MA Photography The Image & Electronic Arts
fiction love
About the project
Calvino’s three novels are combined into a collection “Our Ancestors“. This project is inspired by one of Italo Calvino’s novels, The Baron in the Trees. Although the project wants to discuss the present and possible near future, but every second in the past are history.
The inspiration for the project comes from this novel, which is a fairy tale, a teenager who could not bear the worldly relationships and social interactions, left society and chose to live in the trees. And his love is separated by space, he is on the tree, and she is under the tree. (Cosimo and Violante)
If before this, I only occasionally read some people share their love or sex stories online, I think in the past and a half year, social distancing and all kinds of isolation have brought new changes to the intimate relationship between people with the help of the Internet.
Sometimes, I have a feeling that may be an illusion. Many people in the world are defined as single in the traditional sense. But it seems difficult for me to describe it more clearly. In my view, they have Un-real or online lovers. In terms of their own experience, they are actually in love or marriage. My feeling that may be an illusion makes me believe this would be a more common thing, and the intimate relationship of some people will be somewhat different from now. Like we say now that your lover is Pete? Or the Obi-Wan online?
About Xu Qin
Xu Qin is a Chinese artist who focuses on the narrative exploration of various current themes, and also is interested in the development and display of visual works. His works mainly cover his personal interests in the past, present and future, and he usually uses different media such as film, photography, installation and painting. He has recently started a new project, contemporary and concrete work on a certain intimacy mentioned in a novel by Itano Calvino. The concept from the novel is a mixture of personal observations of the present and explorations of the near future. This project is currently developing mainly in the form of photography.