Prime Instinct

Video / Video Installation / 2015-2017

Magnified snails’ life to you. Because of snails’ translucent skins, you would see their blood flowing through the veins. Looking at the blood moving, you can see how a snail's body actually working, which arouses your sense of living.

Trapped in the human conspiracy, these little things present you a paradox scene of elegant natural slow motion and the artificial manipulated life.

Note: No animals were colour-graded in the making of these videos.

In the summer of 2015, I was shocked by those artificial coloured snails that I came across in Shili He in Beijing, China. They crowded against one another due to the limited room of the container. While surfing online, I found some retailers earned their living by making the animals, such as ducks, goldfish, snails, frogs and so on, colored artificially. I felt sick to discover these morbid, anti-human behaviour happened around us.

Credits

Director: Ria ZHANG Riwen

Music: "I Knew a Guy" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Country: Hong Kong

Length: 2'44"

Frame rate: 25

Resolution: 1920 x 1080

Year: 2015

Special thanks to

Max HATTLER, CHEN Jianhang, LIAO Yulin

Screening / Festival

: ̗̀➛ Relentless Melt No. 7: Moving Image Hong Kong, London, UK, 14 Aug 2018.

: ̗̀➛ Relentless Melt No. 6: Underlige animationsfilm fra Hong Kong, Odense, Denmark, 18 Jul 2018.

: ̗̀➛ Under the Radar Festival, Relentless Melt No. 3: Alternate Realities Hong Kong, Vienna, Austria, 25 May 2018.