Red
Video installation, dimensions variable
Video, CRT TV, projector, Geofon, subwoofer, 16mm film projector, slide projector, 16mm film
2026
This project is an attempt of mine to establish another kind of "geological perception".
Europium (element symbol Eu, sharing the same abbreviation as the European Union) is a very interesting rare earth element. It was discovered by a French chemist and named after Europe, and it is also a key material for rendering bright red on modern screens. I made this red video. When people see red on the screen, it is not merely a screen; it feels as though we can see the mineral itself, the material itself. The video records the magical moments / anomalies I captured at Bayan Obo—one of the largest rare earth mines in the world. Red is also how I feel about this factory town; it evokes countless childhood memories of mine. I try to connect this element Europium, which bears a European symbolic mark, with China's red reality.
I installed a recording device made with a seismometer, a Geofon, on the television. It can capture the vibrations of the TV as it operates and convert them into sound that echoes in the space. Through this capture of "seismic waves", combined with the glowing red rare-earth material on the screen, I try to transform this television itself into a "geological device".
This overlapping of geological sense and image is also reflected in an anomaly I encountered during filming. That evening, I was filming a large mining machine, when huge flashes of light suddenly flickered in the distant sky. That light was silent, located directly above the mine pit, alternating between the northern and western parts of the mine pit. I initially thought they were mine operation lights, because its flickering rhythm was extremely rare and never stopped, lasting for at least half an hour. Much later, when I heard the thunder, I realized it was a rare thunderstorm. Moreover, this thunderstorm happened right after I pressed the shutter toward the mining machine, and I felt a strong shock and mystery at that moment.
The huge mechanical outline of the mining machine was very similar to a film projector, and together with those flashes, it irresistibly made me think of a film projector. That was almost a schema in the sense of Warburg. Therefore, I made a video sculpture of a 16mm film projector. As the strata are exposed layer by layer, aren't they just like frames of film being exposed one by one? Here, Deep Time and Cinema Time are superimposed in the same time and space. I use simulated lightning light to continuously illuminate these minerals, letting them be "exposed" time and time again. The background sound is the sound captured by the Geofon mentioned above.
During the production process, a “film accident” also occurred. I realized that the film on the projector must never stop when the machine is on; once it halts, the high-heat bulb will burn a hole through the film. Presented here via an old slide projector, the hole is a mine pit as a moving-image material, a wound, and a "glitch" in time.
