Moses led the people of Israel to the Promised Land. In the midst of doubt and fear, he split the Red Sea in two in the name of faith and divine power. The work treats this miracle as a recurring meta-narrative about belief, proof, and collective expectation.
If Big Tech has become a new religion, the promised brighter future also asks for its own images, relics, and demonstrations. The installation and video place fake news, fictional stories, virtual worlds, and real news photographs inside the same commemorative logic, blurring the boundary between evidence and fiction.
Process notes
I read the parting of the Red Sea as a structure that keeps returning: doubt, then a demonstration of power, then a promised land that seems to redeem the fear it cost. The work lays that structure over the present, where the brighter future is promised by technology and, like any faith, asks for its own images, relics and proofs.
Inside the video the promise hardens into an interface. “Can we be responsible” sits beside a chariot wheel and a dead web page; an underwater crossing runs under a biblical subtitle, turning the miracle back into visual evidence; a Moses gesture and a greenhouse map quietly rewrite the promised land as something to be navigated, mapped and monetized.
Festivals / screenings
- 2023, Beijing International Short Film Festival, Beijing, China
- 2023, dokumentART, Neubrandenburg, Germany
- 2023, KUANDU Film Festival, Taipei, Taiwan
Exhibitions
- 2026, I lie in the earth, my lips still stirring., East Gallery, Nanjing, China
- 2024, Interlaced Revenant, Huoshui-art, Beijing and Chongqing, China
- 2023, Katabasis, Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival, Xiamen, China
- 2022, Thinking Through Ocean, Topred Centre for Contemporary Art, Xiamen, China
Links / references
- BISFF official selection: How to Split the Sea in Two Official Beijing International Short Film Festival work page.
- East Gallery / Yi Space: I lie in the earth, my lips still stirring. Public exhibition note for the East Gallery / Yi Space presentation that includes the work.
- The Beijing News: Thinking Through Ocean at TCCA Public article on the Thinking Through Ocean exhibition framework at Topred Centre for Contemporary Art.
- Three Shadows / Jimei x Arles: Liu Guangli Public Three Shadows / Jimei x Arles page that situates the work within Liu Guangli's image-system practice.