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| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
178759
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| Summary/Abstract |
This essay examines two films by the Chinese documentary filmmaker Wang Bing about temporary migrant workers in small, privately owned garment workshops in Zhejiang Province, China: Bitter Money (Ku Qian; 2016) and 15 Hours (Shi Wu Xiao Shi; 2017). Wang’s films portray Chinese garment workers’ lived experiences of “suspension,” as defined by Biao Xiang in this issue, in unique cinematic ways. Social sciences have paid close attention to the experiences of migrant workers, but art documentaries use audiovisual and aesthetic means to explore their everyday reality, producing what D. MacDougall calls distinctive “affective knowledge.” Wang’s films are usually categorized as part of the Sixth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, known for capturing social issues through observational methods. In this essay, I identify Wang’s works with the aesthetics of “slow cinema” and a global documentary trend in the visual arts as theorized by T. J. Demos in The Migrant Image. Based on close observation coupled with empathetic insight, Wang develops his own subjective method to portray people in a transformed and still changing China, where suspension is a common state of being. Ultimately, Wang’s films not only make the personal experiences of migrant workers visible and tangible, but also problematize their underlying, collective condition of suspension due to the contract labour system and associated hypermobility. The suspension approach suggests a productive way of bringing documentary art and social sciences into dialogue.
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| 2 |
ID:
178751
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| Summary/Abstract |
“Suspension” is the translation of the Chinese term xuanfu, which has been widely used in public discussions in China since the mid-2010s. Suspension indicates a state of being in which people move frequently, conduct intensive labour, and pause routine life—in order to benefit fast and then quickly escape. People keep moving, with no end in sight, instead of changing their current conditions, of which they disapprove. As a result, frantic entrepreneurial energy coexists with political resignation. Suspension is a life strategy, a multitude of experiences, a feeling—and now, a keyword: a crystallized consciousness with which the public problematize their experiences. This special issue develops this term into an analytical approach based on ethnographic research involving labour migrants in and from China. This approach turns migration into a basis for critical analyses on issues far beyond it; enables co-research between researchers, migrants, and the broader public; and seeks to cultivate agency for change among actors. This introductory essay, based on the author’s long-term field research and public engagement, outlines why we need such an approach, and how we might develop it.
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