Hao Jingban : Opus One

As 2019 recipient of the Han Nefkens Foundation – ARCOmadrid Video Art Production Award, artist Hao Jingban presents Opus One a dual-channel video installation at Matadero Madrid, as part of their “Depth of Field” programme which focuses on the production, screening and study of contemporary audiovisual practice.

Documenting the changing experiences of people has been an important part of Jingban’s work. Based in a country that is rapidly changing and where people tend to jump to conclusions in order to understand what is happening around them she stresses the importance of simply observing, questioning and thinking within her work.

Opus One interweaves two seemingly distinct points in time and space in the history of music and dance movements. The film’s point of departure is 1930s Harlem in New York, when swing dance-forms such as “Lindy Hop” and “The Charleston” became widely popular as people turned to dance after the Great Depression. The film’s protagonists are Suzy and KC, a young Chinese couple in contemporary Beijing who trace the steps of the so-called “authentic jazz,” choreographing a set of dances while drawing references from vernacular and cheesy dance moves found on the popular Chinese digital video streaming platform, TikTok. The parallel narratives portray the irresistible attraction of synchronisation, affinity and the convergence of these two temporalities. As Duke Ellington famously sings, “If you should take the ‘A’ train, you’ll find you’ll get to where you’re going in a hurry.” But for some movements, their meaning will have to wait, and won’t be reached in a hurry.

Hao Jingban will also present a piece from 2018, entitled From South Lake Park to Red Flag Street. This piece reflects on an area in the north-east of China—previously called Manchuria and also (from 1932–45 while under Japanese rule) Manchukuo—that today encompasses three provinces all sharing a long border with Russia and North Korea. In this piece Jingban explores how both the Chinese and Japanese who had worked in a propaganda film studio which functioned from 1937 to the end of World War II were hesitant to talk about their time there.

Han Nefkens Foundation – ARCOmadrid Video Art Production Award 2019
Hao Jingban was selected by an international jury chaired by Han Nefkens, Founder of the Han Nefkens Foundation and joined by Ana Ara, Curator of Programmes at Matadero Madrid; Manuel Segade, Director of Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo; Sunjung Kim, President of the Gwangju Biennale Foundation and Rein Wolfs, Director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; in the presence of Hilde Teerlinck, Director of the Han Nefkens Foundation and Alessandra Biscaro, Award Program coordinator for the Han Nefkens Foundation.

In line with the central theme of ARCOmadrid 2020 “It’s Just a Matter of Time,” where artistic practices will be observed from the work of Felix Gonzáles-Torres, Hao Jingban has taken the title of the work of Gonzáles-Torres Perfect Lovers as a symbolic reference and starting point for this piece, reflecting on the themes of love, life and time.

This exhibition is a project of the Han Nefkens Foundation in collaboration with ARCOmadrid and Matadero Madrid.