We are delighted to announce Applied Cosmos, the fifteenth online installment of the Cosmos Cinema educational program, as part of the 14th Shanghai Biennale.
This edition features Lining (2021, 26 minutes), a film by Ho Rui An, which examines the rise-and-fall of the textile industry in Hong Kong against shifts in labor, technology, and capital between the ex-British colony and mainland China between 1946 and 1997.
Beginning with the displacement of Shanghai’s cotton mills to Hong Kong on the eve of the Communist takeover of mainland China, the film’s narrative proceeds into the Reform era, during which Hong Kong’s industrial base was, in turn, relocated to the mainland. Weaving together archival material, interviews with former factory workers and managers, and documentary footage shot between Hong Kong and Guangdong, the film describes the transformation of Hong Kong from an industrial to a financial hub based on the trade of real estate. In doing so, it traces the material networks that connected the city to the mainland long before the official launch of China’s economic reforms.
The work is available for viewing through March 2 on cosmoscinema.art.
The Cosmos Cinema website is the place 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 will feature work 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 Film 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.
