Huang Ran provided a different answer to the question of artistic action: “It gives me something to do, to deal with the desirable things that I cannot have in the real world.” His video “The Next Round is True Life” (2009) watches a succession of expressionless, dispassionate-looking men chewing a piece of bubble gum. Each forlorn-looking man tries to blow bubbles in an attempt that becomes more and more difficult as the same gum is passed from one to the next. Their faces barely conceal a hopeless disgust, and the dreariness of this repetitive non-drama verges on the comic. Looped like life’s own cycle, in which each new round — whatever it might be — promises to outdo the next, every frame proves that it will not. On how new media has affected our sense of action, the young artist said, “Somehow it kills the sensation; it reveals many levels that used to be hidden deep in the imagination. Now it is easier to access desirable things, but it is harder to be imaginative and creative; you almost develop an addiction, because we are asking constantly for more or ‘what is next?’ without knowing the answer.”
Xu Zhen and Edison Chen.
徐震（左）和陈冠希（右）。
Also included in the exhibition was the 8-channel video animation “Intolerance: Against Montage” (2011) by Zhou Xiaohu. Complex and highly skilled in its execution, the work explores the possibilities that arise from cutting, editing and re-splicing selected scenes taken from D. W. Griffith’s 1916 film Intolerance. With this plural and flexible approach, Zhou aims to challenge what he sees as the conservatism of contemporary artistic and political discourse. “What is at stake in the restriction of human action?” was one of the questions the artists were asked; Zhou responded thus: “Restriction can accumulate reaction, triggering extraordinary imagination.” In consideration of how “Intolerance: Against Montage” is connected to the theme and aims of the exhibition “ACT>ION,” he explained, “I hope every action automatically occurs and develops according to its own rules. Of course, this whole action is within a scheme/context I preset. This scheme/context is where the idea lies…. Get more people involved in a game of absurdity and you will reap unexpected rewards.” For Zhou Xiahou, this is the essence of artistic action.
Zhou Xiaohu.
周啸虎
