Author: AgnesG

Last Friday, the Chinese drama student club, Thus Spoke Ann Arbor, took the stage of Angell Hall Auditorium A, and presented the Mundane World, a play in Mandarin originally written and directed by Meng Jinghui, a Beijing-based leading playwright and director of experimental theater. Meng is especially known for his avant-garde plays, the most famous ones among which are Rhinoceros in Love, Hitler’s Belly, the Accidental Death of an Anarchist, the Murder of the Hanging Garden, and the Mundane World. He developed a distinct and recognizable style of contemporary plays, which could be characterized by their humorous scripts, ridiculous storylines, satirical elements, and a mix of singing and dancing throughout the play.

The Mundane World is one of Meng’s signature works. The adaptation by Thus Spoke Ann Arbor is divided into four acts, developing three different storylines. The first one is about the romance between a monk and a Buddhist nun who ponder whether to resume secular life after observing the expressive love between a young couple. The second one is adapted from a story from the Decameron about a young man who falls in love with the daughter of a humble countryman. In an attempt to sleep with the young lady, the young man stays overnight at the countryman’s house, after which all the hosts and guests end up in the wrong beds. The third one, also from the Decameron, is about a stableman who pretends to be the king to spend the night with the queen, and fools the furious king who later knows about the illicit affair.

The script was beautifully written. Many lines were hilarious and others thought-provoking. The acting throughout the play was excellent. Act III adopted a quite unusual way to present the story: the stage was cut off into two parts as if there was an invisible line in the middle. The dilemma of the protagonists was cleverly shown by arranging two groups of actors/actress mirroring each other and performing at the same time to represent the two inner voices of the protagonists debating against each other.

I really enjoyed this comedy-drama, and I look forward to future plays presented by Thus Spoke Ann Arbor. The trailer of the play could be found under the link below (apologies for Chinese dub only):

Sinaboro? For those of you who have never heard of this student organization before, Sinaboro is a Korean Traditional Drumming Group on campus. Founded in 1998, the group has grown bigger and bigger over the years and perform samulnori, a type of music originally performed outdoors by farmers to celebrate good harvests, in many campus events. Now the next question you may wonder about is the meaning of this word in Korean. Well, I personally searched it online first, but did not find any satisfactory explanations until I opened the group’s official website. Okay…so it means “little by little, gradually without notice” and “the word itself is no longer in use…”–Haha…traditional enough to name this group. So, this past Saturday night, Sinaboro presented its annual concert at Mendelssohn Theater, and after watching it, I was so amazed and impressed and added the Sinaboro annual concert to my list of must-go-event next year.

The concert contained various forms of performance. I was late and missed the opening drumming show, but was lucky enough to enjoy the performance of a lovely singing group. At first it was the solo of a guy singing the theme song of the Korean drama Secret Garden, called That Women. Then a girl joined him and they performed a beautiful duet. At the end of the song, a singing ensemble came on the stage. The melancholy melody was soon replaced by a lively tone of the group. They went on to sing another cheerful Korean song and then Seasons of Love from Rent. The singing section was followed by a drumming piece. The stage was dark with a midnight blue wash, leaving the silhouettes of the drummers. I could see their body movements, and couldn’t help moving my body with the beats. And then there was this really cool dance–I apologize for not knowing the name of it–in which the dancers produced rhythmic sounds by flapping and stepping, somewhat similar to step dance.

However, what I love the most about the concert is that it incorporated every performance into a larger narrative, the parody of the 2010 Korean drama, Secret Garden. I watched that during my senior year in high school and trust me, I was obsessed with that show, and the leading actor, Hyun Bin, has been my favorite Korean man for almost ten years. The show tells the story of two young persons whose bodies got switched by accident, and in the process of getting used to their new bodies and pretending to be each other in front of other people, they fell in love with each other. The concert showed five short movie clips of this story played and filmed by the creative kids from this group. They changed the context of the story to Ann Arbor and recreated the famous scenes in a humorous way. For example, the milk foam kiss scene, the original version being that the Hyun Bin wiped off the milk foam of cappuccino on the girl’s lips by kissing her. Here, when the boy was trying to copy that romantic moment, he got slapped on the face instead and was left muttering “Wait, I thought girls liked this in dramas.” The part when the girl (now in the body of the guy) taught the guy (under the girl’s body) how to wear bras after they just switched their bodies was also hilarious.

Although I kept telling myself that I had this 3000 word paper due in three hours (yep, on a Saturday night), I totally loved this concert and was reluctant to leave early. The only thing I wanna say is: Bravo!

