生产 | 在诘问的十字路口：玛丽·瓦涅Marie Voignier谈“在中国”

For Eng pls scoll down

从2017年底开始，玛丽·瓦涅先后四次来到广州进行研究、采访和拍摄，最终在2019年初完成了作品《在中国》的拍摄。影片是时代美术馆展览“慢进？我们如何共处”（详情点击此处）和“一路向南” （详情点击此处）驻地研究项目的共同委任创作，还受到卡蒂斯特基金会，法国驻广州总领事馆，法国文化网、法国文化中心、法国国家电影与动画中心、法国国家造型艺术中心、Bilboquet电影等机构的支持。作品目前也同时在2019年新加坡双年展中展出。

玛丽·瓦涅，《在中国》，2019

高清视频，70分钟

作品由广东时代美术馆2019年展览“慢进？我们如何共处”委任创作，展览由比利安娜·思瑞克策划

预告片，片段由艺术家惠允

在“慢进”这个开始于2017年的项目中，比利安娜邀请艺术家来到中国进行研究和创作，并与这些艺术家保持长期的共同工作，而时代美术馆以机构的身份调动起更多的资源为作品的实现提供支持。在玛丽·瓦涅的这个项目中，除了提供部分的资金支持，时代美术馆展览部从前期连结本地研究者学者网络以及非洲女性商人群体开始，一直贯穿到最后拍摄阶段充当制片的角色。与此同时，艺术家本身的研究兴趣，也在为美术馆拓展自身的工作和方向上，打开了诸多可能性。玛丽·瓦涅在影片中所关注的非洲女商人、所谓“低端全球化”、商品在非西方系统中的流通，也为时代美术馆与关注全球南方的联系提供了许多的契机。

更多相关阅读：

玛丽·瓦涅

对谈

比利安娜·思瑞克 和 蔡俏凌

比利安娜·思瑞克（以下简称BC）：最初关于做一些关于广州非洲群体的想法在我们第一次见面时埋下了种子，那是2015 年的一次工作室拜访。你在开始这个项目之前有什么特别的考量吗？

玛丽·瓦涅（以下简称MV）：在《在中国》之前，我在喀麦隆做了两个影片。最新的一个（《廷塞尔伍德》，2017）开始于对于喀麦隆东部省法国殖民地证词的研究，探讨了巨大的雨林这个环境和其中居民之间的关系，以及法国在这个地区进行剥削的政治历史。在进行这个项目的过程中，我发现，在喀麦隆，如同在其他非洲大陆的国家一样，中国成为了日常对话和新闻中受到巨大关注的话题。中国工人、中国投资、中国政治在每个城市和村庄中都受到不断地讨论。我自此开始对喀麦隆人和中国人如何共同亦或分别工作、生活和贸易产生了兴趣。不论如何，他们走了与西方殖民主义在过去和现在发生的形式截然不同的道路。

我开始在非洲和中国的关系上进行更多的探索，我很惊讶的发现，在过去超过15年中，非洲的企业家一直在跟随在非洲国家销售的中国产品的产业链，一直跟随到交易的源头。这些年轻的女性和男性，无论是初出茅庐还是有做生意的经验，往往用微小的资本，常常是家族积蓄，到中国去寻找投资、培训、做生意甚至赚大钱的可能。他们来自超过30个非洲国家，有一些已经在中国超过30年，有些才来了一年甚至一个月，调配着自己手中的签证状态、合法性、风险和资本。我知道广州会是观察这种全球化核心的最佳地点——在珠江三角洲的入口，很大比重的低成本中国产品通过这里流通。对于很多在全球化经济中寻找机会的商人来说，广州在这些年已经成为了新的埃尔多拉多，承诺了一种其他地方不可匹敌的社会流动性。

玛丽·瓦涅，《在中国》，2019

“慢进？我们如何共处”展览现场

BC：你是如何对非洲女性商人产生兴趣的？在你关于研究探访中这种兴趣又是如何发展的？

MV：在2017年12月刚开始这个研究的时候，我最初关注的是非洲中国关系的全球经济框架及其在广州可能发生的状况：广州发生的事情在什么程度上和世界上其他地方有所关联，以及和我作为一个法国人的关联是什么？

