Ten years ago, I inserted two euros into the vending machine at my art school. That day, the machine unfortunately malfunctioned, taking my money but failing to dispense the product. Frustrated, I kicked the vending machine twice and mockingly shouted, “You capitalist machine! I’m going to critique you. My French classmate found this scene hilarious, which made me realize that my humor had a universality and that these actions and rhetoric had a shared understanding and identity. Chinese people can find amusement in actions and rhetorical devices that are reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution.

From a certain perspective, we may in fact experience similar detachment from this socialist, militarist tone, as such ways of speaking crumbled with the fall of the grand narrative of communism. In eastern Germany, this revolutionary tone and rhetorical technique may have become a distant memory, allowing people to question and remember it from a more distanced perspective. In China, although people still live within the system of communist discourse, existing in a rhetoric that is disconnected from ideology and reality and within the continuum of this authoritarian tone, detachment has become part of everyday life. It’s like a thin mist in daily life, or particles floating in the air that enter the body. The “capitalism-corroded” body can trigger a sense of repulsion that is hard to shake. When it comes to critiquing capitalism, it’s challenging to find an appropriate perspective to resist the current system. For me personally, it might be more like Don Quixote tilting at windmills, where there’s a sense of both heroism and absurdity.

We learn the dialectics of Marxism from primary school to university, though often in a doctrinal manner. It’s somewhat frustrating and strange that we possess the instruments of critique and the tools of thought, yet we can’t apply them to the reality we live in. This constant state of conflict and contradiction reflects the fact that our reality is ideologically indigestible. Ultimately, this video work stems from my ponderings and inquiries. Communism has turned into a beautiful decoration, out of sync with the reality we inhabit, becoming an incompatible, indigestible language of ideology. It’s easily recognized by anyone trained in it because the words that everyday people use are vivid and fundamentally distant from these modes of speech. This ideological language is associated with a sense of obsolescence due to its stiffness, rigidity, and hollowness after the content has been stripped away, as if a person’s body has been stripped of its essence. It has become a language of zombies, empty and purely formal. The fear of this hollowness is a fear of being transformed into the rigid living dead; it is a fear of ourselves. This militarism drives a body to exist in an eternal state of muscular and mental tension, always positive, strong and vigorous.

I was born in the early 1980s in a typical rural area on the southeastern coast of China, now known as the “new socialist countryside.” I never experienced the era of material scarcity under the centrally “planned economy.” Instead, we are the generation born just after China embraced economic reforms, who grew up under the influence of “the sugar-coated artillery of capitalism.” In contrast to regions in the north that thrived when the economy was centrally planned thanks to heavy industry, the southeastern coastal areas prospered through economic reforms in the early 1980s, experiencing rapid urbanization and development. Our current phase is officially referred to as the “primary stage of socialism.” Most people engage in business, running small enterprises, and there’s a constant flow of business travelers and entrepreneurs.

In my memory, the 1990s were marked by perpetual construction and reconstruction in the places we lived. Everywhere you looked, there were ongoing construction projects, and the urban landscapes were undergoing rapid flux and change. I remember that during my junior high school years, I spent half a year at a boarding school. The school was just 20 kilometers from my small hometown, and during that time, both the roads and the buildings lining the roads were rebuilt. The scenery along the way from my home station changed so dramatically in those six months that I missed my stop, only realizing it after quite some time. People seemed to welcome the future with an unwavering, seemingly ideology-driven enthusiasm, rapidly embracing new things and information amidst the chaos and euphoria. However, that rapid transformation also left us disoriented in terms of history, geography, and our value system. In my memory, it feels as though there were several brief, almost magical phases. During my childhood, my grandmother’s house still used gas lamps and she cooked with a wood-burning stove. There were no private bathrooms or hot water. But progress was so rapid that within just over a decade, by the time I reached high school, my family had acquired a computer and delved into the world of the internet and ICQ.

While the relentless march of time has sparked a sense of disarray with its rapid developments, the one thing that seems to have remained unchanged is the Marxist-Leninist teachings in our textbooks. In the midst of this rich, chaotic life, these ideological expressions appear increasingly distant, unable to harmonize with the complex world we inhabit.

On a personal note, I never felt the influence of East Germany in my life. One reason is the remote geographical location of my upbringing. During my childhood, the Soviet Union had a more prominent presence in the lives of the Chinese people. Russian songs, films, plays, and literature were highly admired in Chinese culture, even forming part of our school curriculum.

Originally, my intention was to create a performance piece. I considered constructing a wooden cart for the vending machine and parading it through the streets, as you might do a prisoner, as a form of political critique. This concept was inspired by the Cultural Revolution, during which people were paraded and publicly criticized as a form of humiliation. However, I lacked the means to modify the vending machine or the physical strength to move it, so I decided to confront and critique it in its original location.

Once the text was completed, I dedicated over a month to thoroughly memorizing it and practiced my physical movements based on the “revolutionary operas” of the 1960s. The vending machine’s audio components were pre-recorded, and someone played the vending machine’s dialogues in synchronization with the text, on set. This approach created a natural rhythm, making it seem as if the vending machine was genuinely engaging in a dialogue with me. Initially, I recorded the performance to observe my actions and adjust my movements and posture to the audience’s perspective. Eventually, I realized the work could effectively exist as a video.

On the official recording day, I believe we repeated the performance more than ten times. During my rehearsals and recordings, people were in fact unable to use the vending machine to purchase candies. The glowing effect on the vending machine was added in post-production because I didn’t have the authority to physically modify it. This illumination gave the vending machine a low-tech, budget sci-fi aesthetic, aligning with the playful and whimsical aspects of my work.

In terms of current projects, I have been collaborating with dancers and actors who have physical skills from various domains. I am exploring a sense of spontaneity and relaxation that goes beyond orderly contexts featuring strong, energetic bodies. Currently, I am in the process of editing a new visual work titled “Prelude to Love.” I have invited a retired female soprano singer from the former People’s Liberation Army’s Song and Dance Troupe to interpret a well-known Chinese patriotic song. However, the focus is not on her singing; instead, it’s on her emotional adjustments and physical movements during the prelude. When the symphony’s prelude begins, the opera singer starts to prepare emotionally. Just as she’s about to sing the first note, I interrupt her and ask her to start over. This continuous cycle of starting and stopping occasionally allows the audience to hear the beginning of the first note, but they never find out what she’s about to sing. The essence of this video explores the tension before the real performance and the sudden relaxation, showcasing how a symbolically trained body dedicated to an ideology reverts to a more spontaneous and relaxed state unique to the individual, with differences manifesting through repetition.

[The questions were posed by Jacob Franke.]