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Porcelain gets a scary makeover
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PORCELAIN has never looked so spooky. On an island where everything is made of white-and-blue porcelain, a mysterious story unfolds of a man, woman and snake. The trees are white and there’s an unusual combination of elegance and surreal eeriness.
The scene is part of a trailer for Geng Xue’s short film “Mr Sea.” It’s a mysterious, elegant, seductive and scary ghost story based on an 18th-century tale in Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) author Pu Songling’s famous work, “Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio.” It’s attracted millions of viewers on video-streaming sites and social media platforms since it appeared online last summer.
The Central Academy of Fine Arts graduate, 31, says porcelain is among her favorite materials to work with, and “Mr Sea” has generated tremendous attention from within the art circle for its innovative approach to presenting porcelain works. It has also struck a chord with mainstream viewers with its easy to understand storytelling.
“I have always loved working with porcelain, but the problem is ceramic works are usually small,” she says in her Beijing studio, where “Mr Sea” was filmed. “This makes it difficult to deliver the cold, elegant, and sensual texture and nature of china in terms of lighting and exhibition space.
“It has been an issue I wanted to tackle for many years — porcelain is easily overpowered by big exhibition spaces, making it very difficult to deliver its delicacy and emotions. Presenting it in a short film has solved these problems.”
With the help of friends, Geng has developed from an amateur camerawoman who only took pictures on her smartphone to making the movie from scratch, learning how to arrange the lighting and frames to editing the footage.
A year ago in her studio in Jingdezhen, a famous city in northeastern China’s Jiangxi Province known as the “capital of porcelain,” Geng molded, glazed and fired all the characters and sets to be used in “Mr Sea.”
She used thin thread in the joints of the tiny objects, giving “life” to the miniature white-and-blue sculptures. Later in the film, these characters crawl, run, wonder, hop, scream, hold their breath and fight.
“The entire process was very experimental and I didn’t know until the end whether it would come out brilliant or crap,” says the sculpture and wood painting major. “But in the end the suspense in the story matches with the nature of porcelain.”
The short film is adapted from a namesake ancient ghost story about a man who travels alone to an island. While he loves the island’s beautiful scenery, he soon regrets coming by himself as a beautiful woman appears suddenly in the middle of nowhere.
The woman tells him a man named Mr Sea brought her to the island, but that they became separated. As she speaks, she becomes frightened and vanishes. A strange snake slithers over and attacks the man.
“Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio,” where the tale comes, is a collection of mysteries published in the 18th century. The book is familiar to most Chinese since the stories have been frequently adapted into films and television shows.
“Mr Sea” is among the book’s least-known stories. At first, Geng says she planned on using her porcelain creations in an original story, but became concerned that her message wouldn’t be understood. She then decided to borrow from the vast treasure of stories built up over centuries in China, a common tactic among artists and storytellers.
“This collection of strange stories is quite intriguing,” she says. “When you think about it, in almost all of the stories, human thoughts are what created the ghosts. Like in ‘Mr Sea,’ he wanted to enjoy the view with somebody, so the woman appeared. It all started with his idea, his desire and his obsession,” Geng says.
The original story is only a few hundred words long but leaves plenty of things unexplained, including whether the snake is Mr Sea, where does the woman go and why does the young man have poison (which he uses to kill the snake).
“The story is unresolved, which makes it a great mystery,” says the sculptor. “It also has lots of strange, unexplained moments, carrying elements of dark humor. For example, you expect a snake to attack a man by biting him, but this one sticks his tongue into the man’s nostril, such a strangely sensual moment.”
The short film has opened plenty of new doors for the young artist, including overseas screenings this year of “Mr Sea” in Germany and the United States.
She has also moved onto a new project. Through “Mr Sea,” she has researched and discussed the relationship between her art and the image of her art. Now, she is interested in the relationship between the subject and its creator.
“Communication with the public has always been very important for me,” Geng says. “An artist can ponder philosophical ideas all she wants, but at the end of day, these ideas ought to be communicated and delivered clearly. The artist is responsible for figuring out the best way to do it.”
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