Dan Edwards: I noticed in a lot of the footage in the film [Ou Ning's Meishi St (2006)], Zhang [Jinli] is filming the police, but the police have cameras too.

Ou Ning: Yeah, it’s very interesting. You can say that digital technology has had a great impact on Chinese political society. You can see at the end of the film during the demolition process, there are so many cameras on the scene. That means that there are some cameras from the police station, some from our team, some from NGO organisations. The digital technology has brought some opportunity to the people to document history by themselves. This is a great change in China. Before that, history only had one version, by the Chinese Communist Party, but now with digital technology history has different versions. History has a Zhang Jinli version, a Security Bureau version… there’s a lot of different versions, not just one version. That is a great progress in the political situation in China.

Taken from CinemaTalk: A Conversation with Ou Ning by Dan Edwards

His works stem from an investigation of his home town of Jixi, a mining town in NE China. Jixi Research Project, ongoing since 2004, is a documentary-like archive of visual and spoken records of the lives of the people living in this town dominated by mining and the consequences of this industry on their lives and landscape. This piece is presented as a 4-channel projection with interactivity, emphasising the audiences participation in the story telling process.

For Sunflower Project, Zheng commissioned his family and friends to plant a large field of sunflowers in the hills surrounding the town of Jixi. The resulting artwork is an ultra-high resolution composite photograph of this field. On the one side in the distance is Jixi and on the other a memorial marking a mass grave of locals killed by the Japanese Army during the occupation of China during the Second World War. The sunflowers act as physical link between the living and the dead, a route of remembrance, reflecting during their short lives the remains of life and death all around them.

The hands of Abbas Kiarostami

The Iranian film-maker, Abbas Kiarostami, signing posters at his show at the Beijing Art Museum of Imperial City, which closes on the 28 February 2008.

Two of Keiller’s films are being shown that afternoon, “London” at 1pm and “Robinson in Space” at 3pm. I have both these on DVD so I won’t bother going to see them, but I would heartily recommend them to everyone.

The DVD cover

Then at 6pm the man himself is presenting a lecture about his work.

Patrick was one of my tutors while I was doing Fine Art BA at Middlesex University in 1993 – he was always very patient and helpful although I can’t have been the easiest student to tutor.

I’ve always read his films as being ruminations on the state of being of a traveller in a city as expressed through the disjointed imagery. “London” especially brings out the relations between these places and the experience of them physically or mentally, through the traveller’s day-to-day, hour-to-hour existence walking, or being propelled through them. The films also have an eye to their own structure, they make you somewhat aware of the breaks, the editing process and it’s creation of a sequence of images which are interpreted as a narrative space (or otherwise?).

Wonderful, funny and poignant films. I’m looking forward to seeing Patrick again after all this time, and to hear what his future works will be.

* These events are in parallel with the “Global Cities” exhibition currently on display in the Turbine Hall, which in itself is an interesting presentation of factoids about and proposals for world cities, intelligently combined with artworks in many cases providing the focused view of the city which is lacking from the charts and statistics plastered across the installation.