Portfolio

JINGWEN XU

PORTFOLIO

CONTEMPORARY ART PRACTICE -MOVING IMAGE PATHWAYPATHWAY-

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CONTENTS CONTENTS INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION II

RUN RUN RUN RUN RABBIT RABBIT RUN RUN IIII Project profile&storyboard III III Lyrics&working process IV IV Finished work

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LOVE LOVE SIGNAL SIGNAL VV Project profile&storyboard VI-VII VI-VII Working process VIII VIII Finished work

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FUTURED FUTURED PLAN PLAN

(collection of inspirations)

BENEATH BENEATH THE THE PURE PURE WHITE WHITE

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（ongoing project）

IX IX Project profile&storyboard X-XI X-XI Working process XII XII Video screenshot XII-XIV

XII XII Project profile&storyboard (RICE WEEVIL-1) XIII XIII Storyboard XIV (RICE WEEVIL-2) XIV Storyboard (SNAILS-1)

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Dear friends, How should I introduce myself to you? To be honest, I don’t know myself well enough. Please allow me to tell you a story. I’ll include myself in this story where I might the protagonist, the humble supporting part or nothing. This is neither a story with an ending nor a relaxing story, but I look forward to encountering you in this story.

My creation started with sketches. These sketches in my old sketch book have never been officially shown to others.

However, sketching was the most exciting part throughout my project creation, and it was the early phase during which I got my inspiration. Hence, sketches accounts for a large proportion in this collection. I like to convey different emotions with my work as the medium. I prefer to combine contradictory feelings, e.g. innocence and sophistication, fun and seriousness, loveliness and violence. I also like to mix different materials and forms in one work. For example, I tend to mix sculpture, animation and performance in the same work, because the contrast will intensify the contradiction and I like to express complicated feelings.

The inspiration and inner emotions with regard to most of my works originate from my childhood experiences, based on which I make up stories. What I try to recreate is not the events themselves, but the feelings caused by them. I’m interested in all kinds of creatures because they are so different from but inexplicably related to human beings. I like making connections between different things. I like hermaphroditic snails, singlecelled paramecium, and the sexy, evil, naive and lovely rabbits, I’ m also fond of imagining virtual space and life, thinking about their possibilities.

So dear friends, my story begins……

RUN RUN RUN RUN RABBIT RABBIT RUN RUN The highlight of this work lies in its musical part.

I want to express a state of being trapped without knowing it. This might be invisible mind control or purposeful ideological enlightenment. One of the protagonists in my story is a rabbit who lives in a comfortable environment with sunshine, blue sky and tender grass. Enjoying the physical comfort, the rabbit gradually gives up thinking, becomes slow in telling good from evil and truth from lies, and eventually falls into a trap and boundless darkness. Pathetically, the rabbit will not realize it until death. There are two protagonists in the video, namely the rabbit doll with human characteristics and the rabbit played by me as a human being. The rabbit played by me is not a real rabbit, and I’m not a human as well. What I’m playing is more like a brainwashing role above all rabbits. This is an inexplicable feeling which is always so treacherous and unreal just like looking up at the world from the muddy bottom and staring at the face opposite through the flame. This work is visually playful and interesting, with a little darkness.

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Storyboard RUN RUN RABBIT RUN, 2019-2020, dual channel video(colour, sound), 03'30", 1920 × 1080 pixels

LYRICS

I like stop-motion animation works that are filled with the sense of handwork and hand-painting. Meanwhile, I prefer to watch some stop motion animations, such as works by Jan Svankmajer and Brothers Quay.

Blooming flower Broken bubbles Person’s life The fresh grass The invisible fence Eyes full of desire Flickering Flickering Blooming flower Broken bubbles Person’s life Sky is blue as pure as crystal ball Sunshine is warm as cozy as my mom’s womb Cozy

I applied stop-motion animation and green screen matting.

The works by artists Marianna Simnett and Shana Moulton have inspired me significantly. For example, Marianna always integrated installations, performances, and other elements in a combination of music and drama, which makes her videos always attractive. Besides, the special visual effects and editing methods of Shana’s work also offer another unique inspiration.

