Film & Video (Film & Video)

In the eight-channel video installation Movement , Li Ming uses his body as a prop to interact with different means of transportation. Each channel features footage of the artist moving forward, jumping between various modes of transportation that weave in and out of the frame in a carefully orchestrated choreography. As the artist descends from the loader bucket of a moving construction tractor, he jumps onto a skateboard which he then discards as he lays on top of a suitcase that continues rolling forward.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Making Chinatown (2012) is a remake of Roman Polanski’s 1974 classic neo-noir film Chinatown . According to Wong, the latter is a “textbook” of Hollywood filmmaking . In Ming’s version, he plays all four main characters portrayed originally by Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, and Belinda Palmer, shooting against a backdrop of a film set reproduced as wallpaper in a gallery space.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The four-channel video installation Same Old Crowd departs from the documentation of an unknown city and takes place in an ambiguous temporal and spatial frame. Twelve characters (amateur actors hired by the artist) appear in black-and-white in highly stylized surroundings wearing patterned cloths. The identities or time period of the characters, all deprived of languages, are impossible to determine.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

In his video work Beyond Geography , Li dramatizes the role of the artist-as-imitator to the point of sheer parody. Dressed to toe in the costume of a typical Discovery Channel adventurer-explorer, the artist dashes suavely through the uncharted jungle habitat of a primitive tribe. Li modulates his own voice in laughably accurate mimicry of the dubbed Discovery Channel protagonist familiar to Chinese viewership, daringly gulping fresh water from a river, expertly admiring exotic vegetation, and whimpering in fear of the dark sounds of the night (screaming, even, as he trips on a human skull) in an full-scale exaggeration of a nature show personality.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Benefiting from its geographic proximity to Hong Kong, since the 1980s Dongguan has become the factory of the world, with toys, plastic products and clothing as the major industries in the town. During its heyday, the region produced 50% of the world’s manufactured toys, but since 2008, the toy industry has declined as the factories moved to South East Asia. Archaeology of the Present (Dongguan) No.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Combined into a single two-channel HD video, Li Xiaofei’s Ponytail and Chongming Island II are silent portraits of the women assembly line workers at a Chinese kitchenware factory. Close-up shots of women’s heads—most notably of the rear with their hair in the similar updo fashion—and faces occupy the frame amidst a backdrop of a revolving steel conveyor. In lieu of dialogue or humming of the machinery, a ringing score of chimes and bells provides a tranquil soundtrack.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

False or True No. 3 by Li Gang consists of two components. The first is a machine designed by Li that uses a pump to collect moisture from the air.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

ÆTHER (Poor Objects) by Li Shuang builds on the artist’s consideration of the interplay between physical and digital spaces. Through a kaleidoscopic video collage, Li examines the complexities of personal subjectivity within an increasingly immersive and omnipresent online culture. Among disparate imagery that includes extra-terrestrial simulations, dizzying hordes of birds, animated figures trapped in dystopian virtual spaces, and real-life abandoned places, the video references the Chinese creation myth of Nuwa, a goddess who uses her own body to repair the sky.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

A Slap in Wuhan documents Li Liao’s performance in Wuhan, China on January 8, 2011. Li waits at the entrance of the Optical Valley walking street. An anonymous person who was recruited online approaches Li and slaps him in the face.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Freedom Farming presents how, after being given the right of farming, Li Binyuan began to re-dig his land. He attempted to physically open a space for conversation with the generation of his parents. On the second day, villagers that were gathering in the field, including his mother, started to watch a strange event: Li Binyuan’ s 2-hour long jumping and falling in his land until he finally stopped, exhausted.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Argentum is part of Li Li Xiaofei’s Assembly Line series. The film was shot in Dongchuan, a small town 180 km from Kunming. Ten years ago, in order to attract foreign investment, Dongchuan officially became a district of Kunming, thus giving it access to preferential policies.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Sexy shows Yan Xing unsuccessfully trying to reach orgasm in freezing temperatures among the falling rocks and howling winds of a precarious canyon. His erotic failure leaves the voyeur-viewer unfulfilled and disappointed. The work explores notions of identity, masculinity, sexuality, voyeurism, and cultural taboos.

