Asset Details
Do you wish to reserve the book?
Documenting China's Garment Industry: Wang Bing's Portrayal of Migrant Workers' Suspended Lives within the Contract Labour System
Hey, we have placed the reservation for you!
By the way, why not check out events that you can attend while you pick your title.
Oops! Something went wrong.
Looks like we were not able to place the reservation. Kindly try again later.
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
Documenting China's Garment Industry: Wang Bing's Portrayal of Migrant Workers' Suspended Lives within the Contract Labour System
Do you wish to request the book?
Documenting China's Garment Industry: Wang Bing's Portrayal of Migrant Workers' Suspended Lives within the Contract Labour System
Please be aware that the book you have requested cannot be checked out. If you would like to checkout this book, you can reserve another copy
We have requested the book for you!
Your request is successful and it will be processed during the Library working hours. Please check the status of your request in My Requests.
Oops! Something went wrong.
Looks like we were not able to place your request. Kindly try again later.
Journal Article
Documenting China's Garment Industry: Wang Bing's Portrayal of Migrant Workers' Suspended Lives within the Contract Labour System
2021
Overview
This essay examines two films by the Chinese documentary filmmaker Wang Bing about temporary migrant workers in small, privately owned garment workshops in Zhejiang Province, China: Bitter Money (Ku Qian; 2016) and 15 Hours (Shi Wu Xiao Shi; 2017). Wang's
films portray Chinese garment workers' lived experiences of \"suspension,\" as defined by Biao Xiang in this issue, in unique cinematic ways. Social sciences have paid close attention to the experiences of migrant workers, but art documentaries use audiovisual and aesthetic means to explore
their everyday reality, producing what D. MacDougall calls distinctive \"affective knowledge.\" Wang's films are usually categorized as part of the Sixth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, known for capturing social issues through observational methods. In this essay, I identify Wang's works
with the aesthetics of \"slow cinema\" and a global documentary trend in the visual arts as theorized by T. J. Demos in The Migrant Image. Based on close observation coupled with empathetic insight, Wang develops his own subjective method to portray people in a transformed and still changing
China, where suspension is a common state of being. Ultimately, Wang's films not only make the personal experiences of migrant workers visible and tangible, but also problematize their underlying, collective condition of suspension due to the contract labour system and associated hypermobility.
The suspension approach suggests a productive way of bringing documentary art and social sciences into dialogue.
Publisher
Pacific Affairs, a division of the University of British,The University of British Columbia - Pacific Affairs,Pacific Affairs. The University of British Columbia
Subject
