In 2013, during the construction operation in Longmen county of Yangshao area, Henan, workers unexpectedly discovered a red pottery tripod (“ding”). The vortex pattern on the vessel bears similarity with the modern “hammer and sickle” motif used to represent New China. According to the C-14 dating, the tripod excavated in Longmen has a five-thousand-year history. Chinese archaeologists have named its mysterious pattern the “hammer and sickle”. On the basis of archaeology, anthropology, psychoanalysis, semantics, semiotics and mythology, Professor Yao focuses her research on the origin and development of the “hammer and sickle” motif, concerning which she proposes six hypotheses with scientific significance.
On the Pedestrian Street in Wuchang District, Wuhan City, Hubei Province, Li Liao closed his eyes, waited for a slap in the face from the perpetrator who volunteered online. After the slap, Li Liao continued to maintain his eyes closed until the perpetrator left.
As much as Tang Dixin’s video may give the impression of a documentary film, once the work begins to reel, one quickly realizes the necessity for adopting a fictional perspective. A young Chinese Tang, who met a young Japanese Nan and convinced him to be buried in a hole among the reeds. This process seemed like two lonely strangers coincidentally met and played a game together, a unique encounter that could not have be repeated. Tang Dixin has an acute ability to grasp theatricality in a contemporary sense–the unusual, illogical and arbitrary encounters of strangers in an unfamiliar environment. The tacit understanding the two men have achieved is final, which neither has a past or a future, nor influenced by any conditions, but in the scenes constructed by these moving images here and now.
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