在广州的非洲社群中，一大群商人脱离西方国家进行交易，脱离西方国家的国际规则、版权、诸如WTO和世界银行这种多边机构，也脱离了几乎所有的银行系统。这种“反霸权全球化”、“大众全球化”或是像一些经济学家命名的“次回路或下回路”，包容了拥有小资本、在霸权全球化边缘进行非正规交易的数百万人。它容许不富裕的人群可以接触到商品——多数在中国生产——否则他们可能根本没有获得商品的机会。我特别感兴趣可以反应西方影响衰退和勾勒新地缘政治形状的情景。最令人激动的是残酷的资本主义和在其中寻找一种交易方法的矛盾，这种交易方法是具有特殊的颠覆意义的，并且通过人和人之间的基本信任和个体之间的关系进行。

在我第一次的探访中，最实际的挑战是去认识人，任何来自非洲并在广州进行贸易的人。我花了一些时间在小北和三元里的批发市场游荡，试图进行一些对话。没有人了解我在寻找什么，我在买卖什么，为什么我问这些问题，并且花时间和人们在那里相处。我不是中国人，所以我不可能是一个中国政府的探子，我不是非洲人，所以我也不是一个生意竞争对手。我不是这个景观的一部分——这反而对我有所帮助。因为所有人在中国都是寻找商机，制作电影是我自己的一个小生意，我开始考虑将拍摄当作一种交易。

一点一点，我开始了解一些喀麦隆商人。我也想认识一些女性商人，但因为人数太少了所以非常困难。终于，在第一次探访的最后一点时间里，我被介绍给Julie，她后来成为了《在中国》中一个重要的角色。

在这次探访中的拍摄非常重要。尽管有一些商人很信任我，但是却因为他们的状态无法参与拍摄。以签证问题为例，他们不能作为商人被拍摄，因为他们持有的是学生签证，甚至不能在广州居住。在第一次探访结束后，我感到非常气馁，甚至想到这个影片可能最终无法完成。

接着我读到了Tu Huynh的文章《交易的“野蛮西方”非洲女性和男性以及广州底层的全球化性别源起》。她在文章中的立场十分精彩。她着重讲述了女性商人具有颠覆性的角色，她们跨越并重新定义了文化准则和本地和全球经济中对性别的规制。她也批判了在媒体和学界中使用的超男性话语。在广州居住、学习中文、做着时尚、建设或者货运生意的非洲女性，常常被忽视了，也少有关于她们的媒体报道。所以我决定关注这些女商人，她们的生活和在西方话语中作为受害者的非洲女性大相径庭。

《在中国》拍摄花絮，2019年1月，广州

摄影：方之予

BC：你在不同的本地语境中工作过，也在之前的影片中遇到了种种困难。你在中国遇到了怎样的困难呢？

MV：他们在镜头面前露出自己的面孔是有风险的，我自己也在试探，拍摄本身也具有风险。

另外一个挑战来自于我想拍摄的空间：小北和三元里的批发市场充斥着色彩丰富的服饰，各种闪亮的假货，每件物品都满溢着招摇过市。我想将这些瞠目结舌和招摇过市都拍摄进影片中，以展示经济的语境、服务全世界的中国商品制造的尺度。但是这些店面都太窄了，对镜头十分不友好。对镜头来说，它们同时太大又太小了。

BC：你花了两年时间和影片中的人物建立关系。你可以解释一下你开展这个项目的模式吗？

MV：我的每部影片都有对应手中的素材发展出的一套方法论。我知道这个项目不会进行得太容易。我倾向于将自己沉浸在本地的商业网络里。回头看的话，项目的发展分了四个步骤，它们互相缠绕在一起，也并没有提前的计划。

