Subway at 8. am

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2021

4K

16 seconds loop

Digital Laser printing on office paper

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One evening in the fall of 2018, I was wandering around the market, and while walking past a fish stall, I saw a white foam box filled with loaches that were stacked almost motionlessly on top of each other. It so happened that the stall owner came out and kicked a few feet toward the foam box, and soon all the loaches began to wriggle erratically and quickly. Even they cannot escape the foam box, they will soon die tonight, become some person’s dinner, but when the outside world gives them stimulation, they start desperately wriggling. I was moved by this desire and struggle for survival, which reminded me of the subway train at eight o’clock in the morning in Beijing on a workday, for work, for survival, for the future, many people crowded in these narrow trains, they wriggled between each arrival and departure. Like a box, the subway carriage carries the crowd through the colorful, dazzling city.

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