Blown out frame of a person leaping.

Qianye Lin and Qianhe 'AL' Lin, Thus the Blast Carried It, Into the World 它便随着爆破, 冲向了世界 (still), 2021

Thus the Blast Carried It, Into the World 它便随着爆破, 冲向了世界
Qianye Lin and Qianhe 'AL' Lin

31/01/2021
Red question mark on blue background.
Other-worldly desert landscape.
Text on a book page.
Red heart with text over the top.
Character for 'it' over a classroom scene.
Chinese characters stretching and distorting.
Oracle figure with finger to their lips.
Oracle figure overlaid with text.
Screenshot of book pages.
Blurry Chinese character fills the frame.
Zoomed out stills of a figure leaping next to an inky blue background.
Chinese characters overlaid over an oracle figure.
Bright red background with the words 'everything already healed.'
Skeleton-like bone joints.
Leaping figure against a colourful background.

Feature: Thus the Blast Carried It, Into the World 它便随着爆破, 冲向了世界

Presented here are stills from Thus the Blast Carried It, Into the World 它便随着爆破, 冲向了世界 and excerpts from the work's accompanying publication. The moving-image work was available to view here from June–August 2024.

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The sun appears again and again in Thus the Blast Carried It, Into the World 它便随着爆破, 冲向了世界, looming with omnipotent menace as a life-giving and life-destroying force. In its glow and shadow grows a small being known only as It, who was dropped into the world, fresh and formless. Alert and impressionable, It absorbs all of the fear, horror and hope around them, their adolescence narrated by an oracle figure. Language flies in all directions — fragments flash, scatter and repeat across the screen. Shards of dialogue slice through darkness. Characters are computer generated and hand scrawled; they swell, distort, scroll and pile up. Song and speech crash together, steered by a script written by the artists. This work, which combines original sound and footage with imagery from other sources, was originally presented as a three-channel installation at The Physics Room in Ōtautahi Christchurch, and later shown at Coastal Signs in Tāmaki Makaurau, where it was accompanied by a publication.

About the artist

Qianye Lin and Qianhe ‘AL’ Lin are siblings based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Together they create audiovisual and performance works, which are often presented as immersive installations that overwhelm viewers with visual and aural sensations. Graduates of Elam School of Fine Arts, Qianye and AL have exhibited their work at Papatūnga, Te Tuhi, The Physics Room and Coastal Signs. They often appear in their works, alongside dream-like imagery, motifs drawn from mythology — such as the magical ren shen fruit from Journey to the West — and self-authored texts and scripts that are both scrawled and spoken. In 2023, Qianye and AL initiated the publication project The Happy Kids Archive alongside susu 蘇子誠, JingCheng Zhao and other invited artists.