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Cao Fei: rethinking spatial dynamics discourse

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Cao Fei: rethinking spatial dynamics discourse

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Content Cao Fei: Rethinking Spatial dynamics discourse
by
Rueichen Tsai
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSKI SCHOOL OF ART AND DESIGN
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(CURATORIAL PRACTICES AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE)
May 2023
Copyright 2023 Rueichen Tsai
ii

Acknowledgments
I am grateful to my esteemed supervisors, Dr. Jenny Lin, Dr. Andy Campbell, and Dr. Annette
Kim, for their invaluable advice and all their help with this thesis, without whom I would not
have been able to complete this thesis. Their insightful knowledge and advice from both
contemporary art and urban studies have deeply influenced my research. I would like to
express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Jenny Lin, the chair of the thesis committee, who has
helped me expand my research with her immense knowledge of Chinese contemporary art
and supported me throughout my graduate program. I enjoyed taking four courses with
Professor Andy Campbell during my graduate program, who has created an inclusive learning
environment for students to engage in reading discussions. Taking these courses with
Professor Andy Campbell significantly influenced my critical thinking skills.
iii

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments......................................................................................................................ii
Introduction................................................................................................................................1
Chapter One: RMB City.............................................................................................................3
Chapter Two: Whose Utopia……………………....................................................................23
Chapter Three: Futures and Conclusions……………..............................................................33
Bibliography.............................................................................................................................37
Appendix of Figure..................................................................................................................43

1

Introduction
Capitalism, in tandem with globalization, mass production, and social stratification,
has shaped the spatial structure of contemporary China. Responding to socioeconomic shifts,
contemporary Chinese artists use diverse forms and materials to reflect the increasing
momentum of globalization, rapid urban change, and hyper-consumerism that have and
continue to shape China. This thesis provides an overview of artist Cao Fei’s trans-
disciplinary practice as it relates to the increasing momentum of China’s process of
globalization and societal change, with a focus on spatial dynamics.
1
Furthermore, spatial
dynamics can be understood through French philosopher Henri Lefebvre’s spatial theory, he
proposes that “([s]ocial) space is a (social) product,”
2
wherein space is defined by the social
relation itself. “Social relations, which are concrete abstractions, have no real existence save
in and through space. Their underpinning is spatial.”
3
Given that Cao Fei’s artistic practice is
multidimensional, this thesis similarly, utilizes a multifaceted approach in examining her
works through the varied lenses of new media art, urban symbolism, the production of space,
art reenactment and urban geography. Focusing on three case studies, this thesis aims to
reveal the fine details and the powerful contextualized spatial dynamics of Cao Fei’s works,
in which she theorizes and creates tangible and virtual space. The first chapter examines Cao
Fei’s RMB City (2008-2011) and delves deep into her multidimensional
4
artistic practice
addressing social change in contemporary China’s landscape ─ spanning tangible and digital
worlds. Chapter Two focuses on Cao Fei’s video production, Whose Utopia (2006), in which
she probes into the depths of factory workers’ mental landscapes. The final chapter looks into

1
Spatial dynamics referred to the force that shapes the relationship between the human being and space, which
is intrinsic to any relationship. Cao Fei reveals this force which exists in the social milieu and reinterprets
through her artistic praxis in RMB City, Whose Utopia, and Asia One.
2
Henri Lefebvre, The production of space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 26.
3
Ibid, 404.
4
Multidimensional includes the wide range of social issues that Cao Fei probes into, the audience participation
experience, and multi-media.
2

Asia One (2018), in which Cao Fei explores the dynamics of logistical space, and offers
conclusions and future speculations. This thesis attempts to provide a new way to
comprehend spatial discourses in Cao Fei’s works.
3

Chapter One: RMB City

Cao Fei, born in Guangzhou, is a Chinese contemporary artist who specializes in
utilizing multimedia approaches—primarily video, photography, and performance—to
respond to China's rapid social change and process of globalization. Guangzhou (also known
as Canton), a southern China city located in the Pearl River Delta Metropolitan Region, has
played a crucial role in China’s economic development. The region harbors disproportionate
manufacturing activities built around three rivers, and was a leading area during China’s
reform and opening-up.
5
Born in 1978, the same year that China’s reform and opening-up
came into effect, Cao Fei grew up under the influence of China’s economic boom, social
transformation, and increasing global pop cultural influences, including American pop music
and Japanese anime. Both, American pop music and Japanese anime have profoundly
affected Cao Fei’s keen artistic focus on rapid social and cultural change, urbanization, and
social pressures. As Cao Fei describes “[p]op culture is what I experienced in the ‘90s and
pop music is indeed so universal as to efficiently reach everybody. Of course, I am able to
combine it with complicated narratives that I build in the virtual stage.”
6

Cao Fei’s artistic career path was ignited in her early 20s thanks to Imbalance 257
(1999). She was invited to first internationally show her video work Imbalance 257, in an
exhibition in Spain in 1999 when she was still a student at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine
Arts. The video depicts a group of Chinese college students anxious about what the future
holds, resulting in hormonal imbalance, mutually enforcing the vicious cycle of malaise.
Academic stress is one of the social pressures that has long plagued students in China due to
the nation’s competitive university entrance examination, also known as Gaokao. The

5
Jiang Xu and Anthony GO Yeh, "Guangzhou," Cities 20, no. 5 (2003).
6
Cao Fei, "FlashArt, Jan 2010 on ‘RMB City Opera’," RMB City, 2010, http://rmbcity.com/2010/01/flashart-
jan-2010-on-rmb-city-opera/.
4

entrance examination was first introduced in 1952, canceled and replaced by a new admission
policy in 1966, but then resumed in 1978. Academic pressure comes from the belief that the
examination result determines one’s fate. Educational researchers Wei Li and Yuxin Li point
out that one of the social indicators for a successful family is the college their children attend.
Furthermore, the percentage of students going to colleges is seen as linked to political
performance, thus equally important as the GDP.
7
The anxiety among college students partly
comes from the harsh competition of getting a decent job after college graduation. Decent
jobs are mostly secured by people who go to first or second-tier colleges in China. As such, a
year of studying hard spent in college might have the value of five years in a good job; the
rate of return can be scaled up in the future. In contemporary China, slang terms used by this
generation reflect the generations’ desperate and exasperated attitudes towards the future;
“involution” and “lying flat,” for example, are popular terms used among the generation that
reflect the culture of overworking and the desire to relax.
8
While Cao Fei’s early works
focused on the desperation of China’s new generation, born and brought up with the
country’s embrace of global capitalism, she herself worked hard as an artist and began
circulating globally.
In 2008, Cao Fei and Vitamin Creative Space launched RMB City, an online art
community on the Second Life platform, which was open to the public from 2009 until the
end of 2011. RMB is the abbreviated term “renminbi,” a literal translation of “people’s
money,” which is China’s official currency. Cao Fei and her team dedicated a year to project
planning and six months to constructing the virtual city. RMB City was completed with
support from Swiss art collector Uli Sigg, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA), and
individual sponsor Christiane Leister. Project partners included Louis Vuitton Foundation,

7
Wei Li and Yuxin Li, "An Analysis on Social and Cultural Background of the Resistance for China's Education
Reform and Academic Pressure," International Education Studies 3, no. 3 (2010).
8
Ruoquan Jiang, "The Psychological Effects of Involution on China’s Rising Generation" (paper presented at
the 2022 5th International Conference on Humanities Education and Social Sciences (ICHESS 2022), 2022).
5

Shiseido, and the collaborator Serpentine Gallery. Corporate sponsorship plays an essential
role in providing funding for the art-making process and exhibitions, thus lessening the
financial burden on artists and art spaces. Both taker and giver benefit from sponsorship in
terms of economics; this relationship can enhance corporate brand identity when both the
artists and the brands utilize similar methods to promote an idea or product. For instance,
Japanese cosmetics company Shiseido launched a delicate skin program in 2009 to promote a
skincare brand for sensitive skin. The program provided an interactive touch panel “Peace
Mirror” that allowed customers to determine their skin type and the skincare products that
suited their needs after uploading their headshots at Shiseido’s on-site booth and answering
six questions.
9
The Shiseido Gallery held a Cao Fei solo exhibition, Live in RMB City, in the
same year. In this case, Shiseido seized the opportunity to connect with RMB City, which can
be seen as a gesture of both promoting art, as well as recruiting the users of RMB City as
potential customers who have an explicit interest in seeing the potential of technology. The
idea of leveraging technology to bring products to people’s lives is a theme that runs through
both Shiseido’s interactive program and RMB City, which similarly provides a digital
platform that enriches people’s social life. The collaboration between Shiseido and Cao Fei
opened up the opportunities to introduce their own users to each other; the benefits of
collaboration of appealing visitors and increasing institution’s visibility can be applied to
other stakeholders of RMB City. The utilization of corporate sponsorship towards a project
that appears somewhat critical of capitalism reveals paradoxes common in the field of
contemporary Chinese art.
10
Simultaneously, within China, where museums are often state-
owned and subject to strict censorship laws, corporate sponsorships can offer artists more
artistic freedom.

