Mist (2009)

• 72%
• 2009
• Xiaotao Zhang

I am trying to use a microscopic narrative to sample and magnify the seemingly entirely unrelated cases of Chongqing Steel and Windows to the World for visual analysis. As I see it, the polluted smoke created by the factory is the smoke of modernization mythology, or maybe the fog of history and reality…. These manmade landscapes have obscured the pursuit of collective modern ideals in pre-socialist China and the painful price paid and hard lessons learned. The massive steel town is the stage for collective sleep paralysis and the march of history. Among the crowds that flow ceaselessly through Windows to the World, it is hard to cover up the massive changes that have been wrought on every Chinese from their faces to their souls by the crazed materialistic pursuits of the post-socialist era.