22 March – 17 April 2024
2nd Floor, No.78, Huqiu Road, ROCKBUND, Shanghai
“Next Year | L'Année Prochaine | 明年” will be showing for a month at the ROCKBUND complex. Here, Ming Wong revisits an icon of the French New Wave: L’Année dernière à Marienbad/ Last Year at Marienbad (1961) directed by Alain Resnais and written by Alain Robbe-Grillet, celebrated for its radical, innovative use of cinematic narrative. The plot follows the encounter between a couple of apparent strangers in a grand hotel. The man claims that they met one year before, fell in love, and made plans to elope. The woman initially denies everything he says, then gradually concedes to her own version of the truth.
Wong re-staged the work in the French Concession in Shanghai in 2016, performing both the male and female protagonists, in locations such as Marienbad Café and Fuxing Park. Wong’s made-in-Shanghai version further ruptures continuities of time, space, gender and geography. Past, present and the future collapse into a singular moment in the now.
