The video is narrated from the perspective of a falling sun god, with text adapted from Yeats’ poem The Second Coming. “The firelight falling from the sky” brings together ancient myths of celestial descent and the failures of modern technological experiments, as if the ascent and collapse of civilization were caught in the same repeating movement.
The footage comes from the documented crash of SpaceX’s Starship during its seventh test flight in Texas on January 16, 2025. The rocket reached space, lost contact within minutes, and disintegrated in midair; the images of debris falling across the sky circulated online as a spectacle of technical failure transformed into romantic grandeur.
Process notes
The footage of debris falling from the sky comes from the seventh test flight of SpaceX’s Starship, on 16 January 2025: the rocket reached space, lost contact within minutes, and broke apart in the air. The images of that failure circulated and re-circulated online until a technical accident had turned into a kind of romantic spectacle. We pulled this public footage across three horizontal channels and let AI-generated fire, falling bodies and reddened atmosphere carry the debris into another register; the narration is borrowed from Yeats’ The Second Coming, spoken by a sun god in the middle of his fall.
When did falling first become a view? We have occupied the land, felled the forests, colonized the sea, turned nature into a thing to be looked at and called it landscape; for a long time only the sky stayed relatively clean, so we lifted our heads and made it the next target. Beyond the atmosphere thousands of satellites are turning, and one rocket test after another becomes the newest scenic line before we have even conquered the sky. A failed descent is seen as magnificent precisely along that line.
Festivals / screenings
- 2025, Boundless Immersion, Beijing International Film Festival, Xinhua 1949 Cultural and Financial Innovation Industrial Park, Beijing, China — Immersive programme presentation.
Exhibitions
- 2026, I lie in the earth, my lips still stirring., East Gallery, Nanjing, China
- 2025, Still Not Quite Right, Artist Hosting Contemporary Art Week, DONG Contemporary Art Platform / ShanghART, former Ragna Primary School, Shanghai, China
- 2025, (un)Systemized, Espace Temps, Paris, France
Links / references
- BJIFF Boundless Immersion programme: The Second Coming Official Beijing International Film Festival page for the Boundless Immersion programme, listing The Second Coming in the triptych-screen section.
- Shanghai Huangpu: Artist Hosting Contemporary Art Week Public article for the 2025 Artist Hosting week, co-organized by DONG Contemporary Art Platform and ShanghART, listing Liu Guangli & Wu Huimin in Bian Yunxiang's fourth-floor exhibition Still Not Quite Right.