NFT (NFT)

Monuments of the Disclosed by Ahmet Ögüt is an NFT series of digital monuments to whistleblowers. As part of the drop of Augmented Reality sculptures, Ögüt invites the public to participate in populating public space with AR monuments, honoring those who have stood up to corrupt power. Each monument is dedicated to a different individual who stood up to protest systems far larger than themselves.

Photography (Photography)

Yoneda’s Japanese House (2010) series of photographs depicts buildings constructed in Taiwan during the period of Japanese occupation, between 1895 and 1945. Yoneda focuses both on the original Japanese features of the houses and on details that have been altered since the end of the occupation. The yet-to-be acknowledged history of the occupation of Taiwan and other East Asian countries by Japan during World War II is subtly disclosed in these pictures.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The Orbit by Bo Wang is based on the story of Hu Na, a former professional tennis player who was known for defecting from the People’s Republic of China. While on tour in California for the 1982 Federation Cup with the China Federation Cup team, Hu Na fled her hotel room and sought refuge at a friend’s home on her second day in the United States. In April 1983, she requested political asylum on the basis that she had a well-founded fear of persecution because of repeatedly refusing to join the Communist Party of China’s tennis team.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

As part of her project Chinternet Plus , a “counterfeit ideology” and parodic take on the strategy “Internet Plus” launched by Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang in 2015, the video work Post commentary, monetary likes, Morgan Freeman’s advice on reality gives an insight into Internet Culture in China. The brilliantly edited video by Miao Ying presents various scenes from a popular Chinese live-streaming platform together with extracts from a TV show featuring Morgan Freeman talking about “What Is Reality”. This work is exemplary of the artist’s practice, questioning, with a degree of humour, the sometimes dramatic consequences of the Internet as it consumes society.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Smoke and Fire is the first chapter of The Northeast Tetralogy , a film project that Wang Tuo began in 2017. The project is a unique regional research of Northeastern China that addresses the region’s geopolitical contentions. Drawing on significant moments from China’s modern history, Wang’s visual storytelling sets up and displaces a series of socio-historical situations through multiple narrative structures.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

In his performative action Subterranean Doomsday Vendor , Draeger positions himself in the subway system of Mexico City, as part of the common occurrence of bootleg media vendors. His contribution lies in dissemination of prophecy as he tests the public’s reactions to the types of content and media which can be circulated in such common spaces.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Winter is a film installation of multiple tenses—shot in the recent past, depicting an unknown future, unfolding (and changing) in the present of the exhibition. Shot in the white-washed homes of New Zealand architect Ian Athfield, including his own communal compound high above Wellington harbor, the film suggests various temporal and cultural conditions of instability, hinting at concerns of global warming and nuclear accidents, pushing at the boundaries of science fiction, stripped of narrative explication and causal explanation.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Berlin Remake ( 2005) combines extracts of East German films with images filmed by the artist in Berlin. While staying in Berlin, the artist found the locations where the official films were made and she juxtaposes the two in a synchronised double projection. Therefore on one screen there is Berlin between 1945 and 1989 and on the other Berlin in 2004.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Artist Wong Kit Yi’s A River in the Freezer combines directed and found footage to meditate upon glacial memory, cryogenics, and frozen fiction. She synthesizes disparate subjects—ranging from Longyearbyen, Norway (a town where no one is allowed to die), the fair-haired manga character Cygnus Hyoga, 19th-century global trading in ice, and color wavelength theory, among others—within a karaoke-inspired sing-along format.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Untitled consists of a small wooden sculpture that leans against a wall. Here, a rectangular piece of wood holds a folded article from a vintage design magazine whose Italian text states: “Villa per una persona sola. Arquitectura Pasadena California.” On the flipside of the paper is a feature with different images of paintings and architecture, including a painting by Piet Mondrian.