New York show examines human drive for a better life
A New York show examines the universal drive for a better life that ended with the drowning of 23 Chinese cockle pickers, writes Richard James Havis
Do films always have to be projected on a single screen in a darkened cinema and watched, uninterrupted, from beginning to end?
Not if the film is an installation like British artist Isaac Julien's Ten Thousand Waves. The 50-minute work is projected simultaneously on nine double-sided screens that are placed at varying heights in the tall atrium of New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).
When people are treated as [the cockle pickers] were treated, that bothers me. And I could also be bothered to do something about it
Some gallery-goers choose to watch the whole film, and some even lie down on the carpeted floor to do so. Others wander in and out of different storylines that all reflect on the main focus of the work: the 23 Chinese cockle pickers from Fujian province who drowned in Morecambe Bay, Britain, in 2004.
One storyline documents the tragedy, featuring footage of the coastguards searching for the victims, and it's harrowing to watch. But other sections are more reflective and cinematic in nature. A major part features Maggie Cheung Man-yuk as Mazu - a goddess in the Taoist and Buddhist pantheons who protects those at sea and brings them home safely - flying through the air around modern Shanghai. In Hong Kong, Mazu is known as Tin Hau.
Another strand has mainland actress Zhao Tao re-enacting scenes from the classic 1934 Shanghai film The Goddess, in which silent movie star Ruan Lingyu played a woman who turned to prostitution to feed her baby son. Yet another sequence has crowd scenes from the Cultural Revolution. Sometimes the screens focus on one part of the story, with multiple screens showing different perspectives.
Ten Thousand Waves may look like the future of cinema, but the idea of multiple screens dates back to British experimental cinema of the 1970s, says Julien.