Drifted into the gravitational field of Guizhou time zone - Language in action host by @baopu.felt
Many beautiful things are unfolding, pulsing through the mountain wilds.
Back in northern Finland for filming and field recording on work-in-progress film.🔊
We moved along the route of proposed Arctic Railway put forward by Norway and Finland around 2017, tracing its imagined path through wind and snow while exploring the northern soundscape. These audio tracks overlap within indigenous temporality—where cyclical time shaped by land and climate intersects with the linear progression of industrial modernity.
Deep in the forest, local Sámi herder led us across a frozen lake by pulk into the reindeer grazing grounds. He called out living beings like Joik fromthe forest, as if they were drawn by an ancient resonance.
On the way to mining area, we uncovered abandoned branch line of mining railway buried beneath thick snow. Metal, altered by prolonged freezing and rust, had changed in its material properties. The loose snow is natural acoustic absorber, softening the sound of rails and leaving only a forgotten whisper.
Recently, during a short research trip into the mountains of Southwest China, we visited abandoned workers' cultural spaces combining cinema, theatre, and political education, rooted in the Soviet system of multi-functional workers' clubs and culture palaces. By examining spatial design as well as satellite communication and audiovisual technologies embedded in these sites, we attempt to read absent histories from present material traces.
P1 After the wave of workers' infrastructure renovations in the 1980s, C-band satellite dishes are widely used in workers' clubs of collectivist factory societies enclosed by mountains, following the launch of DongFangHong-2 geostationary satellite and the formation of national television networks.
P2-P3 In residential compound, a retired elderly showed us the factory gazetteer she treasured at home. Its images captured the richness of past worker cultüre: yangge dance competitions from northern China and exhibitions of workers' arts and crafts.
P4 Ornate ceiling designs and dusty disco equipment. P6 Scattered across the floor, we found fragments of 35mm animation film from Shanghai Animation Film Studio. Parallel to the "New Era" of art, Chinese national-style animation had shifted from themes of revolution and allegory toward fairy tales, humanity, and fantasy.
P10 RGB stage lighting system in the 300 power plant theatre, derived from East German tungsten Rampenleuchte.
P11-P12 The Metal chairs in the worker's club have collapsed under microbial corrosion, buried in silt where green sprouts now grow. What Matthew Gandy calls ecological succession in post-industry has not only produced wilderness in the cracks of industrial space; it has also formed a temporal wilderness, reconciling the suspended interval between postwar defense-industrial construction and subsequent transitions to clean energy. The will of spontaneous growth has overlaid the resource coordination of planned economy.
P16-P17 At a bookstall outside the Shuicheng steel plant, I happened upon a Star War picture booklet from 1980s. One line in its local translation reads: "Hyperspace travel isn't as easy as growing crops🌾"
It’s honored to present my work-in-progress documentary ‘Data Brothers, Sun Lamp and Ethnic Minorities behind Landscapes’ in exhibition opening today 28th June in Kaili, Guizhou. I believe it‘s important to bring work back to homeland, for any experience of diaspora Asian.
The mountainous region known as Guizhou now once the ancient Yelang state. Over the years, Guizhou is associated with mysterious, exotic impression, and marginalised in vast historical context. In the show, 6 artists and I, with positioning self and perceptual experience as subject, contextualize the works in history and contemporaneity to explore a way of rewrite and resettlement on this land. Thanks to Jiawen Li @mylittleairporttt for curating, and Baopu FELT teams for fully support.
Duration: 28th Jun - 16th Aug
Opening: 28th UTC+8 3pm
Location: Baopu FELT, Kaili City, Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture, Guizhou Province, China.
Shown clips of Yiqing Chen‘s new three-channel moving image in @hiap_suomenlinna Open Studio Winter 2025.
