Tim Yip has a good temper.
The man who made the magical oriental aesthetics for "Fengshen Trilogy" speaks with a strong Hong Kong accent, but insists on using Mandarin, speaking very slowly and softly. The clumsiness of his accent adds to his sincerity, and there is always a smile in his eyes.
So in the second conversation, I couldn't help but ask him, "Have you always had such a good temper since you were young?"
Tim Yip denied with a smile, "If you see that I have always been very kind, it is because the whole situation is quite satisfactory to me."
It seems that the day we met at Fangsuo Bookstore in Guangzhou, everything was quite satisfactory to him.
In March, Tim Yip hosted a panel discussion in Guangzhou for his new book, Gaze: My Photography and Life. That day, he wore a black leather jacket, a beret, glasses, and a red scarf, and when he spoke to the audience, he held the microphone with both hands, and his eyes were aimed directly in front of him and slightly raised 15 degrees to see the void.
Tim Yip at the symposium
Our interviews started before the panel and ended a week after the session.
Because understanding Tim Yip is not an easy task.
The communication with Tim Yip is not a direct process of "getting answers", but more like watching a demonstration of solving a problem on the blackboard, deducing step by step, leading to a completely different view of the world.
With his unique view of time and history, his art tries to break the original structure and re-explore the path of man to the world, and he is lonely because of this.
I tried to understand him, but I always hit a wall, and I tried to summarize some of his points, and he even retorted softly and slowly. Then I gave up explaining him with my own knowledge structure, and instead didn't care where I went, I felt close to him.
For Tim Yip, how to see the world is important, which is why he named his new book "Gaze", "Gaze" is a kind of "looking".
For us, it is fortunate to follow his gaze to see the world once.
Someone can discover the world with him, and I think Ye Sheng will also feel very lucky.
Dreaming, dreaming of beauty
Tim Yip said that he wanted to share a video material related to "Fengshen Trilogy", and the audience burst into cheers.
This cheer may be a relief for Tim Yip. He set out from Hong Kong, traveled to Taiwan, China, Europe, and settled in Beijing, because he believed that "Chinese culture is in China", many traditional cultural resources are in the mainland, and many "things that are about to happen" are also here.
"Fengshen Trilogy" is such a thing that happened in anticipation.
In 2016, Wu Ershan found him, at that time, Tim Yip had been slowly walking on the embroidered cloth of oriental aesthetics for decades, and he longed for a new trick and a new partner. Wu Ershan was serious enough, which increased Ye Jintian's confidence. In the movie, he designed the deer platform to be wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, putting the weight on the upper floor as much as possible, so that the building looks like his fate is hanging by a thread, so as to reflect the unbalanced heart of the king of Zhou, he has ambition and desire, so the demonic spirit has an opportunity.
Stills from "Fengshen Part 1: Chao Song Fengyun".
The abnormality of this architecture becomes the externalization of the character's heart.
"Fengshen Trilogy" is "Chinese" and "mythical", but in the final analysis, it is "human". If you look at Tim Yip's aesthetic as a fixed, superficial style, it's likely that you'll drift farther and farther away from him.
For Tim Yip, style has its origins and its future, and the creative effort lies in reinterpreting known traditions, and aesthetics is the way to help us reach our authenticity.
A story has been told a thousand times for a hundred years, not only the conclusion is certain, but even the expressions and postures of the characters are fixed. But there should be something hidden underneath, "like in "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", there is a kind of truth and romance."
So we see the shaking of the bamboo forest in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". It is not a landscape photograph, but a paving the way for us to struggle with erotic desires that are not written in tradition in the bamboo mountains and forests. In this sense, he and Ang Lee have a similar perspective on tradition.
Stills from "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon".
Tim Yip's connection with cinema came to Hong Kong in the 80s, and Tsui Hark saw his paintings and asked him to do the executive art for "The True Colors of Heroes". Now Tim Yip will tell the audience, "Movies are dreams", everyone puts themselves into it, and the dream begins.
