The Alluvial Voice (2024)
Summary
The Alluvial Voice (2024)
The Alluvial Voice (2024) documents the lives of two generations of a Three Gorges migrant family on Chongming Island (Suburb of Shanghai) for two days and one night.
In the meantime, juxtapositing portraits and interviews of residents across the island, embedded with natural and social landscapes, provide a multi-scalar and multi-site portrayal of the ethnographical field research. It reflects the one kind of living conditions of domestic involuntary migrants in contemporary China, which explores the choices and unknown barriers of the residents when encountering Socio-Eco reconstruction.
By curating the moving images with symbolised geographical installation, it merged the alluvial features with the identities of the Three Gorges migrants through curatorial means, the work fuses the migrants' daily lives, identity symbols and environmental changes into the same context.
Through the metaphors of drift sands, depositions and Sichuan peppers (Local crops of Sichuan), the work narrates the characteristics of post-migration locals and the group's unique value that moves with socio-eco policy changes.
Additional info
Neo (Jiapu) Gao, born in Nei Mongol, China, 1998. Manchu&Mongolian Chinese. Based between London and Beijing.
Neo (Jiapu) Gao is an art ethnographic researcher and paralleled practised as a transdisciplinary artist, his practices encompassed writing, sculpture, sound installation, moving images and performance. His artistic motives are usually cultivated by autobiographical poetic writing, where he may be self-empowered to re-narrate the identity politics and histories in archival objects. He collages the dislocated cultures of the foreign and the local through the lens of contemporary migrants, reproducing mythological transpositions and individual life narratives through various materials. His recent research focuses on pan-East Asian oral histories of migration, geo-ethnography, characteristics and changes in social noise in post-millennial.
Keywords: Art history, Art ethnography, Epistemology, Phenomenology, Buddhism, Shamanism, Poem & Literature, Actor-network theory, Immigrant narratives, Noise & Silence
Audio Moving Image
8’22’’
Five Channels Video\Single Channel Audio
Director: Neo Gao
Photography: Neo Gao
Scriptwriter: Neo Gao
Video Editing: Neo Gao
Vocal：Chuan Sui
Performance：Muen Zhang
Sound production: Neo Gao
Found Material: “A Town by the Yangtze” (1950)
By Wan-go H.C. Weng
Courtesy to Artist & Changshu Library
Audio Moving Image
8’22’’
Five Channels Video\Single Channel Audio
Director: Neo Gao
Photography: Neo Gao
Scriptwriter: Neo Gao
Video Editing: Neo Gao
Vocal：Chuan Sui
Performance：Muen Zhang
Sound production: Neo Gao
Found Material: “A Town by the Yangtze” (1950)
By Wan-go H.C. Weng
Courtesy to Artist & Changshu Library
Frame from Pepper Indulging, 2024
Frame from Pepper Indulging, 2024
Frame from Pepper Indulging, 2024
Frame from Pepper Indulging, 2024
Frame from Pepper Indulging, 2024
Audio Moving Image
8’22’’
Five Channels Video\Single Channel Audio
Director: Neo Gao
Photography: Neo Gao
Scriptwriter: Neo Gao
Video Editing: Neo Gao
Vocal：Chuan Sui
Performance：Muen Zhang
Sound production: Neo Gao
Found Material: “A Town by the Yangtze” (1950)
By Wan-go H.C. Weng
Courtesy to Artist & Changshu Library
Rice Fields and Floods, Man with Chopsticks 2024 (1 of 6)
稻田与洪水, 拿着筷子的男人 2024
Variable Size
Frames From Footage “Pepper Indulging”
Silk-screen printing, Acrylic, Digital prints, lithography
“Nothing Can Be Wasted” 2024 (1 of 6)
”都会有用的“ 2024
Variable Size
Frames From Footage “Pepper Indulging”
Silk-screen printing, Acrylic, Digital prints, lithography
Mahjong, Draws out in Hands 2024 (1 of 6)
麻将，手里抓阄 2024
Variable Size
Frames From Footage “Pepper Indulging”
Silk-screen printing, Acrylic, Digital prints, lithography
花椒 (巴东) 梦, 2024
Variable Size
Frames From Footage “Pepper Indulging”
Silk-screen printing, Acrylic, Digital prints, lithography
Prose-manner ballad (titled 'Pepper Indulging')
Prose-manner ballad (titled 'Pepper Indulging')
Prose-manner ballad (titled 'Pepper Indulging')
Prose-manner ballad (provided below, titled 'Pepper Indulging')
花椒梦 'Pepper Indulging'
江堤腰间的青石板上写着云阳
水下，房梁是鱼卵的卧榻
倚祠堂做梦，磨盘为家
花椒叨扰竹席的清凉，麻醉上唇汗水、蚊帐里的闷热和宅子两头的鸡窝
“七十二鳞波底镌，一衔蓂草一衔莲”
秋风亭，枯水露梁
再不见两尾石鱼，一立白鹤
仙人得道去，后人分水走
水是水，江是江
固人虽兮“生别离”，但愿皆尽“新相知”
淹没冲散屋檐下的，词尾的儿化音
南坍北涨，鬼城已无鬼，轻舟满是人
一千年肺腑抵不过绿藻与水泥的攀附
炸弹抹去白帝遗愿
将军随誓言流亡
涡轮叶片卷走的是江底的房梁和板床
后生梦由碎裂的青瓦敲响
电弧从湍流与烈日的霓虹出生
取一块从泥沙中筛出的红糖，捣碎糖块
舀一勺梅雨里的青花椒
铁皮罐子里几次压紧船号的回响，穿白麻背心的
巡河员被舢板拥挤的吱呦声诱入午睡
白浆帆上鼓动着士兵的影子与捕到的饭香
商贩睡
河鲀睡
爷爷奶奶并排睡
睡、睡、睡
角瓜垫着腊肉，孩子挂起新衣
木帆船载着传教士一起不见踪影
清洁工用洗涤灵擦拭着一动不动的孔夫子
麻将与大坝排排站
几双手抓阄，几只手推倒
夜里的屠夫忙着切肉，猪头倒挂
白天的男孩钓鱼，女孩忙着睡觉
喂鸡鸭、喂庄稼、喂不熟别处的土
巴东的风不曾搂住向西的帆
转头钻进泥里梦
张嘴挤舌，不识风尘
花猫叫，吆喝挥舞着的白茅间往返
江水安抚刀鱼的鳞片，温柔的磷光划过渔人的脸，
划不破渔网里的人事，放不走扒在哪颗石子上的故土
暗流与旋涡将祖坟前最后的香灰与锅底灰和在一起，成为夜间黄豆苗的第一口养分
山高的风车被花椒香吹得呼呼转，拾起沙中糖，躺着朝西南
The interviewee is picking Sichuan pepper
Frame from The Alluvial Voice (2024)
