words rachel mok

Wandering through cities leads to a multi-media experience

From their 10-day visit to Shanghai in 2004, London-based creative media collective D-Fuse produced the video Brilliant City and installation Undercurrent. They were so
thrilled by the country that they went back – and created the multi-media performance Latitude [31°10N/121°28E]. After touring worldwide, that presentation finally returns home to China where founder of D-Fuse Michael Faulkner and sound artist Matthias Kispert
talk about their audio-visual experiments.

Why did D-Fuse chose Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chongqing as the subjects for Latitude [31°10N/121°28E]. What was distinctive about them?
They all have very strong characteristics. For one thing, they contain rivers, and river systems were integral to our project. We chose Shanghai as that was the base for our first visit. We found a great contrast between the super-modern architecture and more traditional ways of life that are rapidly disappearing there. Friends of ours compared it to Gotham City, and there is something sinister about the atmosphere at night – not the vibrant street life, which is exhilarating, but the way the huge angular buildings with pulsating lights reach out into the night sky. Guangzhou is less exuberant in its architecture but has real character. With all the markets and shops there is a constant flurry of buying, selling and bartering. Chongqing – one of the fastest growing cities in the world – looks breathtaking when you approach it, the way rows and rows of skyscrapers suddenly seem to appear out of the fog. We developed quite a taste for spicy food there – we’re still on the hunt for the best place in London to eat mapor tofu!

The show has toured since 2007 – how did it evolve in the last two years?
It has been refined and finely tuned. We keep reworking it, adding new bits, discarding others. In our experience of China, we documented lots of good material – Latitude is only the tip of the iceberg. So the piece has slowly developed and evolved like a good wine.

How did the idea of ‘drifting through the city’ work?
We were in China for about three months broken into two or three separate trips. The idea was to simply leave the place we were staying with our equipment and wander around. We wanted to find whatever wouldn’t be the most obvious places people would go and see when they visit. So we had lots of conversations with locals about different areas and activities in the city. Most of our filming trips then developed spontaneously – the best footage came from places we simply stumbled upon by chance. That’s the beauty of drifting. Generally we would explore during the day and socialize in the evening but we also went out at night to shoot. The only time we found quite hard to film was early morning.
How did your contact with the local people affect the outcome of the work?
Interaction with local people is very enriching for these kinds of projects, for both sides. We get to experience a city like a local person, but with fresh eyes, and local collaborators appreciate things they wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. Also, socializing, having conversations, helps us understand a culture different from ours.

The project involved working with local media artists. What impressions did you get from them?
In 2005, when we collected most of our material, our kind of media art seemed quite new in China. The scene was small, and everybody was experimenting with lots of different things, media, ideas. There was excitement in the air; you could sense people’s curiosity and enthusiasm. The field has grown very fast since then and we are happy we experienced it when it was all very fresh. We are still in touch with a lot of people we met.

Is there a commonality between Brilliant City, Undercurrent and Latitude [31°10N/121°28E]?
They all represent ways of reflecting on the city through video art. Brilliant City takes a detached viewpoint, everything looks like a computer game – small figures move like abstract patterns; in fact everything that happens seems to become a pattern. With Undercurrent we wanted to open up the interpretation, to create a communication between different ways of representing cities through video. And Latitude is about the experience of drifting through unfamiliar places – the sensations one picks up, the contrasts, light, speed, patterns, emotions etc. The way the soundtracks were approached is also very similar. We wanted them to be very connected to the visuals, in a material way. So rather than just creating music that somehow works with the images, the music has been created, for the most part, from sounds recorded in the cities we visited. The sounds have been processed and modified to give them more musical characteristics, but the overall sound still carries a lot of references to the urban environment.

Latitude [31°10N/121°28E] closes the programme of the 14th ifva on March 22 at 8:15pm at the HK Arts Centre (5/F, Pao Galleries). Local visual/audio artist S.T., VJ Welby and Teoh are supporting acts. Tickets are $190 from URBTIX, 2734 9009.