26/5-NY11 Where is the beef?

The talk and screening of Yang Fudong's Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest (Part I) was held at China Insitute. In the stairway, is a banner saying that, the future speaks Chinese. Upstairs in the small hall, the seats are all full and packed, over a hundred at least. The talk has two speakers, one who talk first is Barbara Pollock (art journalist), which argue of a nostagia, lost of idealism in the piece, asking where is the bamboo forest, where is the intellectuals? Then in reverse order, Maxwell Hearn (Metropolitan Museum of Art) talked about the background of the Seven Sages, the love theme in the piece. Barbara disagreed and thought that love is just a metaphor, while part of the audience disagreed with Barbara that she deny the reference of Yang's piece to politics. Whether yellow mountain has a political hidden reference, and different people got different impressions. Another one challenges her linking to the French new waves, contra with neo-realism.
For me, the piece has its different monologues from the protagonists, city slickers as Maxwell put it, that contra with the nature scenery, but that doesn't make the execution of the video (or more precise, it is shot in film) anything spectacular to look at, particularly the dramatic music, but arousing such discussion of the contrast, between the title and what is shown, etc. n etc.. But I do remember Barbara said at the very beginning that video is a medium that really suits the Chinese, and for that remarks alone, I think we are addressing two really different issues here.