scott groeniger

Video: The Ping Yao Continuum, single channel projected video loop, 2009

Click on the image to start the video. If the video does not start click on this direct LINK to begin the video.

(running time: 5 minutes)

This video has been accepted into e4c the 4culture.electronic gallery in Seattle, Washington for a one year rotation. Check the e4c website for the current programming schedule. We should know in a few weeks what month the video will begin its rotation.

The Ping Yao Continuum was shot inside the ancient city of Ping Yao, Shanxi Province, People’s Republic of China. Ping Yao is a well preserved walled city founded in the 14th century. During the Qing Dynasty, Pingyao was a financial center of China. It is now renowned for its well-preserved ancient city wall, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Ping Yao is most famous for being the site of China’s first banking system. Once a powerhouse of banking and commerce, Ping Yao is now quickly becoming a destination for both domestic Chinese and foreign tourists from around the world. Ping Yao was the financial center of China in the late Qing Dynasty. During those times, there were as many as 20 financial institutions within the city, comprising more than half of the total banks in the whole country. Among these is “Rishengchang,” considered the first bank in China.

For now, Ping Yao is still currently a working and daily inhabited city. As China transitions into a world superpower, Ping Yao will transition into a tourist destination. I have been to Ping Yao three times over the past four years and watched as it has transitioned from a working city into a tourist mecca. Many of the city’s long-time domestic inhabitants are being relocated to apartments just outside the main city walls. The daily life and domestic rituals within the walls of Ping Yao are changing rapidly and it feels as if it is moving forward and at the same time going backwards. The video was shot during a lunch with a friend who grew up inside the city walls. The lunch was at a very local restaurant inside the walled city. As my friend told stories of growing up inside Ping Yao, a family of three ate just across from us. They watched us carefully, glancing and sometimes staring, politely of course, at our strange behavior.

This video is only 5 minutes of that family’s lunch at Ping Yao, in reverse. The entire video loop lasts a full hour and eighteen minutes. The food comes out of their mouths and is placed back onto the plates. Tea flows from within the body and returns to the glasses. Waitresses as well as customers walk backwards in subtle maneuvers inside the small local restaurant. At times it is nearly impossible to tell the video is running in reverse, and in many ways, China itself is often as impenetrable and unknowable. However, the simple ritual act of eating together at the same table is one of the most universal human experiences. Sharing a meal in any language or culture can be seen as a unifying domestic constant that serves to strengthen bonds between friends and family, solidify business relationships, and renew familial and domestic ties.

Much of what will become the new China in the coming decade will require a part of the old China to revert to a mirror image of its former self. Ping Yao will soon be that image, or simulacrum of a working city, existing as a historical and cultural relic for the delight of all who visit. The ancient walled city is at once moving forward and backwards into a version of its former self. This video, The Ping Yao Continuum, is meant to express this tension by exploring the domestic ritual of a simple family meal inside the transitioning city, capturing a brief moment in time; and then extending it in reverse in an effort to prolong the experience of the present tense and savor the moment as an isolated, universal, ritual experience.

Using textures and abstractions photographed in China, I am examining the present culture and lifestyle of the ancient cradle of Chinese civilization which is Shanxi Province and the current cultural and political cradle which is Beijing. Shanxi Province has a deep and rich cultural history that is thousands of years old. Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi Province, has recently emerged as a major industrial city, fueling the growth of China with much needed energy resources. The entire body of images weave together images of fragments and pieces from the present and the past found in these two extraordinary, historically significant places in China. The entire body of work ultimately suggests a rich cultural past overlaid on a future which is both full of challenges and hope as China transitions into an international super power.

All of the prints in this series are archival inkjet prints (Canon Lucia) made from digital photographic source files. Each print is 24″x43″ and printed on Hahnemühle Photo Rag fine art watercolor paper.

This series is still in progress, more prints will be added.

Open Source Gallery, Brooklyn, New York, March 2009: Installation Documentation

The images in the series 40-60 are constructed from photographs made while I was
working in Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province, China in 2005. The titles refer to the way in
which the people I met discussed the current opinion of Mao. When I would ask about
how they viewed the current influence of Mao, an over arching generalist response was
“60% good and 40% bad.” I reversed those numbers by then end of my time in Taiyuan,
as I became increasingly aware of the impending eco-disaster there.
Taiyuan City is first in terms of cities with the worst air quality on earth mostly due to the
emissions generated by coal burning power plants. Additionally, it has one of the highest
ratios of actual to potential desert on earth. Taiyuan has about 3.5 million people living
there, it is very quickly running out of water and is on the verge of becoming one of
China’s worst eco-disaster that no one has ever heard of. Despite all this, Taiyuan
continues to build.

A collaborative series of drawings with Kirsten Rae Simonsen about the perils of domesticity.