Live in RMB City (3'00" excerpt)

2009 / machinima / 24mins 50secs

Imagine that you could be reincarnated into a new life, that you could go back to birth and take your first steps in a new world…

A fantastic, exciting and unpredictable journey, the video ‘Live in RMB City’ follows the first breaths, fears and curiosities of newly born China Sun, the baby of China Tracy, in Second Life. The camera follows baby China Sun’s wanderings and explorations in a revived RMB City, inspired by brand new additions created by a team of artist, writer, architect, and philosopher collaborators, and infused with a fresh stream of life.

Commissioned by Tokyo’s Shiseido Gallery for a 2009 Cao Fei solo exhibition, ‘Live in RMB City’ is a dreamy children’s tale on the mysteries of (real and virtual) life. Accompanied and instructed by the attentive guidance of an extravagant cyber-mother, RMB City’s newest born baby wonders through old and new buildings, weaving the net of an articulated journey between past, present and future.

The secrets of virtual existence are slowly unveiled in RMB City, a world where mothers never grow old and buildings can become ice-creams, and yet the deeper meanings of life remain unanswered because, as China Sun starts to learn, there is only one way of explaining it, and that is through poetry and imagination:“If my little boat sinks, it has gone to another sea.”