OU NING ::::
born in Guangdong, China
lives in Beijing

CAO FEI ::::
born in 1978, Guangzhou, China
lives in Guangzhou and Beijing

In 2003, the group formed by the designer and cultural activist Ou Ning and the artist Cao Fei, along with other colleagues, realized San Yuan Li, a major research and film project depicting the phenomenon of “village in the city,” an alternative urban form generated in Guangzhou’s urban expansion process. For the last couple of years, they have become even more active as witnesses to the fate of Beijing’s urban gentrification.

Beijing has been going through radical and often violent and destructive urban developments for the last few decades. A number of historic areas have been torn down to make way for new high-rise constructions and motorways. With the upcoming 2008 Olympics, a new wave of urban transformation and gentrification has been launched, which will radically aggravate the urban changes. Meishi street, a part of the Da Zha Lan area in the very heart of the capital, near Tiananmen Square, was totally destroyed in December 2004, and its inhabitants were forced to move to the outskirts of the city. In their new film, Meishi Street, Ou Ning and Cao Fei closely followed and documented the changes wrought on this area as well as the sweeping displacements of its population. the film demonstrates the complicated, often helpless state of mind (and body) the residents, simply trying to survive, find themselves in, as well as their awakening resistance, political consciousness, and efforts at self-defense as citizens within a context of major social and political pressure and upheaval.