WORK / LIVE 干活 Zhao Tao

If I Was the Village Chief 假如我是村长, 2017

Performance: election campaign, speech, banquet

Shanghai

Zhao Tao, a worker at the Beijing factory, imagines running for chief of his home village: posters, a public speech and a banquet at MCAM Shanghai.

If I Was the Village Chief 假如我是村长, image 1

A campaign for the village

The performance took place at MCAM Ming Museum in Shanghai during Precariat’s Meeting, the exhibition curated by Fu Liao Liao to which the Social Sensibility R&D Department was invited. After the opening, the curator asked several workers/artists from the Beijing factory to lead their own workshops, presentations and discussions open to the public.

Zhao Tao, born in 1987 in Zhangjiakou, paints valve actuators and trains new employees at Bernard Controls in Beijing. His work often returns to his home village in the mountains and its traditions. Here he imagined standing as chief of the village and staged an election campaign: a wall covered with posters bearing his portrait and a single word, 渴望 (“longing”), a speech to the public and a banquet shared with the guests, around bottles of 老村长 (“old village chief”) baijiu.

The speech, in Chinese, can be watched in the video below and heard in two parts in the audio tracks.