On the evening of July 23, "The Wind Blows Ten Thousand Tricks: The Screening of He Yitong's Experimental Video Works" was held at the Jiuli Art Space in Huadiwan, focusing on the inspiration and creative concept of He Yitong, a young artist in the United States. Curator and poet Huang Lixiao believes that He Yitong "opens up new spaces in the carrier of the narrative of the female body, showing the powerful motivation of 'finding oneself', and bringing perspectives from elsewhere to make things happen." Her films switch between abstraction and figuration, merge between narrative and de-narration, and look at the heart with 'mirror images', and such a hidden connection becomes the language lens of the film's defamiliarization."
Poster of "The Wind Blows Ten Thousand Tricks: An Exhibition of He Yitong's Experimental Video Works".
Young artist He Yitong, after graduating from the Central Academy of Fine Arts High School, went to the United States to study, studied film production at the California Academy of the Arts, and now lives and works in Los Angeles. His works are dedicated to the possibility of the interconnection of different media, exploring painting, photography, installation art and other fields.
Several dance short films show their inspiration and creative ideas
Nandu reporter learned that The 35 mm drama short film "Bruise (Bruise)" directed by He Yitong was selected for the 2021 official selection international competition unit of the Très Court International Film Festival in France, and the AFI American Film Academy Photography Department Works Exhibition; Embers was selected for the AFI American Film Institute Photography Exhibition; "Slight Heat" was selected for the official selection section of the SEFF Binghamton Film Festival. The "Wind Blows a Thousand Tricks: Screening of He Yitong's Experimental Video Works" screened a number of dance films, which can be described as a concentrated display of He Yitong's inspiration and creative philosophy.
As a branch of experimental cinema, dance shorts are an art form that has become popular throughout Europe and the United States in recent years. He Yitong revealed to Nandu reporters that she was personally deeply influenced by maya Dailen's series of pioneering experimental works, and expressed her tribute to Maya Dellon in many short films. Among them, "Bird" and "Causeway" were created during the most rampant period of new crown pneumonia in the United States, everyone was isolated at home, large and small institutions, colleges, film crews were also shut down, and everyone passively entered a state of suspension. The original intention of the short film was a tentative response to the series of questions: without the crew, the team, the large equipment and hardware, can we continue to create? What are the necessary conditions for creating a video work? Both films were filmed in nature, and they are at the same dam in Burbank, Los Angeles, where many Hollywood films have been filmed. In such a unique and silent time and space, He Yitong germinated the idea of creation, in this barren and grassy countryside, with the physical language of dance, in the way of changing images, let the mind think, and dialogue with the world and time.
Works by He Yitong.
Express the hazy exploration of man and nature, man and space universe in a simple image language
A number of artists from different fields who attended the screening expressed their love and appreciation for the young artist. Director Lu Hengcheng said, "I was very surprised by He Yitong's short film, she used a very simple video language, using the dancer's body language, musical rhythm, and environmental tension to show a sense of ritual fragments, completing the peeping of the private field, and finally transforming into a series with the universe and life time and space." Everyone is a speck of cosmic dust or a star, when you look at the starry sky. In fact, he is looking back at his hometown. ”
Stage artist Ji Qiao gave a positive evaluation to He Yitong's spatial consciousness: "He Yitong expresses her hazy exploration of man and nature, man and space universe in a calm, humble and non-revealing lens language. She tries to use two-dimensional visual vocabulary to express three-dimensional and four-dimensional spatial imagery. Among them, she uses the mirror, the universal object language of human beings, to reflect and criticize herself and human beings. ”
Works by He Yitong.
Director Fu Wenyu told Nandu reporters that He Yitong's experimental images always feel that the lens is a "eye" of another dimension of non-subjective and non-objective, and it is very calmly cared for. The narrative seems to have nothing to do with her, and all she cares about is what exactly triggers the medium she uses. The form of the body is expressed in the state of the theater, deriving the emptiness between the phase and the mind. Seemingly empty and not empty, leisurely wandering in heaven and earth, the self-space she created with images has built us a pipeline connecting with other dimensional life.
Young artist He Yitong
Dialogue -
He Yitong: Exploring the infinite possibilities of the medium with dance short films
Nandu: The theme of the screening is called "Wind Blowing Tricks", why did you choose these four words as the theme? What's the point?
