Song Menglan has many unfinished works, which has become a major concern for her. I told her to come to 510 to hold an exhibition. All your materials will be reorganized within two weeks, and the editing and soundtrack will be completed as soon as possible. She said yes.
When recording "Personal Chronicle", she insisted on looking at me and saying that she would not let the phone stand between me and her. She wanted to have a conversation and express her feelings at a close distance. I said yes.
Meng Lan's WeChat name is trees. She said that she was deeply influenced by Calvino. She didn't want to be in the sky or on the earth, she just wanted to be stuck in a tree. She said that she was abandoned by her parents since she was a child and raised herself by herself. She is her own mother. She said that people are like sand, there is no pipe between us, only water flows through it, and sand remains unchanged in the river.
Meng Lan is a film director, her image is strange, no one knows what she will become. But what is certain is that she never compromised on her ideals. She took a knife and dived into the deep sea with the stars to catch butterflies and become a fish.
"Song of Travel"
Song Menglan
"Wandering Song" is composed of images, but it is by no means just images. All presences are "occurrences" and "evidences"
The idea for "Songs of Travel" came about in early 2003.
Initially, the protagonist in the image was "travelled" in the form of a movie script. It tells the story of a man who wants to express his desires through the mouth of a performing character after losing the ability to speak. In fact, actors often face this problem. The usual pattern is that the parts of life that cannot be revealed due to repression are released through performance in prescribed situations, and the performed parts are eliminated by the identity of "actor". Of course, there are also some people who think that performance within a prescribed situation is a kind of reality, and people are forced to act out the depression in life. These two rhetorics, which vary from person to person, invariably lead to the boundary between reality and performance. It seems that both sides are true, and everything seems to be false.
So during the filming of "Wandering Song", with the help of AC Community Art Space and friends, we conducted a real drama script reading. Except for Sun Jiarui, the actor of "Wandering", who walked within the established plot, the rest of the people were informed that the camera was on before entering the scene. Everyone was asked to randomly come on stage with their identities as actors to perform the drama. Therefore, everyone has more than two identities. First, he is a different participant in the reading meeting, and second, he is a character in his own script.
Of course, as Zhou You, he also has a third role.
The character Zhou You is a typical gender archetype in my creation. It essentially comes from my fantasy about male identity. Men seem to always be on the road to becoming, like a road to production. When a person fantasizes about becoming something and maintains his own order to achieve "him", he will become his own big other. He is always on the road to becoming that and becoming. When the pause begins, he will fall into endless nothingness. And this nothingness is exactly another result he wants. "Predicting everything and predicting every step beforehand" is the path to becoming a 'god' for someone who wants to become a self-conceived person. Correspondingly, women who have gained fertility are women themselves who are creators, and the prototype of women is been, so for women, to be is no longer a purpose. The purpose of men seems to be to become gods and women.
This is the first entry point from gender, production is a motif for me.
Traveling is not a representative of a gender. "Male" here is a quality, a Sisyphus-like growth path after discipline: acting in a prescribed situation. It seems that this statement is closer to reality. The artistic works break up and reconstruct the minutiae of life, thus creating the character Zhou You. The role played by Zhou You in the video has to play a role, but if you can't get out of the play, you can't get into the play. If you want to get into the play, you have to get out of the play. The contradiction lies here, pain arises, our real problems are exposed, and the boundaries between real and false are confused. This blur is reflected in all problems in the world, and where is the truth? Religious people point to God, and self-consistent people point to themselves. This cycle of nothingness reinforces itself until the load collapses. But is reality really just a dialectical law?
The real term is covered by falsehood, and the real self in fiction will inevitably collapse. From Zhou You's eyes, this is the first perspective.
The problem of traveling is also my problem. If I can't act, how should I arrange myself? "Faith" has no object. This alienation is not only a creative instinct, but also a painful bottomless pit. A second perspective is created here, moving the camera to watch all this, together with everyone. Simulate a perpetual onlooker's eye. In fact, none of the characters played are really involved in the play. The detached part is here, and the prescribed situation is just a kind of interpretation. This eye maintains the illusion of objectivity, watching everything that is planned to happen. Like an invisible surveillance camera, behind such surveillance, an extremely arrogant and deified self stands there as the Creator. He seems to predict and control everything that happens, and the pain caused by it is his purpose. Stop, eternity, in the twilight zone before the final step to solve the problem. And where is the real audience? There is no real audience. The audience is a part of the scene at this moment. The audience is also the audience in the relationship between the performance and the image formed. The audience is also the gazer behind all of this. And behind all of this...
We are always in an unfinished spectatorial relationship, and we think we are the creator. This is the second perspective of traveling around.
The role played by Zhou You's actor has to play a role, and the role played by the audience has to play a role. Zhou You, as the creator of the entire scene, has constructed this situation. As the creator, I have constructed Zhou You. I stand behind the camera together with you. This is the God's perspective that we open when watching an image work. In the process of such a performance within a performance and fiction within fiction, the boundaries between true and false are blurred. But at this moment, your identity as an audience member is random, so you become the uncertainty among all the certainties. Of course, this is far from the end.
This is the third perspective, you can be you, you can be traveling around, you can be separated, you can be me.
In fact, there are endless discussions on the root causes, which are directly proportional to the inward and outward explorations. There is no answer to the inward exploration of the analysis of the spirit of seeking delusion and the outward exploration of the practice of reciprocating life. How can the old language carry this weight of nothing, which has no beginning, no end, and nothing? We can only do this, create a new language.
Song Menglan's past works
2020 "I Don't Know How to Say Goodbye" Still Frame
2021 "Tire" Still Frame
2022 "when I awake" still frame
2022 "PTSD" Still Frame
Exhibition address
Building 1, Dongli, Wanghua Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing
(Scan the QR code to make an appointment)
Cost: 50/person
Song Menglan WeChat
