Seeking Tong Hu (Linking Lake)
2024
includes the short film Seeking Tong Hu (2024, single-channel video, 21 minutes 26 seconds), video playing on a phone (2024, single-channel video, 1 minute 30 seconds), inkjet prints, wire fence, transparent film prints
exhibited at Goethe-Institut China
This project is an exploration of seeking escape in an era of fences, while also attempting to show an alternative perception. The short film portrays a transition journey to Tong Hu (Linking Lake), resembling a mysterious sleepwalk. Its style is uncanny and unsettling, yet it carries a strangely comforting effect. The exhibition presents some maps and pieces of evidence.
I have always been very interested in place names that exist outside of official naming systems, especially the unique naming methods found in the Gobi Desert. In the Gobi, I was curious about how local herders navigate through identical sand dunes without getting lost. Later, I discovered that herders have an secret, orally transmitted positioning system, naming some dunes as lakes, such as Cloud Lake and Little Cloud Lake. I found this very intriguing and full of imagination—a dune with vegetation is seen as a lake by herders. Perhaps it was once a lake (dried up at some point due to climate change), but the herders I met had never seen it with water. I also learned from ecologists that the distribution of dunes and plants in the this desert is peculiar; surface water and vegetation distribution are not directly related, creating a fascinating topological landscape.
Later, I heard the even more fascinating story of Tong Hu (Linking Lake). Mongolian herders believe in the existence of a large underground lake called Linking Lake which links various places together. Evidence comes from a legend in which a lama's pot was dropped in one place and found in another location dozens of kilometers away. Thus, when some enterprises in Zhongwei discharge sewage into this area (treating the desert as a dumping ground, literally "deserted"), herders are particularly heartbroken. Although the existence of Linking Lake lacks concrete evidence, this interconnected "linking" imagery is very captivating to me, especially in an era of wire fences and satellites. In the past, herders on the Gobi pastures were nomadic. Later, with the implementation of the enclosed grazing policy, each family's pasture was divided by fences, and people could no longer move freely.
The short film "Seeking Tong Hu (Linking Lake)" has the style of a first-person pixelated horror game and borrows the form from the internet's popular "backrooms" found footages (some fake found footages), about glitches and transitions. This genre of videos are usually “filmed” from a fictional first-person perspective, with the camera often falling to the ground at some point, accompanied by the noise of the fall, transitioning the scene to another space. This kind of transition actually comes from the clipping issues in video games and other 3D worlds. As people's virtual experiences increase, this mode of transition seems more “convincing” and appealing. In the film, Linking Lake becomes a place where glitches and transitions occur; in an era where satellite signals leave no hiding place, a momentary glitch in the signal can allow escape.
"Seeking Tong Hu (Linking Lake)" explores the continually blurring boundaries between the virtual and the real. In the story of Linking Lake mentioned above, the virtual dimension already exists in reality. The flickering pixels in the short film might be signal disturbances, reflections from desert plants or wire fences, or the shimmering water of Linking Lake, perhaps even a sign of transition.
The film features the voice of a Mongolian woman and my own voice. Her voice serves as an introduction and clues, while mine represents the first-person player's perspective. When I was living in the Gobi Desert, I became friends with a former shaman, and the voiceover represents what I imagine the shaman in this game would say.
In the exhibition space, another short video is looped on a mobile phone. This is a capture of an abnormal moment in satellite positioning on a herder's mobile app, showing glitchy movement that transcends the enclosure. It was early morning, still dark, and the coordinates were rapidly jumping on the screen. Under normal circumstances, such repeated rapid movement would be impossible.
Hanging on the wire fence are satellite images filled with artifacts and glitches. These are screenshots from Google Earth in this region, and they appear exactly as they are—untouched by me, though I spent a lot of time finding such moments, serving as footnotes to the legend of Linking Lake. Are satellite maps truly objective and real? Or are they filled with patchwork, fractures, temporal and spatial gaps, and glitches—merely a reflection of the politics of resolution and visibility? Their arrangement and similar patterns also form a narrative of "Tong Hu". The images and the wire fence are both part of the installation. The images, half on the wire fence and half on the ground, form a “sand dune”.
The project also includes four images of glitch moments (moments when the camera hit the ground), which serve as "evidence" of four crossing events. Printed on transparent material, they are suspended in the air. The shadows they cast on the wall represent the boundaries between two worlds, as well as the boundaries between the virtual and the real.
