PROLOGUE
TO
RIPPLE
RIPPLE
RIPPLING
The short documentary film looks into the everyday practice of the dissolved household in Shigushan village, Wuhan, China. It is to learn from the marginalised community who have mastered—as a matter of survival—precarity, imposed by agents of power way beyond their control. They settle in liminality, inhabit thresholds and enact interdependency.
Alternative imaginaries are not something to be invented anew, but have already existed in the here and now. To engage the present as an open moment is to engage the situated ideas, critiques and potentialities, as well as constraints, embedded in the narratives, objects and practices of the everyday life.
The margin is indeed a space of suffering and struggles, but also a profound edge where alternatives are conceptualised and often improvised. To engage the margin as a space of radical openness requires the capacity to see. To see from the mundane moments, from the peculiar spaces, from the partial perspectives, and from the vulnerable depth. To see differently is to know, to position and to live differently.
ON THE MARGINS (2022) is featured at the 3rd International Architecture and Ethnography Seminar and Exhibition Crisis︎︎︎ in Santiago, Chile (October 2022). An initial 2021 version of the film premiered at Driving the Human Festival (Berlin, 2021) and was further screened at Mañana Bold x Atelierfrankfurt (Frankfurt, 2021) and St. Moritz Art Film Festival (2022).
Alternative imaginaries are not something to be invented anew, but have already existed in the here and now. To engage the present as an open moment is to engage the situated ideas, critiques and potentialities, as well as constraints, embedded in the narratives, objects and practices of the everyday life.
The margin is indeed a space of suffering and struggles, but also a profound edge where alternatives are conceptualised and often improvised. To engage the margin as a space of radical openness requires the capacity to see. To see from the mundane moments, from the peculiar spaces, from the partial perspectives, and from the vulnerable depth. To see differently is to know, to position and to live differently.
ON THE MARGINS (2022) is featured at the 3rd International Architecture and Ethnography Seminar and Exhibition Crisis︎︎︎ in Santiago, Chile (October 2022). An initial 2021 version of the film premiered at Driving the Human Festival (Berlin, 2021) and was further screened at Mañana Bold x Atelierfrankfurt (Frankfurt, 2021) and St. Moritz Art Film Festival (2022).
ON THE MARGINS
Directors: Jingru (Cyan) Cheng & Chen Zhan
Local crew: Yizhuo Gao, Chen Zhan, Yunshi Zhou
Editing: Chen Zhan, Jingru (Cyan) Cheng
Consultant: Laura Belinky
PROLOGUE TO RIPPLE RIPPLE RIPPLING
Immersive Video Installation
Single Channel, Colour, Chinese, 10min. 2021
Driving the Human Festival, Berlin, Germany, 2021
Jingru (Cyan) Cheng & Chen Zhan
PROLOGUE TO RIPPLE RIPPLE RIPPLING
Premiere with a panel discussion
Documentary Film, Colour, Chinese, 10min. 2021
Driving the Human Festival, Berlin, Germany, 2021
Jingru (Cyan) Cheng & Chen Zhan