Youth Video | Taco: New Record of Dongtian

Wudang Mountain Tako

Photography and text/Taco

Interview/Chen Zhen

Among the famous mountains in various parts of China, there are scattered places that have been called "Dongtian" since ancient times.

The material form of "Dongtian" is usually a natural cave. What distinguishes it from the cave in the general sense is that from the 3rd century AD, these places are believed to have hidden passages to the fairy world that can travel through time and space.

In the long history of nearly two thousand years, countless hermits have spent their entire lives cultivating in these dark caves, hoping to attain enlightenment. Emperors of the past also held complicated and mysterious rituals in the cave to communicate with the gods of the other world and pray for blessings.

This long-term project seeks to explore this cultural tradition and its unique temporal and spatial implications. From the caveman tradition of human antiquity; to the needs of reality, that is, the ancients in the chaotic world, longed for a refuge away from danger; and then to the extension of the meaning, that is, religion "theorized" and "sanctified" it, and built it into a beautiful paradise independent of the earthly world.

On top of the original concept of "Dongtian", I also tried to explore the extension of its concept, such as the tombs of the Han Dynasty. Han Dynasty tombs, usually chiseled mountains as mausoleums, carved out of the abdomen of the mountain meandering and long tombs similar to caves. I was fascinated by this relic that connects the worlds of life and death, between light and darkness.

When I explored and photographed in the dark caves and tombs for a long time, I felt that the darkness itself seemed to become an entity, and it was this invisible darkness that was really "useful" for the "cave sky", becoming a part that could connect to another world. Darkness shields the perceptual system of the human body, but activates the sensibility of the spirit on another level, making it more sensitive. As Lao Tzu said in the Tao Te Ching, the complex relationship between "being" and "nothingness", "substance" and "nothingness", in some cases, they can be transformed into each other.

Wang Wei Chuan Beiye former site Tako

Your works, from Shishan He Kao (2009-2013) and Huang Yi Project (2015-2021) to Dongtian Xinlu (2017-), have always revolved around history and related texts.

My first creation lasted from 2009 to 2013, about four or five years, and I examined some of the areas mentioned in the Book of Poetry, such as mountains and rivers, or places like ruins and capitals.

Looking back now, the reason why I tried to do this project may be because of the indescribable "homesickness" that occurred when I was studying abroad and leaving China for a long time. When in a foreign country, the history and reality of China have become just as distant. In fact, it is like stepping back to see a mountain, it is better to see the original appearance of this mountain, but if we are in this mountain, we may be wrapped up in a lot of daily reality.

Unlike other pre-Qin ancient books, the Book of Poetry has a relatively large record of the lives of the commoners at that time, and even from the creations of the people at that time. This makes "Poetry" very intimate to read, very able to be infected by the peaceful, lively and vivid, lonely and lonely emotions conveyed in the poem, which will make me involuntarily fantasize about what the land of such wonderful poetry was like then, and what it is now after two thousand years. So I decided to go to these places and experience whether there was still a trace of the breath left over from the poem.

The next few projects are also very natural along this vein, according to the historical text. Maybe my personal interest has always been in historical texts or some ancient people and things, and I am relatively slow to react to things in reality, and usually I do not have much interest in finding out.

King House Cave Heaven Taco

Why did you choose the concept of "Dong Tian" to create it, and how does it relate to your previous work?

In fact, when filming "Huang Yi Project", I was interested in the theme of "Dongtian". I still remember entering a natural cave that Huang Yi had visited, the Dragon Cave, when I was not prepared. When the mobile phone used for lighting suddenly ran out of battery, people are in complete darkness, the sixth sense of the soul will really be opened with the shielding of the five senses, and the feeling of sweat and hair standing upright is still fresh in memory.

Later, I read that Zhang Yanghao of the Yuan Dynasty had "Records of Dragon Cave Mountain", "... His heart was terrified and terrified, and he claimed that he deserved to die and not come back. Yu Qiang shouted to rush forward, and the crowd took smoke for a long time, and no one responded with a voice, and his heart was particularly frightened. ...... The beginning is out of the blue. If so, only the inside. There will be those who weep, those who mourn, those who laugh, those who repent, those who lift their shoulders and breathe, those who are fortunate to have their hands on their foreheads, and those who are the first to show their embarrassment. ”

This fear of darkness is really deeply rooted in the genes of human beings, both ancient and modern.

Five Dragon Cave Taco

Including Cangdong Tian Tako

Can you tell us about the specific workflow of the whole project?

My motivation to do a project often comes from curiosity about something or someone, and the end of the project is usually due to the shift of interest, and curiosity is gone.

In fact, this may not be a good way for photography, because a lot of time is spent reading searches or organizing materials. But photography is after all a visual art, and it is usually the final video work that is presented. But I still like this way, the research process can answer many of my questions and curiosities about the project itself, and the image is just a piece of evidence left on the road of exploration.

But I later found that photography, as evidence of the objective world, has many shortcomings or is incompetent. We all think that direct photography is more objective, but in fact, no matter what form of photography, it is very subjective, we feel that it can be trusted, which is itself a misleading, so the image is best used as a guiding tool to guide the viewer's feelings about the subject I am discussing.

