2016
Nicolas Contreras, Katharina Zanon
live-performance
video HD
16:44 min, sound, colour
Guangzhou
Two alien artists are construction workers on a half- finished highway.
The highway, facing the village Hong`Anwei was built up to the middle of the Zhujiang river four years ago and has for financial reasons not been finished until now.
Two streets on the bridge look clean and empty. They seem to be perfectly prepared for cars. The artist`s expeditions lead them inside the two underground tunnels that run parallel to the streets. The tunnel entrances are visible for both the workers inside the tunnels and the people outside living in the village. The villagers work as fishermen in the Zhujiang river or as construction workers, who were also involved in building the highway.
Inside the construction tunnels the artists find tools, objects and working clothes that show past working activities. They collect and store them in the area close to the tunnel entrances. Two borders are being raised during the early morning hours, while fishermen are preparing their boats for work and are attentively watching the activities going on in the abandoned highway. The artists wear the worker´s clothes and use the objects they found inside. Only the silhouettes of their with dust masks hidden faces are visible, in the focus is the nebulous village that faces the tunnel exit. One piece after the other, the artists are using metal sticks, wooden panels, cans, brooms and wires to cover the entrances.
The barriers are being raised without concept, the artists have no idea what the outcome might be or if their work is ever gonna be finished. In the same area where workers would continue to build the highway, Contreras and Zanon are marking the area as not legally accessible.
The two Chinese characters forming the word „bridge” are modified and connected. Seen as an image they resemble the half-constructed highway. Contreras and Zanon see themselves as alien, arriving from a different solar system and bumping into the dystopian remains of a policy that is not connected to the needs of planetary inhabitants.