Chinese artist and animator Kongkee’s multimedia exhibition at the Asian Art Museum, “Warring States Cyberpunk,” is equal parts history lesson and science fiction extravaganza. Expanding on his award-winning 2020 film “Dragon’s Delusion,” the video installations and sculptures on view tell the story of the Warring States Period Chinese poet Qu Yuan, from his suicide in 278 BCE to his imagined reincarnation in the body of a cyborg in a dystopian future Asia.
The exhibition’s centerpiece is the scene of Qu Yuan’s suicide, a video diptych titled “Are You Flying or Are You Drowning,” 2022, projected on the ceiling of a room. The looping footage cuts between clips of rippling water and the floating silhouette of the drowned poet, giving the viewer a feeling of submergence within the piece. Here, we’re invited to wonder if death can be a form of freedom, especially when thrown against the question of immortality that a robot might possess.
“Like the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, ‘No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man,’” said Kongkee. “I asked myself, what happens when a soul emerges after 2,000 years under water — does it seek out something new? Does it return to places that are familiar?”
Warring States Period antiquities from the museum’s collection are interspersed throughout the exhibition, offering both insight into Kongkee’s research process, as well as another avenue for visitors to traverse the tensions between past and future. The largest video installation in the show, “River,” 2022, taking up the entire wall of a room, is a scene of the flotsam of a fallen civilization moving downstream.