UCCA Beijing Open Today, 10:00-19:00 (Final entry: 18:30)
UCCA Dune Open Today, 9:30-19:30 (Final entry: 19:00)
UCCA Edge Closed Today,
Audio Guide
As a high school student, Cao Fei began to actively participate in campus cultural events. On display here are videos of The Little Spark II, a performance the artist presented at her school’s New Year’s gala in 1995, and her stage drama Campus Rhapsody II, created later, when she was a student at Guangzhou Academy of Art. In these recordings of her early performance works, one can observe the clothing and music that was then popular with young people, as well as references to Hong Kong slapstick cinema. These deeply satirical performances reflect the artist’s receptiveness towards new trends and pop culture and a devil-may-care attitude towards existing conventions. Cao Fei’s experience with her university’s theater troupe fostered an interest in theatrical experimentation found in her works that would follow.
Filmed in 1999, Imbalance 257 is Cao Fei’s first significant video work. Possessing a loose, casual style, the short video depicts a certain imbalance in the lives of a group of art students at a loss about their prospects after graduation and filled with anxiety and confusion about the future.
Cao Fei describes her process at the time:
“I borrowed a camcorder from Guangdong Pincheng Advertising Company, where I was working part-time, and gathered together classmates that were also sticking around the university during the holidays. At that point there was neither a title nor a script, I just wanted to film something super stream-of-consciousness. We started filming at 10 in the morning, so I would wake up at 8 to work on the script, and at night after we had finished filming for the day I would write the script for the next day. We filmed for five or six days like this. Scenes were filmed in the school’s dormitory, classrooms, and oil painting studio for live model painting, as well as outdoor food stalls. Actors’ lines, dialogue were all added in editing. The working method I began using then was actually quite similar to what I do today. It’s a process where things are constantly expanding, and then are only assembled through the process of post-production afterwards.”
Cao Fei earned early recognition for this work: it was shown in a student film exhibition at the Hong Kong Arts Centre. In the same year it was screened in Spain through the invitation of curator Hou Hanru. The video is considered to be the starting point of her career.
Cao Fei describes her process at the time:
“I borrowed a camcorder from Guangdong Pincheng Advertising Company, where I was working part-time, and gathered together classmates that were also sticking around the university during the holidays. At that point there was neither a title nor a script, I just wanted to film something super stream-of-consciousness. We started filming at 10 in the morning, so I would wake up at 8 to work on the script, and at night after we had finished filming for the day I would write the script for the next day. We filmed for five or six days like this. Scenes were filmed in the school’s dormitory, classrooms, and oil painting studio for live model painting, as well as outdoor food stalls. Actors’ lines, dialogue were all added in editing. The working method I began using then was actually quite similar to what I do today. It’s a process where things are constantly expanding, and then are only assembled through the process of post-production afterwards.”
Cao Fei earned early recognition for this work: it was shown in a student film exhibition at the Hong Kong Arts Centre. In the same year it was screened in Spain through the invitation of curator Hou Hanru. The video is considered to be the starting point of her career.
As part of the grassroots filmmaking collective U-thèque, in 2003 Cao Fei and Ou Ning created an experimental documentary for the 50th Venice Biennale. The work was filmed and researched in Sanyuanli, an area in the north of Guangzhou.
Cao Fei describes the process behind the artwork:
“At the time when we made the work, we formed a ten-member filmmaking collective, which included architects, artists, people working in media, cinematographers, and university students. Everyone shot with DV camcorders in and around Sanyuanli for half a year. What we filmed followed the route of the British army as they disembarked in Guangzhou during the Opium War. They came ashore and passed through the suburb of Panyu, then entered the city itself, and finally reached Sanyuanli Village. You could say we took a blanket approach during this half year. We split up into many different groups: some shot the skyline of this urban village, others focused on filming people. Each group recorded different types of content. I filmed as well as serving as producer. For example, I was in contact with the neighborhood administration. I got help from friends who worked at a television station to get credentials so I could coordinate with the administration and get access to residential areas. This included getting permission to go to the local police station to film officers, going to Sanyuanli’s hotels to film staff, and shooting a couple of other group portraits. Sanyuanli was known as an urban village and also an important base of anti-British resistance, though by the 1990s it was being called a blighted area, and a lot of criminal activity, including drug dealing, was linked to the neighborhood. It was a space that was both controversial and intermixed with history. Amidst extremely fast, dramatic urbanization, the traditional clans of the city and its villages were disintegrating. Relying more on images and scenes rather than the oral narration of traditional documentaries, this film uses a poetic method to express this.”
Cao Fei describes the process behind the artwork:
“At the time when we made the work, we formed a ten-member filmmaking collective, which included architects, artists, people working in media, cinematographers, and university students. Everyone shot with DV camcorders in and around Sanyuanli for half a year. What we filmed followed the route of the British army as they disembarked in Guangzhou during the Opium War. They came ashore and passed through the suburb of Panyu, then entered the city itself, and finally reached Sanyuanli Village. You could say we took a blanket approach during this half year. We split up into many different groups: some shot the skyline of this urban village, others focused on filming people. Each group recorded different types of content. I filmed as well as serving as producer. For example, I was in contact with the neighborhood administration. I got help from friends who worked at a television station to get credentials so I could coordinate with the administration and get access to residential areas. This included getting permission to go to the local police station to film officers, going to Sanyuanli’s hotels to film staff, and shooting a couple of other group portraits. Sanyuanli was known as an urban village and also an important base of anti-British resistance, though by the 1990s it was being called a blighted area, and a lot of criminal activity, including drug dealing, was linked to the neighborhood. It was a space that was both controversial and intermixed with history. Amidst extremely fast, dramatic urbanization, the traditional clans of the city and its villages were disintegrating. Relying more on images and scenes rather than the oral narration of traditional documentaries, this film uses a poetic method to express this.”
Cao Fei’s father Cao Chong’en is a renowned sculptor, expert at creating realistic statues of heroes and other model figures. Responding to a call to develop “red tourism,” at the end of 2004, an old Communist Revolution base in Guangxi province commissioned Cao Fei’s father to create a 5.6-meter tall statue of the young Deng Xiaoping. Cao Fei accompanied her father on this “red” journey to film a documentary. In a previous interview, Cao Fei spoke about the trip, commenting: “This experience made me think about my father’s practice in a new way, rediscovering my father himself and the connection between his artworks and society, or even with the entire history of China after Liberation. What he represents is the main theme, or what one might call the thread, of ‘official history.’ Working in contemporary art, I am always observing things from the periphery, looking at everything from my own perspective, like a kind of ‘unofficial history.’”
The space in front of you not only contains the documentary Father, but also the related mixed-media video installation Nation • Father, which responds to the same theme. This includes an interview with the actor who depicted Sun Yat-sen in the historical television show Towards the Republic, sculptures by Cao Fei’s father, and other archival materials. Connecting her father’s life and the country’s fate as symbolized by the icons of Sun Yat-sen and Deng Xiaoping, Cao Fei expands an emotional narrative of a father-daughter relationship into a critical study of significant moments in modern China.
The space in front of you not only contains the documentary Father, but also the related mixed-media video installation Nation • Father, which responds to the same theme. This includes an interview with the actor who depicted Sun Yat-sen in the historical television show Towards the Republic, sculptures by Cao Fei’s father, and other archival materials. Connecting her father’s life and the country’s fate as symbolized by the icons of Sun Yat-sen and Deng Xiaoping, Cao Fei expands an emotional narrative of a father-daughter relationship into a critical study of significant moments in modern China.
Coming of age in the 1990s as a member of what would become known as the 新新人类 or “New Human” generation, Cao Fei was deeply influenced by MTV and other forms of imported pop culture. The “Hip Hop” project seen here was inspired by the artist’s love of rap culture. The project took place in Guangzhou, Fukuoka, and New York, where the artist invited people from different cultures and social backgrounds to dance passionately to hip hop music. The work represents an experiment in taking a borrowed cultural form and localizing it, stripping it of its hip veneer. Cao Fei tailored each work to its locale, incorporating the style and urban culture of different cities and giving each its own unique character.
In this exhibition, Hip Hop: New York is shown as a video installation. The film is projected onto a cluttered dining table, recalling the boisterous restaurants of Manhattan’s Chinatown and adding to the metropolitan atmosphere of the staging. For the work’s debut at Lombard-Freid Projects in New York, the Chinese-American rap group Notorious MSG played at the exhibition’s opening, and they later appeared with the artist at MoMA PS1 in the performance installation Hip Hop Stage.
