After a day of hard sell, I had dinner with Yu Wenhao to take a look at the work he’s been doing for us in his role as Shanghai-based artist to the project. I’ve only been here 72 hours, and I’m already becoming aware that I will be carrying excess baggage around my waist on the way back. I had a fantastic Vietnamese Pho a couple of days ago, then an excellent Chinese vegetarian meal last night, and very tasty and huge Macanese hotpot meal tonight. Burp.

Here’s what Wenhao’s done for us so far. He’s taken 8 b&w long exposure (2-4 hours) celluloid photos of screens in part of a series he’s still working on; one b&w time-lapse video of a screen (again over a 4 hour period); and a colour video of people dancing under the egg at Pentagon Plaza. The latter was totally unexpected, and I found it fascinating and joyful in a strange kind of way. It has sound, and reminded me instantly of the final scene in Apichatpong’s Syndromes and a Century where the people are aerobicizing in a Bangkok park. But in this it’s ballroom dancing, and the middle-aged disporting themselves are having an unabashed good time. It works so well for us in relation to what we’ve spoken about in regard to lightscapes, moving images as beacons, and the whole secular enchantment exercise. As the people dance, the lights on the egg dance and the images on the screen dance, too. The camera is right in the middle of the action, but it is motionless. People seem to notice it, but they’re not bothered by it. Wenhao said that no one said anything to him, or asked him what he was doing. Maybe they’re used to being local celebrities already!

In the series of long exposure images, there are 4 of a tower near People’s Square, 3 of the new screen on the New Era Mall at Pentagon Plaza, and 1 of the old screen on the Orient Shopping Plaza out there. This is a response to or in conversation with Hiroshi Sugimoto’s images of movie screens, because what we get is the light but not the images on the screen. This idea of a photographic and video conversation with the screens and cinema is something Wenhao was also doing with the videos he took before of the screens at Wujiaochang/Pentagon Plaza for me. So, there’s certainly continuity here. I also think it will fit perfectly with the section in the book on retail/leisure and lightscapes. Wenhao plans to do more of these with more screens, then select from the images to make a photographic essay of between 6 and a dozen images. He will supply those to us in high quality format on DVD, so that we can print from that.

For the time-lapse ones, which shows a rapid succession of images, a bit like flick-cards, he also plans to take a series. His ideal would be a gallery space in which there were a series of screens, a bit like the forest of screens on buildings you get in downtown Shanghai, all showing these time-lapse videos. A good idea, but one we are unlikely to be able to fulfil in this particular November exhibition.

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