Dachen Bao arrived in Erdaobaihe Town at the foot of Changbai Mountain straight from the Netherlands in late March. This was not only his first return to China since the pandemic but also his first time setting foot on the completely unfamiliar land of Northeast China. Letting go of all preconceptions, he decided to simply embrace this sense of unfamiliarity and humorously noted that locals could always spot his southern vibe at a glance.
Dachen Bao is used to exploring his surroundings on foot, a habit he has picked up during his years of living in Chongqing. Whether at the China-North Korea border, on Changbai Mountain, or in a North Korean family’s beef soup restaurant, he senses a national narrative infused in daily life, unfolding layer by layer like wrinkles. At the same time, our conversation inevitably shifted between the Northeast and the Southwest, revealing through a comparative lens how the proximity or distance between a person and the mountains shapes our perception of a place.
Place has been both the foundation of Dachen Bao’s years of practice and the subject of recent reflection and caution of this young artist. In his past creative experiences, whether delving into Chongqing’s historical role as a wartime rear area or uncovering a forgotten history of Chinese immigrants through the urban changes in the Netherlands, he excelled at navigating between history, archives, and fiction through video essays. Now, Dachen Bao seeks to explore how the Southwest and Northeast are interconnected with a more open attitude. Being in the border area of Northeast China once again reminds him that place is a constantly evolving concept shaped by social and national narratives. Responding and adapting in a timely manner may be a common challenge faced by artists working with the notion of place.
The following is a transcript of Dachen Bao’s oral description, reviewed by the interviewee before publication. All photographs in the text were taken by Dachen Bao.
This March, I traveled to the Northeast which is like capturing the end of a season. The journey from Changchun to Changbai Mountain by high-speed railway was not the snow-covered scenery I had imagined, but it did have a post-industrial lassitude and pallor. When I arrived at the town of Erdaobaihe at the foot of Changbai Mountain, it felt like returning to the life of a small-town youth.
Compared to other areas in the Northeast, a sense of diversity can still be felt in the Changbai Mountain region. First of all, it is because there are ethnic Koreans living here. The most I ate during my stay was beef soup and rice run in a restaurant by a North Korean family, and every time I went there I would pay attention to their daily conversations, often with a few Chinese words mixed with Korean, and their children watching Korean dramas on the side. The atmosphere instantly pulls you into a foreign country. There is also a profound connection with nature in the Changbai region. In Changbai County, wherever you are, you can see the towering mountains in the distance, reminiscent of the scenery I became familiar with during my time in Chongqing.
Most of my previous practice was centered around a specific place. But in these two years, I have mostly stayed in Europe, and have been separated from both the domestic soil and context for some time. This time, I joined the Changbai Mountain residency to reconnect with the domestic scene in an immersive and field-like manner, aiming to invigorate my creative process and thinking through fresh experiences.
On the one hand, the territory of Northeast China can be traced back to a very long history, including the changes of New China and the Third Frontier Construction, etc., which makes me feel that I can continue part of the practical experience that I have accumulated in Southwest China in the past; on the other hand, Northeast China feels alien to me, and it is indeed the first time that I have been to Northeast China. I want to avoid approaching this place with a research perspective and even refrain from making too many assumptions. Instead, I aim to see what kind of feelings arise from direct, bodily encounters.
While I’m not particularly fond of a comparative perspective, arriving in a new environment inevitably prompts me to unconsciously seek clues to compare the Northeast and the Southwest. However, comparison isn’t my ultimate goal. Rather, I seek to establish a connection between place and myself through this process.
For instance, ecologically, there are significant differences between the Southwest and Northeast. In Chongqing, surrounded by nameless mountains, one can almost see a mountain every few steps, fostering an intimate relationship between people and mountains. Yet in Northeast China, I find the mountains here to possess a more profound sense of divinity, and the relationship between people and mountains feels more distant. Specifically with regard to Changbai Mountain, it may be related to its frontier and historical attributes within the framework of the nation-state, and the mountain is thus endowed with a stronger symbolic meaning. Of course, for those who go into the mountains daily for mining, their relationship with the mountains would be entirely different.
Additionally, as a mountainous city, Chongqing is filled with numerous crevices and folded terrains that I had to navigate on foot. Therefore, arriving in the Changbai Mountain area, I naturally relied on walking to explore similar folded terrains. During my residency, I haven’t only stayed in Erdaobaihe Town but also spent considerable time exploring border towns like Tumen City, Changbai Autonomous County, Hunchun Port, and Fangchuan County. Of course, most of these places have been developed into tourist spots, as evident from the videos I’ve filmed, where many areas are now enclosed with wire fences. It’s said that these wire fences have only appeared in recent years.
I also visited several local folk culture museums multiple times during this trip. Perhaps out of habit, whenever I conduct fieldwork, I would visit local museums to see what exhibits are on display and how they are presented. These exhibits often reflect the relationship between local residents, native cultures, and broader policy directions. In the folk culture museums, I found the history of the Manchu people in Northeast China and the local ethnic perspectives to be very direct and almost unavoidable. These experiences have piqued my interest in narratives concerning nation-states and border regions.
