by Duncan Murray
SYDNEY, June 1 (Xinhua) -- As winter sets in across Sydney Harbour, a selection of artworks from Hong Kong's highly anticipated M+ museum are lighting up the Opera House -- with a five-day preview of visual works from the museum's collection showing from Wednesday to Sunday.
The Hidden Pulse, a joint venture with the Sydney Opera House, is the first collaboration of M+ International, an initiative aimed at fostering global partnerships ahead of the museum's 2020 opening.
The collaboration falls during the broader Vivid Sydney Festival which every year lights up the city's harbor and surrounds, bringing light installations and musical performances to locals and visitors for about a month in May and June.
"The Hidden Pulse will give audiences the opportunity to view moving image artworks by acclaimed international artists from diverse geographical locations and cultural backgrounds," Opera House contemporary art curator Sarah Rees said.
One of the featured presentations is "Miraculous Trajectories," a collaboration by electronic musician Shao Yanpeng and emerging avant-garde video artist Cheng Ran.
The images for the work are pieced together from Cheng's 2015 nine-hour epic film "In Course of the Miraculous," which explored the real-life disappearances of three missing people.
Cheng, who lives and works in Hangzhou, an eastern city of China, visited Sydney for the screening and told Xinhua why he made a movie that was so long.
"I'm not actually a filmmaker. I'm a video artist, so I'm always thinking about other ways of using this medium," he said.
"So I hope this long movie can extend for one whole day of people watching it. It's like one day, going into work in the morning and finishing in the evening."
"The question is, during that time of one whole day, what is happening?"
Australian audiences can witness a portion of the entire film, cut down to just 70 minutes, which will screen at the Opera House on Sunday.
Cheng and fellow artist Cameron Rowland were named as inaugural winners of Nomura Emerging Artist Award, with each receiving 100,000 U.S. dollars.
Among a worldwide slew of works by cutting edge visual artists, The Hidden Pulse will also show the critically acclaimed, "Love is the Message, the Message is Death" by Arthur Jaffar, which incorporates African American music and historical images into a searing depiction of how the culture is portrayed by mainstream media.
M+ curator Ulanda Blair, who was also in Sydney for the event, said that she was delighted to be part of Vivid and to share some of the gallery's exciting moving image collection with Australians.
"The program articulates M+'s strong engagement with contemporary practices from around the world, as well as our firm grounding in Asia," Blair said.
Cheng said that he was honored to be representing M+ during his first ever visit to Australia.
"I have shown some works here before but this video and live music performance will be the most important showing for me. The Sydney Opera House is a dream place for artists and musicians to perform," he said.
"I think for this type of artwork, people don't need to know very much about your country, about your background, they can just listen to the music and watch the movie and feel different experiences from their own heart."
