How has people's intimate relationships changed since social interactions have been reduced?

Due to the epidemic, all art museums and museums in Beijing are currently closed. The Red Brick Art Museum's new exhibition "Free Images – Intimate Relationships", which opened on April 29, also held a media conference online for the first time. The topic that the exhibition wants to explore is precisely what has changed in the intimate relationship between individuals and society, between individuals and others, after the epidemic.

Yan Shijie, director of the Red Brick Art Museum, believes that the "threat" of the epidemic is to put mankind at the crossroads, "In the face of this crossroads, how do we face effective order, effective management, effective communication, and effective communication being destroyed or even invalidated?" In the midst of the pandemic, everyone, every institution, and even every country is looking for a new and effective way to govern, find effective ways to communicate, and build a new order. ”

"Free Image – Intimate Relationship" selects 16 works from the numerous video collections of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Paris, including many winners of the Venice Biennale, to explore the theme of "intimacy" from different degrees. Located between the Champs Elysées and the Eiffel Tower, the Musée Des Beaux-Arts des Beaux-Arts is one of the most important art institutions of parisian cultural life, a museum that opened in 1961 and has been a pioneer in the promotion of video art since the 1960s.

Fabris Helgot, director of the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, believes that the video art works that came to Beijing this time are an important part of the museum's permanent collection, which are "bold and artistic creation", "artists present their different thoughts and themes through different channels and different artistic means of expression." ”

"In human history, it should be very rare for an epidemic like today to sweep every country in the world, and the epidemic has plunged the world into crisis at the same time. The impact it has on us is that we have to maintain a safe distance between people, so we reduce social interaction and reduce social life. Fabris Helgot said that today's society has entered a fragmented and divided process due to the epidemic.

In this context, an exhibition of video art that attempts to explore intimate relationships will allow people to re-examine themselves and return to smaller units, looking at private family life and private life.

Intimacy

What is intimacy? Jessica Castex, curator of the Musée Des Desé Moderne de Paris, said the word "intimacy" has its roots in the Latin word initimacy, referring to the most secret and protected part of each person, "intimacy encompasses our thoughts, emotions, bodies, and all that constitutes our existence." ”

Intimacy is originally a part that only family and friends can touch. But with the rise of the Internet and the rise of reality TV in the 21st century, many known and unknown people share intimate relationships.

"A new concept has emerged in today's times, in which the word intimacy takes away its original prefix and reconstitutes itself as a new word with a prefix to indicate the external world, becoming a gray area. Our inner world is exposed to the gaze of outsiders, and the perspective of the outside world can bring us anxiety, stress and trauma. Jessica Castex said that all the works in this exhibition are hinting at the concept and evolution of intimacy.

At the entrance of the exhibition hall is Ange Lycia's Sabattina. Shot in a bathtub, the film is an intimate portrait of the artist's daughter, with the girl's floating face staring at the viewer, her calm breathing seemingly dismissive, becoming a transition that reaches the ambiguous relationship between the viewer and the seemingly cinematic picture.

In the first half of the exhibition, both the bathtub (Angel Lycia's Sabattina), the kitchen (Mariam Berger) and the kitchen (Mariam Berger) are both bathtubs and baths. Both Bennani's The Kingdom of Gradual Descent and Pet Cats and Dogs (Peter Fitzley and David Wise's Cats and Dogs) are both showcasing the intimacy of an individual's daily family life.

Curator introduction, artist Gillian The British film Trauma, shot in 2000, is a very predictable work. The artist invited eight ordinary people to tell about their childhood trauma, each wearing a plastic mask that mimics a sad child, as well as a wig. In a form similar to a reality show, this work shows us how people's intimate world, the inner world, is brought under everyone's gaze, funny and painful. ”

Under the pressure of developed networks and media, the privacy of celebrities is nowhere to be seen. The installation Zidane: Portraits of the 21st Century, a collaboration between artists Philippe Parreno and Douglas Gordon, is a profound reflection on this phenomenon and a masterpiece of the video collection of the Musée d'Arte moderne in Paris.

The material comes from a 2005 match by French star Zidane, where 17 cameras followed the stars in real time from 17 different angles and distances. Whether or not he was the focal point of the competition, the camera never left his figure. The ubiquity of the 90-minute image creates a spectacle of being surrounded and stared at, and it also raises questions: how can we protect ourselves when the development of media and technology further spreads the idea of intimacy, and thus brings one's life to the fullest for all?

The mission of art under the epidemic

This batch of video art works that came to Beijing have been exhibited in Europe and the United States as representatives of French video art many times, but this time, because of the epidemic, they have derived new meanings.

The curators say that the exhibits have been exhibited many times since 2009, and each time a new exhibition is curated, they have prompted them to have a new interpretation and reflection on the collection, "We can see some iconic works, imagine the diversity of artists as narrators, and let us reflect on what is collective, what is space and time." ”

For the curator, this video art exhibition is presented in China after overcoming various difficulties after the epidemic. He believes that in today's era context, they are presenting the exhibition in a humble way, "for a long time, the artist's work is often some grand narrative, but after experiencing certain things, their perspective turns to family life, private life, to the narrative of ordinary people's lives." ”

He believes that before the epidemic, the international community was open as never before, and people's eyes were facing the distance and the future, but when the epidemic swept through, each country experienced unprecedented isolation and closure, "Maybe this is the mission of the times to us, let us return to smaller units, and our eyes have moved from society to individual life." Artists have a very sensitive sense of touch and can use artistic creation to make us think better about this issue. ”

Since the epidemic, the Red Brick Art Museum has made several exhibitions to present the artist's reflections.

As early as December 2020, curator Yan Shijie planned the exhibition "2020+" as a curator, using the artist's sensitivity to approach the truth of the black swan event and use the artist's individual feelings to express the common memory under the epidemic. The "+" word in "2020+" is based on the commonality of the community of human destiny.

"At that time, we thought through the works of artists what the epidemic would bring us." Yan Shijie said that when people are isolated for a long time due to the epidemic, they can better appreciate what intimate relationships are, "Only in isolation can we feel the greater need for intimate relationships, and feel the energy of individuals, families, communities and larger social organizations." The epidemic has brought many uncertainties, and these are exactly what artists and art museums want to express, which is our mission. ”

Yan Shijie calls this exhibition "the reengineering of new energies", "We connect the monuments of history through works of art in history, through curators and art museums, re-combing and re-expressing, and establishing a new image map." ”

A silent video work in the exhibition, Cats, by artists Peter Fitzley and David Wise.

The cat in the shot has been drinking the milk in the cup holder, the picture quality is not clear, there is no composition and skill to speak of, and the amateur is like a random clip of life taken by anyone with a mobile phone. But it's this casual, familiar, unthinking image that once appeared on New York's busiest Times Square, along with countless beautiful, bright, eye-catching ads, scrolling on a huge screen.

When this 6 minutes and 31 seconds, intimate and ordinary "cat drinking milk" image appeared in the heart of Times Square, it suddenly became a scene of time and space inversion and even laughter. How can a scene that often appears and is overlooked in the streets and alleys be juxtaposed with those luxury advertisements?

It's more or less like people being isolated at home, looking out from the small window sills and seeing a stray cat licking the fur on the steps of the neighborhood in the distance. That kind of ordinary scene of ordinary life with no spectacle to speak of, in an instant, makes your emotions amplified and experienced ordinary and moving.

The exhibition "Free Images – Intimate Relationships" will run until July 3.

(Photo courtesy of Red Brick Museum)