第一步是和我遇到的女性商人尽量相处可能多的时间，这样我们可以更了解对方。我了解到了她们如何工作，如何经商，每天需要长时间坐在她们的美发沙龙、商店或货运办公室里——我没有对这个过程进行任何拍摄。

然后我开始在市场中心用一个手机悄悄进行拍摄。我一直在跟随一个叫做Jackie的商人寻找珠宝、裙子、窗帘、罐子、锅、鞋子和手袋的过程。可能的情况下，我也用一个很小的相机在Kelly和Remmie各自的服装店和货运办公室拍摄她们，蹲守在角落里几个小时，等待有事情发生。

第三个节点是我详细拍摄了对五位女性的采访：Kelly、Remmie、Julie和其他两位。因为人脸识别的存在所以我只能录音。我租用了一个录音棚，让参与者可以离开她们工作的市场和岗位一段时间，这样一来，我可以让她们更全神贯注。因为占用了她们的工作时间，我对她们额外进行的工作支付了薪水。

最终的步骤是长达一周对女商人（Julie和Kelly）以及女演员（Shanny Uwimana和Stephanie Idio）的拍摄。我们拍摄了一些我在采访之后想象并撰写的场景。在这次拍摄中，我和摄影师Thomas Favel以及声音工程师李秉根共同工作，并获得了由蔡影茜带领的时代美术馆团队的支持以及蔡俏凌非常可贵的帮助。

影片的编辑如预想一般困难，不同的人物和节奏在不同类型的图像之间出现：纪录片和虚构故事、直接拍摄和布景、手机拍摄和摄影机拍摄。我喜欢将这些不常出现在同一部影片中的摄影手法混在一起。我也喜欢这种冲突未被消解的感觉。

展现女性生活的多样性非常重要。我不想选择一个具体的人或者路径。我希望对更广阔的经验和实践敞开，尽管影片中的六位女性依然不足以代表所有人。我试图制造一种个体道路和特殊角色之间的张力，也试图制造中国和世界经济语境之间的张力。这些个人和政治语境必须放在一起看。这是一个尺度的问题。

玛丽·瓦涅，《迦南》，2019

“慢进？我们如何共处”展览现场

BC：影片不经意地记录了商品的移动，最终在一批运向非洲的货物中结束。你如何在影片中建构不同的叙事层次？

MV：最初的目的是不去记录这些货物的移动或是任何具体的叙事。不同的叙事层次来自影片所跟随的不同角色，以及那些参与了不同的活动的人们：与客户或者供货商交涉、购买、包装和运输。我的目的是为这些层次之间创造连结。比如，Jackie解释了她对于真货假货的看法，接下来Julie交涉这些手袋可能来自于一个中国的香奈儿或是古驰的代工厂，再之后，Ada在她的女装店试图卖给一个顾客香奈儿针织衫。一个角色从之前的一个角色中接受。在编辑的时候，我们将影片剪成了一种链状结构，将一位女性连接到另外一位女性，一个主题连接到另外一个，在她们之间搭起无形的桥梁，并强调这种经济体系的建构特征。作为结果，这部影片是通过这个经济体系的逻辑搭建起来的，从购买商品开始，到运输它们结束。我们也试图用别的办法剪辑，但是都没有这种更合情理。

蔡俏凌：某种程度上，你的作品让你更随意并且可以快速适应某种情境。最开始你想找一个说伊博语的尼日利亚女性，但是我们只找到了Stephanie，一个尼日利亚裔美国女性，她有自己的美发店并且在幼儿园教课。你决定让Stephanie扮演她自己。我们在批发市场的商店里遇到卖家在用三脚架上的手机直播，这些卖家每天在淘宝上试衣服和粉丝互动进行数百笔交易，你也决定把他们放入影片中。你如何做这些决定？他们对构架这个故事有什么作用？

