ELLEN LARSEN is a curator, designer, and writer who received her PhD from the University of Pittsburg, specializing in contemporary video art from China in 2022. She recently became the CAEA Postdoctoral Instructor in the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago. She earned a Chinese MA degree as a Chinese Government scholar focusing her studies on Modern Chinese History. Her writing has appeared in The Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, LEAP: International Art Magazine of Contemporary China, Carnegie International, 57th Edition: The Dispatch, and Contemporaneity Journal. She was the Associate Editor of Cao Fei: HX, published by the Serpentine Galleries, London.

Larson explores how Liu Yujia (b. 1980) engaged in research within China’s far western Xinjiang Province. Liu’s video works interrogate the dialectical tension between documentary reality and imagination within a Chinese socio-political context. She subtly reveals contemporary neocolonial conditions via the visual and textual layering of temporalities. She steps back and seriously considers how landscape distinguishes the work.

“Every time I describe a city, I am saying something about Venice. Memory’s images, once they are fixed in words, are erased. Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it. Or, perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little.”

— Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino

Since 2016, multimedia artist and filmmaker Liu Yujia (b. 1980) has engaged in research within China’s far western Xinjiang Province. Located almost 1,700 miles from her native Sichuan Province, Liu finds herself drawn to Xinjiang. She explains, “urban time is flat as we cannot read the layers of history” in rapidly developing Chinese cities such as Shanghai, Beijing, or Guangzhou. Rather, the past and the present are felt simultaneously in the ruins of this arid western region. Liu’s resulting projects, Black Ocean (2016) and Treasure Hunt (2021), attempt to liberate what has been buried beneath layers of wind and sand across time. For Liu, “history lies under the landscape.”

In Liu’s own words, she “reveals the fictional and illusory aspects of social reality” within the particular context of place, thus blurring boundaries between reality and fiction. Liu describes the influence of W.J.T. Mitchell’s writings on her exploration of “the vernacular landscape,” and the ways in which “social and subjective identities are formed.” She paraphrases Mitchell, stating her interests are in what landscape does, rather than what it is.

Liu’s 2016 Black Ocean—a nearly forty-minute video work, draws upon the dry and desolate landscape of western China. The video is shot within the Gobi Desert near the oil-rich city of Karamay ( ياماراق†; 克拉玛依†), located along the historic Silk Road. In 2016, Karamay hosted the Xinjinag Karamay Forum, aimed at promoting China’s ongoing Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructural development project launched by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013. Located roughly four hours northwest of Xinjiang’s capital .rümqi ( ىچمۈرۈئ†; 乌鲁木齐) by car, Karamay is home to the largest oil fields in China, providing energy not only for domestic consumption, but also exported to bordering nations as part of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Black Ocean is an industrial spectacle created through the extraction of natural resources. This peripheral environment fuels China’s rapid urban growth; yet, within this barren locale, time is demarcated only through slow, repetitive movements of machines and animals, both populated and controlled by a scant number of faceless humans. Liu’s lethargic shots are analogous to carefully composed landscape paintings, informed by her undergraduate studies in oil painting at the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts.

The video is accompanied by text drawn from Italo Calvino’s 1972 novel Invisible Cities, which imagines a lively banter between Venetian explorer Marco Polo and Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan:

“The city is but a dreamscape... you can dream of anything that you can imagine.”

“The city you describe does not exist, perhaps it will also not exist in the future.”

“Your Majesty, the city itself must not be confused with its description in language.”

“However, there is a relationship between the two.”

“The invisible landscape determines the visual landscape.”

“From now on, I shall describe the city.”

“And you are traveling to confirm whether it truly exists.”

“I want to collect these vanished landscapes.”

“They cannot be reconstructed.”

“Nor can they be remembered.”

With the addition of Calvino’s text, Liu presents the reality of this western landscape as fiction. Towards the beginning of the video, the accompanying text, as if referring to the juxtaposed moving images, reads, “It is built atop a deep, subterranean sea… on the perimeter lies an invisible coastline.” “It lacks the vertical space of a metropolis… it is flat, like a desert. The surface extends into infinity.” Moments later, the following text, “The dark, light-like fluid, like silk. The water appears to tremble from the inside” appears against the silhouettes of two holding tank-like structures at dusk. The neon glow of a dimly lit emergency light illuminates the fa.ade of an adjacent building. Images of pipelines laid across the ground resonate especially with Calvino’s text: “A silver pipe divides it in two… it expands in all directions.” With the addition of excerpts from Invisible Cities, the artist weaves together fiction and reality in tandem with one another.

The video’s title remarks upon the vast oil reserves located beneath the surface of the Earth, a literal black ocean of sorts. The sand dunes look like video stills of choppy ocean waves crashing into one another during a storm. Within this physical periphery, the changing relationship between text, image, and associated meaning is a metaphor for the elastic ebbing and flowing of water and shore amidst the ever changing tides. Like Liu’s treatment of fiction and reality, there is no clear demarcation in terms of where one ends and the other begins.

