Close to the Sea is poetry-made-film;
cinema made video art. Yang Fudong presents us with a wavering and
inconclusive tale of love, tragedy and loss. Surrounding a hanging
screen are eight videos, each showing a musician (or pair of musicians),
playing the trombone, xylophone, trumpet or double bass, all standing
on yellowing rocks by a crashing sea. The music (by Jin Wang) surrounds
you, slightly disjointed and menacing. The piece is accompanied by two
films playing either side of a central, hanging screen.
The side facing the entrance shows a colour film. A young man and woman have been washed up by the sea. However, while ashore on a wooden raft, on which they lie perfectly still in the strong wind. As the camera focuses on the woman, drinking in her soft skin, faded nail polish and salt-stiff hair, she wakes and eventually stands, stumbling weakly in and out of the frame. The film pans back out, revealing her lover is gone. The instruments rise together, their flat keys building in horror and sadness.
Time flashes back, and we see her out at sea, clinging desperately to the raft as the waves crash into it, the man holding on, his head constantly swallowed and spat out by the roiling waves. Although we never witness the event, we are waiting for him to drown. Flash forward again, to the moment the woman wakes and discovers her lover lost, and the other side of the screen shows the pair running around the beach, grasping each other. In black and white, the dream-like scenario seems to cross into metaphor, a way to enter in upon the romantic relationship.
The two films are brought further together by visual references. The couple in the black-and-white film visit some abandoned tractors and walk up and down the shore. At the end of the colour film – the tragedy – the camera lingers on the empty tractors and a pair of footprints indented across the beach.
Visual echoes entwine both films together like two lovers made one. All the while, Yang’s framing moves seamlessly between noir and surrealist techniques. The result is a stunning opus that must be seen in the flesh. Clare Pennington
The side facing the entrance shows a colour film. A young man and woman have been washed up by the sea. However, while ashore on a wooden raft, on which they lie perfectly still in the strong wind. As the camera focuses on the woman, drinking in her soft skin, faded nail polish and salt-stiff hair, she wakes and eventually stands, stumbling weakly in and out of the frame. The film pans back out, revealing her lover is gone. The instruments rise together, their flat keys building in horror and sadness.
Time flashes back, and we see her out at sea, clinging desperately to the raft as the waves crash into it, the man holding on, his head constantly swallowed and spat out by the roiling waves. Although we never witness the event, we are waiting for him to drown. Flash forward again, to the moment the woman wakes and discovers her lover lost, and the other side of the screen shows the pair running around the beach, grasping each other. In black and white, the dream-like scenario seems to cross into metaphor, a way to enter in upon the romantic relationship.
The two films are brought further together by visual references. The couple in the black-and-white film visit some abandoned tractors and walk up and down the shore. At the end of the colour film – the tragedy – the camera lingers on the empty tractors and a pair of footprints indented across the beach.
Visual echoes entwine both films together like two lovers made one. All the while, Yang’s framing moves seamlessly between noir and surrealist techniques. The result is a stunning opus that must be seen in the flesh. Clare Pennington
Originally posted on Time Out Beijing
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