Assembly Line 2
Li Xiaofei
李消非
Production date
2012
Object Detail
Media
video (colour, sound)
Measurements
3 min 22 sec
Notes
Since 2010, Li Xiaofei has been examining the phenomenon of mass production and its impact on social structures and the individual, within and beyond China. In his continuing Assembly Line Project, he has visited factories in southern China and throughout the world. Filming interviews with workers, supervisors and managers, Li has engaged with the reality of mechanisation, exploring the subject of labour and capital in original ways. Themes that emerge from this ambitious ongoing project include relationships between workers and management, between humans and machines, and between individuals and the larger society. Matter-of-fact discussions of pay and working conditions are constantly broken up in his videos by the roar of machinery, and the visually rich imagery of the assembly line, the rotation of gears and wheels, and spinning machine parts. Li Xiaofei raises many questions about the nature of work in the modern world.
The Assembly Line Silent Series extended Li Xiaofei’s original concept. Assembly Line 2 is three minutes and nine seconds of silently boiling, bubbling molten liquid, the by-product of the steel smelting process.
The Assembly Line Silent Series extended Li Xiaofei’s original concept. Assembly Line 2 is three minutes and nine seconds of silently boiling, bubbling molten liquid, the by-product of the steel smelting process.
Accession number
2016.016