Liu Baoyu

[he/him, CN]

Songs of Nightfall

a collection of voices in five movements

IG Film, 2023

[EN]Liu Baoyu [Pauli, 1999, Beijing China] is a multi-sensory storyteller whose primary medium of expression is video. Coming from a background in art history, anthropology, education, and literature, he is interested in a wide range of human concerns such as the phenomenology of perception, multi-species anthropology, and education through storytelling.

[IT]Liu Baoyu [Pauli, 1999, Pechino, Cina] è un narratore multisensoriale il cui principale mezzo di espressione è il video. Proveniente da un background in storia dell'arte, antropologia, educazione e letteratura, è interessato a una vasta gamma di preoccupazioni umane come la fenomenologia della percezione, l'antropologia multi-specie e l'educazione attraverso la narrazione.

[EN]»Songs of Nightfall« is a collection of voices, images, and impressions from sources both real and imaginary. Literary references abound, but there is no plot. Rather, it is an experimentation in sensory and verbal narrative, an exploration in the borderland between those worlds/words called reality and imagination. There is lightness in the images as well as darkness: for Le Guin, night speaks the language of fantasy and is the only place where we can face our inner dragons, while to Calvino lightness is a necessary quality for our weary, laden millineum - a way to escape Medusa's petrifying gaze. The film is a homage to these metaphoric insights that dwell in the artist as well as the artist's attempt at reconciling them with the reality he physically inhabits through something which has become almost like the mind's eye to him - the camera.

Music composed by Aurora Romana. Giulio Caccini's Le Nueve Musiche. Archival radio recordings. Theresa Wong's sound experiment with fabricantis. Literary sources include Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness. Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities and Six Memos for the Next Milleneum. Diane di Prima's poem Rant. A nod to Kazuo Ishiguro's Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall. Chris Marker for a title borrowed from his film Sans Soleil.

[IT]»Songs of Nightfall« è una raccolta di voci, immagini, impressioni provenienti da fonti sia reali che immaginarie. I riferimenti letterari abbondano, ma non c’è trama, piuttosto una sperimentazione nella narrazione sensoriale e verbale, un’esplorazione nella terra di confine tra quei mondi/parole chiamati realtà e immaginazione.

An exhibition about other worlds Otherworlding — AW22/23 Semester Program Contact Imprint