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1500 km performance brings art to Nanjing streets

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Parent Category: I ♥ Nanjing

Category: Arts & culture

Created on Tuesday, 22 May 2012 11:48

Published on Tuesday, 22 May 2012 11:48

Written by Magpie

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It is a typically busy night at Xuanwumen. Large groups of elderly women dance together in open spaces while street food vendors peddle their baked sweet potatoes and kebabs, and throngs of people walk in and out of the gate to the lake. Yet just 20m in front of this same gate, something very atypical is happening, and slowly a crowd begins to gather.

They stand as one; curious, confused, cautious and yet mesmerised by the shadow theatre unfolding in front of them on the night of Monday 21st May, 2012. It is a large box covered by a white sheet, playing music that is an almost inexplicable hybrid of toy box and church bells with a moody and ambient backdrop. Across the white sheet are cast hues of red, blue and yellow, as well as the shadows of shapes rotating in all different directions. To make matters even more confusing, this strange contraption has been placed on the back of a traditional Chinese tricycle (sanlunche); so what exactly is going on here?

French artist Niko de La Faye has ridden his M2B art sculpture 1300km from Beijing to arrive here in Nanjing, and now has only 250km left until he reaches his ultimate destination of Shanghai. M2B is a kinetic art sculpture that has been built onto the back of a sanlunche and is capturing the imaginations of the many people it comes into contact with on its long trip.

“From the biggest cities to the smaller cities, to very tiny villages; people are just extremely curious,” says de La Faye, who is drawing all kinds of weird and wonderful stares from the 30 strong crowd gathered to find out what all the fuss is about. There is no doubt the piece has caused quite a commotion, with a security guard soon arriving to deliver news that de La Faye and his helpers can’t hang around for too long.

“I think this is a live movie, but some people think it is a traffic jam” is the response of one observer, who then says that she will consult Google for further answers. Many other onlookers are doing their best to sneak a peak beneath the sheet, so de La Faye lowers it to reveal the mystery. A resounding gasp followed by a chorus of “ooohs” and “aaahs” follows. “Wow that is awesome!” exclaims the Googler. Beneath the sheet is an open cube of black steel which houses three kinds of spinning shapes; yellow spheres, blue cubes and red square-based pyramids.

“The cubic structure on the back of this bike is a representation of the universe. And inside this universe there is the elementary particles” is a brief explanation given by de La Faye, who sights Taoist ideologies and a graphical theory elaborated by American physicist Garret Lisi as inspiration for the piece.

The first response from most witnesses is “what does it make or what do you sell?” a question which de La Faye says is born out of the pre-existing notions of what a sanlunche is for. “If you go around on this bike, nobody uses it as entertainment. You sell something or you deliver something.” The bike is a very important aspect of this piece of art that is “made to live in the street”. Not only does it provide the mode of transportation to bring art to people who don’t have the opportunity to go to art galleries, it echoes the voluminous loads of cardboard and wood that Chinese people often cart around on their tricycles.

As the crowd continues to jostle around this three dimensional representation of the cosmos, it is clear the imaginations of two kinds of people have been truly captured. “Kids and old people have more time for contemplation and just to look at things…the most amazing responses I get are from kids and old people.”

For more information on Niko de La Faye and “M2B Beijing – Shanghai” consult the following links:
www.nikodelafaye.com
www.m2bproject.com