MV：在拍摄时我偏向去随意应变并且相信我自己的直觉，而并不是跟随一个已经写好的剧本。当Stephanie在试镜时展现自己的时候，她的故事比我之前为她的角色写的有趣得多。很难想象如何去写作一些比生活更精彩的事情——每次我试图写一个虚构的文本，最终我还是会去按照事物本来的样子去拍摄，人们在他们真实生活中的样子。我觉得这样更激动人心。尤其是和这些不专业的演员一起工作，比起强迫他们在镜头前讲一句写好的台词和表演一个与他们截然不同的角色，让他们在镜头前展现自己更容易。

而我们在一次找拍摄地点的时候发现了直播的存在，让我觉得很惊艳。我觉得这是我寻找的一些事物的最好表达：被铺天盖地的商品淹没的感觉——过度流通、过度填充、过度生产，生产和销售的密度以及这些活动背后的人。当我决定在拍摄中包括这些内容时，我不太确定一定会把这一段放在最终的剪辑中，但是最终证明我的直觉是对的，这一段内容在表达广州国内市场贸易的疯狂时是必要的。

BC：你影片中出现的女性都只出现在公共空间中。其中只有一个私密的场景，一个女性在一个宾馆的房间中的镜头前说话。你可以谈谈这个决定吗？

MV：这是一个比较早的决定。在我之前的影片中，我探讨了许多历史、政治和劳工问题，我主要拍摄的也是男性。虽然不是一个明确的决定，但是事实上我的影片中男性角色出现得比女性多：工作的男性、作为某种职业代表的男性、作为领导的男性；女性多数在镜头之外，倾向于不被摄录。我从来没有探讨这些男性的私人生活，也从没有人问起。我希望用我一贯拍摄人的方式来拍摄这些女性——作为反霸权全球化中的职业代表。我不想把我的关注带入私人和私密的环境中，尽管从政治的角度上这些也非常重要，并且和职业生活紧密相关。我认为尽管这有一定意义，但是我更坚持其他的事情，尤其因为她们是女人。

我已经让这些演员去尽可能展现她们自己。在中国的这类交易，大部分都是悄悄进行，甚至是秘密进行的：人们并不和其他人谈论这些交易，他们买什么、从谁买、从哪里买、用什么价格买。即便是朋友也不会太分享自己的生意和生活。人们有时候甚至不知道自己的朋友是否持有合法的签证或许可。有时候一个人消失了，他的朋友很可能认为这个人被捕或者被遣返了。所以，我在《在中国》里做的事情是，让一些女性走到镜头前来讲述自己的生意和签证状态，或者让我拍摄她们工作时与客户或者供货商交易，这真是一个奇迹。到她们的公寓或者曝光她们的私生活并不是我的本意。当然，我自己与Julie、Jackie、Ada等等有进行交心的交谈，关于我们的生活、工作、家庭，但是都是在镜头之外的。镜头的存在会让交心变得不可能。

同时，这些努力工作的女性在这种艰难的情境下只在工作之外拥有很有限的私生活。她们很少出去玩，在中国没有家庭，也不想在这里建立家庭。她们工作、工作再工作，工作到很晚——时差的原因让她们必须在晚上和祖国的客户沟通。这个夏天，Julie在两年中第一次在微信上发了工作之外的照片：她在一个电影院里看了《黑豹》。

BC：你作为一个白人女性艺术家的身份在非洲和中国没有被同等看待？

MV：的确没有。在喀麦隆，我是《廷塞尔伍德》这个主题的一部分，这个主题指的是法国殖民的遗存。我是其中的一个法国人，因为法国不断忽略法国在喀麦隆的殖民史，一种被理解但是却无法被轻易抹去的残酷历史。我必须直面这种残酷来工作。来过我拍摄的喀麦隆东南部的白人很少：仅仅一些狩猎者，有时还有传教士和修女。我的研究对大部分人来说很容易理解，人们也很敏锐地接受了。

在广州的批发市场里，西方人是外来者。他们不是交易或者管理的一部分。我在广州的市场里行走的时候很难不被发现，但是同时没有人关心我的存在。这也是为什么很难去解释我对做一个关于非洲和中国之间交易的影片的兴趣。但是当我开始谈论在欧洲对黑人女性的认知匮乏，谈论欧洲仍在盲目认为自己是世界中心的时候，人们终于理解到我的观点并参与到讨论里。

