SYNOPSIS
The collision and fusion between civilizations, the transformation of the geological landscape, the conflicts between human beings and natural forces – after thousands of years, they have been molded into specimens of human ambition in different times and displayed on the timeless wilderness. However, the heavy significance of their conflicts in their own time has been dissolved by the endless wilderness and become a simple landscape beaming their messages to the timeless vast.
When the shadow of modern the signal tower passes over the beacon tower built two thousand years ago, the significance of conflicts in different times collapses at the same time. Indigenous ecological knowledge and modern civilization representing advanced productive forces coexist in the gaps of collapse. The sublime will to strive for arete blocked by giant building fortifications echoes over the desert as permanently and incoherently as the signal sent by the towers.
The passion and ambition for conflict have not diminished but have become more and more intense. The exploration of the deep sea and space, obsession and fear of artificial intelligence, everyone’s determination to fight against everyone, trade war, economic war, energy war, technology war, information war, cold war thinking, clash of civilization, identity politic. Human society seems to be in an eternal state of conflict, a stasis.
This series of images are three longitudinal slices of this stasis.
BIOGRAPHY
Bian YX, creative designer/media artist who does visuals in digital space, self-taught in visual communication, trained in postdigital storytelling, specialising in the vast in-between, working as a design technologist in luxury, practicing media art and critical design around the topic of digital geopolitics, lecturing at the Royal College of Art and China Academy of Art, exhibited works in London, Eindhoven, Athens, Dublin, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Bejing, Kaohsiung, completed commercial art commissions from Burberry, Harrods, Nike, BMW, and Arcteryx through the years. Currently based in Shanghai, previously in Hong Kong and London.
In my practice, I use media technology to express concern about geopolitical-related topics and create poetic moving images in the context of post-colonialism and global civil war through the construction of digital geo-landscapes. This allows me to document and depict the diverse and complex ways in which people engage with extreme environments from a political philosophy perspective.
FILMOGRAPHY
A Trio of Tales
-CORRIDOR
2021 Qiao Space. Shanghai
2021 17th Athens Digital Arts Festival. Athens
2021 16th Shanghai Youth Art Biennal. Shanghai
2022 BXQ FILM WEEK. Beijing
-ARETE
2022 Fosun Foundation. Shanghai
-BLED