The video begins with a dream under anesthesia during neurosurgery and develops into a satirical critique on industrialization and gentrification campaign, all materialized into a series of sculptures in the video installation. The documentary on craniotomy surgery echoes with Italo Calvino’s fantasy novel “Cosmicomics;” the process where doctors remove brain tumors also resemble the Moon milk purification ritual in a factory within the dream. Through Italian and Chinese narratives, this work interweaves dream and reality, reimagining human agency that transcends the boundary between material and immaterial.
CREDIT:
Artist: Liu Wa
Voiceover: Noemi Quintili
Neurosurgeon: Liang Jiantao, Song Gang
Nurse: Sylvan Shan
Cinematographer: Yang Bo, Yu Hao, Li Kaiqiang, Meng Fanzhao
Edited by: Cheng Weiran
Recording Engineer: Shi Qian
Italian Translator: Sara Paccagnini
Visual Effects: Liu Xiaoyu
Music by: Sam Wu, Max Herve, Mike Kelleher, Neon Ridge
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Caption
It’s time to inject anesthetics. Don’t panic, it will all be over when you wake up
September 26, 2019. Female, 25 years old.
The Moon…How come the Moon is so close to me, almost within my reach?
The planktons in the sea are drawn by the gravitational force of the Moon. Glimmering and phosphorescent, they slowly rise and ascend into the sky.
The surface of the Moon resembles the belly of a fish, covered with a crust of smooth scales.
Every time the Moon sails over the Earth, it attracts honeydew, fungi, reeds, and so on from forests and swamps into the crevices between its scales. Through fermentation, these terrestrial substances turn into the creamy Moon milk.
We climb up the mast of our boat to reach the Moon. Pushing aside its scales, we are thrilled to caress its skin and feel its pulse. Once we find somewhere soft and mellow, we swiftly dig out a handful of that rich paste.
The Moon remains silent in the face of recurring human invasions, as if it has been put under anesthesia.
The Moon milk used to be pure and tasty, but now a lot of industrial waste remains stuck in it, such as nails, glass and plastics.
The insoluble refuse is brought under the scales, which makes it much harder for us to extract the nectar.
Taking advantage of the gentrification campaign, The Moon Milk Corporation claims that factory pollution would harm the city’s image and thereby lobbies the government to move heavy industry to cities and countries that are remote and trivial.
People over there have little idea of pollution. They cannot afford the Moon milk either.
Factories are completely shut down. The furnaces that have been running for five decades are turned off. Tens of thousands of families suffering from the massive lay-offs are quietly dispersed.
Only the factory waste is left in the Moon milk, disintegrating, congealing and forming weirdly shaped objects, which are later filtered out and thrown back to the factory, back to their wrecked hometown.
This abandoned site gathers together all the unwanted debris from the last era, but it now becomes a niche attraction for young explorers and filming crews, gradually regaining its vitality.
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