“Everywhere and All at Once” is a participatory eight channel video installation that focuses on how to bring people together to create new space of possibilities through Mahjong. Mahjong, played by four people, is a domino like tile-based Chinese traditional game. It was brought into North American by Chinese immigrants around 1920s and has played very important role in Chinese immigration history, giving Chinese who live aboard a cultural bond while others might still see it as foreign and exotic.

This work takes audiences to a playful journey to experience new roles both in virtual and reality. The videos are projected on eight square tables with four chairs on each table ( example above is a single channel video installation). Audiences are encouraged to sit on chairs and watch video on their own tables. As the video doesn’t reveal the players’ identity but just their arms and gestures of playing mahjong, when the audiences sit on chairs, they become the mahjong players and extensions of this installation. This work demonstrates how pastimes and traditions can cross-influence, and how mahjong, both as a culture symbol and communication tool, crosses time and space, creates a new social environment in which people come together to engage with the shared culture heritage, opening new interpretations and new possibilities that enable to across ethnic, gender and generational boundaries.

This work is a reproduction of a work that I made in 2010. I made the first version of this work in Vancouver in 2010 when I was a student at Emily Carr University. However, because of lack of mahjong players and lack of  a HD camera, I was not happy about the quality of the video. In 2017, I had a chance to visit China, I decided to reshoot this work.

For more details about this work, please visit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V87keMn_aLY&feature=youtu.be

“Everywhere and All at Once” originally was made in 2010, please see links below. I reproduced it in Beijing in 2017.

For more info about 2010 version, please visit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTxfpf1sgbI
https://chunhuacatherinedong.com/portfolio/everywhere-and-all-at-once/

photo courtesy of the artist

Chun Hua Catherine Dong thanks the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec for its financial support