9
"Shiseido D-Program Skincare: Peace Mirror," 2009, http://www.adeevee.com/2009/03/shiseido-d-program-
skincare-peace-mirror-media/.
10
See art historian Jenny Lin’s discussion of such paradoxes in "Above sea: Contemporary art, urban culture,
and the fashioning of global Shanghai," (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019).
6

Second Life is an online platform that allows participants to create avatars and
interact with others. Praised as an avantgarde urban planning project, RMB City was an online
urbanization project related to socialism and capitalism, creating a community in a virtual
space, replete with Chinese landmarks, such as the Oriental Pearl TV Tower of Shanghai, and
the Olympic “Bird Nest” Stadium, and the flaming chimney, the inclusion of which alludes to
urban development. The grand opening of RMB City in January 2009 was accompanied by
China Tracy’s (Cao Fei’s online avatar) speech. Cao Fei characterizes RMB City as “a
condensed incarnation of contemporary Chinese cities with most of their characteristics; a
series of new Chinese fantasy realms that are highly self-contradictory, inter-permeative, pan-
political, extremely entertaining, and laden with irony and suspicion.”
11
As Erdem puts it,
RMB City serves as an entry point into the exploration of China’s obsession with urban
development: “[t]he best way to negotiate a space of personal freedom within it is perhaps to
appropriate this as a given condition and exaggeratedly utilize it to an excessive degree,
exposing its overabundance and even absurdity to the public gaze.”
12

In the RMB City Manifesto, Cao Fei puts the subheading, RMB–to be ReMember, and
states, “RMB City is not a city of magical mirror, it doesn’t restore the full present, nor does it
recall our reminiscence of the past. It’s a mirror that partially reflects; we see where we were
coming from, discover some of the ‘connections’ that fill the pale zone between the real and
the virtual, the clues of which get disturbed, enriched, and polished. New orders are born, so
are new, strange wisdom.”
13
The first physical exhibition of Cao Fei’s Second Life project
came to the public in an inflatable pavilion entitled China Tracy Pavilion in the form of the
Virgin Garden (a setting in Second Life) at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007. RMB City: A
Second Life City Planning is a video that depicts the life of Cao Fei’s avatar in RMB City,

11
Cao Fei. 2008. "RMB City — Online Urbanization." Vitamin Creative Space. https://rmbcity.com/about/.
12
Ceren Erdem. 2012. "RMB City: Spectatorship on the boundaries of the virtual and the real." interventions.
13
Cao Fei, "City Manifesto," RMB City, 2009, http://rmbcity.com/about/city-manifesto/.
7

first presented at the 10th Istanbul Biennale. The RMB City video was available to the public
through laptops at the Istanbul Biennale, which were also used to access RMB City through
Second Life. At the end of 2007, Cao Fei’s work was presented at Art Basel Miami Beach. On
March 20, 2009, celebrating RMB City’s reinstallation at the Serpentine Gallery in London,
Cao Fei was interviewed by curators Julia Peyton Jones and Hans Ulrich Obrist, through their
respective avatars in RMB City. Since then, it has traveled globally and been presented at
institutions and biennales mostly in cities in the United States and Europe.
The 52nd Venice Biennale was the very first international exhibition that RMB City
was presented at, as documented on RMB City’s online archive. Being invited to participate
in the Venice Biennale is instrumental to increasing an artist’s visibility, thus increasing an
artist’s chance to collaborate with galleries and museums. The Biennale’s impact on artists’
careers is profound. Cultural sociology scholar Olav Velthuis observed ‘the Venice Effect,’
whereby presenting at a prestigious international art fair signals that the artists’ art-making
quality is legitimized and validated by the artworld and art market, thus to shaping art
collectors’ taste.
14
He further articulates that “showing in Venice speeds up sales, gets artistic
careers going, cranks up price levels and helps artists land a dealer ranked higher in the
market’s hierarchy.”
15
Prestige and economic benefit go hand-in-hand.
French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu points out the conversion between different types
of capital and that there are some goods and services that can be obtained only through the
conversion of social capital.
16
After RMB City’s first appearance at the Venice Biennale, it
was shown in Turkey, Norway, the United States, China, France, and Japan, to name only a
few. It was not a coincidence that Cao Fei was invited to present RMB City on both sides of
the Atlantic and in China between 2007 to 2010 after Cao Fei’s appearance at the Venice

14
Olav Velthuis, "The venice effect," The Art Newspaper 20, no. 225 (2011): 22.
15
Velthuis, "The venice effect," 22.
16
Pierre Bourdieu, "The forms of capital," in The sociology of economic life (Routledge, 2018), 24.
8

Biennale. Cultural studies scholar Katya Johanson found that “more established artists appear
in a greater proportion of international and solo exhibitions after their appearance at the
Biennale, suggesting that the quality of exhibition opportunities increases as a result of their
exposure at Venice.”
17

In addition, being at international art fairs allows emerging artists to interact with
other more experienced or established artists and curators. It also provides an opportunity to
exchange ideas about new art-making techniques formally—at the art fair—and informally –
outside the art fair. This is especially true considering that biennales usually last for months.
Secondly, art fairs serve as an efficient platform to match like-minded artists with curators
and connoisseurs of art. Thirdly, art fairs provide an avenue that allows galleries to share
facilities during the event, saving significant time and transportation costs for both presenters
and visitors without travelling around the world to appreciate art in-person. These three
characteristics of international art fairs echo the three mechanisms of urban agglomeration
economies: Sharing, Matching and Learning.
18
Though international art fairs take place
during certain times of the year at specific locations, they can be seen as a form of
agglomeration economies
19
as they occur globally and occasionally.
As for experiencing RMB City, participants could create their own avatars and wander
through the virtual world, hang out, chat, or even dance with others through their avatars. In
addition, participants could be invited to the mayor's inaugural speech, treasure hunting, and
film festivals. RMB City was more than an artwork; it was a lively community hosting
interactive events.

17
Katya Johanson et al., "Is there a ‘Venice Effect’? Participation in the Venice Biennale and the implications
for artists’ careers," Poetics 92 (2022).
18
Diego Puga, "The magnitude and causes of agglomeration economies," Journal of regional science 50, no. 1
(2010).
19
Agglomeration economies refers to the benefits that come into play when firms and people locate near each
other.
9

RMB City was a bustling city, swamped with avatars and oversaturated with signature
architectures, including the Three Gorges reservoir, Tian’anmen Rostrum, and the Grand
National Theatre, to name a few. Landmarks are crucial to constructing a place’s overall
identity. RMB City was built in relation to China’s environment and used various signifiers to
evoke that. However, the process of constructing RMB City was challenging and had various
surprises and problems to solve. Cao Fei described three major challenges experienced
through the management of RMB City. The first challenge was dealing with technical issues.
She explained that there weren’t many multimedia teams familiar with the Second Life
platform although it was a global technological trend at the time. The Second Life platform
was launched in 2003, had undergone rapid growth for years, and reached one million regular
users by 2013.
20
According to Cao Fei, technical barriers prevented herself and her team from
building a gaming city on the platform due to the work involved in coding and programming.
Fortunately, they located a Filipino production team, Avatarian, and a U.K. based
team, Sine Wave Entertainment, to work on RMB City for 3D modeling and the construction
of the virtual city. She pointed out that the workflow for the entire project was built through
remote working, and the conversations about facilitating and managing the project had been
conducted through their online avatars. They never met each other in real life. In addition,
globalized modes of working were essential to the success of RMB City, which was made
possible through the Internet in this case. As such, RMB City would not exist if there weren’t
transnational collaborations. The second challenge was securing funding for the project. Due
to the uncertainty of the project’s end result, they reached out to museums, institutions, and
collectors to invest in the project instead of acquiring or collecting it. Besides, Cao Fei’s team
had rented a server for five years to maintain the digital land for RMB City. As she recalled,

