THE PAST IS A FOREIGN COUNTRY (China, 2009)
Wayne Liu, who grew up in Taiwan and the USA, has been surrounded by English and Mandarin Chinese his whole life, but never entirely mastered either of the two languages. Therefore he feels himself a voyeur in both environments, always searching for clues. Although he never lived there, China has defined his life. People of his generation, he says, grew up with the knowledge that China would develop massively. That led to tense expectations and feelings of uncertainty. In THE PAST IS A FOREIGN COUNTRY Liu does battle with his ‘unfinished memories’. He records the constantly changing Chinese landscape, the empty corridors and hollow rhetoric, the flattened buildings and shopping centres under construction. The result is a dystopian sketchbook, the harbinger of a still uncertain future.