Although she did not use complicated techniques, the visual effects she created are still magical..

Blooming flower Broken bubbles Person’s life Brain is useless No longer thinking will be more free free free Blooming flower Broken bubbles Person’s life If you sink in turbid water You can’t see the waves If you stand in the middle of flame You can see the distorted faces You face the sun Shadows are restless behind you The waves remain on the surface Twisted faces disappear as the flame go out The shadow fall into darkness when the night come Blooming flower Broken bubbles Person’s life

This work was created a little bit differently from my previous works. First of all, I wrote the lyrics, created the song, and then filmed the video based on the music.

I use VOCALOID5 software to make the song.

I connected the camera to the Dragonframe4 software to shoot stop motion animation，and then used After Effect remove the green background. Finally use Premiere for editing.

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I wore a rabbit hood and painted my face white.

I put iron wire in the rabbit doll so that I can control its movement and shoot stop-motion animation.

I made a lot of small brain-shaped sculptures.

These brain-shaped sculptures, made of lightweight clay and sprayed with a waterproof coating, can float on the surface of the water.

Lyrics&working process RUN RUN RABBIT RUN, 2019-2020, dual channel video(colour, sound), 03'30", 1920 × 1080 pixels

Video screenshot RUN RUN RABBIT RUN, 2019-2020, dual channel video(colour, sound), 03'30", 1920 × 1080 pixels https://vimeo.com/488120079/b3750a176e

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LOVE LOVE SIGNAL SIGNEL This work was inspired by my fantasy about my grandmother’s breasts. Such fantasy probably reveals my dependence on motherhood as well as exploration and cognition of gender in my early childhood. At that time, I stubbornly thought that my grandmother’s breasts had got supernatural power to send signals to aliens and connect with them.

Therefore, I built a virtual breast planet where there are alien creatures with both female breasts and male genitalia who explore for water and spread their seeds for reproduction. I created the image of these aliens and played one of them myself. This work seems to be relaxing and full of fun with bright colors, but many strange factors can be found beneath the lovely appearance. They are hermaphroditic creatures who are divided into different classes, namely the leaders and the people. Their birth and reproduction are like virus invasion, and they look like mutated creatures.

Although this is a completed video, I plan to shoot a series of stories about aliens in the future.

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Storyboard LOVE SIGNAL, 2020, dual channel video(colour, sound), 03'02", 6720 × 4480 pixels

Artists Jennet Thomas and Rachel Maclean used green screen technology and costumes extensively in their works, which would be highly helpful in creating a virtual world and performing in it.

Glove data

I also watched some fantasy movies, such as Fantastic Planet(1973), House(1977) etc.

Clothing cutting data

I used moldable thermoplastic to Each piece of prop was stitched with

make some small models, because

Velcro sticker at the back for easy

it is relatively hard and light,

wearing and disassembly.

so it won’t be tired to wear it around my neck during shooting.

I injected crystal resin into a honeycomb-shaped mold and put them together after hardened.

Monster cub Sketches&working process LOVE SIGNAL, 2020, dual channel video(colour, sound), 03'02", 6720 × 4480 pixels

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This work was created during the lockdown period along with the outbreak of COVID-19, where I used the living room as the shooting location. In order to keep the distance between the lens and the subject in the small space, I almost stick my body to the wall to shoot. Meanwhile, to overcome the dark light in the room, I needed to light it in different places by using about seven lighting equipment, including professional photography lights and desk lamps. Since I had to shoot and perform at the same time, I had to sweat profusely after the performance to check and review the shooting effects.

I shoot with the bluescreen and combined it with a virtual scene

I made two sets

after matting.

of clothes, and my friends and

I cut and sewed clothes, and made

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shoes, fingers and other body

one of them.

parts with clay and cardboard.

I made the head skeleton out of iron wires and wrapped the skeleton with newspaper and clay.

I learned some basic principles and methods of making puppets and applied them to making the eyeballs.

