Cultural perspective | the "cave" of century-old architecture, witnessing the integration of Dunhuang culture into the urban space in a new way

"Dunhuang Wonderland - The Mystery of the Legendary Cave 220 Caves" special exhibition site.

Immerse yourself in the 63-meter-long wrap-around light and shadow theater, watch the animation reconstruct the style of the mural, the dancers restore the mural dance, sit down and move into the wine store in the exhibition hall, order a cup of "special tune" on the long snowy winter night, and enjoy the Tang Dynasty feast... At the beginning of the new year, the Dunhuang Caves, an old building with a history of nearly 100 years, ushered in the dunhuang academy's first officially authorized and guided offline multimedia special cave exhibition "Dunhuang Wonderland - The Mystery of the Legendary Cave 220 Caves", opening up people's five senses of Dunhuang culture experience.

This exhibition, jointly produced by the Dunhuang Research Institute and Shanghai Zero Card Culture, is obviously different from the previous common Dunhuang exhibition. On the one hand, it unfolds narrative clues from a single special cave and a specific theme - focusing on the mural paintings of Cave 220 of the Mogao Caves special caves represented by music and dance images, and spreading out the folk paintings of Datang Music and Dance; on the other hand, it pioneered the concept of "traveling exhibition-style retail complex", integrating Dunhuang culture into the urban space in a new way, creating a new consumption with cultural scenes. This will be a three-year global touring exhibition project, with Shanghai as the world's first exhibition.

Whether it is the interpretation of the exhibition's micro-perspective and strong depth, or the attempt to make Dunhuang culture more affinity, sense of experience and humanity, all of them arouse the inherent cultural self-confidence of the sons and daughters of China, and also bring a lot of enlightenment to the creative transformation and innovative development of traditional culture.

The wrap-around narrative superimposes multiple formats, and unveils a corner of the life of the early Tang Dynasty with Dunhuang music and dance

There are 735 caves from the Northern Wei Dynasty to the Yuan Dynasty in Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes, including 492 caves with murals and painted sculptures, with a total mural area of 45,000 square meters, involving ancient religion, culture, art, politics, economy, military and so on. This exhibition selects the music and dance that is closest to life as the starting point, and unveils a corner of the picture of the life of the early Tang Dynasty with the 220th Cave of mogao Caves, which has a representative music and dance image.

Cave 220 of Mogao Caves was created in the early Tang Dynasty and contains an inscription of the sixteenth year of Zhenguan (642 AD). The music and dance scene of the medicine master on the north wall of the main room of the cave occupies one-third of the entire picture, the scene is grand, and it is also the earliest and true sense of the warp music and dance map, and its theme and layout are of epoch-making significance. In the 1940s, with the frescoes of the Thousand Buddhas on the surface of the main room of Cave 220 of mogao Caves peeling off, this masterpiece of early Tang art was impressively revived. In addition to the artistry and legend, Cave 220 of the Mogao Caves opens a window for the audience to understand the life of Chang'an in the early Tang Dynasty. The large-scale orchestra configuration in the murals, the large lamp wheel lamp trees, and the music and dance scenes that most scholars believe to be Hu Xuan dances, various clues point to the source of the murals to the large lantern festival on the first night of Chang'an City.

Stepping into the exhibition, the audience is like following the 220th Cave Provider into the journey of searching for dreams in Chang'an, solving the origin of the mural. The exhibition not only reproduces the exquisite Cave 220 murals in the form of high-definition digital printing, but also uses multimedia theaters, scene creation, mural musical instrument restoration and other rich exhibition means, with original music, customized smells in the exhibition hall, etc., to reconstruct the medieval history and life in a three-dimensional way, and reproduce the bright style of the murals more than a thousand years ago. This is a kind of surround narrative, of which the surround light and shadow theater is particularly evident - light narrative rhythm, immersive perception, four screens project different content, the audience can choose which side to face at will. This narrative is somewhat inspired by Dunhuang's early murals – there is no clear order of viewing, and where to start viewing does not affect understanding.

