Fudong Yang

Born 1971 Beijing, China.
Lives and works in Shanghai, China.

«Yang Fudong has emerged as the chronicler of a lost generation that wandering through modern China without direction, cultural anchoring or existential foundations. His five-part video series Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest I-V (2003-07) is based on an old folk legend where seven poets seek refuge in a forest and, far from all social conventions, devote themselves to a life of creative freedom. Yang's work provides a contemporary interpretation and features a group of seven young people in today's China. Whether they are in an urban or a rural setting, they are shown to be permanently dislocated, with no connection to their environtment or each other. They travel like foreign visitors through a homeland that is alien to them. Yang emphasizes the sense of detachment through his choice of formal means. Many of his films are shot in black-and-white, giving them a curiously timeless feel, and there is no linear, self-contained plot or dialogue. This also applies to the comparatively short video No Snow on the Broken Bridge (2006). Seven young men and women, whose sense of being out of time is suggested by their historicized clothing, have gathered for an elegiac reflection on Nature. Here, Yang splits the piece into eight parallel projections, transferring the disorientation of his protagonists onto the viewing situation itself. East of Que Village (2007), also shot in black-and-white and conceived as a six-channel projection, is without doubt Yang's most existential film. Here he contrasts the fight for survival of a group of stray dogs with the daily struggles of a group of human beings and shows creatural hunger in its truest sense.» Astrid Mania