Lovers in a Hotpot

At a place called Boldogzsher, in the mountains of Hungary, lives an extraordinary family that has little to do with our realities. Itsvan and Reka are an artist couple with 5 children, which are all so unique characters that everything they do seems like a new life lesson. They actually live as in the past, its history may be taken from any fairy tale of 300 years ago, full of songs and rituals, live without electricity, practice sword and bow, and their 5 children do not attend school . Their goal: to be creators of a more real life. Their strategy: to escape from reality.

A ghostly image emerges in the dark, weakly lights up its surrounding —a city ruin awaits renewal. Deep in the darkness, a girl murmurs a scattered diary of her lonely soul amid the city life. An intimate archive of fleeting sensations amid China’s rapid urbanization, especially on the Urban-Village, one of the most drastic scenes of Chinese urbanization. It was realized with the collaboration of young urban-villagers in Guangzhou, China.

With a contemplative letter to a friend as its point of departure, this video essay examines the complex, paradoxical visuality of the atom bomb in China. From 1960s military documentaries to contemporary CGI-enhanced fictions, a visual trope of the communal “People’s Bomb” was orchestrated in counterpoint to the evils of imperialism and the untamed wilderness of the Gobi Desert. Amid the ecological crises of the Anthropocene, Letter to T suggests that despite the disenchantment with and the re-politicisation of the image, we might find radical sources of connection and endurance in nuclearity.

A woman in Ecuador reads a letter from her Chinese friend, telling her about the city Guangzhou and its special African enclave Xiaobei.