film stills © Shen Xin

Commerce des Esprits

4 channel video installation, 17:25, 2018

Commerce des Esprits is a four channel video installation presenting a scripted monologue through animation and text. Based on the research of works by French sinologists on Zhuangzi (370 BC-287 BC), Shen Xin translates the perspectives and productivities of comparative philosophy into an event which narrates an unconscious state. The narrative initiates an imagined experiment of autonomous driving, where questions of ethics in technology, safety and death are provoked. Two animation channels traces human bodies through motion capture, while the two text channels reveal in English and French the commerce of language, and its potential for new ways of producing meaning, and for undermining cultural autonomy of the nation state.

Narrator: Wang Yaying

Writer, Cinematographer, Editor: Shen Xin

Motion Capture: Wang Yaying, Shen Xin

Translators: Alvin Li and Max Krugman

With gratitude for the works of 何乏筆（Fabian Heubel), François Jullien and John Rapp.

In memory of my father, Shen Daohong.

Supported by New Century Art Foundation, Beijing and Rijksakademie, Amsterdam.