In this exhibition, Hip Hop: New York is shown as a video installation. The film is projected onto a cluttered dining table, recalling the boisterous restaurants of Manhattan’s Chinatown and adding to the metropolitan atmosphere of the staging. For the work’s debut at Lombard-Freid Projects in New York, the Chinese-American rap group Notorious MSG played at the exhibition’s opening, and they later appeared with the artist at MoMA PS1 in the performance installation Hip Hop Stage.
As Japanese cosplay culture gradually became popular in China, more and more young people began dressing up as anime and video game characters, often employing elaborate costumes, makeup, and props. Cao Fei decided to engage with this community, resulting in the artwork Cosplayers. In the film, a group of young people dress up as different anime characters, roaming through the urban spaces of a rapidly changing Guangzhou, horsing around and having mock battles. Through these costumes and props, they temporarily enter a world of fantasy, transcending their prescribed aesthetic standards and social roles. Yet at the end of their adventures, they still must return to their everyday lives.
In an interview, Cao Fei described her inspiration for this piece:
Cao Fei: When I saw Doug Aitken’s work at PS1, I discovered the importance of capturing the conditions of reality for people today. So Cosplayers doesn’t just depict them daydreaming, playing games, and running around these urban spaces, it also shows them returning to real life. That is actually the most moving and tender part.
In an interview, Cao Fei described her inspiration for this piece:
Cao Fei: When I saw Doug Aitken’s work at PS1, I discovered the importance of capturing the conditions of reality for people today. So Cosplayers doesn’t just depict them daydreaming, playing games, and running around these urban spaces, it also shows them returning to real life. That is actually the most moving and tender part.
The title “Rumba” is a play on the vacuum cleaner robot Roomba, which debuted in 2002. When Cao Fei’s studio was demolished in 2015, she decided to use these vacuum cleaners to make a new artwork inspired by the event. For this film, the artist placed the machines amid the rubble of her former studio, recording their jerky movements. These robots can automatically detect obstacles and calculate the most efficient cleaning path. They normally follow a preset program, yet here they are unable to formulate a coherent route. In Rumba II: Nomad, Cao Fei presents a dialectic of order and chaos while commenting on the rapid transformation of Chinese cities, how this impacts citizens’ livelihoods, and the contradictions between contemporary development and urban cleanliness. Throughout the gallery, visitors will also find other works inspired by this event. One piece comprises automatic vacuum cleaners atop two rectangular plinths traditionally used to support sculptures. Their spasmodic motion creates a moving sculpture that is constantly changing shape and never reaches a final state. In another, the vacuum seems more like a captive animal, shuttling across a precisely designed, peculiar terrain. In a certain sense, these sculptures reflect the conditions of many people today: feeling adrift, toiling away within a strictly delineated range of activities, struggling to find an escape.
Cao Fei made Isle of Instability in response to her experience last year during the pandemic. The artwork was commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary. Cao Fei originally planned to make a work in Switzerland that would expand upon her longstanding interest in the manufacturing industry. However, with global spread of COVID-19, the artist and her family were stuck in Singapore as international flights were suspended. Cao Fei and Audemars Piguet Contemporary then decided to address an entirely different topic. In her apartment in Singapore, the artist documented her observations and feelings during this period of quarantine. She aimed to explore the physical and psychological influence isolation can have on individuals, families, and the entire human race. The resulting video installation comprises a film surrounded by a suite of everyday items that became household staples during the pandemic. The film depicts a miniature “island” that Cao Fei haphazardly made for her kids in the center of her living room. Her nine-year-old daughter performs as the last human being alive on this deserted island. From her individual vantage point onto a global pandemic, Cao Fei adopts a simple, casual way of documenting the revelations of this peculiar moment.
Rabid Dogs
In 2002, Cao Fei used the office of the magazine conglomerate Modern Media as the backdrop to her film Rabid Dogs. Shot on a DV camcorder, the video depicts a group of white-collar workers wearing plaid outfits crawling around the office like dogs. They bark and gnash their teeth at one another, but they are also tamed, coming when called and scurrying away when dismissed. The way these office workers live, some more pitifully than dogs, stands in stark contrast to their fancy appearances. With a vivid sense of humor and heavy dose of sarcasm, Cao Fei brings the Cantonese saying “working as hard as a dog” to life, exposing how a cutthroat work environment alienates its workers. For this exhibition, the artist designed a mixed-media installation to house Rabid Dogs, showing the film on an old monitor. A set of plaid office supplies responds to visual elements in the video, and for the first time it is exhibited alongside a series of related photographic works. Although the film was made nearly twenty years ago, the themes echo many heated topics surrounding office culture today, such as the 996 work schedule.
In 2002, Cao Fei used the office of the magazine conglomerate Modern Media as the backdrop to her film Rabid Dogs. Shot on a DV camcorder, the video depicts a group of white-collar workers wearing plaid outfits crawling around the office like dogs. They bark and gnash their teeth at one another, but they are also tamed, coming when called and scurrying away when dismissed. The way these office workers live, some more pitifully than dogs, stands in stark contrast to their fancy appearances. With a vivid sense of humor and heavy dose of sarcasm, Cao Fei brings the Cantonese saying “working as hard as a dog” to life, exposing how a cutthroat work environment alienates its workers. For this exhibition, the artist designed a mixed-media installation to house Rabid Dogs, showing the film on an old monitor. A set of plaid office supplies responds to visual elements in the video, and for the first time it is exhibited alongside a series of related photographic works. Although the film was made nearly twenty years ago, the themes echo many heated topics surrounding office culture today, such as the 996 work schedule.
Whose Utopia
In 2005, at the invitation of Siemens Art Program, Cao Fei undertook a six-month residency at OSRAM’s light bulb factory in Foshan, Guangdong. Against the backdrop of economic development in the Pearl River Delta, the resulting work focuses on the assembly line workers and their hopes and dreams.
Cao Fei recently discussed this piece with UCCA Director Philip Tinari:
Cao Fei: Whose utopia is it, really? This question addresses a lot of different facets. First, of course, I asked the workers, and then I interrogated the entire system of production. For whom are they imagining this product? Who needs these products? These items are all exported, flowing out of China. So the party that drives production also drives the entire flow of globalization and the desires it embodies. So how does the flow of globalized trade affect the individual? In China, this flow has had a consistent impact on individuals’ lives since the beginning of Reform and Opening. I think this work is really interrogating what this driving force is. Who is building this utopia? The workers have their own idea of utopia. They want an ideal life. They want to transcend social distinctions and join the middle class, or live a different kind of life. I think these things are all contained within this question.
CF: I think the ending scene with the workers looking out at the audience is really important. Production workers are rarely treated with much dignity. Lots of documentary films about labor aim to expose how the individual within globalization is just a cog in the machine. But to have freeze-frames that linger on each person for five, six, or even ten seconds, you’re then compelled to observe their tired appearances, their expressions. This is a question put to every viewer. A lot of people are moved to some degree when they watch that segment. Even though they might not be a blue-collar worker themselves, it’s still a question put to every viewer.
In 2005, at the invitation of Siemens Art Program, Cao Fei undertook a six-month residency at OSRAM’s light bulb factory in Foshan, Guangdong. Against the backdrop of economic development in the Pearl River Delta, the resulting work focuses on the assembly line workers and their hopes and dreams.
Cao Fei recently discussed this piece with UCCA Director Philip Tinari:
Cao Fei: Whose utopia is it, really? This question addresses a lot of different facets. First, of course, I asked the workers, and then I interrogated the entire system of production. For whom are they imagining this product? Who needs these products? These items are all exported, flowing out of China. So the party that drives production also drives the entire flow of globalization and the desires it embodies. So how does the flow of globalized trade affect the individual? In China, this flow has had a consistent impact on individuals’ lives since the beginning of Reform and Opening. I think this work is really interrogating what this driving force is. Who is building this utopia? The workers have their own idea of utopia. They want an ideal life. They want to transcend social distinctions and join the middle class, or live a different kind of life. I think these things are all contained within this question.
CF: I think the ending scene with the workers looking out at the audience is really important. Production workers are rarely treated with much dignity. Lots of documentary films about labor aim to expose how the individual within globalization is just a cog in the machine. But to have freeze-frames that linger on each person for five, six, or even ten seconds, you’re then compelled to observe their tired appearances, their expressions. This is a question put to every viewer. A lot of people are moved to some degree when they watch that segment. Even though they might not be a blue-collar worker themselves, it’s still a question put to every viewer.