Black Ocean is photographed with lethargic, wide-angle perspectives. This peripheral region is presented as out of time with urban spaces home to most living in China today, confusing the viewer’s sense of time and space. The surrounding environment is an energy utopia, yet markedly dystopian. It could be situated in the present but could also seemingly take place in the future; on planet Earth, or in a faraway galaxy.

Repetition, along with the banality of passing time is found in the repetitive motion of oil pumpjacks as they plunge into the earth, a procession of identical buses on a long stretch of highway, the endless rotation found in a valley of windmills, and even the force of one worker’s shovel as it relentlessly drives into the ground. Machines overwhelm much of the natural landscape, and at the same time, are themselves consumed by the vastness of this empty desert environment.

A row of weather-beaten industrial buildings stands behind an oxidizing iron fence. Liu’s languid shots engage in dialogue with the aesthetics of slowness. She explains that within this region of Xinjiang, time moves more slowly, remarking how it takes years of sand and wind to create landforms. This kind of slow-moving time conflicts with shots of buses driving across the static frame one after another after another. Liu suggests that these buses which transport workers from the oil fields to their temporary residences is an example of “corporation time.” In a subtle nod to Slavoj Žižek’s critique of capitalist temporalities—in which he references a graveyard of abandoned airplanes left in the Mojave Desert—Liu documents abandoned materials left in ruin as the result of extractive capitalism within this peripheral region.

Black Ocean shares visual similarities with LA-based Kordae Jatafa Henry’s Earth Mother, Sky Father, a video that begins with footage of a technologically sophisticated industrial shipping yard located in the coastal city of Qingdao, China. As massive cranes methodically load shipping containers like Tetris pieces onto a barge, an accompanying voice-over prefaces, “on the shores of China lay minerals colonized from Afrikan soil and made into technology—consumed by the world.” Like in Black Ocean, this introductory scene illustrates not only current neo-colonial relations between China and other countries, but also current socio-economic implications of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. 

The scene suddenly shifts to a different shoreline located an ocean and a continent away. The year is 2030. We learn that the Republic of Congo has emancipated itself from the export of precious mineral resources to China. Instead, the country is refining its raw metals on African land and, according to the video’s narrator, “building its wealth from the ground.” An excavation programmer appears dressed in a red clay colored jumpsuit, like the arid earthy hues of his surrounding natural environment. This dry desert landscape shares an uncanny resemblance to many of the shots in Liu’s Black Ocean.

Earth Mother, Sky Father speaks to contemporary conditions which shape the mining of natural mineral resources in the Republic of Congo today. At the same time, Kordae Jatafa Henry imagines a future no longer commodified and stripped of material wealth and agency. According to the artist, 16% of columbite (found in mobile phones, computers, cameras, and automotive electronics) is excavated by hand in the Congo before being shipped to countries like China for manufacturing. This means that, according to the artist, “black bodies touch technology before it’s technology,” and are therefore seen in “equilibrium with technology.” Embracing this metaphor, Henry’s speculative filmmaking portrays humans and machines engaged in domestic production and consumption as coeval entities. The video’s protagonist draws upon mythologies from the past to reclaim possible futures, in which, as the artist explains in a statement, “the pillage of the land is over.”

Analogous to Earth Mother, Sky Father, Liu Yujia’s 2021 fifty-six-minute film Treasure Hunt employs desert and material extractivism as both narrative and metaphor. Like Black Ocean, Treasure Hunt was filmed in Xinjiang, presenting footage captured during the summer of 2009 and winter 2019. While the earlier footage focuses on the regions of Kashgar ( ; رەقشەق 喀什) and Hotan ( نەتوخ†; 和田), the latter follows individuals

searching for precious jade amidst the landscapes of Hotan and parts of the Taklimakan Desert. The resulting work reveals over a decade of environmental transformation within these southern regions of Xinjiang Province. In addition, the artist remarks that aspects of religious culture have vanished over the past several years, including large group gatherings and dress, which are no longer permitted. The artist’s sensitivities towards time are of profound significance.

Like Black Ocean, Treasure Hunt layers text over slow long angle shots of snow-capped mountains, foregrounded by barren grasslands. Blades of grass shiver in the wind, accompanying a low, portentous soundtrack. The camera looks out over a rugged vista along the Kunlun Mountains. The film’s narrator explains, “steep valleys and jagged mountains extend downward,” concealing the Yulong Kash River below. As the film continues, it becomes apparent that Liu is drawing from the writings of European colonial explorers Aurel Stein and Sven Hedin, penned over a century ago.

