Akeroyd Collection

Works

Wong Ping, Wong Ping's Fables 2 (黃炳寓言), 2019

In this film, we are offered two fables to consider. In the first, we learn about a radical activist cow who, during a violent protest, accidentally killed a police officer with his horns. Jailed for 12 years he completes a PhD on the morality of slow-cooking beef while enduring poor treatment from the guards as vengeance for him killing an officer. After his release, he is penniless and malnourished and so cannot continue his political activism. He sells the clothes he entered prison in so that he can buy some food. The market price for his original activist jeans, however, had increased as they had become a fashionable garment and statement piece of clothing. He made enough money from these authentic clothes to set up a production line making distressed jeans in this style. Riding high on his newfound success, the cow builds a luxury underground bunker with his huge riches, eats the best grass and plays every combination of the lottery. Sharing winnings with the public he hopes to win favour but the population we are told hates capitalists. Building his empire deeper and deeper underground, one day he suffers a severe health attack and dies. Coroners discover he was living too close to the Earth’s core and was in fact slow cooking himself. Hong Kong, as a result, discovered that his diet of the best grass and the low slow cooking of his body created a meat that rivalled the best wagyu beef in Japan. Public opinion turns and he is mistakenly commemorated as an important figure who sacrificed himself for his own PhD research.

In the second fable, a set of conjoined rabbit triplets endure their family’s poverty and interconnected bodily functions. When one experiences a particular incident, its effect is apparent on another – we are told when one is horny, the other’s tongue is dry. Each with contradictory ambitions, they literally tear each other apart. The first is killed by a sibling and turned into a chocolate-coated easter bunny, for which the remaining two go to jail. One has studied magic, while the other has studied law. The magic rabbit has an exceptionally long neck from being repeatedly pulled from a hat, while the lawyer has learned how to frame his brother for the murder. Due to the long neck, the lawyer is free to practice law while his conjoined sibling plans his magical escape from prison. On picking the lock, the guards shoot him dead. Miles away, connected via their long neck, the last surviving sibling, the lawyer, wets his pants in court.

MediumSingle channel video animation with sound
Duration13 minutes 30 seconds
Editionof 5 + 2 APs