Filmed in Beijing during the lockdown in June 2022, the work takes a meticulous approach to depict a person who organizes, moves, and stacks his belongings until they are hidden from view.

In 2022, many places in China, including the largest cities of Shanghai and Beijing, experienced multiple lockdowns lasting from six to nine months under China’s Zero-Covid policy. People were strictly asked to stay at home while avoidable secondary disasters subsequently happened, and rumors and anxiety spread on social media as truthful information was always censored, blocked, and disappeared very quickly. Viewing these fragmented realities of others on cellphone screens and then looking around at one’s own reality, the surroundings became simultaneously trivial and unstable, leading to the absolute annihilation of life as the landscape transformed from horizontal to vertical. The concept of home could be seen as both a last refuge (albeit temporary) or a lasting prison.

《該做些什麽？》拍攝於2022年6月的北京，影片本著認真負責的態度，以一種一絲不茍的方式展示了一個人如何將他的所有物進行整理並藏匿至不可見的過程。

Zheng Yuan lives and works in Beijing. He received his master’s degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015. Working primarily in time-based media, Zheng often operates at the intersection of fiction, documentary, and investigative research. His work focuses on the relationships between identity and value systems within different historical, social, and political conditions. In 2017, he began the “China Northwest Airlines” project, an attempt to process the history of China’s recent economic transfonnBtion through the prism of the civil aviation industry, in particular the story of a failed airline based in his home region of China’s northwest.

His recent solo exhibitions include Forward, Backward, Madeln Gallery, Shanghai, 2020; Up in the Air, Taikang Space, Beijing, 2017. Group exhibitions and screening include The Future is Here, Are You Coming?, University of Chicago, Chicago, 2022; E-Flux Screening roorn, New York, 2022; Between Sci-fi and illusory, MAXXI Museum, Rome, 2022; Future Tense: Microcinema event, War hoi Museum, Pittsburgh, 2022; Double Vision, Tai Kwun – Centre for Heritage and Arts, Hong Kong, 2022; Diriyah Biennale, Riyadh, 2021; A Long Hello, UCCA, Beijing, 2020; UN/ CONVENTIONAL: OCAT x KADIST Emerging Media Artist Exhibition, OCAT Shanghai, Shanghai, 2020; The Mesh, chi K11 Art Museum, Shanghai, 2019; OFFLINE BROWSER – The 6th Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition, Hong-gah Museum, Taipei, 2018; New Metallurgists,Stoschek Collection, Dusseldo戊 2018. “Long March Project – Building Code Violations III Special Economic Zone’: Long March Space, Beijing, 2018. His works are also screened at film festivals and online platforms, including Visions du Reel, 2021; Arkipel Festival, 2021; Crashing into the Future, e-flux Artist Cinemas, online, 2021; Hasty Falling Time, 5th floor, Centre d’Art Contemporain Geneve, online, 2020; Out of Blueprints, Serpentine Galleries x NOWNESS, online, 2020; International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, 2019; Kasseler Dokfest, 2019; 25 FPS Festival, 2019; Ann Arbor Film Festival, 2017. He was awarded the Jury Award at the 8th Huayu Youth Award 2020.