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2011│Animation

“Revolutions" is a new work re-developed from Jun Yang’s 2005 work, “revolutions come and revolutions go.” This work is an animation in three parts that analyzes the mechanism and process of revolutions. The artist references various revolutions throughout history using their symbolic scenes as a context; for instance, the lone protester standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square; Eugene Delacroix’s seminal painting of the French Revolution, “La Liberté guidant le peuple “ (Freedom leading the people); or the February Revolution of the former Soviet Union, and so on.

In the first segment of the animation, existing authorities (represented by statues) are overthrown by public movement, and a new hegemony is erected in its place. The second segment depicts a failed revolution – with images of the public being subdued by tanks in Tienanmen Square. In the third segment, the statues of power become landmarks for city marketing; the revolution is dislocated from its social and historical context and has become another fashionable consumer product for tourism.

As the audience enters the installation at the exhibition site, their image is immediately incorporated and projected onto the animation. The audience sees themselves in the animation as a member of the revolutionary masses, but they are unable to “participate” in the pulling down of statues that symbolize the hegemony in real time. Here, the work breaks away from the expectation of instant gratification that is the objective of interactive technology. Incorporating the viewers’ images into the work does not offer a moment of interaction, but instead raises a delayed question: What choices of positionality are available to an individual within a “revolution”? He constraint of non-interaction creates a paradoxical set up which forces the dissatisfied and questioning audience to return to the present reality.