Moment
Installation
Cinema Seat, linear light, timber, plywood, paint, sand, and sound system
10 × 6 × 5 m
In collaboration with Mengmeng Luo
2024
Installation
Cinema Seat, linear light, timber, plywood, paint, sand, and sound system
10 × 6 × 5 m
In collaboration with Mengmeng Luo
2024
Moment is a half-abandoned cinema that continues to invite people inside.
Commissioned by XLY MoMA, Chengdu, Mengmeng Luo and Xinghao Liang transformed the staircase connecting the museum’s upper and lower galleries into an architectural installation measuring eleven metres long and five metres high. Painted and worked to resemble rusting, peeling metal, wooden panels form a structure that appears to have begun deteriorating before it could fulfil its purpose. Joined to the museum’s existing circulation route, the work surrounds visitors before they recognise its boundaries. Only as they ascend and emerge do they discover that a vast container, whose full shape remains unknown, stands behind them.
Sound draws them further in. Dim light, narrow passages, and rhythmic layers of barking and low- and high-frequency noise suggest that something is always about to happen just ahead. Visitors search for an entrance, only to find themselves repeatedly led somewhere they cannot enter. The cinema hidden within is sealed off; small apertures in the walls allow only the gaze to pass through. Tightly packed seats fill the cramped interior, facing those who peer inside. Here, visitors discover themselves behind the screen: searching for a place from which to watch a film, they seem instead to have become performers waiting for a scene to begin.
The work draws on the sense of futurity shaped by technological development and the rapid rise of Asian countries over the past two to three decades, alongside the political promises and speculative bubbles accompanying that growth. Within these narratives, a better life is always ahead, seemingly attainable if one only keeps moving. Moment gives this expectation architectural form: passageways continually draw the body inward, yet the entrance remains elusive. Rusting surfaces coexist with a depth that still beckons, holding decay and desire within the same space.
Cinematic montage unfolds through the site itself—in walking, turning, peering and being stopped. Walls, sound, light and seating compose a film that has yet to be shown, while the visitors’ search for an entrance becomes its ongoing action. The body reaches the end of the passage, but anticipation continues further into the space. Moment holds this instant open: the future is almost within reach, yet we remain on its other side.
Commissioned by XLY MoMA, Chengdu, Mengmeng Luo and Xinghao Liang transformed the staircase connecting the museum’s upper and lower galleries into an architectural installation measuring eleven metres long and five metres high. Painted and worked to resemble rusting, peeling metal, wooden panels form a structure that appears to have begun deteriorating before it could fulfil its purpose. Joined to the museum’s existing circulation route, the work surrounds visitors before they recognise its boundaries. Only as they ascend and emerge do they discover that a vast container, whose full shape remains unknown, stands behind them.
Sound draws them further in. Dim light, narrow passages, and rhythmic layers of barking and low- and high-frequency noise suggest that something is always about to happen just ahead. Visitors search for an entrance, only to find themselves repeatedly led somewhere they cannot enter. The cinema hidden within is sealed off; small apertures in the walls allow only the gaze to pass through. Tightly packed seats fill the cramped interior, facing those who peer inside. Here, visitors discover themselves behind the screen: searching for a place from which to watch a film, they seem instead to have become performers waiting for a scene to begin.
The work draws on the sense of futurity shaped by technological development and the rapid rise of Asian countries over the past two to three decades, alongside the political promises and speculative bubbles accompanying that growth. Within these narratives, a better life is always ahead, seemingly attainable if one only keeps moving. Moment gives this expectation architectural form: passageways continually draw the body inward, yet the entrance remains elusive. Rusting surfaces coexist with a depth that still beckons, holding decay and desire within the same space.
Cinematic montage unfolds through the site itself—in walking, turning, peering and being stopped. Walls, sound, light and seating compose a film that has yet to be shown, while the visitors’ search for an entrance becomes its ongoing action. The body reaches the end of the passage, but anticipation continues further into the space. Moment holds this instant open: the future is almost within reach, yet we remain on its other side.