In East Wind, Cao Fei modifies a common blue Dongfeng truck into the titular steam locomotive from the famous cartoon Thomas and Friends. She then follows its waste-collecting journey from a construction site to a landfill. The transportation of construction waste is not an uncommon sight in urban infrastructure, but this truck attracts gawking bystanders and photographs because of its resemblance to Thomas the Tank Engine. Driving from a construction site, which symbolizes future development, to a landfill on the edges of the city where the past is literally buried, the truck metaphorically plays witness to the course of modern Chinese urbanization. The sites it passes, the crowds it encounters, and the roads it travels all represent the diverse landscapes inside and surrounding the modern city. In this way, a truck bearing the image of a Western cartoon comes to playfully observe the Chinese social ecology. Apart from the film, “Staging the Era” also exhibits toy models of Thomas the Tank Engine, photographs from the Dongfeng Motor Corporation, and other archival documents, providing the audience with new ways to understand the creative background of the film.
The project “Asia One” was commissioned in 2018 by the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The project’s title comes from the name of the most advanced automated warehouse operated by the online retail giant JD.com. The project comprises two video works. The film Asia One is a science fiction love story set against the backdrop of a retail warehouse, while the companion documentary 11.11 depicts JD.com’s logistics chain and the lives of its delivery workers.
Cao Fei recently described her inspiration for the project in a dialogue with UCCA Director Philip Tinari:
Cao Fei: I think the manufacturing industry today is undergoing a dramatic transition. First, the Pearl River Delta no longer has a strategic advantage in manufacturing. Many of the factories are now vacant. The whole industry is transforming and upgrading. At its core, it’s no longer chiefly dependent upon manpower. And since 2016, the national focus has largely shifted to artificial intelligence, unmanned labor, and high-precision technology. I am sensitive to this change, so I thought to take this moment and make a comparison. I wanted to see what sites of production are like today, and whether or not these sites have changed since 2006. At the time, JD.com was adopting a lot of new, experimental measures. In a bold move, I reached out to JD.com and told them about my idea, and fortunately I received their approval.
CF: When filming the logistics chain, it was impossible to embed myself in a fixed site like I did in Whose Utopia. The logistics industry is distributed across different areas and types of work. So for the sites featured in the documentary 11.11, I chose several places near me in Beijing. We began filming in the distribution center in Tongzhou and the JD.com headquarters. At the same time, we were recording how the logistics network permeates Beijing, rooted in delivery stations that address the last kilometer problem. I dispatched several videographers to observe each location up until the Double Eleven shopping holiday, such that the work captures the entire course of the holiday. Actually, you can trace this theme back to Whose Utopia. Who is placing the order? For whom are they buying? Who needs these things? None of us can see the sites of production and sale; it’s a completely invisible chain. But the documentary 11.11 presents what happens behind the curtain: the operations of labor and individuals, those on the low end of the chain. They ride around on small, three-wheeled vehicles, doing all the heavy lifting and moving by hand. When they get home at night they’re exhausted—they work more than twelve hours a day, every day. This is especially true during Double Eleven, when they can only sleep for three or four hours a night. You also see both the high and low ends of the chain. The headquarters of JD.com is entirely those on the high end. During Double Eleven, they eat huge meals, get massages, everything ordered to the office. People are even grilling food, and everyone is reveling in it. From the white-collar class inside the JD.com offices to the frontline workers at the very end of the chain, there are a number of shifts in the landscape of work each step of the way. It’s an interesting spectacle of today’s post-consumer era.
Cao Fei recently described her inspiration for the project in a dialogue with UCCA Director Philip Tinari:
Cao Fei: I think the manufacturing industry today is undergoing a dramatic transition. First, the Pearl River Delta no longer has a strategic advantage in manufacturing. Many of the factories are now vacant. The whole industry is transforming and upgrading. At its core, it’s no longer chiefly dependent upon manpower. And since 2016, the national focus has largely shifted to artificial intelligence, unmanned labor, and high-precision technology. I am sensitive to this change, so I thought to take this moment and make a comparison. I wanted to see what sites of production are like today, and whether or not these sites have changed since 2006. At the time, JD.com was adopting a lot of new, experimental measures. In a bold move, I reached out to JD.com and told them about my idea, and fortunately I received their approval.
CF: When filming the logistics chain, it was impossible to embed myself in a fixed site like I did in Whose Utopia. The logistics industry is distributed across different areas and types of work. So for the sites featured in the documentary 11.11, I chose several places near me in Beijing. We began filming in the distribution center in Tongzhou and the JD.com headquarters. At the same time, we were recording how the logistics network permeates Beijing, rooted in delivery stations that address the last kilometer problem. I dispatched several videographers to observe each location up until the Double Eleven shopping holiday, such that the work captures the entire course of the holiday. Actually, you can trace this theme back to Whose Utopia. Who is placing the order? For whom are they buying? Who needs these things? None of us can see the sites of production and sale; it’s a completely invisible chain. But the documentary 11.11 presents what happens behind the curtain: the operations of labor and individuals, those on the low end of the chain. They ride around on small, three-wheeled vehicles, doing all the heavy lifting and moving by hand. When they get home at night they’re exhausted—they work more than twelve hours a day, every day. This is especially true during Double Eleven, when they can only sleep for three or four hours a night. You also see both the high and low ends of the chain. The headquarters of JD.com is entirely those on the high end. During Double Eleven, they eat huge meals, get massages, everything ordered to the office. People are even grilling food, and everyone is reveling in it. From the white-collar class inside the JD.com offices to the frontline workers at the very end of the chain, there are a number of shifts in the landscape of work each step of the way. It’s an interesting spectacle of today’s post-consumer era.
Second Life is an online virtual world, launched by Linden Lab in 2002. Users can socialize through virtual avatars, constructing utopias of their imagining, or bring real-life social relations, and even economic and political activity into this new realm. Always closely observing new trends, in 2007 Cao Fei created the virtual avatar China Tracy, and began to construct the virtual metropolis of “RMB City,” which condensed together the characteristics of a number of Chinese cities into a single new city. For a number of years afterwards she continued to contribute towards the running of the city.
Cao Fei discusses the creation of the project:
“RMB City is actually quite similar to my piece PRD Anti-Heroes in terms of its ideals. They are both responses to urbanization. When it came to Second Life, the medium itself had the biggest impact on me, making me think about where our social habits might end up due to the virtual ecology of the future. Each person had a new avatar, and a space for online existence. Today many people can easily understand what an online avatar or online account is. At the time many people didn’t understand what I was doing. Most thought I was making an animation, or doing something trendy for young people. But it was just a reality, another layer of reality. Looking back, at that point I had just moved from the South to Beijing, but I hadn’t really grasped what Beijing was about, not just in terms of the contemporary art scene, but also life, or even what I wanted to do next in my art. So working in online virtual reality, actually indirectly transferred some of my feelings from the period when I had left the South but was not yet accustomed to living in the North.”
Cao Fei discusses the creation of the project:
“RMB City is actually quite similar to my piece PRD Anti-Heroes in terms of its ideals. They are both responses to urbanization. When it came to Second Life, the medium itself had the biggest impact on me, making me think about where our social habits might end up due to the virtual ecology of the future. Each person had a new avatar, and a space for online existence. Today many people can easily understand what an online avatar or online account is. At the time many people didn’t understand what I was doing. Most thought I was making an animation, or doing something trendy for young people. But it was just a reality, another layer of reality. Looking back, at that point I had just moved from the South to Beijing, but I hadn’t really grasped what Beijing was about, not just in terms of the contemporary art scene, but also life, or even what I wanted to do next in my art. So working in online virtual reality, actually indirectly transferred some of my feelings from the period when I had left the South but was not yet accustomed to living in the North.”
Haze and Fog is Cao Fei’s first feature-length film. Taking Beijing’s notorious smog as its starting point, the film is a magical-realist melodrama superimposed onto quotidian Chinese society, taking place in the artist’s apartment block.