20
"Infographic: 10 Years of Second Life," 2013, https://www.lindenlab.com/releases/infographic-10-years-of-
second-life.
10

the server and its maintenance were expensive. They bought four digital islands and merged
them into an interconnected land for the project. The third challenge was the operation.
Operating costs included renting a studio in Beijing and paying an offline team consisting of
six people.
21

Next to a tilted Oriental Pearl TV Tower leaning against skyscrapers, a single gigantic
bicycle wheel alludes to China’s important role in the global bicycle manufacturing supply
chain. The wheel is described as a Ferris wheel on the RMB City website, hence why many
journal articles and dissertations refer to it as “the Ferris wheel,” however, Cao Fei reveals
that it is a Chinese bicycle wheel in an interview.
22
Further setting the scene of RMB City:
water gushes out from the Three Gorges Reservoir, which is adjacent to the rear of a building
in Tiananmen Square, juxtaposed with a huge crane suspended mid-air, lifting steel framing.
Hovering jets accompanied by missiles launching out of the floating military base insinuates
the tension of cross-strait relations (Taiwan-China relations) borne out of a drifting shopping
cart loaded with the Taiwanese landmark Taipei 101 building, a Guanyin (the Chinese
translation of Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara) statue, and high-rise buildings.
The flying missiles, jets, and cross-strait relations, not only evokes China-Taiwan
geopolitical tensions, but also elicits an older generation’s emotional response to the Third
Taiwan Strait Crisis during 1995 and 1996. The Third Taiwan Strait Criss took place when
the People’s Republic of China test-launched two sets of missiles in response to Taiwan
moving away from the One-China policy and Taiwan’s democratic presidential election in
1996. Consequently, the U.S. government intervened and sent two U.S. Navy carrier battle

21
"Gamescapes: Cao Fei recalls ‘RMB City’, the virtual world, and its future," STIRworld, updated August 25,
2020, 2020, accessed December 15, 2022, https://www.stirworld.com/think-opinions-gamescapes-cao-fei-
recalls-rmb-city-the-virtual-world-and-its-future.
22
"Interview with Cao Fei," 2016, accessed December 23, 2022,
https://www.thewhitereview.org/feature/interview-with-cao-fei/.
11

groups to respond to the crisis. These symbolic elements stand as a monument to rapid urban
development and China’s geopolitical relation to Taiwan.
The way Cao Fei lays out RMB City, overabundant with symbols of iconic Chinese
buildings, reflects the dynamic of China’s urbanization, globalization, and politics. RMB City
is a light-hearted creation of the artist’s experiences commenting on China’s rapid
urbanization; of note, Cao Fei grew up in an era of China’s reform and opening up. Hu Fang,
the artistic director of Vitamin Creative Space, insists, “Second Life is precisely a way back to
reality. It depends on the re-understanding of both capital and reality. In the end, capital gets
[a] new space of circulation, and people get new way[s] of communication.”
23
Second Life
changed the way in which people socialize and capital runs.
24
Urban studies scholar Eric
Heikkila points out that contributing factors to China’s urbanization include the “transition to
a market-driven economy, political devolution, demographic changes, globalization, and
technological change.”
25
He further indicates that the dramatic urban restructuring in China
had responded to changes in transportation technology. The dynamic of urbanization is “part
of an interrelated set of mutualities that feed on each other while transforming each other.”
26

The Chinese symbols in RMB City, including the Forbidden City, desolate factory, stretched-
out villages, and so forth, represent the footprint of globalization left in China.
China’s urbanization and modernization are not only embodied in the motley
assortment of Chinese symbols but also the proximity of these symbols in RMB City. Cao Fei
lists out the names of these Chinese landmarks and the interactions among landmarks that
allows viewers to better understand the dynamic of RMB City:
In RMB City, we will be able to cruise the digital ocean, witness a Ferris wheel
rotating on top of the Monument to the People’s Heroes; look down from the sky on

23
Cao Fei, "The Weight of the Unbearable Lightness in Reality, a Skype Conversation between Hu Fang and
Jiang Jun," Vitamin Creative Space, 2007, http://rmbcity.com/2007/10/the-weight-of-the-unbearable-lightness-
in-reality/.
24
Note that users of Second Life can acquire Linden dollars ─ the virtual currency, by paying U.S. dollars.
25
Heikkila, "Three questions regarding urbanization in China."
26
Ibid.
12

the water of the Three Gorges Reservoir gushing out of the Tian’anmen rostrum; pass
the giant new totem symbolizing the Oriental Pearl TV Tower of Shanghai; hop over
the Feilai Temple marooned in a raging torrent; walk across a vast, desolate state-
owned factory area in Northeast China; and finally hover over the Grand National
Theatre in Beijing [. . . ]We will see water flowing into huge toilets on the container
piers of the Pearl River Delta area [. . .] The rusted steel structure of the Olympic
Stadium aka “Bird’s Nest” will be washed in splashes of ocean spray [. . .] a
deafening noise that shakes Rem Koolhaas’ CCTV building, causing it to collapse.
27

The landmarks in RMB City are concentrated on a digital island in Second Life, and the way
Cao Fei lays out these names of landmarks one after another represents the overcrowded
urban landscapes and fast-paced social changes in China. If we only view RMB City without
referring back to the location of these landmarks in real life, we miss a chance to better grasp
the role of rapid social change that Cao Fei attempts to address. For example, one must take
several days to travel between these landmarks in real life, however, with an avatar in the
RMB City, travelling from the Oriental Pearl TV Tower to Feilai Temple and stopping by
Pearl River Delta Region or Three Gorges Reservoir can be done within three minutes. The
travel time needed in real life contrasts with the time needed in RMB City, echoing the
concept of time-space convergence (fig. 1.1). Time-space convergence refers to the
diminished travel time between locations resulting from innovations in telecommunications
and transport.
28

Analyzing Cao Fei’s work allows us to take a glance at the rapid urban development
and transformation in China, which thrived under state capitalism. At a granular level, one of
the economic engines that drives China’s fast-paced development and change is the 996
working hour system. Most people from mainland China are familiar with the 996 system,
which describes the system of working from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm, six days a week. It is
widely adopted in the Chinese tech industry, which claims to be a primary contributor to
China’s industrial boom. Jack Ma, the founder of leading e-commerce company Alibaba,

27
Cao Fei, "RMB City — Online Urbanization," Vitamin Creative Space, 2008, https://rmbcity.com/about/.
28
Jean-Paul Rodrigue, "The Geography of Transport Systems (3rd ed.)," (2013), https://doi.org/https://doi-
org.libproxy2.usc.edu/10.4324/9780429346323.
13

never shies away from endorsing the contentious 996 work culture publicly, though it violates
China’s labor laws that allow employees to work a maximum of 44 hours per week. The
working culture is the whip of state capitalism that penetrates individuals’ everyday lives.
Laborers who live with 996 culture not only put themselves under surveillance by capitalism,
but are enslaved to quasi-endless laboring, rendering themselves as inmates of the system.
Cao Fei has also been influenced by Japanese pop culture, and could be claim that the
helter-skelter arrangement of the architectural landmarks in RMB City resembles the
animation of Howl’s Moving Castle (1986) − Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki’s film
loosely based on English author Diana Wynne Jones’s Howl’s Moving Castle. The novel and
film feature Calcifer, a fire demon who used to be a falling star before being swallowed by
and a wizard named Howl, who ultimately makes a mysterious contract with him. Both RMB
City and the character of “Calcifer” may be seen as metaphors of China’s booming state
capitalism and rapid urban development that has made the nation the second largest economy
in the world.
As Cao Fei recalled, the intention of creating RMB City was idealistic and
aspirational, in that the digital world would be the future. The artist felt a need to transfer
real-life content to the digital world, and, in collaboration with art galleries and institutions,
to establish a virtual cultural and artistic ecosystem beyond geographical boundaries.
29
The
zeal for virtual reality can be traced back to the 1990s and has been an investment-attracting
industry since then. Virtual reality is still very popular and one of the most fervent believers is
Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta. Meta has been spending billions of dollars on
its virtual reality project for the past few years. With the continual innovation of technology,
both, the gaming and artistic communities have been similarly advancing and taking
advantage of the various new technologies. Liao points out that new media art is more than a

