The World Is a Fine Place for You to Fight For

Sun Yuan & Peng Yu

Video

90'00''

2011

The World Is a Fine Place for You to Fight For from artists couple Sun Yuan and Peng Yu borrow from theatre and the tricks of conjurer to make us think about what precisely reality might be. Thisis not at all as easy to understand as a textual expression might be. This video piece with continually repeated calm imagery had an endlessly complex structure, and there is little hope of working out the logic of it. And of course this is not what the artists want us to do. The artists set us a riddle but don’t give the audience the satisfaction of seeing it solved, but at the same time this is the type of complexity that is incomparably fascinating. This is like a conjuring act, that the audience knows full well is a trick but enjoys thoroughly. The fun has yet to wear off even after several hundred years, no doubt because deep down everyone wants to be fooled good and proper, to succeed in leaving behind the reality they find themselves in.