Cao Fei describes the process of working on the film:
“In 2013, Beijing’s smog was getting worse and worse. In the post-Olympic economic climate, many people did not know what they wanted to do. The art scene was also stuck in a rut, a bit like today. People did not know what direction to take. Smog becomes a symbol, implying that we could not find an exit, nor see things clearly. I live on the 16th floor, and when the pollution was at its most severe, I couldn’t see more than 10 meters from my window. The symbolism of this may have made my previous optimism suddenly transform into a kind of dystopian mood. Haze and Fog emerged out of this context. I had also watched several seasons of the American TV show The Walking Dead around that time; so soon afterwards in 2013 I started filming Haze and Fog, trying to bring American-style zombies to Beijing, into the reality of my life. I tried to imagine what it would be like if there were zombies in China. Also, there was a prophecy that December 20, 2012 was going to be the end of the world—was this going to happen or not? Furthermore, zombie movies are all about the apocalypse or what comes afterwards, so all these things were the spark behind the creation of Haze and Fog as well as La Town.
In this case a social situation transformed my experience and perceptions in a very direct way, and then my experience produced feedback. Yet this kind of reaction does not necessarily surface at the same time as the situation that causes it. For example, with the current pandemic, humanity is facing an unprecedented challenge, and these works seem to precisely point to the situation today. When the epidemic first emerged, I felt like I had already experienced this kind of desperate situation, as if it had been conceived of beforehand in my own work.”
Cao Fei describes the process of working on the film:
“In 2013, Beijing’s smog was getting worse and worse. In the post-Olympic economic climate, many people did not know what they wanted to do. The art scene was also stuck in a rut, a bit like today. People did not know what direction to take. Smog becomes a symbol, implying that we could not find an exit, nor see things clearly. I live on the 16th floor, and when the pollution was at its most severe, I couldn’t see more than 10 meters from my window. The symbolism of this may have made my previous optimism suddenly transform into a kind of dystopian mood. Haze and Fog emerged out of this context. I had also watched several seasons of the American TV show The Walking Dead around that time; so soon afterwards in 2013 I started filming Haze and Fog, trying to bring American-style zombies to Beijing, into the reality of my life. I tried to imagine what it would be like if there were zombies in China. Also, there was a prophecy that December 20, 2012 was going to be the end of the world—was this going to happen or not? Furthermore, zombie movies are all about the apocalypse or what comes afterwards, so all these things were the spark behind the creation of Haze and Fog as well as La Town.
In this case a social situation transformed my experience and perceptions in a very direct way, and then my experience produced feedback. Yet this kind of reaction does not necessarily surface at the same time as the situation that causes it. For example, with the current pandemic, humanity is facing an unprecedented challenge, and these works seem to precisely point to the situation today. When the epidemic first emerged, I felt like I had already experienced this kind of desperate situation, as if it had been conceived of beforehand in my own work.”
After accidently discovering miniature models of people and buildings on online shopping platform Taobao, Cao Fei started use them to depict La Town, a fictional apocalyptic city. The roughly 40-minute-long stop-motion video is composed in its entirety of characters and settings in miniature. The city is shrouded in an eerie and ominous atmosphere, filled with abandoned buildings, dilapidated stores, zombies, and animals. Cao Fei also adapted classic dialogue from the film Hiroshima Mon Amour and added it to the video. A man and woman can be heard murmuring in French, as if talking in their sleep. Their two voices float above the city like phantoms, narrating its history and destiny. At the end of the film, the city is transformed into a “night museum,” with its characters and streets becoming items on display, presenting an illustration of the apocalypse in which fact and fiction are impossible to tell apart.
Cao Fei has summarized her practice during this period as such: “If one says that Whose Utopia expresses a kind of lyrical, humanistic hope for the future, and that “RMB City” embraces the future and optimistically imagines what it might hold, then the two pieces La Town and Haze and Fog go in a different direction, albeit one that is fictional. Everything is filled with a sense of loss, or perhaps it can be clearly seen that there is no way out. Things are extremely desperate, regardless of whether or not there is hope at the end of the story.”
Cao Fei has summarized her practice during this period as such: “If one says that Whose Utopia expresses a kind of lyrical, humanistic hope for the future, and that “RMB City” embraces the future and optimistically imagines what it might hold, then the two pieces La Town and Haze and Fog go in a different direction, albeit one that is fictional. Everything is filled with a sense of loss, or perhaps it can be clearly seen that there is no way out. Things are extremely desperate, regardless of whether or not there is hope at the end of the story.”
In 2015, Cao Fei moved her studio into Hongxia Theater, located outside of Beijing’s Fourth Ring Road. Since then, she has carried out an extensive survey of the Hongxia residential community that surrounds the studio. Over the course of five years, she completed the large-scale research-based project “HX,” which includes the feature-length science fiction film Nova, the documentary Hongxia, virtual and augmented reality installations, and a publication.
At the end of last year, Cao Fei explained in detail how the project came together:
“Why is it called “HX”? After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, 738 Factory (State-run Beijing Wire Communications Factory) received assistance from the St. Petersburg’s Red Dawn Factory. So to commemorate the Sino-Soviet friendship of that era, this place was named “Hongxia,” meaning Red Dawn, Theater. There’s also Hongxia Road outside its front door, and Hongxia residential community. From this I slowly uncovered many different connections that involved Sino-Soviet relations in the early years of the People’s Republic, the history of the electronics industry, urban planning in Beijing, the evolution of work unit architecture, and the culture around workers’ clubs. All these different things slowly emerged, turning the project into something akin to a archaeological excavation with multiple points and threads. The proudest moment in the history of 738 Factory was the invention of China’s first generation of computers, which was connected to the “Two Bombs, One Satellite” technological development program, as the early self-reliant stage of the country’s electronics industry. The project goes on to cover how 738 Factory turned into Zhaowei Group, a state-owned enterprise, and the long drawn-out battle over the demolition of the neighborhood. These are all typical Chinese problems, and actually come from the same source as the urbanization issues shown in San Yuan Li, “The Dashila Project,” and other works I’ve previously filmed. So here I encountered old problems, common problems, and a few new directions I had not touched upon before. Over the past five years, we have tried to draw together and process all of these different issues, and in the end we used the book HX as an opportunity to collect the details that we were unable to explain in the film Nova or the documentary Hongxia. So, what I was doing was in fact attempting to use different perspectives to get close to the central motif, which was not just tracing the history of Hongxia as a neighborhood, or the development of the electronics industry. Rather, the approach of an artist’s project is almost like peeling an onion, approaching the theme from many different angles. Although we never know what the actual main idea is, we try to get as close to it as possible.
At the end of last year, Cao Fei explained in detail how the project came together:
“Why is it called “HX”? After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, 738 Factory (State-run Beijing Wire Communications Factory) received assistance from the St. Petersburg’s Red Dawn Factory. So to commemorate the Sino-Soviet friendship of that era, this place was named “Hongxia,” meaning Red Dawn, Theater. There’s also Hongxia Road outside its front door, and Hongxia residential community. From this I slowly uncovered many different connections that involved Sino-Soviet relations in the early years of the People’s Republic, the history of the electronics industry, urban planning in Beijing, the evolution of work unit architecture, and the culture around workers’ clubs. All these different things slowly emerged, turning the project into something akin to a archaeological excavation with multiple points and threads. The proudest moment in the history of 738 Factory was the invention of China’s first generation of computers, which was connected to the “Two Bombs, One Satellite” technological development program, as the early self-reliant stage of the country’s electronics industry. The project goes on to cover how 738 Factory turned into Zhaowei Group, a state-owned enterprise, and the long drawn-out battle over the demolition of the neighborhood. These are all typical Chinese problems, and actually come from the same source as the urbanization issues shown in San Yuan Li, “The Dashila Project,” and other works I’ve previously filmed. So here I encountered old problems, common problems, and a few new directions I had not touched upon before. Over the past five years, we have tried to draw together and process all of these different issues, and in the end we used the book HX as an opportunity to collect the details that we were unable to explain in the film Nova or the documentary Hongxia. So, what I was doing was in fact attempting to use different perspectives to get close to the central motif, which was not just tracing the history of Hongxia as a neighborhood, or the development of the electronics industry. Rather, the approach of an artist’s project is almost like peeling an onion, approaching the theme from many different angles. Although we never know what the actual main idea is, we try to get as close to it as possible.