He Yitong: "The Wind Blows Ten Thousand Tricks" is taken from "Zhuangzi Qiwu Theory": "The husband of heaven and heaven, blowing ten thousand differences." The long wind whistles, blows thousands of holes, and makes all kinds of different sounds. I'm not a reader of Zhuangzi, but this imagery has always stuck in my mind (and I also like the domestic bands to play Wan Hehe). In my short films, there is always a wind, which gently blows the dancers' clothes, and the wind also creates the shadows of the trees, the rushing river, and brings the sound of nature. Wind, sound, and dance are all metaphors for time, and images are the biggest carriers of this code word. The process of image creation is like the process of catching the wind to me, it conforms to the rhythm of nature.
Nandu: Why did you choose to take the road of art? Tell us about your artistic experience.
He Yitong: I loved to draw since I was a child, and later studied painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts Affiliated High School, and after graduation, I studied film/video film production at the California Academy of the Arts. He now works and lives primarily as a visual director and art director in Los Angeles, California.
Nandu: You moved from painting to film creation, so how much influence did the experience and foundation of studying painting have on your current creation?
He Yitong: Traditional painting training as a technique or craft is first and foremost a training of the eyes: it guides you to observe the world around you with a keen eye. It is also a training of the opponent and the brain: the study of how to summarize things in the three-dimensional world on a two-dimensional plane, and it takes years of practice to hone the kung fu at hand. This series of learning experiences is similar for different art disciplines, requiring observation, feeling, understanding, induction, and re-output. I always remember one evening at school, there were burning clouds in the sky, and everyone was busy spreading out their newly collected painting tools and standing in the corridor and starting to sketch. It's a kind of simple eagerness to see and record.
Film, as another medium, also involves the process of absorbing and projecting three-dimensional space onto a flat screen, which is somewhat similar to painting. It also touches on a vital dimension: time. Godard said that photography is real and film is real at 24 frames per second, while Roland Barthes said that photography "is neither image nor real, it is a new substance,...... : A reality that can no longer be touched. The fluidity of time is inscribed by images. The paintings of the Bada Shanren allow us to see cats napping, stagnant dragonflies, fish and deer rolling their eyes 300 years ago. The first images of film history existed as a recording tool. Lumiere recorded trains coming in and factories leaving work, and my former teacher, James Benning, an American avant-garde filmmaker, spent dozens of hours documenting the growth of a tree. Whether it is a static painting or a moving image, they are a kind of long-term observation of things.
The background of the painting has somewhat honed my sensitivity to images and cultivated an inertia of image thinking for me. It has made me more use of my intuition in the process of image creation. My ideas for short films are also often based on one or a few images. On the other hand, the experience of studying pure art has led to my interest in video creation focusing more on cross-media exploration. I like to incorporate animation, 3D models, and still images into my work. I always want my work to be a fusion of various mediums.
Nandu: For you, what are the similarities and differences between the creation of short films and the creation of feature films?
He Yitong: At the practical level, of course, the two are quite different in terms of time-consuming and cost of shooting. For me, drama short films are essentially divided into two types. One is to act as a slice in the complete story, showing a fragment of the Lord's journey like an iceberg on the surface of the sea. If placed in a complete feature-length script, this slice often falls on or before the turning point of the plot, suggesting that the mountain rain is coming, and the release of tension is often the part of the audience's reverie after the end of the film. Hungarian director Marcell Iványi's short film Szél and British director Andrea Arnold's Wasp probably fall into this category. This type of short film is very suitable for being extended into a complete feature film story, and as a result, it is often made by many filmmakers as a preview of long films. Another type of short film is self-contained, it directly tells a complete story, although it can easily extend the long film in the text, but because of its short body mouth and exudes a very light charm, if it extends the long story, it will lose its charm. For example, Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon, Amano's Dawn, and Chang Yun's "Just Like That," We Put the Goldfish in the Pool. The latter kind of creation often contains more unconventional narrative methods.
Short films are often used as a prelude to feature films, but many times it can be a world of its own. For me, if a feature film is a novel, a short film is like a sketch in literature, allowing for a lot of idle writing, free and light. The works screened in this exhibition are mostly short films of a few minutes, and they are many open explorations for me, and the creative process is very casual and relaxed.
Nandu: As we all know, this is the digital age, what was your original intention to shoot 16mm film? Is it any different from digital film shooting?
