Foreword

Yang shot in 1997 his first Film an Estranged Paradise. He finished its editing five years later with the support of documenta 11 (Kassel) and participated in the exhibition that year. He has since created significant works, including Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest (2003 – 2007), East of Que Village (2007), Blue Kylin (2003 – 2009), Dawn Mist, Separation Faith (2009), The Fifth Night (2010), New Women (2013) and the recent Moving Mountains (2016), continuously expanding the space for the language of video and installation. With his strong personal style in poetic structure and aesthetic tone, he has won great acclaim in the international and domestic art scene.

Aside from those classic multi-screen video installations and films, Yang has never stopped shooting short films, though few of them were ever exhibited. Some of his early experiments are hardly known to the public. Nonetheless they are important to Yang himself, forming a part of his experiment and providing a different perspective to the development of his video language. Clumsy and naïve they may sometimes seem, they still have an unusual texture and poetic quality. What roles do they play in the evolution of Yang’s video structure and aesthetic style as exemplified by Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest? Based on this, we choose seven of them, as an independent screening project and a research topic, aiming at providing an alternative entry into Yang’s video works.

Screening Films (7 short films in total, loop.)

After AllI, I Didn’t Force You. single channel video. 2 Minutes 30 Seconds, 1998
City Light. single channel video, 6 minutes, 2000
Backyard – Hey, Sun is Rising! 35mm B&W Film, 14 minutes, 2000
Lock Again. single channel video. 3 minutes, 2004
The Half Hitching Post. single channel video, 7 minutes, 2005
First Spring. 35mm B&W film. 9 minutes 11 seconds, 2010
The Nightman Cometh. 35 mm Film, 19 minutes, 21 seconds, 2011