The videos of the concert by parts could be found under the following link:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMYk1kN_bxqcpQ5tDSReEZw

Also, the film clips:

Part I: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0vMx6vCJMw

Part II: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSUqUtdau0A

Part III: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z8BpOmQQrg

Intermission: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2Iqeg1SPXI

Part IV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYCOuvYDCS0

Part V: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bI4fMDDNJ6o

Since when did time traveling become a cliché? After reading and watching so many stories about boys and girls trespassing across time and space to save the world from being destroyed or to simply cause more troubles to people around them, I gave out a snuff when I saw the title of the film: About Time. “Here comes another guy with this magical power to mess with what happened in the past.” Nevertheless, I clicked on the play button without a high expectation simply I got so bored and tired of this eight-hour flight.

The film begins with the monologue of our “extraordinarily ordinary” protagonist, Tim, a college student who is too shy and clumsy to attract the attention of the girl he secretly loves. When Tim was told that he, as all the male members of the family do, could travel in time, predictably, just like most movies about men with previously unknown superpower, we see the serious face of the father and ridicule and disbelief in the son’s eyes.

The film flows relatively slowly as Tim tries out his newly gained ability. He travels back and forth to fix every embarrassing and awkward mistake he makes to leave the best impression before the girl of his dream. Unfortunately, obviously the ability of time traveling cannot help him win the heart of the girl he loves: Tim gets rejected and heartbroken no matter at what point he expresses his feelings to her.

Aiming to be a lawyer, Tim moves to London, where he meets Mary, his love at first sight after a pleasant conversation in Dans le Noir. After a sequence of first encounters when Tim travels back to make sure every detail is perfect, the two finally fall in love. The montage of scenes in the tube station where the two kiss goodbye and depart for work is just so sweet and cute that melted my heart. The stormy, if not catastrophic, wedding scene was one of the most hilarious parts of the film.

Tim realizes the limit of his power after his daughter is born, that traveling to a time before his child is born would affect the child to be born. Knowing this limit, Tim becomes more cautious when using his power. About the same time, Tim’s father is diagnosed with cancer and not long after passes away. Tim keeps traveling back into the past to see and play ping-pong with his dad, until Mary decides to have another child. The decision to have a new baby forces Tim to say farewell to his beloved dad, after which he becomes more mature. At the end of the film, Tim realizes that the secret of happiness is simply to enjoy every ordinary day as if it is the last day of his life.

Such a relaxing and pleasant comedy about love and happiness. I was totally blown away when the ending song began, knowing that this would be one of the films that I would recommend all my friends to watch. You say there is a flowed logic how Tim’s sister is not supposed to be able to travel back because only male members in the family have this ability? Come on, who cares!

Just wanna share with you guys some gorgeous fashion shoots from the exhibition, Papier Glacé (Coming into Fashion: a Century of Photography), at Palais Galliera in Paris.

Papier Glacé, literally means “glossy paper.” The exhibit features fashion photography in Condé Nast magazines over the past century taken by famous photographers of different decades like Henry Clarke, George Platt Lynes, Norman Pakinson, Deborah Turbeville, and Ellen von Urwerth. The exhibit is still on view until May 25th. 

Norman Parkinson, Vogue Anglais (Aug. 1957), Cover

George Platt Lynes, Vogue Americain (Oct. 1946), La Danseuse Tamara Toumanova

Henry Clarke, Vogue Americain (Sep. 1955), Anne Saint Marie

Irving penn, Vogue Americain (1949), Jean Patchett

Jerry Schatzberg, Vogue Americain (Dec. 1958), Betsy Pickering on Wall Street

Last Friday night, the Rackham Auditorium was packed with Chinese students. What was going on was actually a dating show called If You are the One, which was co-organized by Dream Corps, CSSA and CUSA. The Chinese name of this show literally means: do not disturb if you are not sincere, and the American counterpart of this show is Take Me Out.

The basic format of this show is that there would be sixteen girls sitting on the stage, each holding a heart-shaped cardboard in her hands. A guy would walk up to the stage and introduce himself by showing several video clips and presenting his basic personal information, dating history, ideal type of girl he wants to date, and friends’ comments. The girls can flip their cardboard, which has a black cross on the back, at any time during the process, indicating that she has no interests on this guy. After the guy is done presenting himself, he could have an opportunity to choose a girl among the girls who keep the fronts of their cardboards faced toward him, by which meaning they still consider him as “worth dating.” Then he would walk toward her, hold her hand, and they would walk down the stage together in the good wishes from everyone at presence. If he does not like any of the remaining girls, or all girls have flipped their cardboards, the guy would have to leave the stage alone.

