Artist Statement

Theme: Pacific Rim.  Container Culture: Beijing Container. Venue: South Hall

Altitude Zero consists of 6 monitors camouflaged as cabin windows. The video images show ocean waters and drifting materials such as abandoned and polluted objects. The drifting materials remind us of the remnants of different cultures and times and symbolize detachment and alienation from mainstream cultural domains. Video images are activated according to audience movement.

Curator Zhang Ga:
This project contemplates current global cultural conditions. The interaction between dominant cultural forms and marginal cultures precipitates the emergence of fragmented pockets of variant cultural forms. Often disparaged and in danger of extinction, these edgy cultures are finding their ways of manifestation and representation.
The installation is composed of six monitors camouflaged as cabin windows. The video images show materials such as abandoned objects and pollution adrift in ocean waters (Color Plate B), symbolizing detachment and alienation from mainstream cultural domains. The objects drift between sea bottom and sea level, creating a sense of movement and instability. The drifting materials remind us of the remnants of different cultures and times. Sometimes they clash against the windows; at other times they float away. Video images are activated according to audience presence and movement via sensors.

• Hu Jie Ming (China) lives and works in Shanghai, China. He makes media artworks and has exhibited internationally, including in 010101: Art in Technological Times (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2001); Live in Time (Nationalgalerie Im Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum Fur Gegenwart-Berlin 2001); the first Guangzhou Triennial, Reinterpretation: A Decade of Experimental Chinese Art 1990-2000 (Guangdong Art Museum, Guangzhou 2002); Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China (International Center of Photography, New York, 2004); and the 5th Shanghai Biennial, Techniques of the Visible (Shanghai Art Museum Shanghai 2004). His interactive works have been shown in Connected to You in Bizart Shanghai in 2003 and Hu Jie Ming Interactive Art, in MAAC HHKK Brussels in 2004. He was also included in the Second Beijing International New Media Art Exhibition at China Millennium Museum and <Zooming into Focus>, a Chinese contemporary photo and video exhibition at China National Art Museum.