Watch Bing Xu's movie Eye of the Dragonfly.

Last night, I watched the film Eye of the Dragonfly by contemporary artist Bing Xu in Today Art Museum. A fictional feature film, completely edited from real surveillance video material, without photographers and actors.

This is also the artist Bing Xu's first film.

The artist happened to see the lens under the monitor and found that such a perspective was very special, real and impactful. So a whim, decided to use surveillance video material to complete a movie. So I began to find someone to collect surveillance video materials, and some even used personal relationships. Then find someone to start writing a story script based on the video material, and then edit it. Dubbing and subtitles. It lasted for several years, during which the script was constantly revised and improved with the continuous increase of video material. Finally completed this unprecedented film innovation.

The film tells the fate of a girl named dragonfly in her short life. However, through the overhead lens of the ubiquitous monitor, we see a cruel and powerless real world, real and trance.

Dragonfly 17 years old was sent to the temple for practice because of poor health.

Later, because I saw something in the temple, I thought the temple was the same as the outside, so I wanted to go outside and have a look.

One thing I met in the temple was that an enterprise boss donated money to the temple to build a new temple. I want to move a thousand-year-old tree. Dragonflies feel that this is to move the feng shui of the temple, and their hearts are unwilling. Elder martial sister advised the temple to survive, but there was no way to tell her not to be too obsessed. Later, the dragonfly went out.

It is not easy to find a job outside the temple. After several bumps, she found a job in a dairy factory. There, I met a young man named Ke Fan, and I thought that dragonfly was familiar. The two chatted very well. The young man is brave and bloody.

One day, the dragonfly didn't want to talk to him, saying that she felt a cow's eyes tell her that she wanted to leave this place.

The young man remembered what the dragonfly had said. One night, he secretly put the cow on the truck and let it go. He admitted that he did it, so he was fired from the factory. Dragonfly also left the milk factory.

She wants to find a job in a clothing store, but people think she is not worth enough. Later, she found a front desk job in a laundry. Because of clothes problems, I quarreled with a big customer who bullied others and was fired by my boss. Ke Fan, the young man, defended him. Get even with that woman, and then she was beaten up. Dragonfly doesn't want Ke Fan to do this to her, and it doesn't want to be Ke Fan's retribution. However, Ke Fan said he would. Maybe this is the fate of a previous life.

Once on the road, Ke Fan found the woman who bullied the dragonfly sitting in the car behind him, so she ignored the rules and insisted on turning the front of the car over and hitting the car behind her several times (the real material of the surveillance video)! There is no doubt that Ke Fan was beaten again and sent to prison.

Dragonfly later went to the beauty salon for plastic surgery, and the beauty salon said that as long as she agreed to advertise the photos before and after plastic surgery, she could get a discount. Dragonfly agreed.

After plastic surgery, she changed her name and smiled, and made a live video to become an online celebrity. Ke Fan came out of prison and looked for dragonflies everywhere. Later, she found that Xiaoxiao, an online celebrity, was a dragonfly from an advertisement in a beauty salon. Through live video, Xiaoxiao refused to recognize each other no matter how Ke Fan begged. Later, because Xiaoxiao's face after plastic surgery was very similar to that of the star, the star made Xiaoxiao give human flesh, and found many photos of dragonflies before plastic surgery and posted them on the Internet. Xiaoxiao was spurned and spurned by everyone. Later, she disappeared from the internet, and some people said that Xiaoxiao committed suicide. But the police can't solve the case from the surveillance video, because too many people look like Mix.

Ke Fan never let go of dragonflies. Later, he went to the beauty salon and asked for plastic surgery to make himself look like before the dragonfly. After the dragonfly's whole face, Ke Fan walked backwards along the track before the dragonfly, trying to find all the inner feelings that the dragonfly had experienced. He went from laundries, restaurants, dairy factories to temples. After returning to the temple, the teacher elder sister didn't doubt the "dragonfly" in front of her at all, but felt that her appearance had not changed, but her voice had become a little thicker. Sister, again, it's all inside and outside the temple. Let the dragonfly not be too persistent, when it's real, it's really fake. The film is over.

In the 80-minute film, in addition to the fate stories of the hero and heroine, there are a large number of people under the lens as the realistic background of the film, whether it is cars driving on the road or bustling pedestrians, elevators, communities and roads; Day and night. There are street vendors selling breakfast, supermarket fights, shocking traffic accidents, people falling into sewers without manhole covers during heavy rains, natural volcanic eruptions, and sudden collapse of houses ... All kinds of accidents happen at any time, which makes you worry about what will happen next second.

The real world under the lens is beyond your imagination, which is just the tip of the iceberg. You cannot reach the edge of the real world.

From the point of view of the monitor, people who come and go in a hurry are busy and living, just like human beings watching the life of ants, so insignificant and impermanent. I can't help sighing that living is a miracle.

The wandering fate of the protagonist in the movie reminds you of what Buddhists say, that people come to this world to suffer. Only after experiencing human suffering can we truly understand the true meaning of life.

Some sages say that life is meaningless. Whether it is an ant or an elephant, life is essentially the same, and there is no difference. So it is normal to be pessimistic about the world. However, the ultimate pessimism does not mean that you can't live in the present. Now is the only thing that can be controlled. Make this moment meaningful, enjoy the existence of this moment, and the accumulated life will be more meaningful.

A great soldier once said that life is a big dream, make a scene and then turn around and leave. The so-called big fight is just to live according to your own heart.

After watching this film, a friend lamented that in the modern and future, human beings have no privacy at all, which is tantamount to streaking. In that case, why retreat? It's better to be yourself. After all, the world is already a studio with endless big data. Humans have nowhere to run.

You and I under the camera, try to remain neutral and make more good relationships, which may be safer and less blindsided. The so-called karma is also true.

Artist Xu Bing gave the audience a completely different movie experience with completely real surveillance video clips, and could not tell whether it was a feature film or a documentary. This is indeed a fictional story, but all the shots are true. The same sentence should be answered: it is true when it is false, and it is true when it is false.

The world is not just what we see. Many things have happened. If we don't record them, it seems as if they never happened.

The creativity of dragonfly eye:

In biology, dragonfly has two compound eyes, which are very huge compared with its body. Each compound eye consists of 20,000 to 28,000 small eyes. The upper part of the compound eye is dedicated to seeing the distance, and the lower part focuses on the near side. The compound eye is a weapon for dragonflies to survive. It relies on them to get a panoramic view of every detail of the surrounding environment and wait for opportunities.

The eye of the dragonfly is just a metaphor. Those ubiquitous invisible surveillance cameras are like the "eyes of dragonflies" of human society. Under their "compound eyes", all beings are like mosquitoes, flies and ants, and they can never escape the trick and plot against fate.