NI HAIFENG::::

Xeno-visions is a work about how a Western metropolis views socially marginalized people. They are present, but unseen. They are social ghosts and somnambulists. They constitute a shadow in today’s metropolitan life. The video images are housed in a shabby cardboard box, one that is usually used for packing foreign goods. The box lies on the floor and the LCD monitors are tiny: the viewer has to lower himself in order to look down at the xeno-images. The combination of object and images suggests that the xeno-images arrived “packed” and have just been “unpacked.” The setting creates a particular way of seeing; looking down at and peeping into the unpacked box; reading or examining up close those who are portrayed. It is at once voyeuristic and intimate.

The images represent two moments of xeno-presence in our daily metropolitan lives: that of the private, in which a foreigner is sleeping; and that of the public, in which foreigners are walking like ghosts on the sidewalk, half-transparent, passing through one another.  The clips—The Daydreamer and The Ghostly—are on the left and right monitors, respectively.