Spring 2022 Final Reviews | Weihan Jiang

Weihan Jiang, I Am Anxiously Waiting. Video still.
Weihan Jiang, I Am Anxiously Waiting. Video still.

Weihan Jiang, Class of 2022

I Am Anxiously Waiting, 2022
Color slides, operators, slide projectors, video.

In the discrete spaces carved out by languages, what is muted in those translated words? The film is orchestrated by the moving images, slide projectors, and the operator (from the audience). Punctuated by dial tones, participants advance the slides in three projectors in the rhythm that can be decoded into Chinese characters. Collectively, the poem in the slides, the voiceover and the images compose a story about the double, aphasia and amnesia in a space lost in translation.

Weihan Jiang (Chongqing, 1997) graduated from UCSD with majors in Visual Arts in Media and Cognitive Science. He works primarily in videos and films to explore the construction of contemporary narratives. He is interested in the history of public media, anecdotes, personal memories and archives to create works that facilitate an open discussion for the audience.

Weihan Jiang, I Am Anxiously Waiting. Video still.
Weihan Jiang, I Am Anxiously Waiting. Video still.
Weihan Jiang, I Am Anxiously Waiting. Video still.

About the ACT Studio:

The ACT Studio serves as a space for participants to develop their independent practices in relation to each other’s work and in the context of the Art, Culture, and Technology program (ACT) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The understanding and interpretation of each of these terms – art, culture, and technology – can vary significantly between each of the 14 participants; through shared readings, intimate conversations in small groups around each participant’s work, the spring 2022 ACT Studio aimed at developing a common language to allow for a fruitful conversation between the diverse practices of its participants.

In April, a study trip was organized to New York City, the first official out-of-campus travel since the beginning of the pandemic in the spring of 2020. During the weekend, the studio participants visited several art galleries and museums; on Sunday the 11th, they were hosted in the morning by Participant Inc.’s founder, Lia Gangitano; in the afternoon, the studio gathered at Bortolami Gallery in Tribeca, where a seminar took place in the gallery’s upstairs with the invited guests: geographer and abolitionist activist professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and Dia Art Foundation curator Jordan Carter.

The trip culminated on Monday, April 12th, with a full-day visit to the Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as it’s Kept, in which the instructor Renée Green’s work is included. after visiting the overall exhibition, the act studio engaged in an extended and intimate conversation with the biennial curators, Adrienne Edwards and David Breslin.

Related