Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

This is a piece of works done according to my poem written in early 2014 (the following is the content). Letting every sentence of the poem burn at night at someplace outside the Fifth Ring Expressway, including the crossroads, the entrance to the village, the dam, the end of the roads, the demolition ruins, and the uninhabited villages?The poem is filled with plaint, depression, and hopelessness, burning at the places outside the Fifth Ring Expressway where the migrant workers live, the so-called antizens agglomeration area. In the daytime, the places are so noisy with tumultuous crowds in a harsh, dirty restaurants, inferior buildings, and frequent crimes. When Beijing, the great city, is expanding itself, this is a corner that might be easily forgotten. There are always many trucks carrying sandy soil and cement coming and going, for everything there is in a temporary and rough and mobile state, waiting for demolition at any time. The plaintive sentences are burnt in the fire, of some romance. However, the fire has the power to transform things: it burns the old things, but along with the burning, the seriousness and solemnity of the images and sounds of the poem are sublimated. In the darkness, these burnt sentences are not only whoops of one after another, but also the numerous sparks that have been devoured by the big city. They remind us of the A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire, the works of great men.(writen by Deng Dafei)

DENG Dafei (b. 1975, Jinzhou, Liaoning Province, China) and HE Hai (b. 1974, Zhengzhou, Henan) currently live in Beijing, China and are co-collaborators under the name The Utopia Group. Using residencies as their primary vehicle to create artworks together, their yearlong project Family Museum, in 2008, at the Zendai Art Museum, Shanghai practiced the concept of "art venue outside of the gallery system" and earned them much acclaim. DENG Dafei received an MFA in 2005 from the China Academy of Fine Art, Beijing, China and a BA in Art Education from Northeast Normal University, Changchun, Jilin, China. He was given the Shenzhou 19 Astronaut Award at the VIDEO Beijing Film Academy Multi-Media Festival and The Invisible Sword Award at the Yokohama Media Art Festival. He has shown in numerous exhibitions including: In Interaction, Yokohama Media Art Festival, 2007; 2nd Doland Exhibition of Young Artists, Doland Art Museum, Shanghai, 2006; Opening the Door and Seeing the Luck: International Hangzhou Contemporary Art Exhibition, Beicangmen Art Center, Wuxi, China, 2006; Long March Capital, Long March Art Space, Beijing, 2006; Fortune Video, Common Place, Hangzhou, China, 2006; Rule and Possible, Zhejiang Province Museum, Hangzhou, China, 2005; Seeing inside from Physical Body: Chinese Performance Art Document, Macao, 2005; Launch, Long March Art Space, Beijing, China, 2005; OBSESSION ? Turkey Video Festival, X Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey, 2005; Follow Me: Chinese Contemporary Art Exhibition, Mori Museum, Tokyo, Japan, 2005; Transparent Box, SOHO, Beijing, 2005; Double Reading, Directions Art Gallery, Hangzhou, China, 2005. HE Hai received an MFA in Fine Art from Donghua University, Shanghai, a BA in Graphic Design from the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, as well as MA and BA degrees in Visual Art from the University of Marc Bloch, France where he is currently a Doctoral Candidate. He won the Annual Prize for the Best Exhibition in 2006 at the Looking up Luck show. He has shown in numerous exhibitions including: Shenzhen Mobile, Hangzhou Exhibition Center of Peace, Hangzhou, 2009; Two Points, Palazzo Frisacco, Tolmezzo, Italy, 2008; Family Museum Project, Shenzhen Free Art Creation Base, Shenzhen, 2008; Intrude: Art Life 366, ZenDai MOMA, Shanghai, 2008; Opening the Door and Seeing the Luck: International Hangzhou Contemporary Art Exhibition, Beicangmen Art Center, Wuxi, China, 2006; Looking up the Luck: International Hangzhou Contemporary Art Exhibition, Feng Shan Art Space, Hangzhou, 2006; Gift, Museum of Normal Institute of Hangzhou, Hangzhou, China, 2005; Body Measure, Place de Palait Universitaire, Strasbourg, France, 2005.