Wang Bing's Documentary Practice: From Tie Xi Qu to Documenta 14

Wang Bing, born in 1967, emerged as a documentary filmmaker in the late 1990s, leveraging digital video to document marginalized individuals in China. His nine-hour debut, Tie Xi Qu (West of the Tracks, 2003), captures a declining industrial zone in northeast China from a train. His observational style, described as an active witness to social transformation, has earned international recognition, including a retrospective at Documenta 14, yet his films are rarely screened in China due to censorship. In 2017, his first solo exhibition in China, Experience and Poverty at Magician Space in Beijing, coincided with the government's campaign to remove 'low-end population' from the city. The exhibition featured Yizhi (Traces, 2014), his first celluloid work, shot at the Jiabiangou Labour Camp, where thousands died during the Mao era. Fang Xiuying (Mrs Fang, 2017), awarded the Golden Leopard at Locarno, documents the final week of an Alzheimer's patient. 15 Hours (2017) observes a textile factory in Zhejiang Province, echoing his earlier focus on labor. Wang's work has gained prominence in contemporary art, though he remains critical of decontextualization by Western audiences. His films test the limits of cinema through extreme duration and confrontation with social suffering.