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Still of video titled ‘Asia One’. In a dim logistics hub, a young woman wearing a head lamp is sleeping at the table where there is a curvy line of crystal stickers. There are crystal stickers on the woman’s hand. Behind her stands a humanoid robot.

Asia One

Details
Programme: Techno Sapiens
Year: 2018
Director: Cao Fei
Format: Digital / 63 min.
Language: Other (no dialogue with English subtitles)
Audience: Everyone
Location: House 1, House 2
Accessibility: Wheelchair
More Info:

Ticket Information

Standard: HKD 85

Concession: HKD 68

Still of video titled ‘Asia One’. In a dim logistics hub, a young woman wearing a head lamp is sleeping at the table where there is a curvy line of crystal stickers. There are crystal stickers on the woman’s hand. Behind her stands a humanoid robot.

Asia One

Cao Fei’s Asia One, part musical, part love story, takes audiences inside the logistics hub of Jingdong, or JD.com, a Chinese business-to-consumer e-commerce giant—one of the most technologically advanced manufacturing and distribution facilities in the country. Granted unprecedented access to interview JD.com employees, as well as to film onsite, Cao imagines a very real hyper-industrialised future where work is almost completely automated. Set in the fictional Asia One Unmanned Warehouse, Asia One follows the story of the facility’s only two human employees and their robotic assistant as a love triangle gradually develops.

Asia One is a continuation of Cao’s long-term interest in China’s rapid social, economic, and technological transformation, and is the unofficial sequel to her breakout film Whose Utopia? (2006), currently on view in the exhibition M+ Sigg Collection: From Revolution to Globalisation.

Still of video titled ‘Asia One’. In the logistic hub is a conveyor system of two-storey high. Next to one of the conveyor slides is a huge orange inflatable octopus of over 10 metres long, whose tentacles are extending to envelop the slide and the pole nearby.

Cao Fei. Asia One, 2018. Photo: Courtesy of the artist and Vitamin Creative Space

Still of video titled ‘Asia One’. Front shot of two side-by-side slides of a logistic conveyor system. A man and a woman in skiing clothing go down lying on the slides. The slides are labelled in Simplified Chinese and English as ‘Firefly Island’ and ‘Cedar Grove’ respectively.

Cao Fei. Asia One, 2018. Photo: Courtesy of the artist and Vitamin Creative Space.

Still of video titled ‘Samsung’. On a blue background is a phrase in black aligned vertically at the centre in two rows, that reads, ‘”Stop whining, OK?”’. The texts are large, where each row can accommodate 11 characters, punctuation or space.

YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES. SAMSUNG, 1999. Single-channel digital animation (colour, B&W, sound), duration: 3 min. 30 sec. M+, Hong Kong. © YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES

Still of video titled ‘Asia One’. In the logistic hub is a conveyor system of two-storey high. Next to one of the conveyor slides is a huge orange inflatable octopus of over 10 metres long, whose tentacles are extending to envelop the slide and the pole nearby.

Cao Fei. Asia One, 2018. Photo: Courtesy of the artist and Vitamin Creative Space

Still of video titled ‘Asia One’. Front shot of two side-by-side slides of a logistic conveyor system. A man and a woman in skiing clothing go down lying on the slides. The slides are labelled in Simplified Chinese and English as ‘Firefly Island’ and ‘Cedar Grove’ respectively.

Cao Fei. Asia One, 2018. Photo: Courtesy of the artist and Vitamin Creative Space.

Still of video titled ‘Samsung’. On a blue background is a phrase in black aligned vertically at the centre in two rows, that reads, ‘”Stop whining, OK?”’. The texts are large, where each row can accommodate 11 characters, punctuation or space.

YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES. SAMSUNG, 1999. Single-channel digital animation (colour, B&W, sound), duration: 3 min. 30 sec. M+, Hong Kong. © YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES

Still of video titled ‘Asia One’. In the logistic hub is a conveyor system of two-storey high. Next to one of the conveyor slides is a huge orange inflatable octopus of over 10 metres long, whose tentacles are extending to envelop the slide and the pole nearby.

Cao Fei. Asia One, 2018. Photo: Courtesy of the artist and Vitamin Creative Space

Still of video titled ‘Asia One’. Front shot of two side-by-side slides of a logistic conveyor system. A man and a woman in skiing clothing go down lying on the slides. The slides are labelled in Simplified Chinese and English as ‘Firefly Island’ and ‘Cedar Grove’ respectively.

Cao Fei. Asia One, 2018. Photo: Courtesy of the artist and Vitamin Creative Space.

Still of video titled ‘Samsung’. On a blue background is a phrase in black aligned vertically at the centre in two rows, that reads, ‘”Stop whining, OK?”’. The texts are large, where each row can accommodate 11 characters, punctuation or space.

YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES. SAMSUNG, 1999. Single-channel digital animation (colour, B&W, sound), duration: 3 min. 30 sec. M+, Hong Kong. © YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES

Still of video titled ‘Asia One’. In the logistic hub is a conveyor system of two-storey high. Next to one of the conveyor slides is a huge orange inflatable octopus of over 10 metres long, whose tentacles are extending to envelop the slide and the pole nearby.

Cao Fei. Asia One, 2018. Photo: Courtesy of the artist and Vitamin Creative Space

Still of video titled ‘Asia One’. Front shot of two side-by-side slides of a logistic conveyor system. A man and a woman in skiing clothing go down lying on the slides. The slides are labelled in Simplified Chinese and English as ‘Firefly Island’ and ‘Cedar Grove’ respectively.

Cao Fei. Asia One, 2018. Photo: Courtesy of the artist and Vitamin Creative Space.

Still of video titled ‘Samsung’. On a blue background is a phrase in black aligned vertically at the centre in two rows, that reads, ‘”Stop whining, OK?”’. The texts are large, where each row can accommodate 11 characters, punctuation or space.

YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES. SAMSUNG, 1999. Single-channel digital animation (colour, B&W, sound), duration: 3 min. 30 sec. M+, Hong Kong. © YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES

Accompanying Short

SAMSUNG

YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES | 1999 | Digital | English | 3 min. 30 sec.

An anonymous narrator is liberated from their existential angst and ennui thanks to Samsung, the South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate. The narrator’s repeated expressions of love and desire seem absurd, but also underscore the pervasive power of technology corporations and their role in shaping personal and national identity.

Image at top: Cao Fei. Asia One, 2018. Photo: Courtesy of the artist and Vitamin Creative Space

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