29
Nair, "Gamescapes: Cao Fei recalls ‘RMB City’, the virtual world, and its future."
14

tool but a cultural interface connecting humans, technology, and culture.
30
To understand new
media art, one must consider the content and medium as it combines to form the interface. As
in understanding the distribution of cultural information in the context of new media art, we
no longer interact with computer-based technology but the “culture encoded in digital
form.”
31
Manovich explains that “files,” “folders” and so forth are the metaphors for the
organization of computer data that allow users to arrange data on the computer. Cultural data
and information refer to photos, films, music, or texts in the virtual environment.
32
Adding a
layered understanding of new media art in viewing RMB City, Cao Fei’s work goes beyond
the form of encoded culture in the virtual world. It is the capsule of Cao Fei’s encoded
ideology reflecting social change and urban development in the form of art in the virtual
world. Through the lens of architectural analysis, Braester praises RMB City, as it
“exemplifies the unique experience offered by new media” and suggests that “[w]ithin the
parameters of VR, RMB City enjoys a liminal status between [a] construction site and [a]
scale model.”
33

In the influential essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
(1935), German philosopher Walter Benjamin claims that mechanical reproduction destroys
the “aura” of original work by rendering the reproduction’s time and place different from the
original’s previously defined presence. For instance, the ancient statue of Venus gains its
unique aura from its original ancient Greek context, where it was treated as an object of
veneration. However, for the clerics of the Middle Ages, Venus was treated as an ominous

30
Christine L Liao, "Avatars, Second Life, and new media art: The challenge for contemporary art education,"
Art Education 61, no. 2 (2008).
31
Lev Manovich Lev, The Language of New Media, vol. 1st MIT Press pbk. ed, Leonardo, (Cambridge, Mass:
The MIT Press, 2002), Book, 70.
https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=138702&authtype=sso&custid=s8983984.
32
Ibid.
33
Yomi Braester, "The architecture of utopia: From Rem Koolhaas’ scale models to RMB city," Spectacle and
the City: Chinese Urbanities in Art and Popular Culture (2013): 72.
15

idol.
34
The work of art is inseparable from its context. English philosopher Paul Crowther
points to the massive audiences who visit museums and art galleries, driven by a desire to see
the original work. The aura is not destroyed in mechanical reproduction, but rather
transformed. For Crowther, reproductions only enhance the state of the aura, “[i]t becomes
imperative to see the sacred original in direct perceptual terms without the intermediary of
reproductions.”
35
He furthers the argument in the context of digital works stating that it seems
there is no aura in digital works owing to the lack of perceptually privileged ‘original,’ but
only programs, and “the work is disembodied in terms of parallels with traditional art
‘objects,’ but at the same time the fact that it can be realized in times and places determined
by the user means that it has an intimacy and special status through being realizable very
much in one’s own personal space. It is embodied as the user wills.”
36
Crowther shifts the
scope of the aura from a collective-based context to an individual-based one. RMB City is an
interactive art project wherein participants have access wherever they want via the internet.
Crowther is not the only person who addresses “aura” with differing understandings. Munich-
based artist Empfangshalle and a German video artist, Thomas Adebahr reframes the
narrative of aura and implies that artworks made directly by humans rather than through
mechanical production, are being reactivated.
37
In this sense, two definitions of aura emerge.
The first type of aura is embodied through participants’ engagement in RMB City while it was
opened to the public. Engagement includes creating avatars, interacting with other users, or
attending virtual community events. The interactions among users and users’ relationship to
RMB City mutually reinforce each other, thus constructing its aura. The second type of aura

34
Walter Benjamin, "The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction," in A Museum Studies Approach to
Heritage (Routledge, 2018), 229.
35
Paul Crowther, "Ontology and aesthetics of digital art," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 66, no. 2
(2008).
36
Ibid.
37
Winnie Wong, Van Gogh on demand: China and the readymade (University of Chicago Press, 2014), 11.
16

emerges as RMB City is closed to the public and archived by the artist. RMB City fits into the
description of digital works, according to Crowther’s definition.
To better understand RMB City, one could examine it through the lens of the four-
basic structures of virtual artwork as defined by Patrick Lichty.
38
The first is the artwork of
transmediation, in which traditional artwork in the real world is translated into the virtual
world with little formal adjustment. Lichty takes artists Eva and Franco Mattes’s reenactment
of Joseph Beuys’ 7000 Oaks as an example, wherein they created seven thousand virtual oak
trees, each accompanied by a basalt stone in Second Life. However, the work was criticized,
due to the greenhouse gas emissions from “planting” trees on the internet, produced by the
powering the technological devices used and accessing the wireless network.
39
RMB City, is
not “purely” an artwork translated into virtual space from physical form. Nonetheless, each
Chinese symbol translated into RMB City refers to the Chinese landmark in the tangible
world while maintaining little formal modification. The second definition of aura is as an
‘evergent’ work, which is a virtual artwork embodied in the real world. Lynn Hershman
Leeson’s Roberta Breitmore exemplifies this category of remediation from the virtual to the
tangible, which can be seen when Hershman-Leeson dressed up as the fictional character
Roberta Breitmore that she created in Second Life. Then, Roberta Breitmore, Hershman-
Leeson in disguise, undertook Hershman-Leeson’s life and performed daily activities,
including renting an apartment, checking into a hotel, opening a bank account, seeing a
doctor, and obtaining credit cards.
40
The third type of artwork is created in and for the virtual
world. For example, RMB City built in Second Life, is meant to be experienced in the virtual
world. In addition, China Tracy, Cao Fei’s avatar, documented her life and experience in
Second Life, which she then presented as a three-part documentary − i.Mirror. Finally,

38
Patrick Lichty, "The translation of art in virtual worlds," in The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality (Oxford
University Press, 2014).
39
Ibid.
40
Ibid.
17

cybrids, are kinds of artwork in which artists operate in simultaneity in real world and virtual
world, such as Augmented Reality, telepresence, or physical computing . RMB City Opera
falls into this category.
Cao Fei was inspired by Invisible Cities, a novel by Italian writer Italo Calvino. In
describing RMB City, Cao Fei states:
“[t]he sea above the city is reflected on the shattering white night; fire from the
chimney pokes through the cloud, burning the flag red; sky-elevator is ascending
towards the sun, trembling; a missile flies a trajectory of no return […]We are trying
to uncover the secrets of this city, and to discover ourselves in the shadow of
virtuality. We can see the city’s rare moment of sublimity and its boiling colors, we
can breath its free air through our consciousness, we can even feel the humidity, and
the power of love.”
41

The creativity of RMB City and the novel Invisible Cities are somehow symbiotic.
Approaching Cao Fei’s work through the novel, offers an alternative way to “read” RMB
City. Springer insists, to readers who are accustomed to the numerically ordered structure in
reading, that the Table of Contents serves as a map or spatial model to review a book's overall
structure.
42
However, this is not the case for reading Invisible Cities. To approach the novel,
she uses the term diegetic.
43
Springer identifies the diegetic components in the novel as the
“eighteen italicized dialogues between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan which frame the nine
chapters of the book.” Extra-diegetic components “include all the remaining signs (and
spaces) which comprise the external apparatus of the text: the table of contents, the chapter
headings, numbers, and classifications, and the blank pages separating the individual

41
Cao Fei City Manifesto.
42
Carolyn Springer, "Textual Geography: The Role of the Reader in" Invisible Cities"," Modern Language
Studies (1985): 290.
43
Diegetic is a term widely used in film industry, it refers to the sound or dialogue exists in the “reality” to the
characters. Non-diegetic refers to narrator’s summary, background music used to enforce spectacular’s
immersive experience.
18

chapters.”
44
As for RMB City, are all of the symbolic elements diegetic to the discourse of
urbanization? If so, what are the extra-diegetic components?
RMB City Opera is an experimental theatrical play, using both actors and digital
avatars, that takes inspiration from Revolutionary Opera. Cao Fei probes the role of
Revolutionary Opera in social control through both movement and politically charged
gestures and compares how said social control shapes society historically and contemporarily
through RMB City Opera.
45
Throughout the duration of the play, a screen plays the pre-
recorded video of the avatars’ performance, accompanied by the actors’ performance on the
stage. The interaction between actors and avatars blurs the virtual and physical stage
boundary. Sometimes actors served as the prelude to the following scenes. Sometimes, they
react in to the avatars’ performance. Revolutionary Opera, known as yangban xi, depicted
Chinese people’s collective determination against inner and outer enemies, glorified the
unification of the ordinary Chinese people and the People’s Liberation Army, and touted
Maoism and socialism during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. There were eighteen
Revolutionary Operas by the time the Cultural Revolution ended, but only eight were
recognized as Eight Role Models (ba ge yangban xi).
46
Ba ge is the literal transliteration
when pronouncing “eight of” in Chinese. The Cultural Revolution played a critical role in the
elements and performance in the opera. Nonetheless, one must consider Deng Xiaoping’s
evaluation of Mao Zedong to capture Cao Fei's approach to exploring social control.
In 1977, a year after the end of the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997),
the paramount leader of China, led a program attempting to correct the mistakes of the
Cultural Revolution during the boluan fanzheng period, meaning the period for eliminating
chaos. The policy of boluan fanzheng was in service of “settling historical issues,”

