For Prof.MacQueen

Fiction and Reality

Short essay #2

Qianwen Deng

04/21/2019

Reading: Lugon, Olivier_Documentary Authority and Ambiguity

The double bind is strong: on the one hand, documentary images are more

dominant than ever. On the other hand, we have less and less faith in documents.

Nowadays, the documentary's visual material is part of the contemporary emotional

economy, supporting everything from humanitarian aid to the ongoing politics of fear.

Without it, the global media would be completely different, for example, the course of

world politics would be completely different. Images through the documentary

recording media also penetrate into the most intimate areas through mobile phones,

youtube videos and other interfaces. They not only entered the collective imagination,

but profoundly changed it.

In this context, it is not surprising that documentary practice has become one of

the most significant trends in the art field over the past two decades. Traditional

documentary photography and film have been reinvented and revitalized through the

combination with traditional arts such as video, performance, and conceptual art.

Recent documentary work has demonstrated the diversity and complexity of a new

form, from conceptual models to reflective photo essay presented through split-screen

slides, video reports of discoveries, reproduced prints and archaeological collages. Its

references range from traditional documentary art forms and traditional reportage to

third films, prose and avant-garde cinema, from reality TV to performance and

interventionist art. Although this innovative form of documentary art is ubiquitous, with

numerous exhibitions and other projects around the world on documentary practice

and contemporary art, discussion of the phenomenon remains largely confined to

scattered texts in catalogues and journals. This anthology attempts to overcome this

fragmentation and provides new perspectives on this key theme.

How credible and engaged are documentary photography and film these days?

As Lugon declares in this article, documentary has three major components: “the

encyclopedic/educational trend, the heritage/conservation line, and the social, political

approach—to which can be added aesthetic considerations affecting all three, as we

shall discover The first two options—the educational and the conservational.” The

documentary prototype still maintain a lot of self-conscious of what to document? And

what’s the meaning of documenting this? I prefer to use the arthistorian, Beaumont

Newhall to describe documentary in a higher status, it is “the creative treatment of

actuality.”

As I have contributed in class, I mentioned about the movie that made by Xu

Bing, a Chinese artist who is also a close friend with Ai Weiwei. The movie called

Dragonfly’s eyes. The artist didn’t invite any actors/actress to act in this movie. He

accessed to all the video tape from CCTV’s camera and select thousands of CCTV’s

video clips and make up a whole different story. There are still a man and woman as

main characters in the film, but the way Xu Bing choose to show those main characters

are not often showing their front faces. Sometimes are the back of a man and a

woman, sometimes just the side of their bodies. Most importantly, the people he

choose to show in this film are extremely ordinary figures, which means, you won’t

even be able to recognize them even you see them several times in the movie; It gives

you the illusion that they are still the same people from the previous scene. I believe

this is also one type from the documentary films, because the director doesn’t do any

add-ons. All he created is a combination of different interesting clips.

How has the relationship between our daily lives and our surveillance systems

changed from the technology that helped reduce crime to the technology that now

allows the general public to be a spectator or even a direct participant? From his

interview, he specifically mentions that, "Human life relations with monitoring, change a

lot. For example," The eye of The dragonfly "of material from The network, but I found

that many people don't know already in The network of monitoring picture. Our

previous cognitive, monitoring is a government would use such as public security and

traffic department, this is a very concept of The past, like political novel 1984,

totalitarian state monitoring is used to control the people, then a relationship of The

Cold War, now the world's problems is not the problem of The Cold War. Then is "The

Truman Show", the main character lives on an artificial stage, which is monitored and

broadcast everywhere, so dragonfly eye seems to witness that the imagination of that

movie has become a reality today. It can be said that the whole world or China is

actually a big stage, with cameras in almost every corner, which can be recorded and

broadcast at any time.”

It is the essential applied definition of documentary documents that after I

reinterpreted with my personal experiences.

Dragonfly’s eyes (蜻蜓之眼，2017) Xu Bing

YouTube link: https://youtu.be/YtmPcrMC91s