位于三元里一带的商贸城和非洲餐馆

图片由玛丽·瓦涅提供

蔡俏凌：在拍摄前，你很清楚地说明身份认同和民族问题不是这个影片的核心，尽管人们很可能会期待看到这些讨论。为什么你避免去谈论“黑”的概念或者这种关于非洲的视觉呈现？

MV：确实，最一开始我的注意力就在全球经济问题和后殖民时期之间的相互关联上，其中当然包含了身份认同和民族问题，但是这些被放在了我在广州观察到的历史和地缘政治语境之中。在这个意义上，我不认为我回避了种族问题，但是我没有把它们从我在这个语境中探讨的其他问题中分离出去。当然，出于我作为白人女性的角度说话，也应当在历史和经济上考虑到种族概念的建构正来自于西方的奴役和殖民历史。

作为一位白人女性，我不觉得如果我不得不说“黑”，会说出什么有意思或者相关的。必须要去倾听其他声音。作为艺术家和电影人，如果我想要反抗西方社会的机构性种族歧视，我必须从做作品开始，揭示历史和历史的因果中隐蔽的部分。我在作品《廷塞尔伍德》中就是这么做的。在《红色小径》（2015）一书中，也是如此，它是一本合集，收录德国和法国1950年代早期关于东喀麦隆的证词和对话。我应该看向未来并且重审西方社会在当今世界的位置：让反霸权运动、蕴含于新世界的交流与欧洲的地方化为人所知，非洲离散的表征也在粉碎着西方的偏见。我的观点不过是种种观点其中之一。我们需要看到关于主体的更多电影，从不同的角度看待问题，因为每部电影都只能展现部分，都带有主观性，从某一个角度来发声。

BC：你在之前曾说过欧洲仍然认为自己是中心。但是在这个作品制作过程当中，还没有可观看的成片的时候，已经有很多欧洲机构表示对它有兴趣。你觉得这是为什么呢？

MV：当我说“欧洲”的时候，我显然把它泛化了。那里有许多思想家、策展人、学者、活动家、艺术家以及很多对我们所生活的后殖民时期有意识的人，他们都对拆解西方这种自我中心话的叙事产生着积极的作用。有一些多元和激进的方法已经在他们的作品中呈现。但是，在欧洲社会和政治的尺度上，事情发展得十分缓慢，有时还在倒退，比如我们可以看到欧盟正在如何对待来到欧洲的难民和移民。

在法国，你可以做很政治的展览、出版、电影或者是在公共机构中发言，但是总统永远不会发表一个官方声明谴责法国殖民的影响。现实当然是复杂的：许多公共和私人的文化艺术机构已经对去殖民和去中心化的（艺术）历史表现出兴趣，但是这常常是一种投机的姿态，因为去殖民艺术现在已经沁入主流西方艺术世界浅薄的自我诘问中。在这种语境中，《在中国》吸引了一些欧洲的机构并不意外，因为它谈论的问题正处在诘问的十字路口。

玛丽·瓦涅在广州某服装市场仓库中

摄影：梦纯

玛丽·瓦涅 是一位居于巴黎的艺术家，曾先后在里昂国立高等艺术学院修读工程和艺术。她关注交织的现实和复杂的、混合了多种真相的故事，在每个项目中以研究对象及其人际关系为主导，形成一套独特的工作方法。她的作品看起来充满科学的调查实证精神，实际上却在错置图像对真相的讲述，避开了后殖民话语，并把主动的角色变成客体本身。她表示，“我不是在采用民族志的手法，而是希望把目光历史化。”她因为上一部作品《廷塞尔伍德》（Tinselwood）获得了2018马塞尔·杜尚奖提名。她的影片曾在蓬皮杜中心（巴黎）、LAXART （洛杉矶）、艺术之家（慕尼黑）、当代摄影博物馆（芝加哥）、柏林电影节、维也纳电影节、鹿特丹影展、马赛国际电影节以及第57届威尼斯双年展（2017）、巴黎东京宫三年展（2012）和第6届柏林双年展（2010）展映。

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For the exhibition Modes of Encounter: An Inquiry (click to read more), curated by Biljana Ciric, and presented by Times Museum, in Guangzhou, China, Marie Voignier has worked for a few year to make the video Na China.