The film is based on Yiqing's research on electric car value chain and mining industry acrossing Gulf of Finland and Southwest China. In the film, electric car serves as time machine, journeying through the wormhole of globalization. It leaves behind soul fragments in the collectivist theater from the Third Front Construction era, telling the story of geological memory and mining history in the new energy transition.
The work is under the support of @hiap_suomenlinna and @conditionsstudioprogramme
From Power Coast to Electric Guizhou
从动力海岸到电动贵州
Yiqing Chen’s research on Electric Car Battery Value Chain and Mining Industry between Gulf of Finland and Southwest China. The project is ongoing during residency at @hiap_suomenlinna and supported by @conditionsstudioprogramme .
P2 - P3, In the Kotka-Hamina region (northern Gulf of Finland), there are battery factories from China planned to be constructed, including Easpring Technology, and CNGR whose headquarters is based in Tongren, Guizhou. These factory is prepared as a large base to produce cathode active material for new energy batteries in a joint venture with Finnish Minerals Group. This area is shaped into a center of the European battery value chain, as ‘Power Coast’
P4, Ongoing earthworks at the factory reserve site
P5, Electricity infrastructure near to factory reserve site
P6, Sunila Pulp Mill in the background, was built in 1938 by Alvar Aalto, which is an important witness of Finland’s industrial history, it was closed in 2023. Now it’s planed to convert into bio-graphite factory, where wood chips, a forestry by-product, will be used to produce alternative graphite, the anode material for lithium iron phosphate batteries in electric cars.
P7, Forestry is the mainstay of Finland‘s industry, in the distance the port of Hamina can be seen, which is Finland’s biggest port and an important hub in Europe and in the Baltic Sea region.
P8, Hamina used to be called Fredrikshamn in Russian era, its star-shaped fortress plan based on Renaissance concepts as a geometric representation of moral perfection and military fortress. Today hamina is nested in a new expectation, to be a post-carbon utopia.
P9-P12, Wengfu Phosphate Mine in Guizhou (Southwest China) is a modern single open phosphate mine with the largest production capacity in China. It was prototype for scene in the Chinese Sci-fi The Wandering Earth. Guizhou is promoting ‘Electric Guizhou’ policy to build Guizhou into a industry chain of new energy battery material by utilising local natural mineral resources and infrastructure.
P13, Lithiophilite raw mineral
2025 New year, starts with residency in Helsinki International artist programme @hiap_suomenlinna with support of @conditionsstudioprogramme digital lab. Close the eyes and against the feathers, dreaming into untouched reminiscence.
More infos in the bio: https://www.hiap.fi/resident/yiqing-chen/
Visit family museum acrossing through the market stalls. It‘s at the Shimenkan miao village which locate at convergence of two province. Collection of personal narrative is around the old man who is the owner of museum.
P3 Old man‘s father did lots research and translation work, proficient in multiple languages, and translated many book texts into Miao language. After 80s, old man was back to his hometown and collect materials related to local miao culture and translate his father’s oral history into Chinese.
P4 In 1910, Cornwall priest Samuel Pollard came to preach in Shimenkan. He established school, church and teached Miao group English, created writing system for Miao, which has pronounce but no text.
Yesterday work-in-progress experimental documentary “Data Brothers，Sun Lamp and Ethnic Minorities behind Landscape” shown at @icalondon X @conditionsstudioprogramme event with digital lab.
My new work-in-progress documentary film“Data Brothers, Sun lamp and Ethnic minorities behind landscape”will be shown at @icalondon Sunday 4th August 6.30-8:30 with @conditionsstudioprogramme DigitalLabProgramme
@amy_j_wilson@ajwealands@jbaldooo@ig.chipon@zoebiaginiart@iana.mizguina@mollie.tilley
This film is shot during filed research in my hometown Guizhou, with route from city to the countryside. It‘s a non-fictional documentary to witness experiencing development of infrastructure and people‘s life interwoven between live stream and reality in Guizhou, Southwest China. And it’s also my travel note as a tourist to my hometown.
Link in bio for ticket.
