The Cyan Garden considers the limits of giving form to the past which cannot cohere into memory. In part filmed on ‘Lucky’, a discontinued b&w 16mm film reel stock intended for military aerial detection, the moving image revolves around a radio station that was not supposed to be detected and an Airbnb apartment ‘The Lover’, run by Peng’s friend in their hometown. Between 1969 and 1981, a Malaysian communist underground radio in exile Voice of the Malayan Revolution resided in what is now soon to be a resort. Projected on a holographic screen producing shadowy after-images, the work flickers between radio static, bursts of archival jingles, ruins of the radio station and choreographed scenes of the Airbnb apartment decorated in imagined ‘Southeast Asian’ style. Contemplating on a revolution’s fraught relation to emancipation, The Cyan Garden interweaves visual notes on revolutionary remains and stifled romance and inability to remember ‘rightly’ as pop songs lull in the background.

Peng Zuqiang works with film, video and installations.

Exhibitions and screenings include Cell Project Space, E-Flux screening room, Times Museum, UCCA Beijing, 25FPS, IDFA, Antimatter, and Open City Doc Festival. He has received fellowships and residencies from IAS CEU, MacDowell, Skowhegan, and the Core Program. He is the recipient of the Present Future Prize 2022, and a ‘Special Mention’ from Festival Film Dokumenter, Yogyakarta for his first feature film, Nan (2020). A resident artist at Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, he lives and works in Amsterdam.