The Little Spark II
As a high school student, Cao Fei began to actively participate in campus cultural events. On display here are videos of The Little Spark II, a performance the artist presented at her school’s New Year’s gala in 1995, and her stage drama Campus Rhapsody II, created later, when she was a student at Guangzhou Academy of Art. In these recordings of her early performance works, one can observe the clothing and music that was then popular with young people, as well as references to Hong Kong slapstick cinema. These deeply satirical performances reflect the artist’s receptiveness towards new trends and pop culture and a devil-may-care attitude towards existing conventions. Cao Fei’s experience with her university’s theater troupe fostered an interest in theatrical experimentation found in her works that would follow.
Imbalance 257
Filmed in 1999, Imbalance 257 is Cao Fei’s first significant video work. Possessing a loose, casual style, the short video depicts a certain imbalance in the lives of a group of art students at a loss about their prospects after graduation and filled with anxiety and confusion about the future.
Cao Fei describes her process at the time:
“I borrowed a camcorder from Guangdong Pincheng Advertising Company, where I was working part-time, and gathered together classmates that were also sticking around the university during the holidays. At that point there was neither a title nor a script, I just wanted to film something super stream-of-consciousness. We started filming at 10 in the morning, so I would wake up at 8 to work on the script, and at night after we had finished filming for the day I would write the script for the next day. We filmed for five or six days like this. Scenes were filmed in the school’s dormitory, classrooms, and oil painting studio for live model painting, as well as outdoor food stalls. Actors’ lines, dialogue were all added in editing. The working method I began using then was actually quite similar to what I do today. It’s a process where things are constantly expanding, and then are only assembled through the process of post-production afterwards.”
Cao Fei earned early recognition for this work: it was shown in a student film exhibition at the Hong Kong Arts Centre. In the same year it was screened in Spain through the invitation of curator Hou Hanru. The video is considered to be the starting point of her career.
Cao Fei describes her process at the time:
“I borrowed a camcorder from Guangdong Pincheng Advertising Company, where I was working part-time, and gathered together classmates that were also sticking around the university during the holidays. At that point there was neither a title nor a script, I just wanted to film something super stream-of-consciousness. We started filming at 10 in the morning, so I would wake up at 8 to work on the script, and at night after we had finished filming for the day I would write the script for the next day. We filmed for five or six days like this. Scenes were filmed in the school’s dormitory, classrooms, and oil painting studio for live model painting, as well as outdoor food stalls. Actors’ lines, dialogue were all added in editing. The working method I began using then was actually quite similar to what I do today. It’s a process where things are constantly expanding, and then are only assembled through the process of post-production afterwards.”
Cao Fei earned early recognition for this work: it was shown in a student film exhibition at the Hong Kong Arts Centre. In the same year it was screened in Spain through the invitation of curator Hou Hanru. The video is considered to be the starting point of her career.
San Yuan Li
As part of the grassroots filmmaking collective U-thèque, in 2003 Cao Fei and Ou Ning created an experimental documentary for the 50th Venice Biennale. The work was filmed and researched in Sanyuanli, an area in the north of Guangzhou.
Cao Fei describes the process behind the artwork:
“At the time when we made the work, we formed a ten-member filmmaking collective, which included architects, artists, people working in media, cinematographers, and university students. Everyone shot with DV camcorders in and around Sanyuanli for half a year. What we filmed followed the route of the British army as they disembarked in Guangzhou during the Opium War. They came ashore and passed through the suburb of Panyu, then entered the city itself, and finally reached Sanyuanli Village. You could say we took a blanket approach during this half year. We split up into many different groups: some shot the skyline of this urban village, others focused on filming people. Each group recorded different types of content. I filmed as well as serving as producer. For example, I was in contact with the neighborhood administration. I got help from friends who worked at a television station to get credentials so I could coordinate with the administration and get access to residential areas. This included getting permission to go to the local police station to film officers, going to Sanyuanli’s hotels to film staff, and shooting a couple of other group portraits. Sanyuanli was known as an urban village and also an important base of anti-British resistance, though by the 1990s it was being called a blighted area, and a lot of criminal activity, including drug dealing, was linked to the neighborhood. It was a space that was both controversial and intermixed with history. Amidst extremely fast, dramatic urbanization, the traditional clans of the city and its villages were disintegrating. Relying more on images and scenes rather than the oral narration of traditional documentaries, this film uses a poetic method to express this.”
Cao Fei describes the process behind the artwork:
“At the time when we made the work, we formed a ten-member filmmaking collective, which included architects, artists, people working in media, cinematographers, and university students. Everyone shot with DV camcorders in and around Sanyuanli for half a year. What we filmed followed the route of the British army as they disembarked in Guangzhou during the Opium War. They came ashore and passed through the suburb of Panyu, then entered the city itself, and finally reached Sanyuanli Village. You could say we took a blanket approach during this half year. We split up into many different groups: some shot the skyline of this urban village, others focused on filming people. Each group recorded different types of content. I filmed as well as serving as producer. For example, I was in contact with the neighborhood administration. I got help from friends who worked at a television station to get credentials so I could coordinate with the administration and get access to residential areas. This included getting permission to go to the local police station to film officers, going to Sanyuanli’s hotels to film staff, and shooting a couple of other group portraits. Sanyuanli was known as an urban village and also an important base of anti-British resistance, though by the 1990s it was being called a blighted area, and a lot of criminal activity, including drug dealing, was linked to the neighborhood. It was a space that was both controversial and intermixed with history. Amidst extremely fast, dramatic urbanization, the traditional clans of the city and its villages were disintegrating. Relying more on images and scenes rather than the oral narration of traditional documentaries, this film uses a poetic method to express this.”
Nation • Father
Cao Fei’s father Cao Chong’en is a renowned sculptor, expert at creating realistic statues of heroes and other model figures. Responding to a call to develop “red tourism,” at the end of 2004, an old Communist Revolution base in Guangxi province commissioned Cao Fei’s father to create a 5.6-meter tall statue of the young Deng Xiaoping. Cao Fei accompanied her father on this “red” journey to film a documentary. In a previous interview, Cao Fei spoke about the trip, commenting: “This experience made me think about my father’s practice in a new way, rediscovering my father himself and the connection between his artworks and society, or even with the entire history of China after Liberation. What he represents is the main theme, or what one might call the thread, of ‘official history.’ Working in contemporary art, I am always observing things from the periphery, looking at everything from my own perspective, like a kind of ‘unofficial history.’”
The space in front of you not only contains the documentary Father, but also the related mixed-media video installation Nation • Father, which responds to the same theme. This includes an interview with the actor who depicted Sun Yat-sen in the historical television show Towards the Republic, sculptures by Cao Fei’s father, and other archival materials. Connecting her father’s life and the country’s fate as symbolized by the icons of Sun Yat-sen and Deng Xiaoping, Cao Fei expands an emotional narrative of a father-daughter relationship into a critical study of significant moments in modern China.
The space in front of you not only contains the documentary Father, but also the related mixed-media video installation Nation • Father, which responds to the same theme. This includes an interview with the actor who depicted Sun Yat-sen in the historical television show Towards the Republic, sculptures by Cao Fei’s father, and other archival materials. Connecting her father’s life and the country’s fate as symbolized by the icons of Sun Yat-sen and Deng Xiaoping, Cao Fei expands an emotional narrative of a father-daughter relationship into a critical study of significant moments in modern China.
Hip pop
Coming of age in the 1990s as a member of what would become known as the 新新人类 or “New Human” generation, Cao Fei was deeply influenced by MTV and other forms of imported pop culture. The “Hip Hop” project seen here was inspired by the artist’s love of rap culture. The project took place in Guangzhou, Fukuoka, and New York, where the artist invited people from different cultures and social backgrounds to dance passionately to hip hop music. The work represents an experiment in taking a borrowed cultural form and localizing it, stripping it of its hip veneer. Cao Fei tailored each work to its locale, incorporating the style and urban culture of different cities and giving each its own unique character.
In this exhibition, Hip Hop: New York is shown as a video installation. The film is projected onto a cluttered dining table, recalling the boisterous restaurants of Manhattan’s Chinatown and adding to the metropolitan atmosphere of the staging. For the work’s debut at Lombard-Freid Projects in New York, the Chinese-American rap group Notorious MSG played at the exhibition’s opening, and they later appeared with the artist at MoMA PS1 in the performance installation Hip Hop Stage.
In this exhibition, Hip Hop: New York is shown as a video installation. The film is projected onto a cluttered dining table, recalling the boisterous restaurants of Manhattan’s Chinatown and adding to the metropolitan atmosphere of the staging. For the work’s debut at Lombard-Freid Projects in New York, the Chinese-American rap group Notorious MSG played at the exhibition’s opening, and they later appeared with the artist at MoMA PS1 in the performance installation Hip Hop Stage.
