Empty Cage

Multimedia artist Jiang Zhi's eighth video art film. "One day in 2001, just before the day I was about to move again in Shenzhen, a strange homeless girl caught my attention. She stayed under a wire pole in front of my building, reading the same piece of newspaper though she held it up-side-down sometimes. When the night fell, she went to sleep under the pole covering herself with the newspaper. She carried an empty and bottomless bird cage with her all the time like some kind of treasure. It is certain that the empty cage meant a lot to her. I am not sure what it means to her, maybe it is the only thing that she can take hold of, it is a symbol of home. Of course, this is only my guess. For me, the feeling of emptiness is very strong when I shot the film. Passengers passing by the girl like winds, time that looks still by flies away like an arrow…About sympathy and indifferent, about slowness and rapidity…about consistence and random…Everything seems to be about emptiness."