​The Lancang River basin is the traditional habitat of the Asian elephant, and in the Dai language, ‘Lancang’ originally means ‘million elephants’. Because of their size, elephants have repeatedly been given symbols that transcend their own. And these symbols are layered on top of each other, traveling through time and in turn obscuring the elephants themselves. Through the encounter between elephants and external in different historical contexts, the video March of the Elephants (象=image/elephant, 征=represent/march, while 象征 means symbol, and also means ‘march of the elephants’ ) attempts to look back at the entanglement between things and discourses, and how together they traverse history to construct new realities.

​This video is roughly divided into three passages corresponding to the three eras and three discourses that the elephant traverses: the elephant in Dai mythology and legend, the elephant during the period of socialist construction and the early 1970s, and the elephant in the present. The author attempts to appropriate visual materials, sound materials and discourses from the corresponding periods for a self-reflexive narrative. The materials include 19th century French colonial prints, Dai Southern Theravada Buddhist monastery murals, 1950s films and old photographs, 1970s comic strips, and today’s mobile phone images, surveillance images and drone images. From these differently sourced yet interconnected symbols, we can see how the elephants march through different histories and are continually obscured by various symbolic discourses.

瀾滄江流域是亞洲象的傳統棲息地，而在傣語中，「瀾滄」本來就意味著「百萬大象」。 大象因其體量，一再被賦予超越自身的象徵。 而這些象徵層層疊加，穿越時代，反過來遮蔽了大象自身。 錄影「象徵」試圖通過在不同歷史語境中大象與現實的遭遇，回觀諸物與話語之間的糾葛，以及它們如何共同穿越歷史，建構出新的現實。

作品大致分為三個段落，對應著大象穿越的三個時代和三種話語：傣族神話傳說中的大象，17年時期和70年代初的大象，以及當下的大象。 作者試圖挪用相應時期的視覺材料、聲音材料以及相應話語來進行自反性的敘事，其中包括19世紀法國殖民者的版畫、傣族南傳上座部佛教寺院壁畫、50年代的電影與老照片、70 年代的連環畫，以及今天的手機圖像、監視圖像、無人機圖像等。 從這些來源不同卻相互連結符號中，我們可以看到作為實體的大像如何穿過不同的歷史，並被各種象徵話語持續遮蔽。

Cheng Xinhao (b.1985 in Yunnan Province, China) currently lives and works in Kunming, China. He received his Ph.D in Chemistry from Peking University in 2013. Cheng’s works are usually based on long-term field studies, centering around his hometown in Yunnan Province. With videos, installations, photographs and words, he personally investigates the polyphonic relationships between logic, discussions, knowledge, and the part that nature, society, and history play within them. His long-term projects include Strange Terrains (2013-, about the ethnic group Mang in the borderlands of Vietnam and China), To the Ocean (2018-, about the Yunnan- Vietnam Railway), and Tales about the South of Clouds (2021-, about the oral literary tradition in Yunnan).