He has been involved in many important and wonderful events. In 2005, on the eve of Wang Zuxian's retirement, Tim Yip took pictures of her, from 10 o'clock in the morning to noon the next day. "Only Wang Zuxian and I had a lot of fun, and no one else dared to speak", after taking this set of photos, a generation of beauties retired.
Before the birth of "Farewell My Concubine", the pearl of Chinese films, Li Bihua invited Tim Yip to take photos on the set. He wandered around Beijing with Chen Kaige and Leslie Cheung for a few days and chatted for a few days, ate German pig's feet together, and went to Mei Lanfang's former residence. Tim Yip captures an atmosphere, quiet, a little nervous, everyone together, "wanting to do something big". Leslie Cheung just got the role, with a secret worry in his excitement, when the makeup was set, the makeup was not complete, Leslie Cheung glanced at it ownerlessly, and Tim Yip took it. "The whole memory is very subtle and cannot be replicated now. ”
Leslie Cheung photographed by Tim Yip
Tim Yip still remembers that he and Ang Lee watched Zhang Ziyi spin in circles in a rehearsal room. The young actress has clear eyebrows and dancing skills, but they are all hesitant about whether she is suitable for the story.
Ye Jintian took a photo of Zhang Ziyi, and the girl once stared at him inadvertently. Tim Yip thought to himself, he found something different, and since then, "stubbornness" has become Zhang Ziyi's most unique screen character. Yu Jiaolong's stubbornness is Zhang Ziyi's stubbornness, Ye Jintian first discovered Zhang Ziyi, and then discovered Yu Jiaolong, and then in this story, the relationship between Yu Jiaolong and Li Mubai became the core.
Beauty should have personality. Tim Yip feels that there are many beautiful people now, but beauty is rare, because the element of human nature is weakened, as if there is a standard, many Internet celebrities and actors are just performing this standard, but "will not express who they are". Nowadays, many film and television dramas don't seem to respect themselves so much because of the lack of personal expression, "people express themselves as a kind of self-respect".
Cinema, free cinema
But Tim Yip has always had a sense of distance from movies.
After filming "The True Color of Heroes", he even hated movies for a while, because making movies in Hong Kong was "not so easy".
When he was in Hong Kong, Tim Yip always "felt that he had a peculiar affection for Chinese culture, but it was not taken seriously by the circumstances of the time." ”
He wanted to know how people should "speak the first words", and he went to Europe with his bag on his back, spoke struggling English, slept in the train corridors, and went all the way up the ins and outs of European art, which inspired him to go back to the study of Chinese things, and finally realize that his feelings for Chinese culture were to "speak his own words" in his own context.
Doing "Rouge Buckle" is Tim Yip's real "entry into the industry".
Stills from "Rouge Buckle".
He began to feel the true meaning of film art - at least for himself, the details of art affect the whole body, the clothes people wear affect their manners, and people's manners will restore an era. He found that people walking in the 30s of the last century could not be the way modern people walked, "Walking in front of two women, I can tell the difference of the times", the charm of the times slowly spread, and from then on, Tim Yip believed that he had the ability to "seize another time".
Masters such as Fellini, Akira Kurosawa, Pasolini, and the French New Wave have all influenced Tim Yip. Tim Yip's "cultural wrestling" in the film inspired Tim Yip's "profound response to oriental culture", the sages of the French New Wave in the 60s formed a "complete network" in Tim Yip's mind, Fellini created a crazy and peculiar style in a "traditional Italian taste that cannot be washed away", and Bertolucci's "The Last Emperor" made Tim Yip see freedom.
Stills from "The Last Emperor".