44
Springer, "Textual Geography: The Role of the Reader in" Invisible Cities"," 290.
45
Cao Fei, "RMB City Opera," (January 26, 2011 2009). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJc0kxiAtnQ.
46
Barbara Mittler, "" Eight Stage Works for 800 Million People": The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in
Music—A View from Revolutionary Opera," The opera quarterly 26, no. 2 (2010).
19

“reaffirming policies ‘distorted’ during the Cultural Revolution,” and “resurrecting the
apparatus of state”. Deng’s famous claim assesses Mao’s achievements as “70 percent right
and 30 percent wrong.”
47
One of the leading factors contributing to the “30 percent wrong” is
Mao’s catastrophic campaign, The Great Leap Forward. The event resulted in an estimated
twenty-three million to fifty-five million famine-related deaths, though the figure is often
cited as thirty million . Although Deng’s mixed evaluation on Mao skews more positive, it
served as an official statement that recognizes the negative consequences of Mao’s social
control.
As for Mao’s “70 percent right,” part of it could be corroborated by the primary
source collected by art historian Jenny Lin. She points out that during the early years of the
Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong and his wife, Jiang Qing, encouraged the common people
to make art, such as murals, to honor Mao and create big-character posters to denounce right-
wing activities.
48
In Lin’s interview with Liu Debao, a former Red Guard, now known as a
famous Red Collector who collects films and collections from the Mao era, Liu describes
what the Cultural Revolution was like to him: “It was a very exciting time. All of a sudden,
anyone could make art, everyone was an artist […] Art was for everyone; it was no longer an
elitist subject studied only in school […] Art was lived.”
49
Moreover, Lin suggests that the
experiences and stories of people who lived through the Cultural Revolution vary widely,
contingent upon “where they were, what they or their family members did and what (if
anything) they owned.”
50
This statement echoes Deng’s mixed evaluation of Mao to some
extent. In addition to Lefebvre’s spatial theory,
51
he continues that “societies produce the

47
Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer, "70 Percent Good, 30 Percent Bad: China has found a simple formula to assess
Mao Zedong’s legacy," International Politics and Society, accessed July 16 (2017).
48
Jenny Lin, "Friends of Fans of Mao: Researching China’s Cultural Revolution"," in Fandom as Methodology:
A Sourcebook for Artists and Writers (MIT Press, 2019).
49
Ibid, 188.
50
Ibid, 184.
51
He states that “([s]ocial) space is a (social) product,” wherein space is defined by the social relation itself.
20

spaces they inhabit and the nature of these spaces will vary according to the values, habits,
ideology and social practices of the social group, in the particular historical moment of their
production.”
52
Integrating these individualized experiences described by Lin with Lefebvre’s
notions of the social production of space, Mao indirectly created different spaces in which art
was intertwined with political propaganda.
RMB City Opera includes the performance of two actors who dress up like they’re in
the movie The Matrix, acting in response to the text-based conversation playing on the stage
screen at the beginning of the show. They then “teleport” into Second Life which projects
onto the screen, followed by the actors creating avatars via laptops on the stage. Later parts of
the opera shift to performances by actors in Red Army uniforms, Batman/woman, and
Superman/woman uniforms interacting with avatars on the screen. There is no real-life
vocalized conversation between them but rather text-based conversations playing on the
screen. The actors’ interaction between the virtual and tangible world creates a dynamic
theatrical experience. Watkins suggests a way to examine theatre performance through the
lens of Lefebvre’s spatial triad. As such, applying Lefebvrian analysis to examine the opera
could provide readers with a different perspective to look into the performance.
Firstly, Lefebvre points out that constructing a mathematical and scientific
understanding of space circumscribes the notion of space. As a result, space refers to the
geometrical and Euclidian meaning. He posits ways in which to understand space through
the production of space and goes on to assert that “([s]ocial) space is a (social) product.”
53
In
Lefebvre’s spatial triad, the first element is spatial practice, “which embraces production and
reproduction, and the particular locations and spatial sets characteristic of each social
formation.”
54
It ensures “the levels of cohesion and competence required for the everyday

52
Jane Collins and Andrew Nisbet, Theatre and Performance Design: a reader in scenography (Routledge,
2012), 67.
53
Lefebvre, The production of space, 26.
54
Ibid, 33.
21

functions of society”
55
together with the other triadic elements. In the theatrical context,
spatial practice allows individuals to effectively participate in a theatre performance, which
includes “knowing your lines well enough and giving the right cue, or definitely not
grandstanding or upstaging another actor.”
56
As for spatial practice in RMB City Opera, live-
performance actors need to adjust their pace of movement in accordance with the avatars’, as
the avatars are pre-recorded video renderings that are not capable of adjusting their pace of
performance.
Secondly, Lefebvre theorizes representations of space as technocratic space designed
by urban planners, engineers, “which are tied to the relations production and to the ‘order’
which those relations impose.”
57
It is “constructed out of symbols, codifications, and abstract
representations.”
58
Abstract representations, symbols, and codifications are the text and
scripts in a theatrical context.
59
As in RMB City Opera, the text-based conversation is
presented by neither actors nor avatars, but played on the stage screen.
Lastly, the third triadic element, spaces of representation refers to “space as directly
lived through its associated images and symbols, and hence the space of 'inhabitants' and
'users'.”
60
For example, “squatters, illegal aliens, and Third World slum dwellers, who fashion
a spatial presence and practice outside the norms of the prevailing (enforced) social
spatialization.”
61
As Watkins suggests, the aspect of spaces of representation in the theatrical
context is performance itself.
62

55
Ceri Watkins, "Representations of space, spatial practices and spaces of representation: An application of
Lefebvre’s spatial triad," Culture and Organization 11, no. 3 (2005): 213.
56
Ibid.
57
Lefebvre, The production of space, 33.
58
Watkins, "Representations of space, spatial practices and spaces of representation: An application of
Lefebvre’s spatial triad," 212.
59
Ibid.
60
Lefebvre, The production of space, 40.
61
Rob Shields, Lefebvre, love and struggle: Spatial dialectics (Routledge, 2005), 164.
62
Watkins, "Representations of space, spatial practices and spaces of representation: An application of
Lefebvre’s spatial triad," 212.
22

One might notice the floating statue of Mao Zedong in RMB City. It could not help
but make spectators connect Deng’s evaluation on Mao with the statue that is partially
submerged in the water. What is the proportion of the statue under the water? Does Cao Fei
sink 30 percent of the statue in the water to echo the “30 percent wrong,” in reference to
Deng’s statement? If so, why should the 30 percent go under rather than above the water? Is
she implying the “30 percent wrong” is buried? Or, perhaps, she is implying Maoism is
partially buried but still carried on by successive China’s paramount leaders.
At first sight, RMB City differs little from online role-playing video games. People
can create avatars, hang out with online users, and participate in various festivities and
events. Nonetheless, the beauty of RMB City is that it was launched by an artist and
positioned as an online art community. Cao Fei brought people across the world together,
especially people in the arts industry. This is significant considering that there was little
chance for artists, art critics, and curators to come together for the sake of art within an online
video game in 2008. Due to the completeness of the archive of RMB City by Cao Fei and her
team, throughout my research process, referencing the website, available online materials,
and articles, I felt like I was experiencing RMB City first-hand.
23

Chapter Two: Whose Utopia

Cao Fei created the 20-minute video artwork, Whose Utopia in 2006 after accepting
an invitation to create a performance work for Siemens Arts Program, entitled What Are You
Doing Here? Siemens Group launched “Siemens Kulturprogramm” (Siemens Cultural
Program) in 1987, aiming to develop cultural programs for the company and the promotion of
contemporary art, ranging from internal cultural activities to international programs.
63

