Figure | Cai Mingliang: Join in Artron and fall in love with Shenzhen
2018-07-25
In recent years, Cai Mingliang and Li Kangsheng have enjoyed their secluded lives in deep mountains of Taiwan and seldom went out. They named their residence Lanruo Temple, which was borrowed from Liao Zhai, a collection of bizarre stories by Pu Songling of the Qing Dynasty. Director Cai’s new film was produced around the debris nearby. VR, he thinks, is a new medium, but ideas of an innovator matters more.
Cai Mingliang also talked about his transformations in art innovation that “In recent years, I have held very special film exhibitions at art galleries, including Outing, which was distributed at an art gallery instead of a theatre. Last year, I held an exhibition Without Losing Sleep in Taiwan. Around the New Year’s Day this year, some young film producers of Xiamen invited me to the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre holding an exhibition. As a result, my works got to be known and turned to another ‘circle’.”
Cai Mingliang and Li Kangsheng, the exclusive leading male actor for his major films, jointly answered questions
“Once moved to an art gallery, Outing undergoes a change. Generally we watch a film in two hours, but after you go to an art gallery watching a film, you may find that the film has changed to an image. You may calm down to feel it, touch it, discover texture and charm of an image.” Through Outing held at the art gallery, people really enjoy an “outing”. Cai Mingliang allow people to spend their nights at the art gallery and watch the film when they sleep and awake alternatively. He also allows babbling kids to enter his own image space, “Not to know well, but to perceive art and to understand exhibitions”. Cai Mingliang calls it “sowing seeds” and believes that harvest will come soon or later that we don’t have to worry.
Cai Mingliang says that in Mainland China, going to an art gallery for an exhibition may not be a daily activity, but in the west men or women, young or old, often go to art galleries not to assume any task or burden but to feel the charm of art. Usually, when he holds an exhibition at an art gallery, he doesn’t leave immediately after he arranges the exhibition well. Instead, he often stays there and observe the exhibition with others, tell stories in the evening, hold concerts and enjoy coffee with others. He hopes that more people can know that films can be watched at an art gallery and felt in so many ways. Going to an art gallery is not so boring. Instead, it may be funny.
Director Cai shared his world of images based on his works
This time Cai Mingliang came to Shenzhen upon the invitation of Artron Art Center and will have an opportunity to hold an exhibition of images in Shenzhen that is specific to Shenzhen and full of new originality. Content and date of the exhibition, Cai Mingliang said in an interview with Moviebase, was undecided at this moment and added that “Luck is very important”.
Cai Mingliang also said that he did not know Shenzhen audiences so well and that if possible, he would hold a personal concert of old songs in Shenzhen at the beginning of the new year since “I like the old songs as they are full of charm.” Unconsciously, Cai Mingliang sang Listen to My Narration of Wu Yingyin on the spot. He likes the on-site emotion and direct responses derived from facing the audiences rather than any indirect narration. He is like an observer feeling elapse of time and transformation of facial expression with his heart.
Cai Mingliang and Li Kangsheng visited Artron (Shenzhen) Art Center
We expect Cai Mingliang to visit Shenzhen again with his originality, run into the well-known rapid pace of Shenzhen with his symbolic “tardiness”; run into the city’s “practicality” with his “insignificance”; run into the “fullness” of contemporary society with his “desolation”; which help people willingly stare at and reconsider the “time” so as to open up a little window that may have been closed for a long time in people’s mind.
