Night Shift (2016-2019) is a visual meditation on memory and the shifting of urban space as well as an exploration of my feelings of disbelief towards how much my birthplace of Jinan has changed upon visiting the city again in my teenage years.
Influenced by Chantal Akerman’s film News From Home, the film juxtaposes an industrialized landscape with the small moments I saw on the street - two taxi drivers sharing a cigarette, the light of a building, the passing city from my car window view. It was only at night when the city lit up, did it feel truly alive.
I knew that it was a result of the years of air pollution that nearly every city in China has endured, yet I could not help but be fascinated and enthralled by it. Jinan is consistently among the top 10 cities with the worst air pollution in China every year. Shot in 2016 and finally pieced together in 2019, the film captures an extreme cityscape that no longer exists as China has ramped up efforts to reduce air pollution. A year after shooting, I visited again in hopes of continuing to shoot for this film but skies were remarkably more clear, and the scenes that I had recorded were the only reminders of what had existed.