Cue China

It would be no exaggeration to say that the labor of Chinese factory workers makes up “the fabric of our lives.” We wear clothes made by them, we spend all day staring at screens assembled by them and we communicate through circuits soldered by them. With this projection, these unknown workers come up close to us. What happens if, following a simple hardware update, your computer screen shows only the face of someone involved in making that very computer? And what if he or she could also see you? Performer Ant Hampton made recordings of video chats between himself and several Chinese workers. In this installation, you look right into the eyes of the people behind the products that we take for granted every day. At times, Hampton’s face merges completely with those of the workers; at other times, they touch one another’s faces, as if trying to check whether it’s their own face they’re seeing or the other person’s. One man says that he has been poisoned in the factory and that he finally wants to tell someone about it. This chat turns out to be much more dangerous for him than for Hampton.