Whose Utopia (5'34" excerpt)

2006 / video / 20mins 

With the background of Pearl River Delta’s economic development, OSRAM Factory, as one of the new space promoters, is taking part in the process of China’s integration into the global system. On the other hand, the power of global market is penetrating the local areas by means of multi-national corporations. As a result, local economy is forced onto a global stage while young laborers from many inland provinces are entering this new international labor division.    

In the Pearl River Delta area, multi-national corporation management and culture gains a new local experience. Because the majority of laborers in these corporations are new emi-grants from inland China, oversea companies and Chinese workers form a new assembly under the globalization, a new type of social relationship and social form. Hence, a swift
reform of culture, capital and labor is progressing in the Pearl River Delta with the multi-national enterprise capital flow and cross-provincial population flow.

The “Utopia” project plans to explore the life of these emigrant factory workers in the Pearl River Delta who represent the “backup force” for China’s competitiveness in a global econo-my; and how they achieve a totally new experience, new standard and new meaning in the overwhelming trend of globalization. This project therefore allows us to see how they light up their “Utopia” in a new reality. Their utopia further exemplifies how the wider and wider globalization is reshaping the Pearl Delta River area, and even the whole China.

Their utopia is also my utopia, and the utopia of many more with hopes. I hope utopia will stop to be an ideal and will one day turn into reality.