In 1993, Tim Yip went to Taiwan and began to live with artists, he opened a tavern, Bai Xianyong, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Zhong Acheng, Zhu Tianwen, Zhang Dachun, Lin Huaimin, Luo Yijun were all guests. At that time, Hong Kong was not very satisfying to him, and in Taiwanese society, there was more room for art, and Luo Dayou's talented songs became the spiritual banner of a generation, while Hou Hsiao-hsien and Yang Dechang relied on "stuffy films" to make a name for themselves on the island and in the world. Tim Yip cooperated with Wu Xingguo and Lai Shengchuan, and his colleagues in the field of stage drama have the temperament of underground artists, "more miserable and living a rather embarrassing life", but he has a desperate spirit for the sake of performance. Taiwanese artists can be respected in society even if they are marginal, and this social atmosphere of respect for art is exactly what Tim Yip wants.
So in Taiwan, Tim Yip allowed himself to become a greedy learner, and when he was the craziest, he bought tens of thousands of books a day, and was named one of the "Top Ten Book Buyers" of Eslite Bookstore.
Wu Xingguo moved the Greek tragedy "Medea" to the ancient Western Regions, and used experimental Peking Opera to make Medea incarnate Princess Loulan, and Tim Yip also saw the influence of Kurosawa and Bertolucci in him. Like a pebble thrown into a waterhole, he and his Taiwanese friends are in the ripples of European art. This ripple may have been bigger than he thought, and at the end of the century he met Li Shaohong, who was also in it. The script in the latter's hand is gorgeous and romantic, telling the history of the Tang Dynasty in the form of a European-style poetic drama, which happens to be the kind of form praised by Tim Yip, the culture has been transformed, and the final result is "not necessarily so Chinese", but we can find a lot of details in it.
Whether it is Bertolucci or Wu Xingguo, they are all using external things to impact the traditional, solidified, and face-painted interpretations, "break up and start over", and enter a relatively open state, and then we can experience human nature from it—this is the premise for cultural transformation.
A still from director Bertolucci's work "The Last Emperor".
At Fangsuo Bookstore, Tim Yip showed the audience a short film, an exhibition record at the British Museum, when Tim Yip had just returned from England. He designed a skirt for a tall, beautiful black model to wear, dancing softly in the light like a piece of porcelain with heavy colors. The eastern face is too poignant, the white face is not new, and the freedom and vitality of the black people from the grassland made Tim Yip complete a "cultural transformation" again, just like using Shakespeare to talk about ancient times and Italian to build the Forbidden City, he can let black people tell about Oriental aesthetics, this attempt makes him excited and happy, "We all had a lot of fun that day."
The East, the East of the future
"The Orient is a world that is widely different from Western vision, they have a common matrix, roots, and a community that transcends national boundaries, so the spirit of Oriental aesthetics is more important in the expression of the intangible. My films and creations try to shoot at that bull's-eye, and each time I find a different angle. ”
Oriental aesthetics is an unavoidable keyword in Tim Yip's story, and since he came into contact with contemporary art in 2007, he has spent a lot of effort to integrate theories and put forward the term "New Orientalism".
It's the way he sees the world. Tim Yip, who takes pictures, Tim Yip, who makes movies, Tim Yip, who makes stage plays, and Tim Yip, who does installation art, are all different. In his words, when you go to eat supper with people in different fields, you will choose different places. But behind all kinds of cross-border attempts, there is always a core view of time, which can explain the "East" - Tim Yip's dream land.
Photography and painting are the starting points of Tim Yip's art. When he was 11 years old, his brother gave him a camera, and he was given a way to see the world – behind the lens, he could "peek into the world without burden". For Tim Yip, being a photographer is not an identity, a profession, but a personality, which means "standing by and recording the surroundings with subjective consciousness", completely free to wait for the arrival of the next photo.
Tim Yip photography
When he was a child, Tim Yip often had a feeling of not being recognized, and I can probably guess that he was silent, a child with a world of his own, indulging in fantasies and distractions. And he thinks that he is still in the same situation today, because he "doesn't want to do what other people are used to", at the cost of fewer people who know him. So he felt that he was marginal, that he was not in the mainstream, that he did not want to be in the mainstream, that he was not in it, and that he did not want to be in it. A kind of "outside", being an outsider is not necessarily bad, sometimes you can't see a lot of things clearly when you are in it, so it is normal for others not to understand Tim Yip.
