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Play, download and edit the free video 2 Rivers + 30 Years.

The work of Laura Heyman and Luxin Zhang plays with hierarchies and ideas around language, historical narrative and modes of transmission, exploring the relationship between artist and audience, state and citizen, teacher and student, parent and child. Heyman and Zhang first encountered each other in the classroom, and "2 Rivers + 30 Years" reverses their relationship from that time, presenting instead the two artists in a video work centered around a former student’s attempt to teach their former instructor how to sing. Singing lessons are interspersed with the artist’s conversations about the structure and meaning of the piece, presenting their shared vision and points of friction to be negotiated in order to complete the work. This collaboration and struggle extends across three screens as Zhang takes singing lessons from her mother in China, while the Heyman attempts to translate what she’s learned from Zhang into lessons for her son.

The songs Zhang and Heyman teach and learn are from the soundtracks of two popular films ("A Great River", lyrics by Qiao Yu, music by Liu Chi, from the 1956 film "Battle on Shangganling Mountain", directed by Sha Meng, and "Moon River, lyrics by Johnny Mercer, music by Henry Mancini from the 1961 film "Breakfast at Tiffany's", directed by Blake Edwards). Both of these nostalgic and sentimental songs remain in wide circulation in their respective countries, (though the films they were created for are no longer as well known), and both are viewed as a quintessentially representative cultural artifacts. Zhang and Heyman teach, learn and sing each of these songs in the original language without translation, producing different levels of resonance and understanding for the audience that question the way various hierarchies can create meaning and value within art and popular culture.

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