Between 2005 and 2006, during Cao Fei’s six-month artist-in-residence at the Osram light
bulb factory in Foshan, Guangdong Province, she conducted research and sent out
questionnaires to the factory employees with fifteen questions . The commissioned video
work, Whose Utopia, then developed into a comprehensive project that includes a video, a
course of study and research, and its own news thesis Utopia Daily. In Whose Utopia Cao Fei
depicts employees’ work routines and explores their dreams. The video work consists of
three parts: Imagination of product, Factory Fairytale, and My future is not a dream.
The first part of the video consists of fragmented clips of the factory's light bulb-
making and assembling process. Spiritual music mixed with the sound of the high-pitch
machinery confuses one’s senses, as if both came from the machine. The rhythmic high-pitch
sound elicits the imagery of economic efficiency, which further echoes the imagery of the
functionality of the assembly line. After four minutes of documentary-like sequence shots of
the factory, the camera shifts to assemblers sorting contact wire with a close-up shot of a
worker leaning towards the work table while facing the camera but looking in a different
direction. A sequence of shots unfolds: workers soldering parts, identifying discrepancies for
correction, and stamping packages and boxes of finished products. The first part of the video
ends with a row of luminescent strip lights displayed in the middle of the frame. The

63
"Siemens Arts Program," History, accessed December 30, 2022,
https://www.siemens.com/global/en/company/sustainability/arts-program.html.
24

melancholy rhythm perpetuates Factory Fairytale, the second part of the video starts with a
shot of a ballerina approaching the camera, then shifts to her performing Chaînés. The
following scenes show a man performing tai chi while strolling through the factory interior
corridor. The fluid movement of the man doing Chinese martial arts contrasts with the
stiffness and stillness of the workers working on both sides of the corridor. The man and
ballerina dance as if intoxicated, as if the factory was the stage they always longed for. The
last part of the video, My future is not a dream, begins with a folk rhythm. A sequence of
shots shows the employees standing in their working environments. The third part of the
video ends with a shot of seven male workers standing side-by-side in white shirts, each shirt
printed with a character of Chinese. When read together, the shirts read wo de weilai bu shi
meng, the Chinese translation of “my future is not a dream.”
Cao Fei probes the issue of the migrant worker in an innovative way by revealing the
dreams of the Osram factory employees. Intentionally leaving out the question mark after the
video’s title Whose Utopia, she proposes the question of who is constructing our utopia? The
way in which Cao Fei thinks of the light bulb is not bound to the functionality but through a
subtle way of looking into the object, “[t]he fact that this is a light bulb factory is meaningful.
It sheds light on our materialistic world yet without simultaneously lighting up its inside or
lighting up the workers’ lives.”
64
This way of thinking is embodied visually in Whose Utopia.
Participants in Whose Utopia are migrant workers. Chinese migrant workers play an
important role in economic growth. They are essential to the modernization and urban/rural
development in China. In 2006, the year Cao Fei was working on Whose Utopia, there were
130 million rural migrant workers in China. Migrant workers often undertake menial and
labor-intense jobs with the low pay due to their low skill and education levels. Such jobs

64
"Cao Fei: Constructing ‘Whose Utopia’," 2017, https://www.mplus.org.hk/en/magazine/cao-fei-constructing-
whose-utopia/.
25

expose workers to a greater risk of work-related injuries and illness.
65
Chinese migrant
workers often leave their hometowns for urban areas or non-agricultural labor. As they do so,
the labor flows from rural or central/western inland areas to coastal areas.
This type of population mobility has been emptying villages of young people across the
Chinese countryside, however, they send money home to their family as a source of wealth
accumulation – labor flows out, money flow back.
66
To the city’s people, migrant workers are
the rural elite because they are younger, enterprising, and better educated than their older
counterparts in the countryside. Migrants are referred to as a “floating population,” from their
instability within legal household registration systems and personal mental health.
American journalist Leslie T. Chang, in her publication Factory Girls: From Village
to City in a Changing China, documented the lives of two young female factory workers over
the course of a three-year period; Lu Qingmin and Wu Chunming, who worked at the
assembly lines of Dongguan.
67
The mental state of factory workers has grabbed Chan’s
attention. According to a young woman in the factory: “In the factory when I have free time, I
think of all kinds of troubles. I feel like a single boat floating on the great ocean. Even if the
heart desires quiet, it cannot be.”
68
The instability ripples through factory workers, affecting
their romantic relationships. One of the factory workers Chang spoke with, Chunming, shared
a story of her romantic relationship with a driver who worked at a building-materials
company. She wanted to break up with the man ever since he slapped her on the face because
domestic violence is more than just a one-time thing as old saying goes – the man who hits
once will hit again. The man ended up packing his stuff and leaving Chunming without

65
"China: Improving Rural Migrants’ Employment Prospects through Skills Development," 2016,
https://www.worldbank.org/en/results/2016/06/06/china-improving-rural-migrants-employment-prospects-
through-skills-
development#:~:text=In%202006%2C%20there%20were%20over,third%20of%20total%20urban%20employm
ent.
66
Leslie T Chang, Factory girls: From village to city in a changing China (Random House, 2009), 13.
67
Chang, Factory girls: From village to city in a changing China.
68
Ibid, 136.
26

argument. Ever since then, Chunming had not engaged in serious relationships but, rather had
many flings. The phenomenon of Chunming’s romantic relationship is perhaps one of the
numerous cases of liquid love, a phrase coined by Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman.
69
The
fluidness of constant mobility, moving from countryside to the city, as well as a similar
fluidity of unrestrained personal attachment, contribute to negatively influencing migrant
workers’ physical and mental status.
The floating population starkly contrasts with and upholds elite city people. How can
we define the floating population in relation to capitalism in China? Marxist geographer
David Harvey states that surpluses of capital and shortages of labor in capitalism can be
resolved either through the movement of capital to areas where there is a labor surplus, a
weak labor organization, or cheap importation of labor.
70
The floating population is one of the
phenomena of spatial unfixity. In addition, “[s]urpluses of wage labor and shortages of capital
often generate strong migratory currents,”
71
which can explain the rural population flows out
into urban areas. Taken as a whole, the imagery of flowing runs through the thread of the
aforementioned discussion, from a higher level to granular level. Connecting the atmosphere
in contemporary China which is shaped by the flowing of capital, floating population and the
liquid form of relationship experienced by modern individuals. Capital flows to areas with
weak labor organization, or, in this case, no labor organization at all, as shown by the
employer tactics to control factory workers.
Some workers come to urban areas for better opportunities, but are limited by their
low skill levels and end up working as factory workers, waitresses, or construction workers.
Some workers leave their hometown due to its poverty level and attempt to earn a better

69
Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid love: On the frailty of human bonds (John Wiley & Sons, 2013).
Bauman argues that the society is transitioned from solid to a liquid form of modernity. Relationship is made up
of fragile bond that centers on constant changes, without fixating on solid form of bond.
70
David Harvey, "Globalization and the “spatial fix”," geographische revue: Zeitschrift für Literatur und
Diskussion 3, no. 2 (2001): 26.
71
Ibid.
27

salary than they can in their hometown to take care of their family by sending money back.
Social welfare scholar Daniel Fu Keung Wong points out that Chinese migrant workers are a
marginalized group living in urban areas.
72
Job mobility is low among migrant workers. Their
limited skills leave them in dead-end jobs, and lower wages result in poor living conditions.
Lack of knowledge of legal rights renders migrant workers easily manipulated by employers.
Factory employers use tactics to keep workers from leaving freely through delaying wage
payment, requiring new workers to deposit a certain amount of money with the factory, or
keeping a certain portion of wage from workers which they should receive at the end of the
year.
73
The household registration policy (hukou) further frustrates rural migrant workers.
China’s hukou system is a household registration system tied to social welfare and residence
status. To change residency, the system requires the approval of both the government of the
place where a person comes from and the government of the new place wherein the resident
wants to be registered.
74
The hukou system also excludes migrant workers from having the
social security and medical benefits that other urban residents possess. Political science
scholar Haitao Zhao suggests that the additional costs derived from the hukou registration
system and the responsibility of taking care of children and elderly family members and
traveling for family reunions are two main reasons that force migrant workers to return to
rural areas.
75

Migrant workers not only have little access to social and medical resources but suffer
from poor psychological health, and are often looked down upon by urban residents. Poor
psychological health includes sleep disturbance, depression, and anxiety. Such health

