Description

“仁者见仁，智者见智，浊者见浊。”

Deep in the surrealistic mountains and forests, two hideous ghosts of impermanence (黑白无常) in black and white escort a mythical feminine creature living in the river as a tribute to the nature god. A straying wine-and-meat monk, starring the musician Dragon Wu, goes by their journey and chants.

The ethereal occurrences which take place in A Peek of Sludge refers to the traditional Chinese ceremony nuo wu (傩舞) from Jiangxi, China, where the Han people would don masks of ghosts and gods to worship nature as a form of sacrifice. The inner state of these traditions stem from human being's innate fear of the unknown.

Amidst absurd yet pre-existing metaphors, this video appropriates the ancient ceremony in a modernized context, where the feminine water-living genie, starring non-binary artist-choreographer Jas Lin, unchains from the conventional gaze of nature, and empowers their self-defined presence through the trace of water.

In the spirit of recapitulating ancient Chinese convention, director Beidi Wang portrays a ridiculous yet cynical fantasia between myths, women and the gaze of nature.