Is that a belly or a cell that is in visible turmoil? In any case, in Angel Wu’s film the capitalist hamster wheel is a living organism – though it is not quite clear whether we live in it or it in us. When a young factory worker makes a wooden fetish, prays to it, and then eats it, he is physically and visibly consumed with ambition and work mania. Without further ado, the people around the fire turn into a column of factory workers with a number-crunching management, the free-roaming zebra is put into a cage that is quickly shipped off as a container. But Wu does not just stage this development as a simple series of recognisable capitalism markers but also retains the cryptic, haptic quality of her magnificent mixed media reflection on the content level.
Is the fetish an anvil that symbolises human malleability? Does the worker long for something else? Are the delicately drawn insights into the interior of the machine visions of hell or simply an Anthropocene in its final stage? Based on the physical formula “work equals force times distance,” Wu not only combines 2D animation, photography, collage, and drawing – as well as Taiwanese music featuring some unsavoury retching. Rather, she condenses reflections on working life in (Asian) societies and our imprisonment within it.