The work begins from the persistence of vanished creatures in the imagination. Borrowing a passage from Calvino’s The Dinosaurs, it asks why the more dinosaurs disappear from the world, the more they extend their dominion inside the thoughts of the survivors.
Made with Zirui Chen, the double-channel video configures realism through 3D modeling, CGI, AI-generated images, found footage, and essay-film methods. Between scientific hypothesis, entertainment spectacle, and technical image-making, the work examines who has the power to make an unbelievable object look plausible, and who is granted the authority to dream it into a shared reality.
Process notes
The work begins by restoring the dinosaurs I drew as a child — marks of an imagination from before I fully had language. We set those drawings beside AI-generated images, and beside the reconstructions of palaeontology and the dinosaurs that recur across film and television, building a concrete visual memory for a past no one ever saw.
The more completely the dinosaurs vanish, the further their dominion spreads in the thoughts of the survivors: Calvino’s line became the film’s direction. The images drift between restoration and imagination, repair and deviation, while a child’s hand keeps facing the even coldness of the algorithm. From imagining with hand and memory to letting a machine imagine for us — what have we inherited in that passage, and what have we handed away? Where scientific hypothesis, entertainment spectacle and technical image-making overlap, what makes an unbelievable thing look credible is always a kind of power; and fiction is the speculative language in which we lodge, for a while, in the cracks of the real.
Festivals / screenings
- 2024, Blue Planet Science Fiction Festival, Nanjing, China — Jury special mention
- 2024, South Taiwan Film Festival, Tainan, Taiwan
- 2024, Kasseler Dokfest, Kassel, Germany
- 2024, Xi Ying Light Your Fire Young Film Festival, Xi'an, China
- 2024, Chinese Film Festival Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
- 2024, Machines & Me: A Filmless Festival - Where Truth Lies, University of Maryland, Maryland, United States of America
- 2024, 2023 Chinese Documentary Annual Concern Special Screening & Forum, LUXELAKES ART EXPO CENTER, Chengdu, China — Special screening
- 2023, Beijing International Short Film Festival, Beijing, China — Art Exploration Award
Exhibitions
- 2026, Earthed: Reconnecting with the Ground, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China
- 2025, Hello Tomato, Better Tomorrow!, ICAT Institute for Contemporary Art & Transfer at HFBK Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
- 2025, TECH DESTINATION, Center for the Promotion of Science, Belgrade, Republic of Serbia
- 2025, (un)Systemized, espace temps, Paris, France
- 2025, NTAa, the International New Technological Art Exhibition and Awards, Foundation Liedts-Meesen, Ghent, Belgium
- 2024-2025, Place and Narration: The First Annual Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Photography and Video Arts, Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai, China
- 2024, Drawer Inside the Bar Lines, Power Station of Art, Shanghai, China
- 2024, Nanjing Contemporary Animation Art Documentation Exhibition, Nanjing, China
- 2024, Nanjing Art Fair International, Qimu Space, Nanjing, China
- 2023, Katabasis, Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival, Xiamen, China
Links / references
- BISFF official selection: How to Imagine the Unimaginable Official Beijing International Short Film Festival work page.
- BISFF 2023 Chinese Competition Award BISFF award page for the Art Exploration Award.
- BISFF live recording: imagining reality BISFF discussion record on fiction, realism and technical images.
- South Taiwan Film Festival: How to Imagine the Unimaginable Official South Taiwan Film Festival programme page.
- NTAa / Zebra Art work record Work record from the NTAa exhibition and awards platform.
- (Un)Systemized at espace temps Public exhibition page for (Un)Systemized at espace temps, including How to Imagine the Unimaginable.
- Three Shadows: Katabasis Official Jimei x Arles Katabasis page; the exhibition text explicitly discusses How to Imagine the Unimaginable.
- Power Station of Art: Emerging Curators Project 2024 Power Station of Art exhibition page for Drawer Inside the Bar Lines.
- UBPA review: backstage and drawers Commentary on the exhibition layout, backstage structure and drawer mechanism.
- Blue Planet Science Fiction Film Week award report Public report carrying the Blue Planet jury special mention record.