This event is definitely one of the top three events among Chinese students that it has attracted as much attention as, if not more than, the Chinese New Year Gala. Not to mention the Chinese TV show of the same name, which receives a nationwide popularity in China. Yet I’m always suspicious about the credibility of such a fast match making process. How can I know someone well enough through four three-minute-long video clips that I could decide to be his girlfriend right away? Go on a date, probably, but in the conventional Chinese context one of the presumptions of this show is that holding hands means more than merely a date.

The outcome of the show turned out to be quite cheerful—although only one out of the five guys who went on stage found the matched girl, there were four guys who walked up to the stage after the actual show ended and openly expressed their love to the girls they have been secretly loved for a long time. All of the four girls accepted their love. This result was surprising, because nobody expected these many courageous guys who went on the stage; however, it is also predictable, because most girls rejected previous guys who they did not know until they met on the stage, but accepted those guys who they had known for months. Im not saying that only time matters, but rather the process of getting along with someone that is the most important. It would not make much difference if the guy were given hours long instead of twenty minutes to thoroughly narrate his life experience, because for me, there is no shortcut to get to know somebody other than personal interactions—unless you are a human resource manager, who can decide whether to recruit a candidate by browsing his resume in two minutes.

 

In October 2006, David Phillips, a nationally recognized sculptor, brought suit against Pembroke Real Estate, Inc. in federal district court of Massachusetts, asserting that Pembroke would violate his rights under VARA (Visual Artists Rights Acts, 1990), and MAPA (Massachusetts Art Preservation Act, 1984) by removing multiple pieces of his sculpture and stonework from the Eastport Park near Boston Harbor. Pembroke owned the land where the park is and hired the artist in 1999 to create 27 sculptures for placement in the park. Soon after the park was completed in 2001, Pembroke decided to redesign the park and remove and relocate the works by Phillips due to conceptual change of the new design of the park. As a result, the artist objected to the revised plan and filed suit seeking for injunctive relief. This case raised an important question about the protection of VARA on site-specific art.

Site-specific art is a subset of integrated art. A work of integrated art is comprised of two or more physical objects that must be presented together as the artist intends for the work to retain its meaning and integrity. In terms of site-specific art, the location of the work is a constituent element of the work. In this case, the artist argued that these sculptures were made specifically for the park and had a marine theme that corresponded to the harborside location of the park. In other words, the marine environment of the park itself could be interpreted as one medium of the artworks. Therefore, removing the sculptures from its original site would lead to an intentional conceptual destruction on the artworks. Pembroke, on the other hand, contends that public presentation exclusion permits it to relocate Plaintiff’s artworks. So what is public presentation exception? This statute was adopted after the case of the artist Richard Serra and his site-specific piece, “Tilted Arc,” in which the court rejected the artist’s argument that the relocation of his site-specific art from the federal plaza violated his rights under federal copyright and trademark law. Public presentation exception permits certain inevitable modifications of artworks if they were moved because the point of VARA is to preserve a work of visual art as it is rather than preserve it where it is.

Convinced that the works were site-specific and moving any or all of these integrated work would cause a physical alteration of the work, the district court first issued a temporary restraining order preventing Pembroke from altering the park. The injunction was later (2004) vacated because the district court held that although VARA applies to site-specific art, the public presentation exception allows Pembroke to relocate these sculptures. In 2006, the artist challenged the district court’s reasoning about public presentation exception and the case entered the first circuit. The result was that the first circuit not only affirmed the district court’s permission for Pembroke to remove Phillips’ artworks, but also held that VARA does not apply to site-specific art at all since VARA says nothing that suggests special protection for site-specific art.

Trial courts have adopted the same reasoning about the exclusion of site-specific art in similar cases following the final decision of Phillips v. Pembroke case. However, the decision was questioned in 2009 in a case between the wildflower artist Chapman Kelley and Chicago Park District. The artist designed Wildflower Works, which was considered as a site-specific painting/sculpture, in Chicago’s Grand Park and the park officials altered it without the permission of the artist. In this case, the court raised the question about whether the Phillips v Pembroke rule would allow any distortion of a site-specific work. The plaintiff argued that site-specific art is not necessarily destroyed if moved; modified, probably, but not utterly destroyed. And the public presentation exception does not eliminate every type of protection VARA grants to artists of site-specific art. For instance, it does nothing to limit the artist’s right of attribution, which prevents the artist’s name from being misappropriated. Also, site-specific art could be defaced or damaged in ways that do not relate to its public display.  In short, the court held that the exception only covers a particular kind of site-specific art and site-specific art should not be categorically excluded from VARA.