“This work sums up my life in the hutongs. Before, everyone was very relaxed. Now it’s not so free. Everything is forbidden, ‘No, No, No.’ Negation upon negation upon negation.” This is how Kan Xuan describes the impetus for her animated video Walking, Walking (2019), of cucumbers moving across a white screen to chants of
(No oil! No garlic! No vinegar! No salt!), as a “negation of the most authentic, average Beijing dish.” Kan created the video for the Beijing alternative space Arrow Factory, where it was shown beginning in July 2019 for two months, during the space’s final summer. She placed the screen in the corner of the tiny space so that it was only visible when a passerby peered through the street-level window, echoing how “the entrances of many Beijing’s shops were blocked and there was no way to know that a shop was in there.”
