Shot in the highlands around Lijiang, Yunnan, China in 2006 and 2007, this composite of video, sound and still images chronicles the encounters of the Manchurian video artist Na Yingyu among the Naxi people in the sandy pines at the foothills of the Himalaya. This area of the world hosts a richness of land, family, music, ritual, and the natural beauty that someone in the video describes as “home”.
Picture 1 – 3 video stills from: Our Homeland, Gone Just Like That – Video, 5 Hrs. 53 Min., 2010
Entangled in these chapters are the ongoing politics of minority ethnicity and cultural representation in China, the disappearance of traditional knowledge (the old priest He Xun simply says, “the book has been lost”), the stable rhythms of farm work, the loss of a father, the dangers of pyramid marketing, the awkward curiosity of American high school students. Na Yingyu organizes his material into chapters which lie, as he puts it, “on a möbius strip” so they can be seen in any order, or simultaneously. Our Homeland, Gone Just Like That, uses this particular structure, the reveries of sound and image, and various narratives to explore the Lijiang area and its particular crisis in the transmission of knowledge.
Picture 4 – 6 Galerie Nord Berlin
Picture 7 SAL Bangkok / Nakhon Pathom
Picture 8 (teaser) Galerie M Berlin