But for the local ethnic Korean community, such grand narratives naturally permeate their daily lives. Many people’s leisure activities involve using specialized telescopes to observe North Korea across the river, sometimes even without the aid of telescopes. During my walks, I often encounter scenes that appear surreal and conflicted, such as residents on this side of the border playing loud music and dancing in public squares, while soldiers are clearly stationed on the opposite side.
My particular focus on geography in my creative work stems from my previous experiences in Chongqing. In Chongqing, the intertwining of human life with natural landscapes is a deeply complex state. As an artist, we don’t need to consciously extract this in our work; our attention is naturally drawn to our relationship with the natural surroundings. Thus, I often ponder how the Southwest can serve as a method—what exactly does it signify? Whether in examining relationships between people and species or in architecture and spatial relationships, it provides us with a distinctive perspective.
On the other hand, I have always been interested in discovering the so-called folds of history. In Chongqing, folds are not only visible and palpable at the geographical level but also evoke the gray space of a city that has been covered up or neglected in the process of modernization, or a grassroots and civic state. But in the context of the Northeast, the so-called folds are more like a moment, one that distances itself from the present and presents a state of non-consensus.To cite what might be an inappropriate example, one day in Erdaobaohe Town, I was walking and filming when an elderly man fishing asked me where I was from. I replied, “Chongqing.” He confidently said, “Ah, Chongqing, in Sichuan Province.” Though a small and everyday topic, it reflects the local perception of places beyond Northeast China, pulling me into another scene with a sense of some kind of rupture.
In recent years, my creative focus has primarily been on video essays, weaving together different historical threads through archival research and incorporating elements of fictional narratives to accommodate multiple storytelling perspectives. This research-oriented approach remains essential to me, as it establishes a robust and creative logic and structure. However, once it becomes stale, changes are necessary. My experience studying in the Netherlands over the past two years threw me into a completely unknown and unfamiliar environment, prompting me to contemplate inadvertently the relationships between self and others, self and the environment, as well as between creation and audience. I began seeking a connection, a form of empathy on a cognitive or emotional level. Returning to my residency in the Northeast, as I mentioned in the beginning, I aim to discard preconceptions and past creative methods, starting fresh with embodied experiences. Since the pandemic outbreak, emotionally engaging with a place has become significantly more important and urgent to me.
During this residency, I mainly focused on documenting daily landscapes. Faced with a relatively vast landscape like the Northeast, I was more interested in photographing something specific and microscopic, such as animals and plants, to reflect a sense of difference. In addition to filming, I also conducted some field recordings. I captured military drills from across the North Korean border, and on one occasion, I heard a type of music that one might hear playing in a bar, though it abruptly ended before completing a full song.
As for the final product, I’ll probably still continue my previous exploration of the relationship between grand narratives and local history, combining archives, field filming, and fictional narratives to tell a story about place, but I also hope to open up more possibilities, to accommodate a relatively abstract, ambiguous state. I wondered if it was possible to utilize this unfamiliar experience to create a less complete narrative.
I’ve also been wondering how a focus on place can avoid falling into a narrow regionalism. Regionalism refers to an insular, top-down approach to research and narrative based on established geographic and geo-frames, but the practice of art is not oriented towards the production of a research outcome, but rather about making a more effective, alternative connection. For me, archiving and research is not the ultimate goal. I still hope to make this process hidden under the logic of artistic narrative through a concrete way of creation.
I will continue to refine my filming and reflections during this residency period, and I’ll also explore potential connections between place and geography, especially the intimacy of place and geography within the discourse of a nation-state I am curious to find out if it’s possible to develop a relatively long-term project that integrates previous work experiences into a cohesive network. This sounds like an ambitious plan, but it’s the direction I hope to explore starting from this residency.
In my artistic practice, I always set up an imaginary adversary for myself, a grand Other, so to speak. I envision my narrative approach to be fluid, much like the concept of place itself, which evolves under the changes in societal structures and national frameworks. Various entities are all attempting to construct their own narratives about place to achieve their respective intentions and goals, a process that is distinctly directive. As an artist engaged in place-based practices, I remind myself to be aware of the mechanisms of change behind a place and make adjustments in a timely manner.
Interview and writing: Mo Ran
Dachen Bao is a visual artist, filmmaker and researcher based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands and Chongqing, China.
Through films, installations, and performances, Dachen’s practice combines historical investigation, ethnography and speculative fiction in examining the ever-shifting structural relationships between geopolitics and ecology, self and other. His recent research attempts to re-touch histories and memories of hinterlands in Southwest China on the basis of materiality, embodiment and perception, explore indigeneity and the entanglement of temporalities, as well as its potential for alternative narratives outside of nation-state and imperial frameworks.
Dachen holds a master’s degree (Summa Cum Laude) in Lens-Based Media from Piet Zwart Institute, and also has an MFA in Print from Sichuan Fine Art Institute. He is a co-founder of the self-organized Chongqing Work Institute (CWI), a research-based collective operating since 2018.
