Dull Pain
2022
A Documentary Film by Jolie Zhilei Zhou & mafmadmaf
33 mins | Cantonese/English subtitles
The protagonist, always in black, stands at the same spot by the edge of an expressway and shouts out something unrecognizable every night for over four years. This 11-km expressway, whose name can be explained as “the rhyme of science and technology,” interweaves a lot of high-tech Innovation Parks and four main villages inside the city areas of Guangzhou, China. People work in zones like Silicon Valley during the day and live in villages inside the city at night. Here, young people contribute their youth to the production of the digital world. Meanwhile, on this expressway, all vehicles pursue the same goal: the fastest and most efficient way to finish something, no matter what. However, the deformed sound of the protagonist seems to counteract this pure admiration of acceleration. It resists the KPI-ism (KPI as a Key Performance Indicator) that worships efficiency.
Your Past is My Present, My Present has Passed
2017
Single-channel video with sound
9 min 35 second