A new commission by Cao Fei, Haze and Fog is an alternative type of zombie movie set in modern China. 45 mins. Screens on the hour between 2pm – 6pm (last screening is at 5pm).
Zombies have long been an important metaphor in Western popular culture but not so in China. Often violently blank they allow for evil motives to be projected onto them. In the western zombie film the zombie’s brain is dead but the body is alive. In Haze and Fog the ‘walking dead’ are people with something dead inside only not their brain but their soul. Instead of strong violence and shock, or a tense atmosphere through the unseen, Cao Fei’s Haze and Fog examines people up close, slowly and in detail. Zooming into the international modern cells of new immigrants moved from traditional housing areas, we see people whose daily rituals have changed and traditions lost.
Rather than positioning activity as good vs evil, Cao Fei’s major new video commission explores how the collective consciousness of people living in the time of what the artist calls “magical metropolises” emerges from seemingly tedious, mundane, day-to-day life. This magic reality is created through a struggle at the tipping point between the visible and the invisible.
Working with film, photography, installation and performance Cao Fei probes her personal and cultural relationship to metropolitan China.
Haze and Fog will be exhibited in Arnolfini’s cinema space over three weekends through Autumn: 12 & 13 October, 16 & 17 November.
Haze and Fog is produced by Eastside Projects and Vitamin Creative Space. Commissioned by University of Salford and Chinese Art Centre, Eastside Projects, and Bath School of Art and Design, Bath Spa University, with Vitamin Creative Space.
Supported by Arnolfini. Special Thanks to Elena Hill.
