Underground Circuit is a collage of hundreds of video clips shot in the subway stations in New York. Station to station, the movement of the commuters in the outer rings suggests the repetitive cycle of life and urban theatricality and texture. The inner-most ring includes people sitting on benches waiting; the central drummers act as the controller of the movement, inspired by the concept of the Four-faced Buddha in Chinese folk religion, the god who can fulfill and grant all wishes of its devotees.

One of the inspirations of my work is documentary photographers like Walker Evans who captured the American vernacular of ordinary life and indigenous architecture. Underground Circuit came about during my visits to New York City. I was strangely fascinated by its subway structure where the platforms of the local stops were at the opposite sides. I noticed that while people wait for the train, they can’t help but also observe those on the other side of the platform as if they are actors on a stage. The stations are like two-way theaters. I wanted to explore this sense of theatricality and also a collective urban rhythm embedded in ritualistic moments.

Underground Circuit is a collage of hundreds of video clips shot in those subway stations. Station to station, the movement of the commuters in the outer rings of the video suggests the repetitive cycle of life and urban theatricality and texture. The inner-most ring includes people sitting on benches waiting; the central drummers act as the controller of the movement, inspired by the concept of the Four-faced Buddha in Chinese folk religion, the god who can fulfill and grant all wishes of its devotees.

For the installation, the video is projected onto the gallery floor and mapped onto a cube with relief in the middle of the projection area. The installation invites audiences to sit on the central cube as Voyeur-gods, to observe the anonymous characters in the projected urban labyrinth.

—in Yuge Zhou, Floor Magazine, 23/11/17

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