LANA Z CAPLAN
NEW MEDIA ARTIST & PHOTOGRAPHER

 

PROJECTS

 

PEACH BLOSSOM SPRING

PLAY AND REPEAT

THE LOVELIEST MOUNTAIN OF CHINA

FUTURE TELLER

SITES OF PUBLIC EXECUTION

OUT OF THIS BODY

 

 


CV

NOTABLE PRESS

PUBLICATIONS

THE LOVELIEST MOUNTAIN OF CHINA

3-CHANNEL VIDEO INSTALLATION, 48 MINUTES TOTAL RUNNING TIME
2012- 2014

 

THE LOVELIEST MOUNTAIN OF CHINA, INSTALLATION DOCUMENTATION, 9 MINUTES
JANUARY 2014, GALLERY NAGA, BOSTON

 

INSTALLATION VIEWS


 

MOCK-UP VIDEO STILL COMPILATIONS

 

STATEMENT

The Loveliest Mountain of China is comprised of three vertically hung HD TV monitors. On the left, the monitor displays the natural beauty of the landscape, replicating traditional Chinese painting of the region, but with the fog, clouds, and light changing in real time. The monitor on the right shows interviews of local people who work in the tourist industry on the mountain. The center monitor shows the tourists - one by one, they enter and exit the frame to have their photo taken with the backdrop of the mountain. 

The installation upends traditional documentary structure.  Establishing shots of the mountains, observational b-roll of the tourists and participatory interview footage are all playing at the same time, one on each of the three monitors.  The scenes are episodic, however, each has different durations and therefore they rarely show with the same adjacent episodes twice. Large horn-shaped wall-mounted speakers, like megaphones, deliver the sound as a public address into the gallery, turning the viewer into the nature tourist in the loop and creating a simulation of the experience of noise pollution and over-population in this natural landscape. 

The narrative is told not only by the stories the locals tell in the subtitled interviews, but by the visual information across the screens - the serene landscape, presented like moving Chinese ink brush paintings, contrasted with images of concrete where nature used to be; interviews with failures in translation or omissions in answers; and cell phones and streams of noisy tourists interrupting the image and contributing to a soundtrack of noise in the gallery. 

 

THE LOVELIEST MOUNTAIN OF CHINA INSTALLED:

INSIDE OUT ART MUSUEM, BEIJING (2012-2013)
GALLERY NAGA, BOSTON, MA (2014)
CLARK GALLERY, LINCOLN (2014)
MUSEUM OF RENMIN UNIVERSITY, BEIJING (2014)

LANA Z CAPLAN
1551 UNION STREET
APARTMENT 505
SAN DIEGO, CA 92101

WWW.LANAZCAPLAN.COM

LANAZ@LANAZCAPLAN.COM