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MK 发表于 2008-11-17 23:49:00 |
El nautragio de los hombres (The Wreck of Men) is one of the best art pieces exhibited in the Singapore Biennale 2008.
It is a three-channel video installation. Artist Charly Nijensohn filmed the videos earlier this year during the raining season in the salt desert of Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia. The desert is 13,000 feet above sea level and contains billions of tonnes of salt. When it rains, the vast landscape, the endless clouds, the sky and their perfect reflections on the water, present an infinite emptiness above the existence of individuals.
You see tiny little things as evidence of life amid the emptiness, such as the changing sunlight, the gentle rain drops on the water, the running tide. You hear the sound of wind, water and rain, but nothing else.
Here the dividing line between real and reflection is fragile and vague. It’s like the two worlds of life and death: they are so close, so alike, yet stand at opposite end and we human are there in between.
There are human figures occasionally appear in the video. People are isolated from each other, wrapped in black jackets, faces covered, standing faraway on the water as if they are floating like spirits. Most of the time, they are standing still. No dialogue, no movement, no facial expression. Sometimes you know they are looking at you. Sometimes you are totally ignored. You can’t stop asking yourself, what are they thinking? What are they looking at and looking for? What would come into your mind if you were there, in such a great silence?
“Exposed to the erosion of time, they vanish into the emptiness. In silence and isolation, they are testimony of an existence which, in disappearing, becomes a declaration of principles. ” Charly Nijensohn once talked about this work.
I wonder what principles he meant. Could they be the answer to the long-asked question of being? Could they be a challenge or surrender to the mysterious nature?
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