A chat - (title changed for videocity.bs presentation)
(2013)

The artist prefers relatively short videos, usually not even one minute long. On the one hand, he observes people, objects, and animals in everyday life, on the other hand, he acts as a performer. His narrative style is laconic. He focuses on repetitive moments and the small differences resulting from the overall constellation. One could say that he is – thinking of the American video pioneer Bruce Naumann – a minimalist in video art.

An exception in terms of its running time is the video selected for videocity.bs. It is over 16:30 minutes long. When curator Andrea Domesle selected this work from his extensive oeuvre, Wenfeng Liao answered in an email on 01.01.2020: “I appreciate that you put the sunflower piece on your list, I have never thought about that. It’s a relatively long and boring piece, but I think it is good to show the work in such a public context. Indeed, I have other works which relate to food, but in the context I would say it’s very fitting.“ The video was selected in view of the screening on the huge eBoard at the Messeplatz in Basel. This location inspired Wenfeng Liao to change its title, which was originally “Snack sunflower seeds”: “I would like to change the title of the work to ‘A Chat’. In the video you don’t see and hear any chat, but in a very common situation in China (maybe also in some other cultures), sunflower seeds serve as a medium for the chat. There are also different possibilities for interpretation with sound or without sound.“

The artist comes from the eastern Chinese province of Jiangxi. People within all social and income levels in China love eating sunflower seeds as a snack. The main reasons for their popularity is the tradition of eating them and their cheap price in relation to other available nuts. Primarily, sunflower seeds are consumed at home, and alone but mostly during social events and holidays, such as the Chinese New Year.

Eating the handful of sunflower seeds in the video “A Chat” defines the duration of the reel. The film excerpt focuses on the endlessly repeated gesture of picking up the individual seeds. The repetition creates an emptiness of content, a philosophical ennui. The video can be compared to an hourglass that indicates the passing of time. The 16:30 minutes represent for the artist an “absurdity of time consuming (the video on the one side whilst on the other side the audience watching the video).” (Wenfeng Liao to Andrea Domesle, email, 28.02.2020.)

The act of eating the sunflower seeds retreats into the background. One might now think that because of the title there are at least two different hands involved. The artist, when asked about this, replies: “The hand that you see in the video is only my hand. The chat didn't really happen, because you only hear the cracking sound of sunflower seeds. But the visual representation of eating sunflower seeds still reminds us visually that it could be a chat. I would say, it's a chat between me and the void.” (Wenfeng Liao to Andrea Domesle, email, 01.03.2020).

Andrea Domesle, translated by Christopher Haley Simpson