A Workshop Director
Li Xiaofei
李消非
Production date
2010
Object Detail
Media
video (colour, sound)
Measurements
6 min 12 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.
Initially Li Xiaofei’s works seem to conform to the conventions of documentary reportage. He uses a real time shooting technique in each location, often gaining permission to enter hazardous workplaces through an elaborate network of social relationships, and interweaves these interviews with footage of the assembly line and machinery. The abrupt transitions are often deliberately jarring; your thoughts are constantly interrupted by mechanical noise and your ability to concentrate on the softer voices of the interview subjects is broken, just as the thoughts and conversations of the workers themselves are subjugated to the demands of the machinery they operate.
There is an unexpected beauty in these factories, though, and it is fascinating for the viewer to enter places that are generally off-limits. Li’s starting point was an interview with a printer. He was struck by what he defined as the ‘romanticism’ of this man’s description of his work, and when he took his camera and recording equipment into the printing works he found the relationship between human and machine had become ‘strange and complicated.’ The result was nine separate videos, including A Workshop Director (2010).
Initially Li Xiaofei’s works seem to conform to the conventions of documentary reportage. He uses a real time shooting technique in each location, often gaining permission to enter hazardous workplaces through an elaborate network of social relationships, and interweaves these interviews with footage of the assembly line and machinery. The abrupt transitions are often deliberately jarring; your thoughts are constantly interrupted by mechanical noise and your ability to concentrate on the softer voices of the interview subjects is broken, just as the thoughts and conversations of the workers themselves are subjugated to the demands of the machinery they operate.
There is an unexpected beauty in these factories, though, and it is fascinating for the viewer to enter places that are generally off-limits. Li’s starting point was an interview with a printer. He was struck by what he defined as the ‘romanticism’ of this man’s description of his work, and when he took his camera and recording equipment into the printing works he found the relationship between human and machine had become ‘strange and complicated.’ The result was nine separate videos, including A Workshop Director (2010).
Accession number
2012.058