Opening hours: 2pm–8pm, Monday–Friday
Feb 23–Mar 12, 2009 | Beijing Angle Modern Art
24 City is the latest feature film by the Golden Lion-winning director Jia Zhangke. Set in a fifty-year old state-owned military weapon factory in Chengdu, China, it tells the stories of the relocation and demolition of the factory’s warehouses, workshops and industrial plants through the real and fictional narration of three women and five factory workers. Collectively, these stories of the sacrificed and destroyed present the memories, beliefs, youth and passion that were buried in time.
Curated by Shao Foundation, ‘Jia Zhangke: 24 City’ focuses on topics such as social transformation, political reform, and the rapid renewal of physical environments, attempting to present the subtle changes in the relationship between the collective and the individuals. Inspired by the film’s technique of integrating documentary and fictional elements, the design of the exhibition combines unused footage of workers’ interviews with ‘framed’ views of the construction sites outside of the gallery, streamed in real time. Special walls (a type of wall known as weishengqiang popular in the Chinese household in the 1980s, usually with the lower half painted in green), furniture, film props and the collage of still photographs of the interviewed workers and the demolished factories will be incorporated into a modern office environment. By juxtaposing the spaces of the film and the reality, ‘Jia Zhangke: 24 City’ offers you a glimpse of the individual’s fate in a distant and forgotten era.