Collection Online
Search the Collection 搜索M+藏品
M+, Hong Kong. Gift of Wang Bing, 2019, © Huang Ran
On View
Mediatheque
Huang Ran 黃然
The Next Round is True Life 下一輪才是真實的生活
2009
Huang Ran’s The Next Round is True Life deconstructs familiar bodily movements to question everyday rituals and gestures of contemporary society. The video’s title was inspired by a line in Syriana, a film from 2005 directed by Stephen Gaghan that explores geopolitical conflicts over access to oil in the twenty-first century. In Huang’s film, white-shirted actors repetitively pass a piece of chewing gum back and forth until it becomes a rubbery, flavourless white wad. Over a period of twenty-seven minutes, Huang’s protagonists treat the tedious and banal act of chewing gum with grave seriousness. The silent film captures their movements against a black background, leading audiences to read the actors’ body language to decode their thoughts and emotions. For the artist, this sharing of the same piece of gum represents the complexities of social exchange.
Loading