Marie Voignier

in conversation with 

Biljana Ciric and Cai Qiaoling

Biljana Ciric (BC): The seed of the idea for developing a project in relation to the African community in Guangzhou was first planted when we met for a studio visit in 2015. What were your concerns before embarking on this project?

 
Marie Voignier (MV): Before Na China, I did two films in Cameroon. The last one, Tinselwood (2017), began with research into testimonies recalling the French colonization of the eastern region of Cameroon in order to explore the relationship between the environment—the huge rainforests—its inhabitants, and the political history of French exploitation in this region. During the development of this project, I realized that in Cameroon, as in other countries of the African continent, China has become the object of great attention in everyday conversations and in the press. Chinese workers, Chinese investments, Chinese policies are extensively debated in every city and village. I became interested in the ways in which the Cameroonians and the Chinese could work/live/trade together—or not. In any case, they follow a radically different path from the forms of western colonialism that have operated in the past and the present.
 
I started to dig deeper into those relationships between Africa and China, and I was thrilled to learn that for more than fifteen years, African entrepreneurs have been tracing the production chain of Chinese products sold in their countries and going to the sources of those trades. With a small amount of capital, often their family savings, thousands of young women and men, beginners or experienced, have moved to China to seek opportunities to invest, receive training, start a business, even make a fortune. They come from over thirty different African countries; some have been here for fifteen years, others for just a year or a month, holding all possible configurations of visa status, legality, risk, and capital. I knew that Guangzhou would be the best place to observe the heart of this globalization—being located at the mouth of the Pearl River Delta, where a large portion of low-cost Chinese production flows through. For many traders looking for opportunities in the globalized economy, Guangzhou has become a new El Dorado over the years, promising social mobility no other place could offer.
 
BC: How did you become interested in the African women traders? How did this interest evolve over the course of your research visits?
 
MV: At the beginning of my research in December 2017, I was primarily interested in the global economic framework of African-Chinese relations and its condition of possibility in Guangzhou: To what extent were things happening in Guangzhou connected to the rest of the world, and to me as a person of French nationality?
 
In the African communities in Guangzhou, a large part of the trade operates without the oversight of western countries and bypasses their international regulations, their copyrights, their multilateral institutions like the WTO or the World Bank, and is mostly outside of any banking system. This “counter-hegemonic globalization,” or “popular globalization,” “subaltern or lower circuit,” as some economists call it, involves millions of people with small capital and informal transactions on the margins of hegemonic globalization. It allows the less well-off to access commodities—mostly manufactured in China—that would otherwise be out of reach. I’m very interested in situations that reflect the decline of western influence and outline the shape of this new geopolitics. Thrilling are the contradictions between a brutal capitalism and a way to do trade inside it, which is uniquely subversive and operates on basic human trust and individual relationships.
 
During my first visit, the practical challenge was to meet someone, anyone, from Africa who was involved in trade in Guangzhou. I spent days wandering in the wholesale markets in Xiaobei and Sanyuanli, trying to start conversations. No one understood what I was looking for, what I was selling or buying, why I was asking questions and spending time with people there. Since I wasn’t Chinese, I couldn’t be a Chinese government spy, and since I wasn’t African, I couldn’t be a business competitor. I was not part of the picture at all, which was helpful. Since everyone else was in China for business, and filmmaking was my little business, I started to consider filming as a kind of method of trade.
 
Little by little, I got to know some Cameroonian traders. I wanted to meet women traders too, which was very difficult because there were few of them. Finally, at the very end of my first stay, I was introduced to Julie, who has an important role in Na China.
 
