Reflexology at a Distance: Entering the Dreamscape

We are thrilled to present Reflexology at a Distance: Entering the Dreamscape, the eighth online screening in Cosmos Cinema Educational Film Program, as part of the 14th Shanghai Biennale. This week features Random Access (2023, 14 min), a film by He Zike.

Exhibited as part of the 14th Shanghai Biennale’s Reflexology at a Distance section—which considers how the same proportions that govern the constellation of stars and subatomic particles operate on our bodies through mediating practices such as astrology, alchemy, medicines, architecture, and art—He Zike’s film reflects on the technologization of society and comments on the chaos that lies just beneath the surface of contemporary life. 

Random Access takes the form of a science fiction set in the city of Guiyang and its surrounds, home to the world’s largest radio telescope (the five-hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST) and a “data center cluster” credited with driving the rapid expansion of China’s digital industry. Riffing on her parents’ experience of living in this misty and mountainous technological hub, the artist imagines a narrative unfolding after the unexpected crash of its main data center. In this disordered digital reality, two characters travel through a city filled with flashes of ancient memories and imaginaries of the future.

Random Access was produced in collaboration with Cinevoyage and was commissioned by VH AWARD of Hyundai Motor Group.

Don’t miss this cinematic journey, available on cosmoscinema.art website until January 13.

The Cosmos Cinema website is where the histories of cinema excavated in weekly screenings at the Power Station of Art meet the moving-image works of artists represented in the 14th Shanghai Biennale. Each week, in alignment with one of the nine thematic sections that structure Cosmos Cinema, a selected moving-image work by one its artists is presented online with new contextualizing information. The Cosmos Cinema website features works by artists including Itziar Barrio, Yin-Ju Chen, Saodat Ismailova, Deimantas Narkevičius, Liu Xin, Maha Maamoun, Agnieszka Polska, Raqs Media Collective, Ho Rui An, Liu Yujia, He Zike, Julieta Aranda, Jakub Štourač and Anna Lunakova, and Zhou Xiaohu, among many others.

Cosmos Cinema Educational Program and online platform are made possible by .ART Registry.

It is also co-sponsored by Aesop and Humanities Research Center, Division of Arts and Humanities, and DKUNST Art on Campus of Duke Kunshan University.