Pushing One's Back

"The Prophesizing Catalog of 'Pushing One's Back'" is an ancient Chinese secret book categorized into drawings, prophecy, and songs. This book has been determined by many to have quite correctly prophesized the major events in Chinese history.
This video installation consists mainly of two parts, an interior room and exterior wall. The four screens on the exterior wall display the words of prophesy in this ancient book, juxtaposed with scenes from a 1930's classic movie from Shanghai, "Street Angels," which tells a story of the fate of a layperson. While the four screens, with each screen displaying one letter, together makes up a Chinese idiom, the scenes from the movie displayed behind these letters are shown with slight time difference from each other, creating a temporal relationship between the letters and the images. At every moment, the images displayed in the four screens construct an interlinking relationship. Stepping into the room, an image of a rotating Chinese compass is projected on the floor. Such great order of the universe as represented by this compass, the recollection of the tunes of "The Four Seasons Song" from the movie "Street Angels," and the sense of ephemerality as if one's shadow only passes the surface, such are the representations of the understanding of life by the Chinese. During the exhibition, the drawings from the "Catalog of 'Pushing One's Back" are projected onto the image of the compass, becoming part of the whole image and also moving constantly. Amidst such disorderly movement and the rotating compass, the participating "players" hold a pan containing milk, following the image from the "Catalog of "Pushing One's Back," attempting to "catch" what has fallen upon them, but in actuality, their movement is restricted by the movement of the image and the rotating motion of the compass. Thus, they are trapped under the control of the video just like string puppets.