Associação Cultural Videobrasil

Short Drama Films - Sociological Images

Since 1979 Chinese government has been assuring and supporting the economic and political reform. The level of life of Chinese population is gradually growing, while arts are gaining incentive and opportunities. The coexistence of multiple cultures has become a national policy in China. Thus, the continent begins to leave its isolation to mix its art and culture with those from the rest of the world. Chinese society lives a kind of fate, marked by incertitude and religious, social, racial problems, besides other related to multicultural coexistence and economic integrity. Ideological differences are no longer the only relevant issue for international communication. There are differences involving nationality, culture, regional economic development, etc. How to settle the dispute is an eternal topic. For Chinese artists of the younger generation, the VD became a direct weapon, as the portrait and the collective action. They are concerned with themes related to their individual existence. Their work reflects the mix of regional culture and international popular culture. The unprecedented convenience provided by the Internet in the exchange of these informations and the advancement of the cross circulation of goods and capital around the world facilitate in an unprecedented way the dissemination of international popular culture. Some of the selected works reflect elements that could be characterized as typical of the traditional Chinese culture. In their free and casual creative process, these photographic and video works use the appropriation, mixing, adaptation, manufacture, imitation and copy to deal with the traditional culture and its residual elements. They unconsciously offer a new visual experience, which presents characteristics of traditional visual images and strengthens the conveyance of contemporary Chinese culture in the face of globalization, reinforcing the foundation underlying the artist’s contemporary aesthetics. To be born and raised under Chinese culture for half of my life and then be reforged by the West, for better or worse, independently of what is deposited in my bones, is unchangeable. Twenty years after the Cultural Revolution and after China has opened its doors to the world, we, Chinese artists, should have been sufficiently influenced by Western philosophy, art and culture to attain a certain confidence which enable us to tell stories about ourselves by using our own language. Just as our ancestors had done for so long and the Western people do now, I feel that we should not need to tell stories about the Chinese situation only through the foreign languages that we have just learned.

ASSOCIAÇÃO CULTURAL VIDEOBRASIL, "Displacements - 14th International Eletronic Art Festival": 22nd September to 19th October 2003, pp. 262, São Paulo, Brazil, 2003.