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As Beijing grabbed the global spotlight with the opening of the 2008 Olympic Games, British artist Sarah Morris began to shoot a movie detailing scenes from local life during the event, which was later screened in many cities outside China. Ten years on, her film Beijing is finally coming to the capital for its first screening in the city.
“It’s very strange that I never showed Beijing in Beijing. But I think it’s the best time now,” says Morris, a New York-based painter and filmmaker.
The 50-year-old’s first retrospective show, Odysseus Factor, which opened on March 24 at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art and runs through June 17, is showcasing a comprehensive selection of her works, including films, paintings, drawings and photos. Most of the 14 films in the exhibition focus on some of the world’s biggest cities, and took Morris two decades to complete. Her next film concentrates on a city in Japan, but the artist insists on keeping its location a secret until she has finished shooting.
Talking about returning to the city where Beijing was produced, the artist says: “I like the fact there’s been a delay of 10 years. I like the number 10. It’s a good number.” She explains that the pause will help raise the audiences’ expectations and give a new perspective of the city they live in. This follows the pattern of her 2016 film Abu Dhabi, which was also first screened outside of the city.
With a running time of about 85 minutes, Beijing is a fusion of fragmented scenes condensed into one work, showing a broad range of scenes from people on the street watching the fireworks during the opening ceremony of 2008 Beijing Olympics, to movie star Jackie Chan giving a speech at an Olympic forum, to women rehearsing ribbon-spinning in a public square.
It shows Beijing and the Olympics from a variety of perspectives, as well as in more detailed ways, during the exceptional summer of 2008.
“Most people look at my film and think it must have taken me several months to shoot. When I told them it only took one hour, they think I’m crazy,” Morris says.
In fact, the work took her just two and half a weeks to shoot. However, the process of obtaining filming permits and persuading people to appear in the film cost her a great deal more time and energy.
To secure permission to gain entry into the Olympic stadiums to shoot an artistic film, Morris traveled to the headquarters of the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne, Switzerland, to try and persuade officials there in person rather than relying on email.
“I enjoy having conversations and persuading people. It’s an interesting process. My work is about the power of art. I believe art has the power to open doors and bring very different people together,” she says.
With her list of recent contacts running to 30,000 people, being a film producer means that Morris has to reach out to lots of new faces and ask for help when she takes on a new project.
Sticking to the style of Beijing, most of Morris’ later films followed a similarly fragmented approach, with scenes changing quickly with little apparent connection. It’s her way, says the artist, to place viewers in a visual framework that represents a much larger entity and allow audiences to feel like they are on the inside.
Philip Tinari, director of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, says Morris uses the theme of being on the inside in all her works. Tinari sees this as a reflection of wider society, where situations often arise that people fail to see or think that are out of their control.
While visitors might not be able to sit through all 14 films at the show, they will be able to dip into any of the works and get a flavor of the cities or people in focus and gain a fresh perspective.
Morris’ paintings follow a similar concept. In this show, she and her team have painted an on-site wall painting that measures 58 meters long, covering one entire wall of the exhibition hall.
For Morris, her films and paintings are “two sides of the same coin”. The former is fast and dynamic, while the latter is slow and static. The artist also has two sides to her personality. On the one hand, she is impatient and is always thinking about her next project. On the other, she uses paintings to force herself to slow down and concentrate, read books and meditate.
Since 1998, when she produced her first film Midtown about New York, Morris has devoted herself to portraying either individuals or cities. And the cities she has chosen as subjects, such as Rio de Janeiro, Los Angeles, Paris and Beijing, are all aligned with each other in terms of their economy or culture. But Morris says her films are not documentaries, because her works are more surreal, sometimes like a dream, sometimes like a nightmare.
“It’s an investigation with no ending, no answer and even no truth — only perspectives open for interpretation,” she says.
Having filmed in many of the world’s major cities, the artist says she finds the future of urban living a little worrying, especially the increasing power of surveillance used by tech companies.
“It’s a contradiction. I use all these products and then worry about my privacy,” she says, adding that it’s also the contradictions in cities that are the focus of her films.
I believe art has the power to open doors and bring very different people together.”
Sarah Morris, artist