Cosplayers
As Japanese cosplay culture gradually became popular in China, more and more young people began dressing up as anime and video game characters, often employing elaborate costumes, makeup, and props. Cao Fei decided to engage with this community, resulting in the artwork Cosplayers. In the film, a group of young people dress up as different anime characters, roaming through the urban spaces of a rapidly changing Guangzhou, horsing around and having mock battles. Through these costumes and props, they temporarily enter a world of fantasy, transcending their prescribed aesthetic standards and social roles. Yet at the end of their adventures, they still must return to their everyday lives.
In an interview, Cao Fei described her inspiration for this piece:
Cao Fei: When I saw Doug Aitken’s work at PS1, I discovered the importance of capturing the conditions of reality for people today. So Cosplayers doesn’t just depict them daydreaming, playing games, and running around these urban spaces, it also shows them returning to real life. That is actually the most moving and tender part.
In an interview, Cao Fei described her inspiration for this piece:
Cao Fei: When I saw Doug Aitken’s work at PS1, I discovered the importance of capturing the conditions of reality for people today. So Cosplayers doesn’t just depict them daydreaming, playing games, and running around these urban spaces, it also shows them returning to real life. That is actually the most moving and tender part.
Rumba
The title “Rumba” is a play on the vacuum cleaner robot Roomba, which debuted in 2002. When Cao Fei’s studio was demolished in 2015, she decided to use these vacuum cleaners to make a new artwork inspired by the event. For this film, the artist placed the machines amid the rubble of her former studio, recording their jerky movements. These robots can automatically detect obstacles and calculate the most efficient cleaning path. They normally follow a preset program, yet here they are unable to formulate a coherent route. In Rumba II: Nomad, Cao Fei presents a dialectic of order and chaos while commenting on the rapid transformation of Chinese cities, how this impacts citizens’ livelihoods, and the contradictions between contemporary development and urban cleanliness. Throughout the gallery, visitors will also find other works inspired by this event. One piece comprises automatic vacuum cleaners atop two rectangular plinths traditionally used to support sculptures. Their spasmodic motion creates a moving sculpture that is constantly changing shape and never reaches a final state. In another, the vacuum seems more like a captive animal, shuttling across a precisely designed, peculiar terrain. In a certain sense, these sculptures reflect the conditions of many people today: feeling adrift, toiling away within a strictly delineated range of activities, struggling to find an escape.
Isle of Instability
Cao Fei made Isle of Instability in response to her experience last year during the pandemic. The artwork was commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary. Cao Fei originally planned to make a work in Switzerland that would expand upon her longstanding interest in the manufacturing industry. However, with global spread of COVID-19, the artist and her family were stuck in Singapore as international flights were suspended. Cao Fei and Audemars Piguet Contemporary then decided to address an entirely different topic. In her apartment in Singapore, the artist documented her observations and feelings during this period of quarantine. She aimed to explore the physical and psychological influence isolation can have on individuals, families, and the entire human race. The resulting video installation comprises a film surrounded by a suite of everyday items that became household staples during the pandemic. The film depicts a miniature “island” that Cao Fei haphazardly made for her kids in the center of her living room. Her nine-year-old daughter performs as the last human being alive on this deserted island. From her individual vantage point onto a global pandemic, Cao Fei adopts a simple, casual way of documenting the revelations of this peculiar moment.
Rabid Dogs
Rabid Dogs
In 2002, Cao Fei used the office of the magazine conglomerate Modern Media as the backdrop to her film Rabid Dogs. Shot on a DV camcorder, the video depicts a group of white-collar workers wearing plaid outfits crawling around the office like dogs. They bark and gnash their teeth at one another, but they are also tamed, coming when called and scurrying away when dismissed. The way these office workers live, some more pitifully than dogs, stands in stark contrast to their fancy appearances. With a vivid sense of humor and heavy dose of sarcasm, Cao Fei brings the Cantonese saying “working as hard as a dog” to life, exposing how a cutthroat work environment alienates its workers. For this exhibition, the artist designed a mixed-media installation to house Rabid Dogs, showing the film on an old monitor. A set of plaid office supplies responds to visual elements in the video, and for the first time it is exhibited alongside a series of related photographic works. Although the film was made nearly twenty years ago, the themes echo many heated topics surrounding office culture today, such as the 996 work schedule.
In 2002, Cao Fei used the office of the magazine conglomerate Modern Media as the backdrop to her film Rabid Dogs. Shot on a DV camcorder, the video depicts a group of white-collar workers wearing plaid outfits crawling around the office like dogs. They bark and gnash their teeth at one another, but they are also tamed, coming when called and scurrying away when dismissed. The way these office workers live, some more pitifully than dogs, stands in stark contrast to their fancy appearances. With a vivid sense of humor and heavy dose of sarcasm, Cao Fei brings the Cantonese saying “working as hard as a dog” to life, exposing how a cutthroat work environment alienates its workers. For this exhibition, the artist designed a mixed-media installation to house Rabid Dogs, showing the film on an old monitor. A set of plaid office supplies responds to visual elements in the video, and for the first time it is exhibited alongside a series of related photographic works. Although the film was made nearly twenty years ago, the themes echo many heated topics surrounding office culture today, such as the 996 work schedule.
Whose Utopia
Whose Utopia
In 2005, at the invitation of Siemens Art Program, Cao Fei undertook a six-month residency at OSRAM’s light bulb factory in Foshan, Guangdong. Against the backdrop of economic development in the Pearl River Delta, the resulting work focuses on the assembly line workers and their hopes and dreams.
Cao Fei recently discussed this piece with UCCA Director Philip Tinari:
Cao Fei: Whose utopia is it, really? This question addresses a lot of different facets. First, of course, I asked the workers, and then I interrogated the entire system of production. For whom are they imagining this product? Who needs these products? These items are all exported, flowing out of China. So the party that drives production also drives the entire flow of globalization and the desires it embodies. So how does the flow of globalized trade affect the individual? In China, this flow has had a consistent impact on individuals’ lives since the beginning of Reform and Opening. I think this work is really interrogating what this driving force is. Who is building this utopia? The workers have their own idea of utopia. They want an ideal life. They want to transcend social distinctions and join the middle class, or live a different kind of life. I think these things are all contained within this question.
CF: I think the ending scene with the workers looking out at the audience is really important. Production workers are rarely treated with much dignity. Lots of documentary films about labor aim to expose how the individual within globalization is just a cog in the machine. But to have freeze-frames that linger on each person for five, six, or even ten seconds, you’re then compelled to observe their tired appearances, their expressions. This is a question put to every viewer. A lot of people are moved to some degree when they watch that segment. Even though they might not be a blue-collar worker themselves, it’s still a question put to every viewer.
In 2005, at the invitation of Siemens Art Program, Cao Fei undertook a six-month residency at OSRAM’s light bulb factory in Foshan, Guangdong. Against the backdrop of economic development in the Pearl River Delta, the resulting work focuses on the assembly line workers and their hopes and dreams.
Cao Fei recently discussed this piece with UCCA Director Philip Tinari:
Cao Fei: Whose utopia is it, really? This question addresses a lot of different facets. First, of course, I asked the workers, and then I interrogated the entire system of production. For whom are they imagining this product? Who needs these products? These items are all exported, flowing out of China. So the party that drives production also drives the entire flow of globalization and the desires it embodies. So how does the flow of globalized trade affect the individual? In China, this flow has had a consistent impact on individuals’ lives since the beginning of Reform and Opening. I think this work is really interrogating what this driving force is. Who is building this utopia? The workers have their own idea of utopia. They want an ideal life. They want to transcend social distinctions and join the middle class, or live a different kind of life. I think these things are all contained within this question.
CF: I think the ending scene with the workers looking out at the audience is really important. Production workers are rarely treated with much dignity. Lots of documentary films about labor aim to expose how the individual within globalization is just a cog in the machine. But to have freeze-frames that linger on each person for five, six, or even ten seconds, you’re then compelled to observe their tired appearances, their expressions. This is a question put to every viewer. A lot of people are moved to some degree when they watch that segment. Even though they might not be a blue-collar worker themselves, it’s still a question put to every viewer.