Working process LOVE SIGNAL, 2020, dual channel video(colour, sound), 03'02", 6720 × 4480 pixels

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played

Video screenshot LOVE SIGNAL, 2020, dual channel video(colour, sound), 03'02", 6720 × 4480 pixels https://vimeo.com/516951399

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BENEATH BENEATH THE THE PURE PURE WHITE WHITE

(ongoing work)

In this work, I mainly want to express the repression of childhood and the horror of children, which is caused by the suffocating education and school life.

Tadpoles and ducks are the props used in this video.

Frog eggs have to become tadpoles before they develop into frogs. In my film, there will be frog eggs with blood, falling tadpoles and tadpoles crushed after being caught, accompanied by the sound of foot trampling and tadpoles’ cracking. In this video, none of the tadpoles manage to grow into frogs in the end. They are eventually trampled, with their bodies exposed to the hot sun, which is bloody and tragic.

Nevertheless, the inner struggle and suffering under the highly intense mental pressure is also a kind of invisible bloodiness and tragedy. In ancient China,“鸭” (a Chinese character meaning “duck”) and “ 甲” (a Chinese character meaning “first rate” or “class A”) were homophones, so “ 鸭 ” means to be the Number One Scholar in the imperial examination, which implies a bright future and academic success.

In the film, two children kill a duck and then inserted the its head into the mound in the shape of a birthday cake and sang a birthday song for the duck. The scene seems very absurd. It is a memorial ceremony as well as a celebration.

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Storyboard BENEATH THE PURE WHITE, 2021, single channel video(colour, sound), 4096 × 2160 pixels

Monster Chetwynd used rich hand-made costumes, props, and sets in her work. Her cardboard props are strong and easy to move and perform.

I also watched the stop-motion animated film The Wolf House (2018), which deeply expressed the darkness and depression of childhood experiences. The emotion expressed by this movie is similar to my work. Although the reasons for this emotion are not the same as mine, the shooting methods are also worth learning, such as smoothly switching between the animation on the wall and the physical scene.

I use Photoshop to divide the tadpole into different layers, and then use After Effect to make the tadpole swim.

To make the masks more vivid, I made them fuller and put pink blusher on their cheeks.

I used different clay to make the duck’s head and body, and I made tadpoles and frog two child-like masks. eggs by dissolving jelly powder in water, adding black food colouring into the water, pouring the mixed solution into a finished mould, and then putting the mould in the refrigerator for cooling.

Screenshot&working process BENEATH THE PURE WHITE(Duck's bitheday), 2021, single channel video(colour, sound), 00'27", 1476 × 1026 pixels https://vimeo.com/489833796

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I installed a warm-toned light inside the duck’s head.

Screenshot BENEATH THE PURE WHITE, 2021, single channel video(colour, sound), 4096× 2160 pixels

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FUTURED FUTERED PLAN (collection of inspirations) This part is all about sketches which are actually videos that I plan to shoot in the future. Whenever I’ve got a new idea, I’ll always draw sketches to prevent myself from forgetting these ideas. There are two projects, the protagonist of one project is the rice worm, and the protagonist of the other is the snail. I intend to make a series of short animations which last from about a dozen seconds to one minute. Or I’ll probably make a GIF because I want to shape the rice worm into someone filled with all kinds of desires, e.g. appetite, sexual desire, thirst for knowledge and greed for power, with each desire conveyed in a short story. Snail is the protagonist of the other project. Snails have got interesting physiological characteristics. For instance, the snail moves very slowly and exposes its trace with its body fluids; the snail carries a heavy shell on soft body; it is androgynous and when two snails mate, they’ll compete to be the father because being a mother is not only tiring but also contains certain risks of death; when snails breed, they’ll eat some of their own eggs to maintain physical strength. Every single feature is worth creating a story.

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Storyboard RICE WEEVIL-1

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RICE WEEVIL-2

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Storyboard

RICE WEEVIL-3(left) SNAILS-1（right）

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E E H ND ij ngw enx u.net @ugly kiwi__

Dear friends， My story is to be continued. Thank you for reading and watching.

I am gr e a t l y honored.

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