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

Producer: Story Farm Productions

Special thanks: Gu Tao, Li Shouzhong, Ba Tu, Yi Shan, Wang Rong, Zhang Kun

This film was shot in the Northern journey of “Moose Film Caravan"'s Project "The Map of Shaman"

Production year: 2020

Screenings :

  • Lianzhou International Photography Annual Exhibition, Lianzhou, December, 2023

  • 1st Hubei Youth Fine Arts Works Exhibition, Wuhan, May, 2023

  • Yangtze Video Art Community 2010-2011” Intermedia Art Exhibition, Wuhan, February, 2023

  • “Double Sided Landscape-Ice and Fire” Art Exhibition, Wuhan, December，2021

  • 2nd Wuhan Photo Art Fair, Wuhan, November, 2020

  • “Off the Beaten Track- Tan Tan’s Unknown Ritual” Online Exhibition, October "EXIM

  • 2020"Experimental Video Festival in Macao, September, 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. In the highest point of the city surrounded by mountains and rivers, the site consisted of several departments including two Buddhist temples, and eight odd architectures imitating "the eight Buddhist holy sites" in Nepal and India (eight important addresses where Shakyamuni spent his life from birth to Nirvana), in a total huge size of 36.9 square kilometres. However, inside the luxury exteriors of the buildings, their interiors have left unfinished and abandoned for more than ten years. It seems "The Holy Land" promised for Buddha has never received him in real.

This is the fifth film that was shot in abandoned spaces by Tan Tan, besides, it is the second episode of the "Unknown Ritual" project of her, which is a long-term intermedia art project that attempts to create site-specific invented rituals with performances and music.