Waste Not

I don’t usually ‘do’ modern art. A pile of bricks or a flashing fluorescent tube hold no meaning for me, so you’d probably hear me walking away muttering, ‘my dog could do better…’. However, a recent visit to the Song Dong exhibition at Groningen Museum really took me by surprise.

One of my favourite photos of Waste Not - clothes

 

Song Dong is a Chinese artist, born in Beijing in 1966. The museum blurb described him as a performance artist whose work includes video installations – all the things I detest. My expectations were at their lowest! But, something about the work caught my imagination. Each piece had a detailed explanation – in English, Dutch and German – of the background and the artist’s thought process and motivation. I think this explanation made all the difference to my enjoyment of the exhibition.

One of the clear themes was the transient nature of life, which is coupled with Song Dong’s Taoist philosophy. As a child, Song Dong learned calligraphy and to save money on materials practised by writing using water; this way the words that he wrote faded and disappeared, highlighting the transient nature of life. Writing in water is a way to avoid lingering in the past and to focus on the present moment by concentrating on the task of writing rather than the actual words. The photograph here shows the stone writing blocks and calligraphy pens.

Writing blocks

 

Water was frequently used in the installations. One featured a video of Song Dong writing on stone tablets with water, which then evaporated. Another display of the ‘water diary’ exhibit featured the pages on which he had written thirty stories of his life, recounted to him by his mother and assembled into ‘books’. Several walls were lined with a chronological display of monochrome photographs, each featuring a significant news event of the year. However, these were not simple photographs, each picture was a video overlaid with water and from time to time a hand came into view and swept across the frame, distorting the image with rippling waves.

Water Diary

 

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to photograph the small house, squeezed into a 62 square foot shipping container. This contained a bed, table, storage chests and a stove. It was inspired by his parents’ first house in the alleys of Beijing where he was brought up. The Map of the World, overlaid with a sweets – with an invitation to help yourself – was also inspirational, if tricky to photograph.

Map of the World

 

There were many more installations that caught my eye, but the most significant, and the one which has brought Song Dong international attention is Waste Not. This display of the household and personal effects of Song’s mother, who was a hoarder, resounds with anyone who has had to clear out a deceased relative’s property. There was everything from old clothes and shoes to plastic bags, bits of wire and the polystyrene inserts from the packaging of white goods. The items are all arranged in groups with great care, sometimes colour coordinated. It is a striking reminder of the detritus created by modern living and a reminder for me of the junk we threw away when clearing out my Mother’s house. I’m sure a similar display could be created from the contents of our house and barn despite my attempts at minimalism – a reminder that it is better not to acquire this stuff, although there is a certain inevitability to this in modern life.

Another view of Waste Not - the polystrene