Colonial expeditions by Stein and Hedin are indicative of attempts at western colonial expansionism throughout central Asia, including parts of what is now Xinjiang Province. Threatened by the Russian annexation of regions south of Siberia, the British were eager to gain control of western Xinjiang in order to protect a strategic mountain pass which connected China to India and current day Afghanistan, already part of British colonial hegemony. Stein’s explorations of ancient ruins within this region of central Asia not only offer a clearer picture of the history of Buddhist mobility and exchange along the Silk Road, but also serve as an example of British imperialist expansion, and pillaging of ancient relics and texts, many of which are still in British collections. Throughout his travels, Stein engaged in the careful survey of territories which contributed to a series of high-precision mappings of the Tarim Basin. His diaries reveal detailed observations of climate, geography, ethnographic information, and cultural conditions.

Stein unearthed myriad rare and priceless cultural artifacts, including murals, texts, statues, and other objects. His team engaged in the difficult task of removing these fragile objects from their desert resting place and transporting them first to Delhi, then to British Cultural Institutions. The British Museum erected a Stein Chamber, which still stores important cultural relics uncovered in the Taklimakan Desert.

Following an exhaustive period of research, Treasure Hunt stitches together footage acquired during two different research trips, with the addition of black and white archival photographs of Stein’s journeys. Like Black Ocean, combined text and image offer new narrative possibilities. As an example, while the camera pans over a seemingly endless expanse of desert, the narrator says, “the vast, fascinating changes in scenery will always linger in my memory… On the so-called ‘treasure hunt,’ one must rely on luck to uncover precious materials from the ruins buried in quicksand.” Within the context of Stein’s writings, we might understand such “treasures” as historic Buddhist texts, cave grottos, and murals. The narrator observes, “cities buried beneath the desert of storms, never explored again,” perhaps nodding to cities detailed in Calvino’s Invisible Cities. Visually, we see footage of women, digging through rubble, in search of precious jade fragments. The narrator then details the ancient practice of sifting through the riverbed for jade after the summer floods are carried upstream in the valley along the Yulong Kash River, once again offering a non-contemporary connection between text and image.

Archival images capture local guides tending to horses in the desert. The narrator shares how the 7th century Chinese monk explorer Xuanzang (玄奘) was abandoned by his guide in the middle of the Taklamakan. Time collapses, and at once, we may imagine figures across time, all moving through this harsh, unforgiving place.Liu identifies her own research interests as inspired by “national tradition and religious culture (which) are gradually vanishing, (along with the) overexploitation of pictorial scenery and fragmented landscape.” Liu addresses this region’s colonial history in which western treasure hunters plundered priceless centuries-old relics, murals, and other Silk Road objects. At the same time, she notes additional changes that have taken place in this region between 2009 and 2019. Footage from the summer of 2009 captures members of the majority Muslim Uyghur ethnic group, native to Xinjiang. Women appear in headscarves and long skirts which reach their ankles. Their lightweight garments sway in the wind as they gaze out across the seemingly endless desert. A man wearing a Muslim kufi hat stands in the foreground, bathed in summer sunlight. Green desert plants blossom under blue skies and puffy white clouds.

The next scene sharply shifts to winter 2019. Men, along with women who are no longer wearing headscarves, peruse the stony ground, searching for jade despite the winter cold. Nearby, the sounds of construction equipment drill into the earth and a large white building complex is visible in the distance. As these individuals search for jade, the narrator describes non-native treasure hunters who come to this region in search of precious objects. They are described as “terrible plunderers of the land.” The following footage captures a Uyghur man trying to sell a jade bracelet to a group of Han Chinese, who are uninterested in the item and shoo the man away.

The final scene occurs in a lively Xinjiang jade market. Men and women with phones, livestreaming jade sales with local sellers. People crowd around as potential buyers sift through boxes of jade, haggling with sellers. They argue about size, clarity, fineness, and color. A man examines a piece of jade in his hand before offering 200RMB to a Uyghur vendor. The vendor, who speaks Mandarin with an accent, counters with 1500RMB. Holding a smartphone, the potential buyer exclaims, “Allow me to save face!” The two finally settle on 300RMB. The buyer immediately proceeds to sell the jade via livestream on his phone.

Rather than prioritizing the universal, Liu Yujia is drawn to specificity, creating complicated narratives shaped by present conditions in Xinjinag, while at the same time underscoring continuities that persist across time. Like Kordae Jatafa Henry, Liu Yujia’s recent video practice blends together nonlinear temporalities to challenge neocolonial conditions of power, capital, cultural homogenization, and planetary degradation and depletion. For both Liu, and Henry, landscape is a medium that can uncover buried histories, or reveal worlds yet to come.

Critical to Liu’s ongoing practice, the artist interrogates multiple coeval notions of time: central and peripheral; documentary and fictitious; remembered and forgotten; above and below ground. She nods to historic, religious, and imaginary Silk Road sojourns of the past, while simultaneously making a great leap forward into the future, with viewers meandering somewhere in between.