JIANG JIAXIN

The film, “The videos and audios (1.26-2.13) from my hometown, Dunhua, Jilin, China” breaks a family’s intimacy and discloses the artist's family life to the public. Seeing “experience” as a medium of creation, the artist held his iPhone in his hands whenever and wherever he was with his family members, capturing then later presenting pieces of mundane stories from a first person point of view. In this film, none of the plots were designed or predetermined since the beginning. The entire film is edited with scenes in chronological order. With raw video and audio recordings elaborately placed, stitching with three-second long black scenes, the film emphasizes the idea of “fragmented time”, implying repetitive family impact on the formation of a person’s ideology and identity. In the meantime, the artist purposely weakens the dramatic colors when editing a film, in order to shift the attention to intensify the dramatic colors in the conversations and happenings in reality. 

In Northeastern of China, younger generations are commonly treated as “children”, even though there is no clue on when the younger ones can be stopped treating as “children“. The positioning of the artist as a “child” that happens in real life, however, didn’t let him be spoiled by his family members. Receiving repetitive and stressful warnings of “the oldest child of his generation in his family”, the artist was heavily coached by his family members all the time. In this film, the artist’s family members mentioned his “change”, and they were worried about his “change”, persuading him to obey their ways of living and thinking. Including the scenes talking about this “change”, although there are a lot of debates happening in this film, none of the concerns were solved or reached an agreement, and most of the concerns were not respectfully listened and fairly developed. 

Without being told any hint for making this film, the artist’s family members didn’t know the purposes of the recordings at the beginning. With more and more shootings, his family members were accustomed to behave themselves in front of the camera. In a lot of moments of this film, the performances from his family members give the artist some illusion that he is watching a well-produced film performed by professionals. Through subsequent screenings and talks, the artist identifies more differences and similarities, comparing his film to commercial ones. Meanwhile, he appreciates more about what he has and continues his journey of making documentaries including his second film, ”the year of dog”. 

After the first film, to his surprise, the artist found that “food” is the only unbiased and the most popular topic in his family. And because of “food”, it dramatically opens conversations across a variety of other topics. The excessive infatuation about “food” in his family inspires the artist to examine this phenomenon, and share his findings with his audience, as he researching and connecting this phenomenon to the immigrant status of his family, whose ancients immigrant from Shandong area during the Chuang Guandong human migration (during the hundred-year period beginning in the last half of the 19th century). During the Chuang Guandong migration, about 8.7 million people arrive to Manchuria (today’s northeastern of China) from China south of the Great Wall, and most of them suffered famine throughout the whole process.

影片《来自中国吉林敦化的视频和音频(1.26-2.13)》打破了家庭式的隐私，向公众展示了艺术家自己的家庭生活。视“体验”作为创作的媒介，无论何时何地，当艺术家与家人在一起的时候，他都会拿着iPhone，用第一人称的视角捕捉和之后呈现出平凡的故事片段。在这部电影中，从一开始就没有一个情节是预先设计好的。整部电影都是按时间顺序剪辑的。通过在影片中精心放置了的原始的影音资料，期间用3秒长的黑色场景拼接起来的操作，这部电影强调了“碎片化的时间”的概念，暗示了家庭对一个人意识形态和身份形成的重复性影响。同时，艺术家刻意弱化了通过剪辑来引发的戏剧性色彩，目的是将注意力转移到现实对话和现实事件中的戏剧性色彩上。

在中国的东北地区，年轻的一代通常被当作“孩子”来对待，尽管目前还不知道年轻的一代什么时候可以被停止当作“孩子”来对待。然而，在现实生活中艺术家被当作一个“孩子”的地位，并没有让他获得家人的溺爱。通过不断地收到令人有压力的“你是这代人中年龄最大的孩子”的警告，艺术家无时无刻都在被他的家人教育着。在这部电影中，艺术家的家人提到了他的“改变”，并且家人们担心他的“改变”，劝说他遵从家人们的生活方式和思维方式来生活。包括提到的“变化”，虽然在这部电影中有很多争论，但没有一个问题得到了解决或者达成了一致，大多数问题没有得到尊重的倾听和公平的对待。

由于没有被告知任何有关制作这部电影的线索，艺术家的家人们从一开始并不知道拍摄的目的。随着越来越多的纪录，他的家人们习惯了在镜头前表现自己。在这部电影里的很多场景中，家人们的表演给了艺术家一种错觉，仿佛他在看一部由专业人士表演的制作精良的电影。通过随后的放映和对话，在将他的电影与商业电影进行了比较的同时，艺术家发现了更多的不同和相似之处。与此同时，艺术家更加欣赏自己所拥有的一切，并继续他的纪录片之旅，包括他的第二部电影《狗年》。

在第一部电影之后，令艺术家惊讶的是，他发现“食物”是他家里唯一没有偏见、而且最受欢迎的话题。正因为“食物”，它戏剧性地开启了其他各种话题的对话。这种在家庭中对“食物”的过度迷恋启发了艺术家对于这个现象的研究，并且与观众分享他的发现。艺术家发现了“食物”和他的家庭的移民身份之间的联系，艺术家的家庭的祖先是在闯关东人口迁移中从山东地区迁移到东北地区的（闯关东人口迁移前后历时100年，开始于19世纪中期）。在闯关东人口迁移期间，大约有870万人从长城以南的中国地区来到满洲(今天的中国东北)，他们中的大多数人在整个移民过程中都遭遇了饥荒。