“A Film Endless” Installation Review

A Film Endless is an installation by Guo Xi, located by the riverside of Huangpu behind Shanghai’s West Bund Museum. I stumbled across this installation as I was taking a stroll by the river, trying to read the words on the screen—it turned out to be a poem about the passing of time. With the river flowing in the background, cargo ships slowly passing by, with children running around and laughing, the atmosphere was just right.

The artwork consists of a black border in the dimensions of a movie screen, with a strip of an actual digital screen sitting on the bottom, displaying “subtitles” in both Chinese and English. The description of the artwork reveals that it was the artist’s intention to create a “collective cinematic experience”, where everything we see within the black border—the river, the ships, the people—is the content of a “film”. With the ever-flowing river, ever-changing weather, with different people passing by and the sky transforming from day to night to day, the “film” is truly endless. Not only does it capture the inevitable passing of time, it captures the essence of this metropolis that is Shanghai: a city that is ever-changing. The current view of the West Bund is unimaginable to somebody from ten years ago. In a rapidly developing country like China, everything changes with the blink of an eye.

Being a truly site-specific installation artwork, Guo Xi’s A Film Endless captures the attention of unsuspecting passersby and urges them to pause for a moment, and take in the view of the river.