2024 Mix media 10m*7m*5m
Location: Chengdu, China
collaboration by artist Mengmeng Luo & Xinghao Liang
Moment, a collaborative large-scale spatial installation by Mengmeng Luo and Xinghao Liang, parasitizes and re-engineers the architectural staircase of the museum. The artists deconstruct and invert the traditional cinematic black box, erecting an alienated monolithic structure fabricated from scarred timber and flaking, oxidized metal. Contracting from an oppressive 2.2-meter entrance before abruptly rearing to a 5-meter apex, the inwardly tapering architecture seizes the viewer’s vertical ascent and funnels it into a hermetic acoustic corridor.
Within this architecturally constructed "counter-cinema," the artists direct a rigorous critique at the foundational mechanics of the cinematic apparatus. For over a century, the theater has conditioned viewers to inhabit a position of detached, sovereign privilege—relying on darkness, ergonomic seating, and unidirectional projection to foster the illusion that the spectator looks at the world without being seen. Moment violently dismantles this optical privilege: navigating this claustrophobic cavity through radical shifts in scale and spatial disorientation, the spectator is denied the anticipated auditorium seat and aggressively ejected into the inaccessible void behind the cinema screen.
This precise spatial displacement triggers a profound transformation in somatic perception. Drawing on Louis Bordeleau's perspective on the cinema space, the theater here reveals its dual functionality: it serves simultaneously as a material medium for the passive consumption of two-dimensional screens and as a site capable of conveying three-dimensional spatiality and conventional projection practices. The projection surface becomes an insurmountable physical barrier, instantly upending the hierarchy between the observer and the observed. The viewer's body ceases to be a detached receiver of light, becoming instead an active "organ of perception" squeezed by spatial pressure, low-frequency acoustic vibrations, and the abrasive tactility of rusted architecture.
Unlike flat visual media, architectural space possesses a subtle illusion: it easily encourages spectators to forget their own role as an intrinsic component of the artwork. In Moment, however, sound, site-specific context, and carefully organized circulation are woven into a powerful spatial montage. The work demands to be organically "generated" through audience participation rather than passively interpreted. As abrasive tactile space and compressed pathways forcefully commandeer the flesh, every body traversing the staircase is stripped of its detached bystander status—left exposed within the inescapable web of images, architecture, and the sovereign gaze.
The images and the project are jointly copyrighted by artists Mengmeng Luo and Xinghao Liang.