When I was a child, the teacher wrote on the blackboard in class, and the artist Lei Lei had already begun to scribble on the corner of the textbook, which became an animation as soon as it was turned over. In college, Lei Lei studied book design and information design, and later he formed his own band, playing music and skateboarding, Lei Lei said that his interests were too extensive, "I think only animation can put all my inspiration in it, other ways seem to be somewhat limited, not free enough, so I began to do my own animation." 」 ”
Today, Lei lei teaches experimental animation at CalArts at the California College of the Arts in Los Angeles. Lei Lei's animated short films have won several international awards, and his feature film Animal Dialects premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February.
Lei Lei Picture to thank the artist
For Lei Lei, who was born in the 1980s, Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio is a very warm word, because when he was a child, after playing with children, everyone would always go back to watch cartoons, and at six o'clock on TV, he would start to play the animation of Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio, the Rubik's Cube Building, the Haunted Heavenly Palace and so on. "For me at that time, six o'clock in the afternoon was a very happy time, especially warm." Later, when Lei Lei himself began to do animation, he decided to name his work "One Man's Art Film Studio", and Lei Lei hoped to continue this warm feeling of childhood in his own way.
The Art of Love: The Traveler's Diary" "One Man's Art Studio". Image source: Yuntu Original ©YT
In the early days of short film creation, there was no script, no storyboarding, no original picture setting, Lei Lei said: "Everything is in my head, if I have a dream I can draw it, it is a very free process, especially relaxed, and in this process I can fully enjoy myself, just need a crazy idea to show it." 」 ”
"Big hands, big hands, bigger is better", color animated short film, time: 4 minutes and 07 seconds, animation: Lei Lei, music: Li Xingyu, the picture is a short clip
On the outskirts of Beijing, there is a garbage recycling site that specializes in refining silver salt from discarded negatives. French art collector SuVin spent years collecting these 35 mm negatives, numbering more than half a million. The images document fragments of the lives of the people of The Chinese capital and the capital over the past three decades. From 2011 to 2012, Lei Lei used more than 3,000 of these photos to add color to these forgotten life scenes through his work "Photo Recycling".
In 2013, Lei Lei and Su Wen collaborated on another project, "Hand Coloring of Photos". They chose old black-and-white photographs from Chinese history and imagined that they all came from the same virtual Chinese. Through the process of repeated manual coloring-scanning-printing-re-coloring of photos, Lei Lei used collage and tracing to link these old photos, and after two years of work, 1168 hand-colored photos after repeated coloring created the effect of time passing, so that the virtual protagonist gained life in the passing time and space.
"Duck Pear or Alien", color animated short film, time: 4 minutes and 05 seconds, animation: Lei Lei, music: Li Xingyu, the picture is a short clip
Old photos, old stories, Lei Lei's works always seem to revolve around the theme of memory. But Lei Lei said: "The theme of memory is not my deliberate choice. In this era of rapid development, information and technology are changing with each passing day, and these more or less make him feel a little uneasy and strange. On the one hand, because Lei Lei thinks that he is not very talented in terms of technology products, on the other hand, he feels that the current situation of modern people being wrapped up in social media and bound by some rules of high-tech and metropolises makes him feel strange and uneasy, and how to find a safe and self-warming place in this, Lei Lei chose memory. He chose to use memory to create.
"Book on Book", animation: Lei Lei, voice: Nik Phelps, the picture is a short clip
"I was influenced by my father to do some family oral history, like the process of a person searching for self-identity in a high-growth city and era." This is not a creative idea, or an advertising slogan, not "Lei Lei's creation is retro, is a memory", this is Lei Lei's way of thinking. He said: "When we have been looking forward, constantly running forward, can we look back and see what is the difference between the way an artist born in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, thinks differently from the people who live in New York and London, each of us has a different family story, and I think this is very important." Lei Lei hopes that when people are confused, they can look back and think about "who I am", an eternal topic.
"Who am I" is a topic that has always been discussed in Lei Lei's works, and it is also a problem that everyone will face. In the face of confusion, in the face of problems, some people will choose to read, some people choose to listen to music, some people choose to travel as an answer to these questions, Lei Lei's choice is to create, in his view, free creation is also like a trip, "In my animation, I don't know who I will meet, what a fresh place I will reach." ”
The second season of "The Art of Love": The Traveler's Diary, which is being exhibited in Hall 2 of the Today Art Museum in Beijing, as one of the participating artists in this exhibition that explores love, discovers love and awakens love in the journey of life, Lei Lei also uses his work "One Man's Fine Art Film Studio" to lead the audience into China's social changes with his images and memories.
Lei Lei used cathode ray television and TV cabinets to show 12 animated short films created in recent years. Each TV monitor is packed into a box made by the artist himself, and the hand-drawn drawings on the box are inspired by the book design work that Lei Lei's father was responsible for when he was in the publishing house earlier.
Lei Lei cleverly created his animation and placed it in those patterns full of early modernist style. He hopes to reinvent the color and toughness of animation through these TVs. In these works full of the handmade texture of Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio, each story carries Lei Lei's childhood memories, about love, loneliness, music, life's initial curiosity and courage to explore the world.
