The filmic narrative traces the work of human labor in China, mixing conceptual animation and several years of documentation footage from factories located in Southern China. The project renders and depicts the laboring body as the site of exchange between nature and society. Using Anson Rabinbach’s book on the Human Motor: energy, fatigue and the origins of the modernity as a backdrop on the implications of images of ‘labor power’ of 19th Century thought, ‘Human Motor: narratives from the assembly line’, transforms this critique in a haptic, mesmerizing narrative between fact and fiction, production and consumption within contemporary China. The piece links three disparate sites: a toy factory in Dongguan, a paper factory in Heshan and a garment factory in Shenzhen.

Exhibited at the 4th International Architectural Biennale Ljubljana, Slovenia