Yang Zhenzhong
Let's puff
Two Channels
Video Installaions

Click here to view the sample movie

      
 
       
       
After exploration in installation and photography, Yang Zhenzhong begins be engaged in large number of video experiments. His art style is mostly bright and intelligent, and his works usually make an individual inspectionon seemly ordinary and simple subjects to represent extraordinary connotation. Let's Puff, his video works for this Biennale reveals Yang Zhenzhong's easy and humorous character once more. In front of a fashionable girl, real city scenes become unreal game properties, then reality and unreality that are two seemly paradoxical realms convincingly overlap together in this specific time and space and successfullycreate a miraculous illusion.

------Li Xu/2002 Shanghai Biennale catalog

 
The work of Let's Puff is the video installation with two synchronized channels: In one of the two faced screens (video A), there is a girl who keeps on blowing; but in the another one, (video B), it shows the city scene becoming far and far away from us according to the rhythm of the blowing of the girl. During the production of the work, I had to solve several important technical problems.
 
Since I found a wonderful model, the shot of video A seems off to a good start. After several trials, I recorded her blowing sound onto a sound CD, which is used to control the movement rhythm in video B.
 
I chose the Nanjing road for the spot of video B. Nanjing road is the most famous commercial street with many remarkable buildings as symbols of Shanghai city. I called four friends to help me and borrowed a wheelchair on that day; just for ensuring the camera could be under smooth movement when I shot the video on the street. All the facilities and methods are simple but effective. One of the friends sitting in the wheelchair in responsible for holding the camera steady, I pulled the wheelchair to back up, running or pausing, with the walkman, by the rhythm of the sound from the CD. The other three friends behind me took the responsibility for dispelling the public in order to keep up the path without barriers. On such a sunny afternoon, we five weird guys, passed the Nanjing road streaming with sweat and, fortunately, we were finished within one hour,
 
After taking the shots, the main part of my work was editing the video. Actually, it was quite a lot of trouble to put the two videos into the same step.
 
I have always been interested in the methods to shoot the city scenes involving the movement. In this work, I was also supposed to experiment with an interaction by using the illusion of image, which was how to transfer the view of city into a tool of the blowing game by a fashion girl. Of course, any imagination was welcome. This was accomplished by using the viewer and generating that from the effect of the work.