But he still wanted to let others know what he discovered, so he wrote books, gave lectures, and did exhibitions. In the photo album, Tim Yip wrote a text at the bottom of each work to explain when and why the photo was taken. He wanted to shorten the distance between the work and the audience as much as possible.
He felt that something had an inexplicable relationship with him, so he photographed it. One of the greatest things about photography is that it is always one moment and one angle, and when the photograph is finished, the object it preserves and the relationship between light and shadow has changed. Tim Yip put his hands on the table and led us to imagine a scene, "When we leave this room, turn off the lights, the room is empty", this table is in the dark, that we can't see, so we can never fully understand what the reality of this table is, and photography is just a sample of reality.
His statement reminds me of Wang Yangming's psychology, "When you come to see this flower, the color of this flower is immediately understood", and it also reminds me of the double-slit interference experiment - Tim Yip has indeed seen quantum mechanics.
He says that his work in all fields explores the mystery of "the coexistence of time".
Tim Yip
Tim Yip's discovery in both Taoist thought and the theoretical framework of physics is that we have the ability to "go in and out" of time, which is very different from what we are used to understanding that people always live inside time. He believed that man could have two selves, one out of time and one in time, which distinguishes between truth and falsehood, fiction and reality. For this reason, he has persistently tried to present the "juxtaposition of virtual and real" in his artworks, and the relationship between man and time should not be only one, "every moment of human life creates his own time with an unknown encounter, just like a game of time".
Photography, as a flawed perspective, is a kind of karma for Tim Yip, and the connection in that moment is an unspeakable and irreproducible dialogue between him and the world. This made him pour more "Yuan Shen" into this, so this angle will become thicker. After the decline of film, the digital age has brought greater convenience, people no longer need to choose precious moments for a limited shutter speed, and those easily available photographs have become thin in time, and the connection between people and things has become weak.
Just like the explosion of information brought about by Xiaohongshu and artificial intelligence, you can quickly gain knowledge in the information flow, grasp several or even dozens of aesthetic formulas and templates at once, we share this information, "there is no thing that you know independently", and people's unique ideas can make you close to the real world.
The best thing about photography is that sometimes he feels that he is not just looking at the photo, but that "there is someone who doesn't know who is looking at it". Tim Yip believes that all his works are in dialogue with someone who "doesn't know who".
The highest level of communication is communication with an unimaginable individual. A person who makes a chair will think about who is going to sit on the chair and how the person who will sit on the chair will affect the meaning of the chair's existence in the world, and Tim Yip is a person who makes clothes, and he will communicate with someone who "doesn't know" about wearing this dress.
I thought it was an "audience" mentality, and Tim Yip laughed that it was brainwashed by business. I asked again, then would you want to make this unknown person known?
There is no way to know about this object, "I have a piece of air in front of me and I can pick it up and play with it, I can collect it with a balloon and it will no longer be a piece of air".
After starting to do installations, Tim Yip created Lili, a female humanoid installation. Her face is not representative, she is young and has no insight into the world. Lili is only meaningful when she is in contact with people, because she is originally an empty carrier, and she is what the people who meet her want her to be, "The greatest energy of people is like the philosophy of black holes, black holes are negative, but finding hope here may be the most suitable place".
Lili, a humanoid installation designed by Tim Yip
We are getting closer and closer to his oriental aesthetics.
Tim Yip's New Orientalism is to ask the past about the future, and to find life from nowhere. He believed that a beautiful and vibrant Oriental world had existed for a long time, and it was only his job to discover it and make it known to more people.
"Now" means that the consequences have not yet happened, but because of this, it is a black hole moment in which people will participate and actions will turn the present into the future.
In this sense, the production of oriental aesthetics may also be about building time, and he continues to deduce his thoughts: "You can say that time is constantly draining, but you can also say that time is constantly building, right?"
Author | Zhao Shuhe
Editor-in-Chief on Duty | Zhao Jinghan
Edit | Wu Qing
Typography | Get up