You have done a lot of research on the historical materials and documents of "Dongtian", and on this basis, you have visited one place after another where "myths" have occurred. What do you think are the similarities and differences between you and archaeologists? Or rather, you personally care more about what you're digging into.

I have been thinking about a similar issue, that is, the soul of ancient culture. This sounds like superstition, but this thing has become quite mainstream precisely after the birth of photography, and artists in many countries are doing similar things.

Does the land where something happened carry all the memories of this happening? In fact, the past is both invisible and ubiquitous, and all the details that remain on the land are a force that shapes our vision and senses. The landscape and its various descriptions are waiting for us to reshape and interpret.

Photography can do what we can't do with the naked eye, give a slice of flowing time, and use the present to write the traces of history that have disappeared. This slice will inspire the viewer to have a unique imagination of what has happened in this wilderness. Am I thinking this imagination is completely individualized? Or is there some commonality for people with similar cultural backgrounds?

Maybe this question is for Carl Gustav Jung.

Tako

Pressing the shutter in low-light environments usually requires waiting for a period of exposure, let alone a pitch-black cave. But in "Dong Tian", this seems to become a kind of "practice", even a kind of empathy with the ancients. You once said that when you were studying at Rochester Institute of Technology, you stayed in the darkroom all night, and even sneaked in through the back door after locking the door, is that environment and experience also the same as your "dark song" in the dark cave?

The dark red light of the dark room is actually quite secure after getting familiar with it. But in the deep, dark wilderness caves, the sense of fear aroused by the body is often difficult to suppress.

In particular, some caves are very vast, some even have more rapid underground rivers than the outside world, and even waterfalls, deep pools, huge water sounds, rivers and waterfalls from the darkness, and flow to the darkness, for a moment there will be an illusion, they are in a roar, or an absolute silence. The scale between himself and the outside world is also out of tune because there is no reference, and he will feel that he has shrunk to an incomparably small size, but his spirit seems to fill the entire claustrophobic underground space.

"There is no inside and no outside, no big and no small, no birth, no death, no coming and going." It's a wonderful feeling.

Cave In Kannon-1 Tako

Little South China Sea Guanyin Cave Tako

Door in Taco

Waterfall cave Taco

The Light of the Mountain Taco

I heard that you are currently preparing new works, will you continue to connect with the distant past in some way? What does it mean to you to establish a variety of paths between ancient and modern?

In recent years, the main thing is to continue the filming of the "Dongtian" project, and the stalls are getting bigger and bigger. When I first started doing it in 2017, I thought that this project could be ended in two or three years, but as a result, I shot and sorted out, read the materials, asked teachers and friends, and constantly added, deleted, and adjusted. The outline of the shooting done in this process is listed, and there is a thick pile of paper. There are still a lot of information has not yet been read, I think there are four or five years to finish the burning of high incense, very headache, this project is not good to do a few years will be yellow, it is not impossible.

However, fortunately, the structure of this year's outline is basically determined, and it feels more complete and powerful than before. This year's shooting is also very smooth, step by step to advance, I very much hope that the final result of this project will be presented in the form of a set of exquisitely structured albums.

The so-called establishment of a path between the ancient and the present, it is better to say that I am trying to "audit the ancient". This word comes from the "Shang Shu", and now we use it less, but the Japanese still use it, tea ceremony, flower way, kendo, or sumo wrestling, they call learning the skills and learning that have been handed down from ancient times, called "Jigu", emphasizing inheritance. However, our understanding of the word "Ancient" should be more comprehensive: "Today we should study the Ming Dynasty and examine the right and wrong; we should be careful of being foolish, do our best to hear and hear, read the biographies of the ancients, and quality the similarities and differences of modern times; save what is right and go from wrong, cut down its troubles and simplify it..." It is more emphasized that on the basis of study and understanding, in combination with the development of the times, we should follow the right and abandon the obsolete.

But it is obvious that no matter what kind of tendency the "ancient" and "ancient" are like a yardstick, which can help us get out of the quagmire of the reality of sinking and struggling, change to a stranger but more sober perspective, project ourselves into a wider time and space, so as to more objectively look at the "present" in this continuously flowing historical river.

Manifold Taco

Ta ke, born in Qingdao in 1984, studied at the Central Academy of Fine Arts and the Rochester Institute of Technology in the United States, and now lives and works in Qingdao and New York. His work is based on traditional texts, focusing on the search for relics and the reshaping of memory. His works have been exhibited in numerous exhibitions in China and the United States, including the National Art Museum of China, UCCA, Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum, China Academy of Art Art Museum, CAFA Art Museum, Anaya Art Center, Monash Art Museum, Berkshire Museum, Sanyingtang Photography Exhibition, Lianzhou Photography Exhibition, etc.; the photography series "Shishan River Examination" is collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In 2011, it was selected as the first TOP20 Chinese Contemporary Photography Cutting-edge Exhibition. In 2021, it was selected as the TOP20 10th Anniversary Academic Retrospective Invitation Exhibition.

This article was first published in the April 2022 issue of China Photography

TOP20·2021 China Contemporary Photography New Talent Exhibition is sponsored by China Photographers Association and Zhejiang Provincial Federation of Literary and Art Circles, and organized by Zhejiang Photographers Association, China Photography Magazine, Cross-media College of China Academy of Art, and Hangzhou Yuhang District Federation of Literary and Art Circles.