72
Daniel Fu Keung Wong, Chang Ying Li, and He Xue Song, "Rural migrant workers in urban China: living a
marginalised life," International Journal of Social Welfare 16, no. 1 (2007).
73
Ibid, 34.
74
See an interesting discussion of a painting prize linked to the hukou system for migrant painters living in
Shenzhen, China in Wong, Van Gogh on demand: China and the readymade, 1.
75
Haitao Zhao, Jinxiong Chang, and Jinxian Wang, "What pulls Chinese migrant workers back to the
countryside? An analysis from a family concerns perspective," International Review of Economics & Finance
(2022): 801.
28

conditions might result from being migrant workers. Migrant workers are perceived as a
threat to social stability, complete with unemployed urban residents, and considered ignorant
by the general public. In addition, workers often undertake jobs that urban residents are
unwilling to do or disdain.
76
Taken together, the environments migrant workers live in put
social and mental pressures on them that might lead to workers’ low self-esteem.
In Whose Utopia, Cao Fei elicits workers’ personal dreams and fantasies to create a
fantasyscape in the light bulb factory that allows workers to perform tai chi and ballet in the
factory. In a questionnaire, Cao Fei posed questions to workers regarding their daily lives,
such as “How do you feel about the factory” and “Why did you decide to leave your home
and go to the river delta” or “What do you hope to achieve in the future”, ‘Do you imagine
crying out toward the machine? Or want to take some unreasonable behavior?’
77
In the end,
Cao Fei received about a hundred questionnaire responses, resulting in fifty-five employees
being selected and grouped to build installations and perform in the video. She paid weekly
visits to and bonded with them during her artist residency.
The tension between fantasy and reality runs throughout Factory Fairytale. It is not
unusual for Cao Fei to deploy the tension of dualism in her work. She challenges the
boundary between the virtual and tangible world in RMB City, rendering the boundary porous
and malleable. The boundary is unhinged where virtual and tangible sites collide and
converge, thus allowing a third site to emerge. Art historian Miwon Kwon applies the term
“discursive site” to describe artists’ engagement with sociopolitical issues as the ‘site’ of their
work theorizing the site of their “‘locational’ anchor in the discursive realm.”
78
The
discursive site in Cao Fei’s work is neither the pop culture that has influenced her work nor is
it China’s social changes that the artist addresses throughout her practice. Instead, the

76
Keung Wong, Li, and Song, "Rural migrant workers in urban China: living a marginalised life," 34.
77
"Your Utopia is Ours - Fillip," Cao Fei, 2006, http://www.caofei.com/texts.aspx?id=50&year=2006&aitid=1.
78
Miwon Kwon, One place after another: Site-specific art and locational identity (MIT press, 2004), 28.
29

discursive site in RMB City and Whose Utopia resides in Cao Fei’s intention of exploring and
contrasting the boundary between reality and fantasy. Building upon Kwon’s concept of
discursive sites, Cao Fei’s artistic praxis that probes the boundary of dualism has established
itself as a ‘site’ different from the virtual and tangible or the real and fantasy.
The space of the Osram light bulb factory was transformed by Cao Fei over the course
of filming Whose Utopia. This particular factory system requires workers to behave as light
bulb manufacturers by assembling metal filters and making sure it functions properly, fusing
wire and soldering parts, and performing light bulb quality assurance tests. The factory
functions as a representation of space, “tied to the relations of production and to the ‘order’
which those relations impose, and hence to knowledge, to signs, to codes, and to ‘frontal’
relations.”
79
Yet, through participating in Cao Fei’s project, workers were able to live out
their fantasies, temporarily liberating them from the state of order requiring them to stay at
work. Building upon Lefebvre’s spatial triad, urban theorist Edward Soja theorizes the
concept of Firstspace by referring to a spatial practice, which he defines “as the process of
producing the material form of social spatiality[…] presented as both medium and outcome
of human activity, behavior, and experience.”
80
Soja then refers to representations of space
and further propounds Secondspace as “the primary space of utopian thought and vision, of
the semiotician or decoder, and of the purely creative imagination of some artists and
poets.”
81
As Lefebvre goes beyond binary oppositions and transcends such dualism in terms
of positing a spatial triad, Soja suggests a Thirdspace and explains:
“[e]verything comes together in Thirdspace: subjectivity and objectivity, the abstract
and the concrete, the real and the imagined, the knowable and the unimaginable, the
repetitive and the differential, structure and agency, mind and body, consciousness
and the unconscious, the disciplined and the transdisciplinary, everyday life and
unending history.
82

79
Lefebvre, The production of space, 33.
80
Edward W Soja, "Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined places," Capital & Class
22, no. 1 (1998): 66.
81
Ibid, 67.
82
Ibid, 56.
30

In this understanding, Cao Fei takes over the Osram factory and turns it into a
Thirdspace, in which she asks the chosen workers to behave “irregularly” by performing tai
chi and ballet in the factory, but makes sure the rest of the workers stick to their daily routine
to keep the light bulb production line functioning as usual. The factory was a Thirdspace
where the Firstspace and Secondspace converge, a place where the fantasyscape overlaps
with the real world.
Reflecting upon the title Whose Utopia, the pronoun ‘whose’ not only refers to the
anonymous factory workers, but also the person who brings these workers together to
complete her own project. Nonetheless, Whose Utopia is neither a utopia exclusive to
anonymous factory workers, nor the artist. Deciphering the status of the utopia through
transcending binary circumstance, the utopia is no longer a place where of two separate
utopias: workers’ and Cao Fei’s, but rather, a utopia made up of two overlapping utopias.
The artist-participant relationship serves as a key component in Whose Utopia as a
participatory project. The artist-participant relationship has been a debated topic among art
critics. For example, community art as participatory art allows artists to work with local
communities through collaboration. However, artists may or may not be familiar with certain
communities when they come into the project. Lack of familiarity with the community might
result in inappropriate artistic practice that jeopardizes the artist-participant relationship. Art
historian Grant Kester suggests that the community artist is the delegate “the signifier
for a referential community,”
83
who is “an outsider who has the institutionally sanctioned
authority to engage the locals in the production of their (self-) representation.”
84
Artists’
individual identity might eclipse community’s group identity. In addition, artists as delegates
derive their identity and legitimacy through speaking on behalf of the community while the

83
Grant H Kester, "Afterimage 22 (January 1995) Aesthetic Evangelists: Conversion and Empowerment in
Contemporary Community Art1," Afterimage (1995): 5.
84
Kwon, One place after another: Site-specific art and locational identity, 138.
31

“community also comes into existence politically and symbolically through the expressive
medium of the delegate.”
85
Participatory art becomes a means of validating artist and
participant, which presents and enforces a mutually-shaped dynamic relationship.
Cao Fei takes on a collaborative artistic practice working with factory workers over
the course of the project. According to Cao Fei, collaborating with Osram factory workers
allowed her to “have a close encounter with the working class” and discover “a kind of raw
emotion from them, which has long been lost among urban residents.” She believes that the
project “will have a long-term influence on them.”
86
Some responses she received from the
workers uphold her aforementioned thought. One of the workers said that, “[n]ow I know
what art is, art is life itself.” Another worker said to her, “[w]e are all artists.”
87
The
questionnaires and informal conversation allowed Cao Fei to get to know about workers’
attitudes toward life and their work-life balance.
As for positioning Whose Utopia, Cao Fei defines it as ‘mass art’ or ‘plebianized
art.’
88
Scholar Chris Berry further indicates that it bears the characteristics of participatory art
which attempts to demystify art, thus shifting away from the idea of artist as individual
genius to participatory art as a social process. In Whose Utopia, Cao Fei and the factory
workers are participants who actively invest themselves into the project. Whose Utopia can
also be considered as new genre public art.
89
As the director of Whose Utopia, she deploys
chosen workers in the Osram factory to perform tai chi and ballet in their workplace, but she
is also an audience member, along with the rest of the workers, watching the performance.
The relationship doesn’t solely come from the formal collaboration that Cao Fei was invited

85
Ibid, 139.
86
Chris Berry, "Cao Fei’s “Magical Metropolises”’," Visual Arts, Representations and Interventions in
Contemporary China: Urbanized Interface (2018): 224.
87
Chris Berry, "Images of urban China in Cao Fei’s ‘magical metropolises’," China Information 29, no. 2
(2015): 214.
88
Berry, "Cao Fei’s “Magical Metropolises”’," 223.
89
Suzanne Lacy, Mapping the terrain: New genre public art (Bay Press, 1995).
32

to create a project for Siemens corporation, but derived from the bonding process between the
artist and workers during her weekly visits to the factory. According to an interview, she went
out to eat with workers and was invited to karaoke parties.
90
Moreover, the balanced
relationship between them is embodied through Cao Fei imparting power to the workers. Cao
Fei, through Whose Utopia, builds upon the way in which workers’ express their own
fantasies in the Osram factory.

