'Requiem', 2007: Sun Xun Animation
A top hat, a solider, an airplane, a magician and a mosquito; these are the poignant and recurring images that might have been collected and stored in audience member’s memories after viewing Chinese artist Sun Xun’s work the opening night of the Cinema Pacific Film Festival last week here in Eugene, OR.
Cinema Pacific is a collaborative effort between the University of Oregon and the Eugene community in which director Richard Herskowitz works with graduate students in the UO Arts and Administration Program (including CV’s own Tomas Valladares and Nan Yang) alongside undergraduate interns to administer a five day festival of screenings, live multimedia performances and art exhibitions. This annual film festival is devoted to discovering and fostering the creativity of international films and new media from Pacific-bordering countries, including nations in America and Asia. Several guest artists and performers engage with audiences in post-film discussions to explore aesthetic and social issues, and developments in media production. This year’s festival focus was specifically emphasizing the commercial and independent film production from mainland China.
What is striking about Sun Xun’s work is the way he juxtapositions traditional techniques of hand-drawn animation with new media. In creating his detailed and meticulous animations, Sun Xun uses traditional calligraphy techniques to produce drawings on canvas, silk and printed materials. These are then hand-copied frame by frame to create flickering effects and complex, multilayered textures. When filming the drawings sequentially one at a time, Sun Xun creates a sense of movement that also indicates the passing of time, as well as the beauty of basic simple forms.
'Shock of Time', 2006: Sun Xun Animation
Sun Xun’s animations particularly focus on elements of world history and politics, as well as natural organisms (such as the incessant plaguing mosquito). When growing up in China, Sun Xun knew it while in a time of reinvention; his work reflects the time when China was shifting from socialism to capitalism, a time of economic reform and new trade policies. Living in a mining community at a young age, Sun Xun’s early memories are colored with images of loudspeakers booming propaganda messages every morning and uniformed workers shuffling against chimneys. This resulted in visual remnants of industrialization and other historical conceptualizations that ultimately planted the seeds for much of Sun Xun’s work
Though the overall issues surrounding Sun Xun’s politically charged art are complex, what resonates is a larger message: the power art possesses in mirroring a culture, a society and a country. From Sun Xun’s animated works, history is illuminated through art as it addresses the historical contexts of China through a multitude of drawings that incorporate text within the images. In this way, the stories of China are not forgotten, but preserved through his precise and authentic animations.
'The New China', Sun Xun Animation
For more information on Sun Xun and the Cinema Pacific Film Festival, please visit: http://cinemapacific.uoregon.edu/
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