UCCA Beijing

“Cold Nights” Talk Series Chen Zhou: Life Imitation

2017.10.5
14:00-16:00

对话
Location:  Auditorium
Language:  Chinese

In conjunction with the ongoing exhibition “Cold Nights,” UCCA presents a series of artist conversations, inviting related artists, curators, and guests to foster a novel text-based community discussion about various social issues and the individual creative process for artists. Each of the four artists participating in the exhibition “played” a character from the text of the original novel, maintaining an open dialogue with each other while also exploring the relationships between the chosen characters. A collective exploration thus emerges within the context of Ba Jin’s novel. The artworks in the exhibition represent not only the artists’ response to the interrelation of the four characters in the novel, but also the artists’ reflections on their own situations in the real world, which altogether opens up a new textual space.

UCCA invites Chen Zhou, one of the artists participating in the exhibition “Cold Nights,” to share his film Life Imitation, for which he recently received the New: Vision Award at the 2017 CPH:DOX Film Festival. After the screening, Chen Zhou and Dai Zhanglun converse through WeChat.

Ticketing: Free

Note:

*Collect your ticket from reception 45 minutes before the event begins;

*Please no late entry;

*Seating is limited, and tickets must be collected individually;

*Please keep mobile devices on silent.

UCCA Membership Benefits

Scan the QR code below to sign up for UCCA membership and enjoy exclusive member benefits.

会员

For this event, UCCA members will enjoy:

• Exclusive seats reservation service

• Members-only guided tour

For UCCA members, please send us your name and mobile number to RSVP (ve@159.138.20.147) or call UCCA membership hotline: +86 10 5780 0200

Guests

Chen Zhou (Artist)

Chen Zhou (b.1987, Zhejiang province) received a bachelor’s degree from the Digital Media Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, in 2009, and currently lives and works in Shanghai. He received the New: Vision Award at the 2017 CPH:DOX Film Festival for his debut feature Life Imitation, which has also been included in the Official Selection of the 61st BFI London Film Festival. Exhibitions he has recently participated in include: “2nd Asian Film and Video Art Forum” (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, 2017), “After Us” (K11 Art Museum, Shanghai, 2017), and “Cold Nights” (Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2017).

Dai Zhanglun

Chen Zhou’s reader and WeChat friend

Schedule

14:00-15:30 Film Screening

15:30-16:00 WeChat Conversation between Chen Zhou and Dai Zhanglun

*Please arrive promptly.

About the Film

Life Imitation

Release: 2017

Runtime: 82 min

Specification: HD Digital Film

Subtitles: Chinese and English subtitles

Foreign media reviews for Life Imitation:

It’s a virtual futuristic vision of a dark new world mediated through gaming, chat rooms and sexting, which exposes the conjunctions of technology, communication and gender. Structured through a dexterous mix of verité footage of young life in China, mobile phone screens and the ultra-violence of Grand Theft Auto that represents American life, Life Imitation focuses on young women exploring their identities and pushing their boundaries in the real and the virtual worlds. These characters occupy liminal spaces alienated from mundane daily life, but unfulfilled in the on-line world. They stare at their phones as if in expectation of a life-changing revelation from beyond, but all that comes is what has come before. Strange and compelling, the film creates an almost post-human identity, one that cannot exist outside the digital, but that strives unsuccessfully to fulfil the very human desires of bodily contact and emotional exchange.

--BFI London Film Festival

“Without spectacle and with deep ambivalence, the film creates an intimate portrait of the performance of the self in a hyper mediated world, calmly casting an insistent gaze on shifting experiences of sociality, gender, and technology.”

--Jury comments for the NEW: VISION Award at CPH: DOX

Projection Support

BARCO