Descrizione
“Beijing 10/2003” is a video work by Ai Weiwei about the city he lives in and its people. Participants include assistants Liang Ye and Yang Zhichao, and driver Wu. The work took 16 days to complete beginning on October 18, 2003.
Beginning below the Dabeiyao highway interchange, the vehicle from which the video was shot traveled every road within the Fourth Ring Road of Beijing, one by one. Approximately 2400 kilometers and 150 hours of footage later, it ended where it began below the Dabeiyao highway interchange.
Through the windshield, the camera objectively recorded all the visual information that appeared before the vehicle – investigating the spatial state of the city’s streets, the endlessly changing times, scenery, movements, behaviors, and other concepts – thoroughly, meticulously, and calmly recording the mega city of Beijing through a single lens. The sum of the entire process became the meaning of the work.
This book is a documentation of this video work. One still frame was captured every 5 minutes from the nearly 150 hour long video, resulting in the 1719 images that appear in this book.
