Film／video art
I’m not a Robot
Category: Experimental Film
Artist: Tan Tan
Video Generation/Editing: Tan Tan
Music: Kukabek, Tan Tan
Duration: 2:20
Production year: 2024
This experimental film attempts to portray the interaction and struggle between artificial intelligence and humanity with nature—the image of the robot represents human wisdom and creativity.
Perhaps such intelligence has appeared and perished many times on Earth, and from the perspective of the universe, it is all just a fleeting moment.
Odessa Steps 2022
Category: Experimental Film
Artist: Tan Tan
Special Thanks: Tetiana (Ukraine), Guo Xiaodong
Duration: 14:30
Production year: 2022
This film cross-cut the "Odessa Steps" chapter from the famous war movie "Battleship Potemkin" (1925) and the actual footage of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict in 2022.
It uses a 21st-century "Montage d'Attraction" to explore The circle of history, the contradictions of civilization, and the crisis of life.
This film is dedicated to everyone who suffered in the war.
Unknown Ritual No.2
Category: experimental film
Artist: Tan Tan
Photographer:Long Miaoyuan
Music: Hu Anshi, Tan Tan
Performer: Tan Tan
Editor: Tan Tan
Duration: 14:35
Production year: 2020
This is an encounter between human and the emptiness, which happened in an apple of Sodom, a theme park of massive scale. Meantime, this is a meeting between a natural spirit and a man-made ghost, who was represented by a shaman in white and a witch in red.
At last, it forms an unknown ritual when we lost our souls that were once connected with the universe.
The film was shot in a scenic spot in Hailar, Inner Mongolia. The site consisted of several departments including two Buddhist temples, and eight odd architectures imitating "the eight Buddhist holy sites" in Nepal and India. However, inside the luxury exteriors of the buildings, their interiors have left unfinished and abandoned for more than ten years.
Category: Experimental film/ Physical theater documentary
Artist: Tan Tan
Photographers: Hao Peng, Jiang Junjie
Length: 6:38
Production year: 2019
Under confinement, the reality and the illusion become unbounded to me.
Even if the door in the reality is open, which direction will it lead to?
This experimental film is meanwhile a documentary of a physical theater performed by Tan Tan. It attempts to illustrate the illusions and journeys inside the mind of a prisoner of a society/one’s life, it talks about the infinite loop between imprison and freedom, reality and dream.
Unknown Ritual No.1
Category: Experimental film/video installation
Concept and Director：Tan Tan
Cooperative artists: Eric Bribosia, Li Ning, Zhang Mengqi, Bi Haiyan, He Chengyun, Zhu Linan
Music/Sound: Eric Bribosia
2017
This is an "intermedia film", as it combines a fiction film, a documentary film, and several site-specific performance art works. It mixes fiction and reality, script and improvisation, art and ritual.
The “ritual” begins with a wedding of a mixed couple (Western and Chinese) in a “fake church”. Suddenly the bride disappears, then the groom begins to look for her anxiously. Soon, he finds himself trapped in one after another labyrinth, where he meets some mysterious people, animals, and spirits…
All these happened in Wuhan, a typical big city of China. Tan Tan chose three special spaces as the stages of the ritual performances, which divide the film into three sections. “The man’s world”, “The hell”, “The heaven”.
Lost in Home
Artist: Tan Tan
Category: Experimental film／Video installation
Length: 29:35min
Production year: 2013
“Xian An Fang” is an old community built from 1910 to the 30s. It had ever been the best-preserved stone-ringed door community in China, and one of the most western-culture-influenced neighborhood. From 2012, it has been demolished and rebuilt, so the memories of 100 years will disappear under the new cover.
The work uses “Xian An Fang” as a background, and attempts to break the boundaries between documentary, fiction and performance, by the means of creating a subjective time-space which is parallel to the reality of China.
Whose Eyes
Artist: Tan Tan
Category: Experimental film／Video installation
Length：15:30min
Production year：2011
4 fake“surveillance videos”mix some real records of crimes and our daily life shots.
