找妈妈 (2021至今)
当时我在英国读研期间没有回国，该聊天记录呈现了我和母亲相隔八千公里/七个小时，在截然不同的生活轨迹下，却矛盾地约定见面，她要带我去派出所更改我们的户籍所在地，在这段我去找她的旅途中，我看着地图、导航、指示标，不停地在迷路，被各种沿途事物分散注意力，以我们各自的路径（交通工具+步行）为线索，勾连出她的个人经历和中国城市化进程中的集体记忆。
母亲出生于70年代初，她经历了中国高速现代化发展时期， 中国在20世纪50年代至改革开放的户籍制度可以类比为“国内护照制度”，它构建了中国城乡二元对立的概念（延续至今），很多国家都有类似户籍的概念，只不过通常仅被用作于人口统计，而中国在上世纪的户籍政策和食物/教育/医疗/社会福利等公民权益直接挂钩，这使得户口更多意味着身份/社会阶级而非出生地点/定居地点，它限制了人口从农村向城市的流动，为每一个新出生的孩子刻划下肉眼可见的归宿——没有选择的权利。而城乡之间极大的不平等也就产生了中国特色的“农民潮”“城市化”“户口买卖”“盲流”等现象。
在我父母成年并开始寻找工作的年代，限制城乡流动的政策已宽松， 农村有数以千万计的人口涌入城市工作，他们所幸赶上社会浪潮成为了“北漂”一份子，作为外地人在北京工作、 生活。 北京作为首都，对外地人有极高的落户/居住限制。“漂”、“流” 体现了流动的生存状态。作为外地人在北京工作、生活，我们的家庭长期处于“无家可归”的状态：租住、搬迁、户籍与现实生活地址的不一致，成为一种制度性漂泊。 户口在他们的观念里是最重要的东西，在北京落户是他们此生的梦想，而作为他们的孩子，很长一段时间我不能理解他们的行为，并且产生了很多意见分歧。，
而我在离开她、独自远行之后，才开始试图理解她讲过却被我忽略的那些故事。项目中的对话是自言自语式的、记忆重构的，是我第一次尝试用感知与语言理解母亲、理解她作为中国现代化的一份子如何参与、挣扎、被规训。这段“寻找”的过程没有清晰的方向，它像一场悖论式的旅程，始终在“将要见面”却永远无法抵达的状态中悬置。它映射出我作为她的女儿、一个在全球化教育轨道上漂流的年轻女性，对于故土、家庭和自我身份的不断追问。
在后疫情时代，世界的尺度从渐渐收缩为自己脚下的一方土地，离散感与边界意识变得愈发明显。卫星定位与地图测绘系统构建了我们对自身位置的认知和想象；远程通讯则制造出一种“连接”的想象，我试图在影片中营造一种灵异eeire氛围，在形式上借鉴了微纪录片形式的恐怖电影元素，意在回应基于远程通讯的移动媒介本身的不稳定性，看似丝滑，但又确实存在延迟甚至断裂。母亲的形象因此被媒介化、幽灵化，成为一种处于现实与数字之间的模糊存在，既真实可感，又不时滑入记忆、幻觉与算法生成的回声之中。她既真实存在，又如幽灵一般盘旋、干扰、不肯退场，盘旋的幽灵既来自motherland的呼唤，也来自现代媒介造成的“显灵”错觉，心里 - 地理上的无家可归。
我找妈妈的路显得遥遥无期，我们永远也不会见面，这不是终点，而是一种对“回家”的永恒悬置。
Finding Mom (2021 to present)
During my postgraduate studies in the UK, I did not return to China. The chat records show that while my mother and I were 8,000 kilometers and seven hours apart, living completely different lives, we were paradoxically on our way to meet each other. She wanted to take me to the police station to change the location of our household registration. On this journey to find her, I kept looking at maps, navigation apps, and road signs—only to get lost again and again, constantly distracted by the details along the way. Using our respective routes (transportation and walking) as clues, the project connects her personal experience to the collective memory of urbanization in China.
My mother was born in the early 1970s and experienced China’s rapid modernization. From the 1950s through the Reform and Opening period, China’s household registration system (hukou) functioned as a kind of “domestic passport,” constructing and reinforcing the urban-rural divide that still exists today. While many countries have some form of household registration, it is usually only used for population statistics. In contrast, China’s hukou system was directly tied to a person’s rights—such as access to food, education, medical care, and social welfare. Hukou became less about where you were born and more about who you were in society. It shaped identity and class, and restricted population movement from rural to urban areas, marking every child with a visible destiny—one they had no power to choose. This deep inequality led to phenomena such as the “rural tide,” rapid urbanization, hukou trades, and waves of “blind migration.”
By the time my parents reached adulthood and began job-hunting, restrictions on movement had eased. Tens of millions of rural migrants poured into cities, and my parents became part of the so-called “Beijing Drifters”—living and working in the capital as outsiders.
Beijing, as the capital, has long imposed strict limitations on residency for non-locals. Terms like “drifting” and “floating” reflect the experience of impermanence. For many years, our family lived in a constant state of structural homelessness—not in the literal sense, but shaped by endless renting, relocation, and the disconnect between our hukou address and our actual place of residence.
For my parents, household registration was everything. To be allowed to settle in Beijing was their lifelong dream. As their daughter, for a long time, I didn’t understand their choices, and often felt conflicted.
It was only after I left her that I began trying to understand the stories she had told me—stories I had once ignored or forgotten. The dialogues in this project are internal, almost monologic. It is my first attempt to understand my mother—through sensation, through language—to consider how she took part in China’s modernization, how she struggled, and how she was shaped by it.
This act of “finding” has no clear direction. It feels like a paradoxical journey—always about to arrive, but never quite arriving. It reflects my own position as her daughter, and as a young woman drifting through the global education system, constantly questioning the meaning of home, family, and identity.
In the post-pandemic era, the scale of the world has shrunk to the land beneath our feet. Feelings of displacement and heightened boundary awareness have become increasingly present. GPS and digital mapping now shape how we understand—and imagine—where we are. Instant messaging creates an illusion of connection. It feels smooth, efficient, fast, and immediate. In this work, I try to create an eerie atmosphere, drawing from horror aesthetics in pseudo-documentary form to express this instability—what seems seamless often conceals delays, glitches, or even collapse. Mobile media becomes a ghost-making machine.
Through this lens, my mother’s presence becomes mediated and spectral—a figure suspended between physical reality and digital ghostliness. She is both tangible and elusive, constantly circling, interrupting, refusing to disappear. The ghost that hovers is not only the mother, but also the motherland—summoned by memory and made spectral by media. It is a haunting born of both emotional longing and technological illusion. A form of psychogeographic homelessness.