East Wind
In East Wind, Cao Fei modifies a common blue Dongfeng truck into the titular steam locomotive from the famous cartoon Thomas and Friends. She then follows its waste-collecting journey from a construction site to a landfill. The transportation of construction waste is not an uncommon sight in urban infrastructure, but this truck attracts gawking bystanders and photographs because of its resemblance to Thomas the Tank Engine. Driving from a construction site, which symbolizes future development, to a landfill on the edges of the city where the past is literally buried, the truck metaphorically plays witness to the course of modern Chinese urbanization. The sites it passes, the crowds it encounters, and the roads it travels all represent the diverse landscapes inside and surrounding the modern city. In this way, a truck bearing the image of a Western cartoon comes to playfully observe the Chinese social ecology. Apart from the film, “Staging the Era” also exhibits toy models of Thomas the Tank Engine, photographs from the Dongfeng Motor Corporation, and other archival documents, providing the audience with new ways to understand the creative background of the film.
Asia One
The project “Asia One” was commissioned in 2018 by the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The project’s title comes from the name of the most advanced automated warehouse operated by the online retail giant JD.com. The project comprises two video works. The film Asia One is a science fiction love story set against the backdrop of a retail warehouse, while the companion documentary 11.11 depicts JD.com’s logistics chain and the lives of its delivery workers.
Cao Fei recently described her inspiration for the project in a dialogue with UCCA Director Philip Tinari:
Cao Fei: I think the manufacturing industry today is undergoing a dramatic transition. First, the Pearl River Delta no longer has a strategic advantage in manufacturing. Many of the factories are now vacant. The whole industry is transforming and upgrading. At its core, it’s no longer chiefly dependent upon manpower. And since 2016, the national focus has largely shifted to artificial intelligence, unmanned labor, and high-precision technology. I am sensitive to this change, so I thought to take this moment and make a comparison. I wanted to see what sites of production are like today, and whether or not these sites have changed since 2006. At the time, JD.com was adopting a lot of new, experimental measures. In a bold move, I reached out to JD.com and told them about my idea, and fortunately I received their approval.
CF: When filming the logistics chain, it was impossible to embed myself in a fixed site like I did in Whose Utopia. The logistics industry is distributed across different areas and types of work. So for the sites featured in the documentary 11.11, I chose several places near me in Beijing. We began filming in the distribution center in Tongzhou and the JD.com headquarters. At the same time, we were recording how the logistics network permeates Beijing, rooted in delivery stations that address the last kilometer problem. I dispatched several videographers to observe each location up until the Double Eleven shopping holiday, such that the work captures the entire course of the holiday. Actually, you can trace this theme back to Whose Utopia. Who is placing the order? For whom are they buying? Who needs these things? None of us can see the sites of production and sale; it’s a completely invisible chain. But the documentary 11.11 presents what happens behind the curtain: the operations of labor and individuals, those on the low end of the chain. They ride around on small, three-wheeled vehicles, doing all the heavy lifting and moving by hand. When they get home at night they’re exhausted—they work more than twelve hours a day, every day. This is especially true during Double Eleven, when they can only sleep for three or four hours a night. You also see both the high and low ends of the chain. The headquarters of JD.com is entirely those on the high end. During Double Eleven, they eat huge meals, get massages, everything ordered to the office. People are even grilling food, and everyone is reveling in it. From the white-collar class inside the JD.com offices to the frontline workers at the very end of the chain, there are a number of shifts in the landscape of work each step of the way. It’s an interesting spectacle of today’s post-consumer era.
Cao Fei recently described her inspiration for the project in a dialogue with UCCA Director Philip Tinari:
Cao Fei: I think the manufacturing industry today is undergoing a dramatic transition. First, the Pearl River Delta no longer has a strategic advantage in manufacturing. Many of the factories are now vacant. The whole industry is transforming and upgrading. At its core, it’s no longer chiefly dependent upon manpower. And since 2016, the national focus has largely shifted to artificial intelligence, unmanned labor, and high-precision technology. I am sensitive to this change, so I thought to take this moment and make a comparison. I wanted to see what sites of production are like today, and whether or not these sites have changed since 2006. At the time, JD.com was adopting a lot of new, experimental measures. In a bold move, I reached out to JD.com and told them about my idea, and fortunately I received their approval.
CF: When filming the logistics chain, it was impossible to embed myself in a fixed site like I did in Whose Utopia. The logistics industry is distributed across different areas and types of work. So for the sites featured in the documentary 11.11, I chose several places near me in Beijing. We began filming in the distribution center in Tongzhou and the JD.com headquarters. At the same time, we were recording how the logistics network permeates Beijing, rooted in delivery stations that address the last kilometer problem. I dispatched several videographers to observe each location up until the Double Eleven shopping holiday, such that the work captures the entire course of the holiday. Actually, you can trace this theme back to Whose Utopia. Who is placing the order? For whom are they buying? Who needs these things? None of us can see the sites of production and sale; it’s a completely invisible chain. But the documentary 11.11 presents what happens behind the curtain: the operations of labor and individuals, those on the low end of the chain. They ride around on small, three-wheeled vehicles, doing all the heavy lifting and moving by hand. When they get home at night they’re exhausted—they work more than twelve hours a day, every day. This is especially true during Double Eleven, when they can only sleep for three or four hours a night. You also see both the high and low ends of the chain. The headquarters of JD.com is entirely those on the high end. During Double Eleven, they eat huge meals, get massages, everything ordered to the office. People are even grilling food, and everyone is reveling in it. From the white-collar class inside the JD.com offices to the frontline workers at the very end of the chain, there are a number of shifts in the landscape of work each step of the way. It’s an interesting spectacle of today’s post-consumer era.
RMB City
Second Life is an online virtual world, launched by Linden Lab in 2002. Users can socialize through virtual avatars, constructing utopias of their imagining, or bring real-life social relations, and even economic and political activity into this new realm. Always closely observing new trends, in 2007 Cao Fei created the virtual avatar China Tracy, and began to construct the virtual metropolis of “RMB City,” which condensed together the characteristics of a number of Chinese cities into a single new city. For a number of years afterwards she continued to contribute towards the running of the city.
Cao Fei discusses the creation of the project:
“RMB City is actually quite similar to my piece PRD Anti-Heroes in terms of its ideals. They are both responses to urbanization. When it came to Second Life, the medium itself had the biggest impact on me, making me think about where our social habits might end up due to the virtual ecology of the future. Each person had a new avatar, and a space for online existence. Today many people can easily understand what an online avatar or online account is. At the time many people didn’t understand what I was doing. Most thought I was making an animation, or doing something trendy for young people. But it was just a reality, another layer of reality. Looking back, at that point I had just moved from the South to Beijing, but I hadn’t really grasped what Beijing was about, not just in terms of the contemporary art scene, but also life, or even what I wanted to do next in my art. So working in online virtual reality, actually indirectly transferred some of my feelings from the period when I had left the South but was not yet accustomed to living in the North.”
Cao Fei discusses the creation of the project:
“RMB City is actually quite similar to my piece PRD Anti-Heroes in terms of its ideals. They are both responses to urbanization. When it came to Second Life, the medium itself had the biggest impact on me, making me think about where our social habits might end up due to the virtual ecology of the future. Each person had a new avatar, and a space for online existence. Today many people can easily understand what an online avatar or online account is. At the time many people didn’t understand what I was doing. Most thought I was making an animation, or doing something trendy for young people. But it was just a reality, another layer of reality. Looking back, at that point I had just moved from the South to Beijing, but I hadn’t really grasped what Beijing was about, not just in terms of the contemporary art scene, but also life, or even what I wanted to do next in my art. So working in online virtual reality, actually indirectly transferred some of my feelings from the period when I had left the South but was not yet accustomed to living in the North.”
Haze and Fog
Haze and Fog is Cao Fei’s first feature-length film. Taking Beijing’s notorious smog as its starting point, the film is a magical-realist melodrama superimposed onto quotidian Chinese society, taking place in the artist’s apartment block.
Cao Fei describes the process of working on the film:
“In 2013, Beijing’s smog was getting worse and worse. In the post-Olympic economic climate, many people did not know what they wanted to do. The art scene was also stuck in a rut, a bit like today. People did not know what direction to take. Smog becomes a symbol, implying that we could not find an exit, nor see things clearly. I live on the 16th floor, and when the pollution was at its most severe, I couldn’t see more than 10 meters from my window. The symbolism of this may have made my previous optimism suddenly transform into a kind of dystopian mood. Haze and Fog emerged out of this context. I had also watched several seasons of the American TV show The Walking Dead around that time; so soon afterwards in 2013 I started filming Haze and Fog, trying to bring American-style zombies to Beijing, into the reality of my life. I tried to imagine what it would be like if there were zombies in China. Also, there was a prophecy that December 20, 2012 was going to be the end of the world—was this going to happen or not? Furthermore, zombie movies are all about the apocalypse or what comes afterwards, so all these things were the spark behind the creation of Haze and Fog as well as La Town.
