A Parisian in Tianducheng

Would you like to see Chinese Paris through the lens of a Greek/French Parisian music video director, Romain Gavras?

Jamie XX, the music guru, had made one of his music videos in Tianducheng where is famous for its Eiffel Tower replica and Hausmannian blocks surrounded by Chinese super-apartment buildings. It also included to one of the so called ghost estates of China. The video itself creates a strange mood, a thrill to be honest. Albinos (famous model Hassan Kone and more), Chinese children with the same hair cut and hair dyed yellow with identical uniforms, a drift car in the setting of mud covered construction yards, dust and electric lines, dark karaoke bars, alienating drone view fly-through the built environment; suspended inbetween sky and ground...

But behind the scenes video is for sure more thrilling than the music video itself. This decoder of Tianducheng's everyday life interrupted by the production crew and outnumbered Chinese children running on the streets and plazas is a 'must see'. The gestures of locals become more interesting while they are watching the shooting process with a background of inhabited, finished but uninhabited and semi finished development projects. Chines children moving in unison like robots remind the viewer of the major Chinese national pride events copied and pasted in the urban context but the preparation process unveils the human nature; not-disciplined, ready to spoil but always obeying when there is an order. 

Is this the new urban-punk?
Isn't there a correlation between this video and Blade Runner or Mad Max (1979)? 
Not because of technological aesthetics they shared but because of the thrill they both create.

The clip must be a big hit in Europe and especially in Paris considering the electro club vibe of the music. The Chinese urban setting created with a development act as a spectacle turned into another spectacle for the people living the origin of that spectacle's fragments, Paris.

China seems more honest while reflecting the change that we live through. Paris, London, Newyork and almost all big cities of the global north are constantly changing while most of the time faking not doing so. Chinese transformation, dirty, unfinished, on going, conflict-visible, mask on its face while doing sports on the streets... Global north is more disguised, image oriented, lying while claiming that saying the truth, runs 3 hours in the ventilation controlled environment of the Gyms and taking photos of the sweating self to be satisfied by likes. 

One is not better than the other for sure, there are only nuances.
But what if this representation of Tianducheng is what we really feel while living in the cities of global north?  What if this music video is not a fictional mood but the direct representation of what it is?

ps: while checking out the clip on the web I came across to another comment on the video and Tianducheng, and it is HERE


Behind the Scenes

Jemie XX - Gosh - The Music Video