About the Assembly Line Project
The “Assembly Line” is an ongoing series of works, which was initiated in 2010 by Li Xiaofei. It is a practice that is intertwined with the social process and changes of our time in not only China but on a global scale. By 2019, Li has travelled around the world (China, Norway, Sweden, the US, Germany, New Zealand, etc.) and investigated in and shot more than two hundred factories of different types, having dialogues and exchanges with people of different positions within the assembly line.
In the early phase of “Assembly Line”, He employed a “realtime” shooting technique which was difficult to control, mixed with the language of documentary and a fragmented interwoven approach to create a mutual restructuring and a transformation of the relationship between man and machine , in essence to reconstruct an illusory reality. While in the past four years, he has used various artistic forms employing “everyday objects” as his medium, and a non-narrative method to depict different landscapes and homes, to provoke people from different angles —From the observation of specific details to the contemplation of the whole. In the process the viewer can realize that things which may look unremarkable or natural, often bear with them a profound social significance.
In Li Xiaofei’s view, the assembly line is a mode of production driven by capitalistic desire—it is repetitive, consistent, mechanical and devoid of emotion. At the same time, it is highly efficient, and can expediently expand the volume of production to create maximum value. This kind of repetition and consistency not only refers to the machine, but also represents the people in between and finally the products themselves. What lies beyond the visible orderliness of the assembly line is the invisible normalization in the capitalist factory, consumer society, social progress and social moral—the reality of the people living in a highly systematic and institutionalized environment.
In order to understand the laborers, he cuts across traditional narrations and uses repetitively moving and progressing images, by which he explores the relations between industrial production and social development. In this way, he is challenging the dominating single way of thinking and exploring how the social politics and economic structure affect people’s living space and their communication.
In the long-term working process, Li Xiaofei also realized the change of his role: becoming from a bystander at the beginning stage when he treated the factory and workers as his filming subject to an observer as he probed deeply into the social meaning behind the factories to a participant as he himself has become a worker of the “Assembly Line”.
https://www.kunstraum-muenchen.de/vorschau/li-xiaofei
流水线项目
李消非从2010年开始创作流水线项目，这是一个持续性的艺术项目，是一种与当下的社会进程和社会变迁联系在一起的实践过程。至今李消非已在世界各地（中国、美国、挪威、瑞典、德国、新西兰等国）考察和拍摄了两百八十多家不同类型的工厂，与流水线上不同职位的人进行对话和交流。项目早期作品融合了纪录片和社会学的语言，采用实拍、切片、交错的方式将人与机器相互重组和转换，来重构一种虚幻的真实。2014年后的作品以“日常用品”作为媒介，用一种非叙事的手法将各种景观并置，以触动观者从不同的角度、从细节到整体去感受、体悟。
“流水线”是资本欲望所驱动的生产模式，它是重复的、一致的、机械的、缺乏情感的，同时高效、快捷地将生产价值膨胀到最大，这样的重复和一致，不仅指的是机器，同样，还包括生活在其中的人，以及最后的产品。而隐藏在生产过程之外的“流水线”是资本工厂、消费社会、社会进程、价值观念的标准化，是人在高度系统化和体制化的环境里的一个现实处境，也已经和正在成为李消非探讨的方向。
近几年，李消非用重复不断的运行和递进的影像来代替一般叙事手法去感知生产者，以探讨工业生产和社会发展的关系，以此来审视当下单一的、持久的思维方式，长期在社会政治和经济结构中是怎样影响人的生存空间和沟通的。在长年持续的创作过程当中，作为创作者的李消非从把工厂和工人对象化的记录（旁观者），到逐渐深入研究、分析工厂背后的社会意义（观察者），再到感觉自己已然成为另外一个“工人”（参与者），李消非对自我的认知也逐渐在转变中。