In this case a social situation transformed my experience and perceptions in a very direct way, and then my experience produced feedback. Yet this kind of reaction does not necessarily surface at the same time as the situation that causes it. For example, with the current pandemic, humanity is facing an unprecedented challenge, and these works seem to precisely point to the situation today. When the epidemic first emerged, I felt like I had already experienced this kind of desperate situation, as if it had been conceived of beforehand in my own work.”
Cao Fei describes the process of working on the film:
“In 2013, Beijing’s smog was getting worse and worse. In the post-Olympic economic climate, many people did not know what they wanted to do. The art scene was also stuck in a rut, a bit like today. People did not know what direction to take. Smog becomes a symbol, implying that we could not find an exit, nor see things clearly. I live on the 16th floor, and when the pollution was at its most severe, I couldn’t see more than 10 meters from my window. The symbolism of this may have made my previous optimism suddenly transform into a kind of dystopian mood. Haze and Fog emerged out of this context. I had also watched several seasons of the American TV show The Walking Dead around that time; so soon afterwards in 2013 I started filming Haze and Fog, trying to bring American-style zombies to Beijing, into the reality of my life. I tried to imagine what it would be like if there were zombies in China. Also, there was a prophecy that December 20, 2012 was going to be the end of the world—was this going to happen or not? Furthermore, zombie movies are all about the apocalypse or what comes afterwards, so all these things were the spark behind the creation of Haze and Fog as well as La Town.
In this case a social situation transformed my experience and perceptions in a very direct way, and then my experience produced feedback. Yet this kind of reaction does not necessarily surface at the same time as the situation that causes it. For example, with the current pandemic, humanity is facing an unprecedented challenge, and these works seem to precisely point to the situation today. When the epidemic first emerged, I felt like I had already experienced this kind of desperate situation, as if it had been conceived of beforehand in my own work.”
La Town
After accidently discovering miniature models of people and buildings on online shopping platform Taobao, Cao Fei started use them to depict La Town, a fictional apocalyptic city. The roughly 40-minute-long stop-motion video is composed in its entirety of characters and settings in miniature. The city is shrouded in an eerie and ominous atmosphere, filled with abandoned buildings, dilapidated stores, zombies, and animals. Cao Fei also adapted classic dialogue from the film Hiroshima Mon Amour and added it to the video. A man and woman can be heard murmuring in French, as if talking in their sleep. Their two voices float above the city like phantoms, narrating its history and destiny. At the end of the film, the city is transformed into a “night museum,” with its characters and streets becoming items on display, presenting an illustration of the apocalypse in which fact and fiction are impossible to tell apart.
Cao Fei has summarized her practice during this period as such: “If one says that Whose Utopia expresses a kind of lyrical, humanistic hope for the future, and that “RMB City” embraces the future and optimistically imagines what it might hold, then the two pieces La Town and Haze and Fog go in a different direction, albeit one that is fictional. Everything is filled with a sense of loss, or perhaps it can be clearly seen that there is no way out. Things are extremely desperate, regardless of whether or not there is hope at the end of the story.”
Cao Fei has summarized her practice during this period as such: “If one says that Whose Utopia expresses a kind of lyrical, humanistic hope for the future, and that “RMB City” embraces the future and optimistically imagines what it might hold, then the two pieces La Town and Haze and Fog go in a different direction, albeit one that is fictional. Everything is filled with a sense of loss, or perhaps it can be clearly seen that there is no way out. Things are extremely desperate, regardless of whether or not there is hope at the end of the story.”
HX
In 2015, Cao Fei moved her studio into Hongxia Theater, located outside of Beijing’s Fourth Ring Road. Since then, she has carried out an extensive survey of the Hongxia residential community that surrounds the studio. Over the course of five years, she completed the large-scale research-based project “HX,” which includes the feature-length science fiction film Nova, the documentary Hongxia, virtual and augmented reality installations, and a publication.
At the end of last year, Cao Fei explained in detail how the project came together:
“Why is it called “HX”? After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, 738 Factory (State-run Beijing Wire Communications Factory) received assistance from the St. Petersburg’s Red Dawn Factory. So to commemorate the Sino-Soviet friendship of that era, this place was named “Hongxia,” meaning Red Dawn, Theater. There’s also Hongxia Road outside its front door, and Hongxia residential community. From this I slowly uncovered many different connections that involved Sino-Soviet relations in the early years of the People’s Republic, the history of the electronics industry, urban planning in Beijing, the evolution of work unit architecture, and the culture around workers’ clubs. All these different things slowly emerged, turning the project into something akin to a archaeological excavation with multiple points and threads. The proudest moment in the history of 738 Factory was the invention of China’s first generation of computers, which was connected to the “Two Bombs, One Satellite” technological development program, as the early self-reliant stage of the country’s electronics industry. The project goes on to cover how 738 Factory turned into Zhaowei Group, a state-owned enterprise, and the long drawn-out battle over the demolition of the neighborhood. These are all typical Chinese problems, and actually come from the same source as the urbanization issues shown in San Yuan Li, “The Dashila Project,” and other works I’ve previously filmed. So here I encountered old problems, common problems, and a few new directions I had not touched upon before. Over the past five years, we have tried to draw together and process all of these different issues, and in the end we used the book HX as an opportunity to collect the details that we were unable to explain in the film Nova or the documentary Hongxia. So, what I was doing was in fact attempting to use different perspectives to get close to the central motif, which was not just tracing the history of Hongxia as a neighborhood, or the development of the electronics industry. Rather, the approach of an artist’s project is almost like peeling an onion, approaching the theme from many different angles. Although we never know what the actual main idea is, we try to get as close to it as possible.
At the end of last year, Cao Fei explained in detail how the project came together:
“Why is it called “HX”? After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, 738 Factory (State-run Beijing Wire Communications Factory) received assistance from the St. Petersburg’s Red Dawn Factory. So to commemorate the Sino-Soviet friendship of that era, this place was named “Hongxia,” meaning Red Dawn, Theater. There’s also Hongxia Road outside its front door, and Hongxia residential community. From this I slowly uncovered many different connections that involved Sino-Soviet relations in the early years of the People’s Republic, the history of the electronics industry, urban planning in Beijing, the evolution of work unit architecture, and the culture around workers’ clubs. All these different things slowly emerged, turning the project into something akin to a archaeological excavation with multiple points and threads. The proudest moment in the history of 738 Factory was the invention of China’s first generation of computers, which was connected to the “Two Bombs, One Satellite” technological development program, as the early self-reliant stage of the country’s electronics industry. The project goes on to cover how 738 Factory turned into Zhaowei Group, a state-owned enterprise, and the long drawn-out battle over the demolition of the neighborhood. These are all typical Chinese problems, and actually come from the same source as the urbanization issues shown in San Yuan Li, “The Dashila Project,” and other works I’ve previously filmed. So here I encountered old problems, common problems, and a few new directions I had not touched upon before. Over the past five years, we have tried to draw together and process all of these different issues, and in the end we used the book HX as an opportunity to collect the details that we were unable to explain in the film Nova or the documentary Hongxia. So, what I was doing was in fact attempting to use different perspectives to get close to the central motif, which was not just tracing the history of Hongxia as a neighborhood, or the development of the electronics industry. Rather, the approach of an artist’s project is almost like peeling an onion, approaching the theme from many different angles. Although we never know what the actual main idea is, we try to get as close to it as possible.
UCCA Beijing
Open Today, 10:00-19:00 (Final entry: 18:30)
798, No. 4 Jiuxianqiao Lu, Beijing
Tel: +86 10 5780 0200
Fax: +86 10 5780 0200
UCCA Dune
Open Today, 9:30-19:30 (Final entry: 19:00)
Aranya Gold Coast, Beidaihe
Tel: +86 335 7522 652
UCCA Edge
Closed Today, 10:00-19:00
2F, No. 88 Xizang Bei Lu, Jing'an District, Shanghai
Tel: +86 21 6628 6861
