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The Chinese contemporary artist Xu Bing, internationally renowned for his work in installation and printed media such as Book From the Sky and the Phoenix Project, came to Harvard University to deliver a talk on his concepts and creative journey on September 5th, 2017. For the first time in the US, he discussed his first film project Dragonfly Eyes (2017). The 81-minute fiction film, composed entirely of authentic surveillance camera footage gathered from public online sources in China, has won critical acclaim since its debut at Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland this August. This “provocative film for our times which marries conceptual art with cinema in a fresh and unusual way” will also join Toronto International Film Festival soon and debut in the US at New York Film Festival in October. The artist shared with us behind-the-scene stories of script-writing for a film without actors, issues of privacy and personality rights, etc, accompanied with short clips from the film. The talk was followed by a Q&A session, led by Prof. Eugene Wang, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Asian Art, during which the audience and the artist engaged in illuminating and dynamic conversations on the creative possibilities suggested by Dragonfly Eyes.
