Li Wake

Non-narrative series of shots: in factory, sex workers etc.

A low-budget independent film made on 35mm, that was screened only four times in a small circle in China since its completion in 2000. This semi-autobiographical film, set in the Cultural Revolution, provides the missing link between the roots-seeking and scar literature and art of the 1980s and the performance art of the 1990s and 2000s. It grounds many of the embodied extremes of China’s famous performance art in the persistent psychosexual fetishes and neuroses produced by the extreme denial of individual desire under “mass line” socialism (Chinese Independent Film Archive).

CIFA (the Chinese Independent Film Archive) has recently helped restore The Crack, a low-budget independent film made on 35mm, which has been screened only four times to a small circle in China since its completion in 2000. This semi-autobiographical film, set during the Cultural Revolution, provides the missing link between the roots-seeking and scar literature and art of the 1980s and the performance art of the 1990s and 2000s. It grounds many of the embodied extremes of China’s famous performance art in the persistent psychosexual fetishes and neuroses produced by the extreme denial of individual desire under “mass line” socialism.

As a sequel to Ai Weiwei’s film "Disturbing the Peace," the film "So Sorry" (named after the artist’s 2009 exhibition in Munich, Germany) shows the beginnings of the tension between Ai Weiwei and the Chinese Government. In "So Sorry," you see the investigation led by Ai Weiwei studio to identify the students who died during the Sichuan earthquake as a result of corruption and poor building constructions leading to the confrontation between Ai Weiwei and the Chengdu police. After being beaten by the police, Ai Weiwei traveled to Munich, Germany to prepare his exhibition at the museum, Haus der Kunst. The result of his beating led to intense headaches caused by a brain hemorrhage and was treated by emergency surgery. These events mark the beginning of Ai Weiwei’s struggle and surveillance at the hands of the state police.

On December 15, 2008, a citizens' investigation began with the goal of seeking an explanation for the casualties of the Sichuan earthquake that happened on May 12, 2008. The investigation covered 14 counties and 74 townships within the disaster zone, and studied the conditions of 153 schools that were affected by the earthquake. By gathering and confirming comprehensive details about the students, such as their age, region, school, and grade, the group managed to affirm that there were 5,192 students who perished in the disaster. Among a hundred volunteers, 38 of them participated in fieldwork, with 25 of them being controlled by the Sichuan police for a total of 45 times. This documentary is a structural element of the citizens' investigation.

The ubiquitous loudspeakers, television propaganda and slogans in towns and villages are constantly instilling the will of the powers that be and the alienation of thinking in the minds of the people. Men, women, and children of all ages are trapped in a huge brainwasher-like airbag promoted by propagandists, and they roll forward and backward.

Li Wake travelled to Beijing in June 1998 with a desperate post-modernist passion and had models dressed in his "shroud fashion" walk through the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, Wangfujing and other venues, and virtually performed a "living dead" shroud fashion show in front of a crowd of people. The footage was then mixed with clips from Pink Floyd's "The Wall" and edited into an MTV format, which was projected onto the wide screen of the Beijing Theatre, where the shroud fashion models moved from the outside of the theatre into the inside of the theatre, walking freely in front of the screen, occasionally delivering ballots to the mailboxes. At this point, revolutionary songs, Enya's score, and funeral marches alternate, and a poppy patchwork of music, video acts, and props combine to form a kind of absurd self-eulogy-like martyrdom ritual.