Recent mass evictions and demolitions between the fifth and sixth ring roads in Beijing have affected many lives. At the same time, many burial sites in the area – both ancient and present-day – have been destroyed, disrupting cultural burial practices and the peace of the spirits.

Reflecting on a specific demolished urban village burial site, the experimental essay film “Our Bodies Have Turned to Gold” examines this devastation from the position of the “dead” and further. Prior to the destruction taking place, the villagers dug up their ancestors’ and family members’ urns to avoid bad luck. The video speculates on these conditions in terms of spirituality, temporality, necro and social politics and global capitalism. How and what kind of active political and ethical agency and resistance can nonhuman and nonliving subjects perform within (local and global) social, ecological and economic systems? “Our Bodies Have Turned to Gold” reflects on modes of collaboration and becoming with the more-than-human. Opening a transcultural dialogue, this polyvocal and intersubjective project draws broadly on meditations on the site by communicating with the spirits by Daoist Master Wu Dangfeng and exchanges with the spiritual scholar Li Chunyuan, as well as considering writings by the philosopher and feminist theorist Rosi Braidotti and the philosopher Gilles Deleuze. These viewpoints are taken alongside local knowledge and lived experiences.

Narrated by the artist in the first-person plural, the installation reflects the voices of continuously shifting multiple subjectivities (human and not) that are telling the story. These “wes” question the processes of connectivity, exclusion and boundary formation, challenging divisions and dualistic narratives such as matter-mind, otherworldly, the low-end citizen, while at the same time emphasizing the notions of kinship and the ethics of co-existence. Furthermore, the use of plural form instead of the “I” in Chinese language is common and seen as a gesture of humility.

Courtesy of the artist and Lumen Travo Gallery