He Yitong: The "Cosmic Love" screen this time was shot with a Boltex camera from Alai, Germany, and a roll of Kodak 200T 16mm film. The original intention of shooting is because in Los Angeles, filming film from the pre-production to the post has a relatively mature service, from film, camera rental and purchase to development, scanning can find the corresponding professional agencies, the cost is not high, so of course want to try the "film addiction". In shooting, the Bolex I used belonged to a relatively primitive and compact machine, which needed to be hand-cranked to power, and it was difficult to see the recorded picture in real time like digital film shooting, and it was necessary to wait until the film was swept out to see the final effect. When I attend workshops at the California Institute of the Arts, I draw and texture on negatives, a technique called Direct Animation. Doing all of this is very different from the way we are used to shooting, and to be honest, there is a fresh sense of "handwork". Holding a plate of negatives in your hand, heavy, although it is a romantic and insignificant statement, but it is indeed touching the "substance" of the movie, which is exciting.
Nandu: We just watched your dance video works "Bird", "Cosmic Love", "", "Little Summer", for ordinary audiences, "dance image" is a relatively unfamiliar concept, why did you think of creating such a theme?
He Yitong: These short films are my exploration and practice of the category of dance film or movement piece, and "" is a relatively complete recent work in terms of production and concept. Although the works are all directed by me, most of the time I only provide visual concepts and story lines, and the dance movements are choreographed by the dancers who are filmed, who are all talented dancers. Dance video, as a branch of experimental cinema, has personally emerged from a series of avant-garde experimental works created by Maya Delane. In 1945, Dylan filmed the landmark A Study in Choreography for Camera, a landmark film in the field of dance video. "The dancers have continuous dance movements through the cinematic technique, jumping through the forest, living room and art gallery three scenes. Dylan unleashes the different disciplines of dramatic space and real space on the human body, pioneering the film itself as the dancer's 'stage' and 'audience'. She believes that dance and film have a natural connection, both of which flow in time, both of which rely primarily on visual projection to express themselves, and both of which produce meaning in some kind of movement. It can be said that the human action process and the filmmaking process are the two areas that Maya Dellon pays the most attention to in her creative practice. Similarly, I think the dance movements themselves are related to the rhythm of the film clip (many people say that editing is like dancing), and shooting dance is an exercise in the composition of the image. "Birds" and "Causeway" were both created during the most rampant period of new crown pneumonia in the United States, everyone was isolated at home, institutions, colleges, and film crews were shut down, and everyone passively entered a state of suspension. Looking back now, they seem like a tentative response to the question: Can we continue to create without crews, teams, large equipment, and hardware? What are the necessary conditions for creating a video work? Both films are filmed in nature, and they are at the same dam in Burbank, Los Angeles. Many Hollywood movies have also been filmed here, including one action blockbuster, in which the protagonist strides forward handsomely at the end, allowing the behind him to explode and burn and smoke rise - a classic scene of Hollywood action movies, which is a little funny. Now, without the vocal crew, born into death, billowing smoke, American tough guys, the plants on this are growing more and more densely, and the bare cement clearing in the river has gradually become overgrown like an island in the water, becoming a habitat for small animals. I was here with a camera, three or five friends, and I was recording a dance. This is a unique vacuum in the outbreak. Nature, for my eager consideration, responds generously and silently to the question of image creation.
"Belé" is directed by He Yitong.
Nandu: You were the art director of "Belé" that was screened at the end, can you tell us about this one?
He Yitong: Yes, "Belé" is an experimental mv, and the director and cinematographer are my friends Zhang New York and Du Jiang respectively. The music in MV was composed by Peruvian composer Alvaro Balvin Benavides. Similar to the previous screening, this mv is also a dance short film. The plot is that one day, a girl from outer space suddenly lands on the beach of the human world, producing a strange, alienated and nostalgic strange emotion, and tells it in dance. As an art director, the process of filming is more like writing propositional compositions. I do background checks based on the clues given by the director, look for visual references, or go directly to the beach where I was shooting for inspiration. In the early days of filming, I talked to the director a lot about the visual concepts and styles behind the film, and finally chose the image I see now: a girl in a silver tights and gloves, with slender hands and feet, and chestnut hair shining in the sun. She danced in the middle of the sea, surrounded by countless transparent planet-like bubbles. Many pearls grew on her face, like the tears of a fishman. This is one of my favorite elements of the styling of the whole film. I used a lot of mirrors in the film, and the round mirror reflected the strong light, holding a small sun in the dancer's hand. The tones of the film are light blue, brass and silver, and this pure color combination turns the beach that tourists love into a deserted wonderland.
Nandu reporter Zhou Peiwen