#week 129

This week we are happy to feature two creators: @ghostdrakon & @mickey-altieri!  

Please help us by supporting these talented creators by reblogging what you enjoy.

The Death of the Xinkai River. Li Xinmo (李心沫) . Performance. 2008.

“ The Death of the Xinkai River” was performed in 2008 by Li Xinmo. The Xinkai River is one of the major rivers in Tianjin, but it has recently become severely polluted due to excessive city water pollution and discharge of industrial water. During the summer, the river gives off a putrid stench and the entire surface is covered with heavy blue-green algae. By submerging herself in the water, Li pays homage to not only the death of the river, but also to the issues of Chinese women, when a female freshman at the Academy of Art was murdered and thrown into the river in spring 2008. She comments, “This beautiful river has already died. The young woman also died. Perhaps I want to intentionally make death appear before us, to make people see their crimes.”

Li Xinmo is a Chinese multimedia artist born in Heilongjiang Province in 1976 and received her master’s degree from Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts in 2008. She is currently based in Beijing. She uses a variety of media for her works, including performance, painting, video, photography and installations, which have been exhibited in art museums and galleries in France, Italy, America, Canada and Columbia. 

Banner was made by the talented @everlarkingjoshifer

Here is week 129, folks. As always, thank you to these amazing authors who provide me with endless amounts of entertainment. You are all amazingly talented!

Readers-please make sure you show these authors some love! If you’d like to check out my previous posts, follow #rachel’s fanfic lists or search the tag on my blog. Happy reading!

See Right Through My Walls - @hpfanonezillion

Come Back To Me - RainbowUnicorn_12

Stop the Train - Rannonsolo7

Reverse - @adreamofadandelioninthespring

Welcome Home - @historywriter2007

We want to thank you all for helping us to share all the creations this week from @ghostdrakon and @mickey-altieri!

Please give them a follow if you wish to see more of their content in the future!

Don’t forget you can use our tracked tag, #spncreatorsdaily, if you would like us to reblog your original work on weekends.

Good Hunting by Ken Liu. 2012.

As described by Liu himself, “Good Hunting” is “a story that begins as a fantasy fairy tale and ends as a gritty piece of steampunk.” An unlikely friendship develops between a Chinese demon hunter and Yan, the daughter of a hulijing, a shape-shifting female fox spirit, and the story follows their struggles as they learn to survive in their world that is changing due to industrialization.

 Hulijing are typically viewed as dangerous creatures that seduce men and deprive them of their vitality, and in modern Chinese the term is used as an insult to describe charming yet manipulative women. Liu gives his hulijing character qualities that challenge the typically negative view of the mythological creature. 

“Good Hunting” is one of the short stories adapted in the animated Netflix series Love, Death & Robots.

Mad World (一念無明). dir. Wong Chun. 2016.

Mad World is a Hong Kong drama film directed by Wong Chun, starring Shawn Yue (余文樂), Eric Tsang (曾志偉), Elaine Jin ( 金燕玲) and Charmaine Fong (方皓玟). The story centres on the life of Tung (Yue), a former financial analyst suffering from bipolar disorder. After being released from a psychiatric hospital, he is placed in the custody of his estranged father (Tsang) and faces many obstacles on his journey to recovery. The story is a sombre view of mental illness and social stigma in urban life Hong Kong. 

Mad World is a low budget but powerfully raw film, marking Wong Chun’s debut into the Hong Kong film industry where humanist dramas covering stigmatized topics are a rarity. 

Among its numerous awards, Wong received Best New Director at the 53rd Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan, and Elaine Jin received Best Supporting Actress. Mad World was also Hong Kong’s selection for Best Foreign Language Film at the 90th Academy Awards, but it did not get nominated. 

Drinking Tea series by Xue Lei. 2004-2009.

Born in Qingdao, China, Xue studied oil painting in Shandong before moving to Germany, where he has lived since 1999. While Xue’s work spans a wide variety of media, including scroll paintings, watercolours on rice paper, video installation and animated film, he is best known for his porcelain works, among which the Drinking Tea series is the most renowned. 

Xue’s Drinking Tea series consists of sculptures of crushed drink cans hand-painted with Ming dynasty motifs. His process is painstaking and complex - he first creates can-shapes from clay, using them as moulds for the final porcelain product. After several firing stages, Xue paints the designs with a thin brush. Xue’s preoccupation with cans recalls the imagery of Western Pop Art, contributing to an artistic dialogue between East and West.

Images courtesy of the artist.