Category Archives: installation

strahlen. emits.
Site-specific Installation
WiE KULTUR
Berlin, Germany
2013

In the center of the room, there’s an energy hole. It sucks everything in and turns the room into a field of isolation. Thus, the room itself exists as an isolated cosmos that emits new energy. The rays of energy collide, merge, ramble, expand and emit, recklessly and aimlessly.

Key-verbs:
< Explode > to create a scene with spatial thinking
< Expand > to stretch the possibility of restructuralising the natural power
< Explore > to recognize orders from chaos
< Capture > to keep the transient moment of movement

Strahlen. emits. is a site-specific installation created for WiE KULTUR Gallery in Berlin. Spending 2 weeks on the positioning and joining of a complex structure of over 2,000 plastic straws, Xinglang Guo has been fascinated by the meditative working state throughout the working process. She created her own power of universe by using fire as a medium to join each and every single straw together. The whole structure is designated to be a tangible form of the energy of nature: wind, light and heat. With the power of black light, the installation is transformed from a white-cube-bounded structure into a boundless and lifted cosmos that approaching the viewer, silently but recklessly.


Travelling Cube
Video installation
Berlin, Germany
2009

Mobility is relatively still. We move with this planet every moment without realizing it. There’s neither absolute mobility, nor stillness. They chase each other in a circle that never ends. Stillness is just comparatively related to the ground we step on. Sometimes mobility is just a feeling inside of peoples sub-consciousness and the psychological reaction from peoples vision.
The idea is to show a sort of relative mobility of physical space in the white cube. I created a video while traveling in Berlin by the public transportation (U-bahn/S-bahn/Bus). The video consists of two parts-daytime version and night version; they are projected alternately onto the window of the white cube according to the time of day or night.
For me, it’s a way of showing sense of mobility for the viewers. While travelling with this cube, people would realize that it is also an exploration of the relationship between themselves and the city of Berlin. At the same time, this work brings the question of how to define the board of inside and outside, for it inducts the perspective of outside into a conventional gallery space and creates another dimension between these two spheres.

Over-seas / Cultural Possession
Outdoor installation
Kardamili, Greece
2010

Both Greece and China have ancient cultures and long traditions. Legends and Myths are the heritage of ancient culture; they are possessions of the descendants. Heroes and immortals symbolize the spirit of nation and culture; they were passed down, from generation to generation, through language, writing and drawings.
Standing on the seaside of Kardamili, I’m amazed by the calm and pure blue; I wonder if the Greek myths and legends are created by this natural miracle itself. In this work, I decided to put a Chinese and a Greek legend on both sides of an old door and left the door on the seashore of Kardamili. The scene creates a path linking the western and eastern mythology. At the same time, they are facing towards the orientations they belong to respectively.


Field of Confusion

Plastic straws
Schöppingen, Germany
2012


Tree of Love

Plastic straws
Schöppingen, Germany
2012

Wachsende Plastik / Growing Plastic
Eröffnung: Samstag 24.11.2012 um 19 Uhr
Ort: Galerie Fotoscheune
Stiftung Künstlerdorf Schöppingen, Feuerstiege 6, 48624 Schöppingen
Dauer: 25.11.2012 – 30.04.2013
(geöffnet zu den üblichen Bürozeiten der Stiftung: Mo-Do 9-2 u. 14-15:30 sowie Fr 9-12 Uhr)

Growing Plastic is an exhibition from current resident Xinglang Guo from Künstlerdorf Schöppingen. During her stay of two months, Xinglang has particularly concentrated on artworks that are based on her personal impressions and experience of Schöppingen. She interprets the landscape into abstract and expressional visual composition with plastic straws which she found in a local market. The structure of the artwork reflects time and space referring to the essence of nature–circulating and ever-changing.

Wachsende Plastik nennt sich eine Ausstellung der aktuellen Stipendiatin Xinglang Guo im Künstlerdorf Schöppingen. Während ihres Stipendienaufenthalts hat sich Xinglang besonders intensiv mit künstlerischen Themen beschäftigt, die auf ihrer persönlichen Auseinandersetzung und ihren eigenen Erfahrungen mit Schöppingen als Inspiration basieren. Sie interpretiert die Schöppinger Landschaft als abstrakte und sehr aussagestarke Komposition aus bunten Plastikstrohhalmen, die sie in großen Mengen direct im Ort erwerben konnte. Die gesamte Struktur des Kunstwerkes reflektiert Zeit und Raum als Bezugsgrößen des Wesens der Natur – immer in Bewegung und immer im Wandel.

Press


WEIMAR WECKER
In collaboration with Li-Shih Chen
Interactive sound installation, video documentation
Weimar, Germany
2009

In an interview for its geographer readers, Michel Foucault mentioned the map as an instrument of power/ knowledge. With strategical applications of measure, inquiry and examination, behind a mapping process, shaping of time and space is a structure of power.
During the research in city archive, a photo caught our attention. Therein is a smiling girl holding a row of mass-produced clocks. Each of them is labeled Weimar. That was the first, fortunate encounter with what we attempt to commemorate: Uhrenwerk Weimar, a lost mark on the city map and city history.
When we found the former site of the factory, all we can see is a colossal wall relics and vast area covered with piles of bricks and concrete lumps. The giant materiality and its timeless beauty already speak for itself, so our first act is to build an interactive sound installation. The sounds are recorded from the ticks and alarms of those old clocks, try to put the relics back into the context of time, and also connect to everyday life experience for audience.
The second act is to find and invite people who used to work there to tell their story in the factory. Imaging the depth it is supposed to dig into the life world in the city, the process took most of our time and energy. However, with participation of local people and collaboration with brilliant partners, this process becomes the most productive part of this project.
The meaning of Weimar Wecker is not limited in to wake up an alternative memory, though we do wonder why a factory could not win a visibility in public memory in proportion to such scale since it was the largest state enterprise during GDR time in Weimar.
Rather than it, we attempted to turn our sight to a more basic level that is – to wake up peoples interest of storytelling. These actions should not only be the link between the public memory and aspects of daily life in final result, but also fix in the process of history or public memory forming.