No Snow on the Broken Bridge

Directed by Yang Fudong

8-channel video installation, 35mm b&w film transferred to DVD. Music by Jin Wang. A freeze-frame tableau in which seven young men and women, dressed in a haberdasher’s ？nest, look outward from a rocky outcrop; boats slowly drifting across placid waters; lush, unpopulated landscapes dominated by mountains. Like all of Yang Fudong’s work, the narrative is loosely structured, favoring centripetal forces over linear paths. Here, glamorous young men and women are slowly pulled together as, alone or in pairs and quartets, they wend their way toward the eponymous bridge to catch a last glimpse of winter snow; the rabbits, parrots, and stubborn goats on leashes that accompany them hint at the dandyish excess of a bygone era.