90
Scott, "Interview with Cao Fei."
33

Chapter Three: Futures and Conclusions
Cao Fei explores social and urban change from both macro- and micro-levels,
bridging the gap between individual mental space, tangible factory space, digital space, and
the space conquered by capitalism. One of the artist’s most recent projects, Asia One, is a 63-
minute science-fiction film commission for the Guggenheim’s Robert H.N. Ho Family
Foundation Chinese Art Initiative. Cao Fei produced the film, which was first presented at the
Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2018. Asia One can be seen as a sequel to Cao Fei’s
exploration of the relationship between factory workers and modern society, but in different
settings than in Whose Utopia. The film, set in an automated distribution center, centers on a
male worker, a female worker, and an AI robot. A dynamic relationship among them is
revealed as the video progress. The chemistry between the two workers starts emerging
through the mundane day-to-day work, partly because the AI robot oversees and handles most
of the work in the distribution center efficiently. The “sleek infrastructure, speedy robots, and
constantly flowing stock,”
91
and automated process engaged with conveyor belts take up the
physical space in the automated warehouse, foregrounding the fact that two workers are less
efficient. This chapter focuses on how Asia One reflects the role of AI and automation in
modern society.
Asia One stands as a microcosm of the era of automation. Cao Fei questions the role
of technological advancement with AI technology in society. As the world enters in a more
fast-paced consumerist society accelerated by e-commerce, as we experienced during the
COVID-19 pandemic, automated warehouses and sorting centers play an increasingly
important role. Automated warehouses require a bare minimum labor force to perform the
sorting process. The common thought is that AI robots are taking over monotonous tasks, so
that humans can turn to performing other levels of tasks requiring making judgements,

91
"Asia One," 2018, https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/38191.
34

individual thinking, and creativity. However, with artificial intelligence deeply engaged in the
work environment across industries, what will the future of work look like? Will there be
massive job displacement? How will the change from a human-labor to technology-
dependent work force reshape the future of cities?
Artificial intelligence and automation are an accumulated progress that has been
developed and advanced over the past few decades. The advancement of AI is interrelated to
economic development across various industries, even that of national security. In 2022,
President Biden signed into law the bipartisan Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce
Semiconductors Act, known popularly as the CHIPS Act. The CHIPS Act aims to counter
China’s ability to produce homemade advanced chips, thwarts China’s research and
development in the semiconductor industry, and bolsters the United States’ leadership
position in semiconductors.
92
We are living in a fast-paced, high-tech and productivity-
oriented era, wherein the advantages of AI and automation are incredibly important. Because
technology has developed exponentially over the years, the issue of human labor being
replaced by robots is thus coming into the spotlight. While a study shows that less than 5
percent of occupations consist of activities that can be completely automated, at least 30
percent of activities can be fully automated in 60 percent of occupations.
93
Concerns around
AI are also shared by scholars in academia. Students using ChatGPT to write submitted
essays for schoolwork is an emerging concern, as it is considered intolerable plagiarism and
violates academic integrity.
94
Artificial intelligence, conceived of as a neutral and powerful
technology, could be misused in some cases.

92
The White House, "FACT SHEET: CHIPS and Science Act Will Lower Costs, Create Jobs, Strengthen Supply
Chains, and Counter China," news release, August, 9, 2022, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-
room/statements-releases/2022/08/09/fact-sheet-chips-and-science-act-will-lower-costs-create-jobs-strengthen-
supply-chains-and-counter-china/.
93
J Bughin et al., "A future that works: Automation, employment, and productivity," McKinsey Global Institute
(2017): 5.
94
Debby RE Cotton, Peter A Cotton, and J Reuben Shipway, "Chatting and Cheating: Ensuring academic
integrity in the era of ChatGPT," Preprint. https://doi. org/10.35542/osf. io/mrz8h (2023).
35

American journalist Jason Farago points out that Cao Fei foregrounds the ongoing
trend of China using facial recognition technologies in Asia One, by showing a bar code
tattooed on the female worker’s wrist. Farago further states the dehumanization that the bar
code on the female worker’s wrist renders her a product instead a human.
95
Applying facial
recognition technology to citizen’s everyday life is not unusual in China, and surveillance
technology is used by the Chinese government city- and nationwide. The notion of mass
surveillance, in which authorities monitor citizens and violate their privacy, generates heated
debates, especially in Western countries. Within China, on the other hand, the broad
application of facial recognition technology does not seem especially controversial.
In an interview on the topic of the political “Red Line,” or political censorship, in
China, Cao Fei states, “[e]veryone knows where the red line is, they don’t need to discuss it.”
She further states that she would remove sensitive elements in her work, not out of feeling the
pressure to self-censor, but due to how “the art world sees Chinese artists.”
96
As a result, the
way that Cao Fei shows the bar code in the film can be seen as a way of addressing the issue
of facial recognition technology with subtlety.
The automated warehouse setting in Asia One alludes to the automated sorting center
in Kunshan, Jiangsu Province.
97
The dynamics of distribution centers go beyond the
spectacular scene in the warehouse shot by Cao Fei. There is a steadily increasing demand for
logistics space. The spatial layout of logistics facilities highly depends on land price, traffic
accessibility, market demand, agglomeration advantage, and government policy in
contemporary China.
98
Traffic Engineering researcher Meiling He breaks down the process of

95
Jason Farago, "An Artist Warns of a Robot-Ruled Future. Or Is It Our Present? Let’s Discuss.," The New York
Times 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/23/arts/design/cao-fei-china-guggenheim-discussion.html.
96
Amy Qin, "Q. and A.: Cao Fei on Art, Motherhood and Walking the Political ‘Red Line’," The New York
Times 2015, https://archive.nytimes.com/sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/07/q-and-a-cao-fei-on-art-
motherhood-and-walking-the-political-red-line/.
97
Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, "Asia One."
98
Meiling He et al., "Logistics space: A literature review from the sustainability perspective," Sustainability 10,
no. 8 (2018).
36

cluster and sprawl in logistics spatial layouts into three phases. The first phase is when
logistics facilities are concentrated in the city’s central area. Then, with the advantages of
agglomeration economies, these facilities relocate to the port, with logistics parks and
locations along the transit corridor. In the third phase, logistics facilities shifted outward
along the urban sprawl.
99

In Asia One, as in RMB City and Whose Utopia, Cao Fei fosters a dynamic discourse
in different settings that extend beyond fantasy. The artworks discussed in this thesis
illuminate issues, such as the emergence of global capitalism, the status and desires of
migrant factory workers, automation, artificial intelligence, and mass surveillance, that have
been overlooked by society in contemporary China, bringing them to the fore in a way that is
memorable to the general public. I hope this thesis provides new directions for understanding
the dynamics of spatial discourse in Cao Fei’s practice and artworks.

99
Ibid.
37

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43

Appendix of Figure

Figure 1
Elements within RMB City projected on real life geography

Rueichen Tsai, 2023

44

Abstract (if available)

Abstract Capitalism, in tandem with globalization, mass production, and social stratification, has shaped the spatial structure of contemporary China. Responding to socioeconomic shifts, contemporary Chinese artists use diverse forms and materials to reflect the increasing momentum of globalization, rapid urban change, and hyper-consumerism that have and continue to shape China. This thesis provides an overview of artist Cao Fei’s trans-disciplinary practice as it relates to the increasing momentum of China’s process of globalization and societal change, with a focus on spatial dynamics. Furthermore, spatial dynamics can be understood through French philosopher Henri Lefebvre’s spatial theory, he proposes that “([s]ocial) space is a (social) product,” wherein space is defined by the social relation itself. “Social relations, which are concrete abstractions, have no real existence save in and through space. Their underpinning is spatial.” Given that Cao Fei’s artistic practice is multidimensional, this thesis similarly, utilizes a multifaceted approach in examining her works through the varied lenses of new media art, urban symbolism, the production of space, art reenactment and urban geography. Focusing on three case studies, this thesis aims to reveal the fine details and the powerful contextualized spatial dynamics of Cao Fei’s works, in which she theorizes and creates tangible and virtual space.

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Creator Tsai, Rueichen (author)

Core Title Cao Fei: rethinking spatial dynamics discourse

School Roski School of Art and Design

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Degree Program Curatorial Practices and the Public Sphere

Degree Conferral Date 2023-05

Publication Date 03/31/2023

Defense Date 03/29/2023

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