The most eye-opening aspect of this exhibition is that it has pioneered the creation of a composite space, introducing new formats such as liquor stores and dance dramas, and breaking the restrictions of exhibition space. For example, every night, the exhibition hall will transform into a desert-themed "Moonrise Liquor Store", integrating the scenes of secular feasts and drinks in Dunhuang murals into the nightlife of modern people, serving a variety of special liquors, opening the audience's imagination of Dunhuang from the visual and taste point of view. Every Friday and Saturday night, the first domestic audio-painting interactive song and dance drama "The Other Shore Flower", based on Dunhuang murals, will also be staged here, and well-known choreographers and new dancers will be invited to bring the ancient oriental aesthetics into the new media and venue background, bringing the audience a richer sensory experience about Dunhuang.

How the immovable treasures of Dunhuang have entered today's public life is worth continuing to explore

Dunhuang, located at the throat of the ancient Silk Road, witnessed the history of multicultural exchanges and mutual learning between the East and the West. Unfortunately, as immovable cultural relics, the exquisite murals, painted sculptures and grotto buildings in the Dunhuang Grottoes that have lasted for thousands of years cannot be moved to other places for display. Researchers can only do everything they can to replicate them. Over the past few decades, the Dunhuang Research Institute has held countless exhibitions across the country and even the world, and in the early years, the exhibitions were copied by old artists, and gradually benefited from the "digital Dunhuang", and the murals and painted sculptures collected in high definition can be presented in front of people's eyes in a more diverse way. In Shanghai alone, there are not a few Dunhuang-themed special exhibitions held in recent years, among which "Dunhuang: Songs of the Living" that appeared at the Himalayas Art Museum in 2015 and the "Silk Road Dunhuang Happy Survival" cultural and art exhibition that landed in the center of Shanghai in 2018 have left a deep impression on many people.

Wu Qiongfang, deputy director and associate researcher of the Cultural and Creative Research Center of Dunhuang Research Institute, believes that many previous practices are far from enough, and the fascinating telling of Dunhuang's story is worth continuing to explore. According to her, there was once a large-scale survey about "what words come to mind when you think of Dunhuang", and the first three answers that were finally counted were "mysterious", "distant" and "flying". The survey made her realize that the people's understanding of Dunhuang was still very limited. "As academic research institutions, we have a responsibility and an obligation to deliver accurate, value-oriented and positive information to the public."

Don't look at this special exhibition to open your mind, the vividness and fullness of the story are based on rigorous academic research. The curatorial team worked closely with experts from the Dunhuang Research Institute to present the latest achievements in the study of Dunhuang mural music and dance. At the same time, the curatorial team invited literary and historical experts, musicians, and multimedia design teams to jointly develop and produce, and carefully studied to solve the rational restoration of the social picture of the early Tang Dynasty, the new interpretation of the color of the murals, the contemporary interpretation of Datang music and other curatorial difficulties, so that the millennium Dunhuang murals entered the present. Wu Qiongfang said frankly: "We never thought of using the exhibition to define Dunhuang for the audience, but wanted to create a bridge to narrow the distance between Dunhuang and the public." "This is because Dunhuang is a changeable beauty, different vision, different professional background, different age groups, different cultural backgrounds, see Dunhuang is different." Diversity, richness and tolerance are also the biggest charm of Dunhuang.

It is worth mentioning that the Shangsheng New Institute, where the first stop of the exhibition is located, is a sample of Shanghai's "urban renewal". This makes the dialogue between Dunhuang here layered – Tang Dynasty art from Dunhuang murals and modern art are linked, and multimedia exhibitions also bring new formats to the historical buildings in the park. In the industry's view, such a practice suggests that the combination of traditional culture and charming urban space has become a new trend, bringing about a new trend of consumption. When traditional culture becomes an important theme of cultural and entertainment consumption, it will have stronger vitality and broader development space. Increasingly beautiful urban spaces also need to be filled with high-quality cultural content. The integration of the two will also spark more and more surprises in the future with the upgrading of creativity.

Author: Fan Xin

Editor: Fan Jing

*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.