The mix of two kinds of reality comes to a eternal false sense of“normal ” in daily life.Is our life really normal?Are ourselves really normal?
The 4 violences all broke out in public,but nobody helped to stop the crimes as if they didn’t see the scene.
Is there whose eyes can see?
Positive
Artist: Tan Tan
Category: Experimental film／Video installation
Length：6:33min
Production year：2010
This work explores the illusions in near-death experiences, “Negative” and “Positive” are basic concepts in the ancient Chinese philosophy. In the original meanings, “Negative” means back to the sun, and “Positive” means face to the sun.
Like the comparative relation of sun and the globe is always changing, the relationship of “Negative” and “Positive” is changing in every second. Sometimes, “Negative” and “Positive” are bipolar, but other times, they can transform into each other.
Game Time
Director:Tan Tan
Category ：Documentary
Length：42:50min
Production year：2009
Production company／Supervisor： CNEX Foundation
A group of young people plays online games from dawn till dark, day after day in an apartment in Tiantongyuan, a huge living community in Beijing. It’s not an internet café, nor someone's home, but a private “work studio” earning money by playing games for customers.
In everyday’s life, the young boys just keep most simplified behaviors, which are eating, sleeping, and playing games. Even during Chinese new-year festival, they still go to an internet café to play games…
Qian Men No.1 Hotel
Artist: Tan Tan
Category: Experimental film
Length：12:00min
Production year: 2008
It is a film about time, history, and memory.
In a very old hotel, a woman in red cheong-sam appears, and disappears in some rooms, corridors and corners. When she stands up from a sofa, the sofa turns to old, when she passes a corner of stairs, the handrail gets to be coated with dust…We can gradually discover that the hotel is abandoned!
“Qian Men No.1 Hotel” was built in 1901 in Beijing. In 2008, It is a secret place surrounded by many construction sites.
Chinese cabbage
Director: Tan Tan
Category ：Documentary
Length：33:11min
Production year: 2007
In one evening of November 2005, a farm truck loading many Chinese cabbages entered Dazhalan area, which is only 2 kilometers far from Tian An Men square, the heart of China. This neighbourhood was under a fully demolition that time.
An old man bought more than 50 kilos of Chinese cabbages from this truck, and then the seller sent his 5-years-old son to help the delivery. The sweet boy pulled the cart full of cabbages with his total strength, until they reached the home of the old man. After loading all the cabbages into home, as a reward, the old man carried the boy on the empty cart, and pulled him back to his father. Unexpectedly, as soon as they arrived, they saw the urban management officers were taking the seller away for his illegal selling…
Spend 1 minute with 60 people
Artist: Tan Tan
Category ：Experimental film/Documentary
Length：6:58min
Production year：2007
1 minute is counted by 60 people’s voices. Most of the 60 people don’t know each other, and even won’t know in their life that they have ever shared 1 minute together.
This “1 minute” symbolizes any instant in one’s life. I found all the people randomly, but the result was planned before. In the last section, which is the most important part of the film, I put some sound of sea in accompany of the image of clock, like the current waves are forming the eternal sea…
Song
Artist: Tan Tan
Category ：Experimental film/Animation
Length：6:26min
Production year：2007
A man sits quietly, and then he outstretches his hands to make some movements in the air. After a while, he starts to act as playing a guitar, in consequence a guitar shows up in his hands suddenly, but soon it turns into a broom,a pan,a Chinese cabbage,a dog,a knife……
The film tries to symbolize the roads of becoming artists, or talk about how to find the inner melody of yourself……
Live
Artist: Tan Tan
Category ：Experimental film
Length：4:43min
Production year：2006
Some emblematic objects burst into flame one after another. During the burning, they show up, and turn to ruin, follow on turn into each other… This process makes the audience see the whole life course of human beings, themselves, or others.
This is a course, which includes passing, living, as well as making mistakes or feeling regretful… Some procedures I’ve passed by, some I’m experiencing now, some I still have to confront in the future.