Although Lei Lei's creation is basically shown in animation, each work is very different while continuing the personal style. This concept comes from the inspiration of the Taiwanese writer Luo Yijun, who once mentioned in a lecture by Luo Yijun that after writing a book, it is like emptying a hard disk, it is a new beginning, when he finished the work "Xixia Hotel", if he followed his original method he could write many similar novels, but he chose to empty, reconstruct a system, and open a new door for himself. This is very courageous and very dangerous in Lei Lei's view, but after listening to Luo Yijun's words, Lei Lei felt that he had found a consensus or found a like-minded way of creation.
"'One Man's Fine Art Film Studio' has a system, but in 'Photo Recycling' it's completely different. My most recent feature-length film, Animal Dialects, is a big difference compared to Photo Recycling. Lei Lei said: "Brave artists are not immersed in or satisfied with the consumption of the contemporary art market, satisfied with the operation of the gallery, satisfied with the exhibition of the art museum, but can always empty themselves, introspect and deny themselves, and then open a new door for themselves." ”
YT interviewed artist Lei Lei, and before he boarded the plane back to Nanchang, we seized the time to talk to him about the story behind the creation.
"It's not a moment to lie", color animated short film, time: 3 minutes and 30 seconds, animation: Lei Lei, music: Li Xingyu, picture is a short clip
YT: A lot of your work is shown at film festivals, in theaters, on big screens, but "One Man's Art Film Studio" chose 12 small television sets to play, why choose this way of presentation?
Lei Lei: What's more interesting about this project is that it is transformed into a small TV broadcast, which becomes a live feeling. The audience entering this scene is like entering the world of an artist, compared to the cinema the audience also has more choice possibilities, he can choose different stories, choose to see these sources presented on TV, I think it transforms these videos or moving images and the relationship between the audience, this work may have a new life in this regard relative to the theater broadcast, I think this is very interesting.
In fact, the content can also be said to be the artist's daydream or utopia, whimsical. Each story is quite like a diary, one of the short films "This Thought is Love" is a story about love, at that time I was also immersed in beautiful love, so in the story you can see a lot of love, small details about life, small stories, daily bits and pieces. It's a day-to-day diary, like putting a diary in a TV box for viewers to flip through.
YT: So you give the audience all the explanations of your work?
Lei Lei: In fact, the relationship between artists and audiences has long been broken, and more rights should be given to the audience. For example, when the audience watched my animation live, their feedback, some of their memories of the eighties are likely to be more valuable and more important than my creations.
"Big hands, big hands, bigger is better", color animated short film, time: 4 minutes and 07 seconds, animation: Lei Lei Music: Li Xingyu, the picture is a short clip
YT: In works such as "One Man's Fine Art Film Studio", we can see your father's inspiration for your creation, did your father give you a lot of creative inspiration?
Lei Lei: Yes, my animation also has a lot of collages, art characters, pattern designs, etc., and these aspects are all from my father's early book design. My father was one of the earliest book designers in China, and in the era when he worked, there was no Photoshop, no computer design, so most of his design was collage, editing, handmade, glue and so on. So when I was a child, my memory was that my father used an art knife to carve art words, and used old magazine collages to make some graphics for the cover, which also affected some of my work in animation production, and the layout of the exhibition, including the patterns on the carpet in the exhibition hall of this exhibition, were also from some old books, and the patterns on the TV cabinet were common.
YT: You mentioned earlier that you want to let everyone see "how the way of thinking of an artist born in Nanchang, Jiangxi Is different from that of people living in New York and London", do you think that the city has a great influence on a person's creation?
Lei Lei: It's not so much about having an impact on creation, in fact, the city is more about having an impact on life, it's possible that we've been living in a city without feeling that my current life is mainly in Beijing, in Los Angeles, and my current plane is going to fly from Beijing to Nanchang. The first is the change of climate, Nanchang is very humid in winter cold, summer is very hot like a sauna, Nanchang people are very able to eat spicy, many characteristics of the south will affect a person's lifestyle, which is completely different from the life experience in the north, in the United States and Europe.
"Three Missing One", color animated short film, time: 4 minutes and 25 seconds, animation: Lei Lei, music: Li Xingyu. Picture thanks to the artist
I think when we were young, we didn't realize it, we always felt that life should be like this, cold in winter and hot in summer, but when I arrived in Los Angeles, I found that there was another place that was more than twenty degrees all year round, and it didn't rain, and Nanchang was four months and five months when it rained. In fact, creation is only a small part of life, the city will really affect our life, a person growing up, living in different places, different cities and even his personality will have an impact.
YT: Your work has been exploring the question of "who am I", do you have some answers after so much creation?
Lei Lei: I'm still looking for an answer to that question. This is a complex issue. I remembered that I saw some old photos of myself seven years ago that night, but I couldn't recognize myself in the photos, and I thought that my appearance was different, but others said that this was you, and I was very questioned: "Is this me?" So 'Who am I' is always a question.
You can come to the "Art of Love: The Traveler's Diary" in Hall 2 of the Today Art Museum in Beijing to see the photos taken by Andy Warhol and Christopher Makos in Beijing that year, as well as more exciting exhibitions, as well as some surprise gifts:
The Art of Love: The Traveler's Diary
Exhibition time: March 30, 2019 – June 30, 2019 (closed on Mondays)
Hours: 10:00am-18:00pm (lasts ticket sales at 17:30pm)
Venue: Hall 2, Today Art Museum, Beijing, No. 32 Baiziwan Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing
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