Video, choreography & installation
Polycarbonate tube, aluminum alloy joint
6 min 31 sec
2021

Concept, project lead, technical and fabrication lead
In collaboration with Jenny Wang (Filmmaker), Sihan Cai (Composer), and Mengfan Wang (Choreographer)

Rectangular shapes didn't exist in nature until homo sapiens invented them at the beginning of civilization. Ever since then, this novel shape has been inseparable from human lives.It can be a door, a window, a building, a cage, or a system. One rectangle stacks on top of another to make up the human civilization and society as we know it. 

The prop is designed as an unstable cube, a flaccid grid, a cage dependent on its captive’s support to stand. It speculates a dialectic relationship between various modern systems and the modern man. The film presents three characters dancing with the prop in different city spots. It places the metaphorical device into specific contexts that help illustrate and re-inspect one’s relationship with the urban and social constructs, from community to workplace, from social hierarchy to private relationships.

The dance between human beings and the cage, the tension and the power in embrace and resistance, are all parts of a game of reincarnation between human and human constructs. We are all besieged by this “framed life”, the very structure we created and support, hoping to break from it yet insecure about the unknown, outside world.