Original Title: 落花犹似坠楼人
English Title: Petals Scattering, Like People Falling
Artists: Lily & Honglei
Medium: Chinese paintings, digital animation and sound
Duration: 1 minute 30 second
Year of completion: 2010-2011
Artist Statement
The animated film expresses deep concerns about human condition in current Chinese society. It was completed between the summer of 2010 and the beginning of 2011, when a series of notorious, violent incidents occurred in mainland China and shocked the global media. Among these tragic cases, Foxconn Suicides, namely young workers killed themselves by jumping off buildings at Foxconn factory campus in southern China, have provoked numerous controversies on the working conditions at the world largest electronic component manufacturer making renown products like iPhone, iPad, iPod.
Nowadays, Chinese people on the one hand have to cope with the relentless social transformation resulted by economic development, on the other hand, they feel nostalgic for cultural traditions. In this film, to visualize this complex mentality and reality, two layers of sentiments are superimposed: through a fan-shaped window typically found in ancient Chinese garden, a tranquil, picturesque lakeside landscape is revealed; the exquisite, harmonious atmosphere is undermined by falling figures reminding sorrowful fate of young workers of Foxconn.
Petals Scattering, Like People Falling is a verse of an ancient Chinese poem, which laments a famous beauty committing suicide by jumping out of the window when her lover was defeat in power struggles. In China, average people often become sacrifices of political power shifts, or change of eras; their fate is like a petal in late-spring wind, vagrant, hardly acting for itself, and soon drifting away.
Rooted in eastern aesthetic tradition, the work revives appreciation for Chinese garden and landscape painting by deploying both Chinese painting and digital animation techniques.
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iPhone Poster (video installation/Augmented Reality)
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Lily & Honglei © 2011. All rights reserved.