It was impossible to film during this visit. Even if the few traders I did meet trusted me, they couldn’t possibly participate because of their status. Take the visa issue for example, they couldn’t be filmed as traders because they were on a student visa or didn’t even have the right to live in Guangzhou. After my first visit, I was so discouraged that I thought the film might not be possible at all.
 
Then I read Tu Huynh’s article “A ‘Wild West’ of trade? African women and men and the gendering of globalization from below in Guangzhou.” Her stance in this text is remarkable. She highlights the subversive role of women traders who transgress and redefine cultural norms and gender assignments in the local and global economy. She also criticizes the hyper masculine discourse about the business world in Guangzhou adopted by the press and academia. African women who settle in Guangzhou, learn Chinese, and set up businesses in fashion, construction, or freight have been overlooked and receive little media attention. So, I decided to focus on these businesswomen, whose lives can’t be more different from the victimizing western discourses ascribed to African women.
 
BC: You have worked in very different local contexts and faced many obstacles in the making of your previous films. What were some of the obstacles you encountered in China?
 
MV: Since 2013, foreigners, especially black people living in Guangzhou, have had to deal with increased police repression. Day after day, visa checks, counterfeits and drug searches, and administrative restrictions are on the rise. As I mentioned, many women (and men) live and work in Guangzhou on student visas, which is in violation of the law. Any police raid can lead to their arrest and deportation with a 10-year ban from return. This situation makes filming a risky business: the camera may alert the police, and it’s too dangerous for them to show their faces to the camera while talking about their work. I was also taking chances: getting caught with a camera in the streets or markets of Guangzhou without a shooting permit could bring serious problems to me.
 
Another challenge had to do with the spaces I wanted to film: the wholesale markets in Xiaobei and Sanyuanli are fascinating with all the colorful garments, all the flashy counterfeit items; everything is overflowing with excess. I wanted all this outrageousness and excess to be in the film to show the economic context, the scale of commodity production in China that serves the rest of the world. But these shops are so narrow that they are a nightmare for the camera. They are too big and too small at the same time.
 
BC: You spent two years establishing relationships with the people in the film. Can you explain your mode of approach for working on this project?
 
MV: For each of my films, I develop a methodology that corresponds to the stakes at hand. I knew this project wouldn’t be easy. I’d have to immerse myself in the local business network. Looking back, there were four stages of development, which were interwoven and not planned in advance.
 
The first step was to spend as much time as possible with some of the women traders I met, so that we could get to know each other better. I learned how they worked, how they ran their businesses, much of which entailed sitting in their hair salons, shops, or cargo offices every day for long hours. All of this I did without filming.
 
Then I started filming very discreetly, with a mobile phone, in the heart of the markets. I had been following a Cameroonian trader named Jackie in her quest for jewelry, dresses, curtains, pots and pans, shoes, and handbags. When I could, I also filmed Kelly and Remmie in their own clothing store and cargo office with a tiny camera, spending hours in a corner waiting for something to happen.
 
The third milestone was an extensive recorded interview with five women: Kelly, Remmie, Julie, and two others. Only the sound recording was possible because of the risk of facial recognition. I rented a recording studio so participants could get out of the markets, get off work for a little bit, so I could have their full attention. Since I took their time away from work, I paid them for this other work that I asked them to do with me.
 
The last step was to do a week-long shoot with the businesswomen (Julie and Kelly) and actresses (Shanny Uwimana and Stephanie Idio), where we filmed scenes that I had imagined and wrote after the interviews. For the shoot, I worked with cinematographer Thomas Favel and sound engineer Li Binggen (李秉根) with the help of the Times Museum team led by Nikita Yingqian Cai (蔡影茜) and the precious assistance of Cai Qiaoling (蔡俏凌).
 
The editing was predictably challenging because different characters and rhythms are shown in different types of images, between documentary and fiction, direct cinema and staging, shot on both the mobile phone and the video camera. I like the mixture of different ways of approaching cinema that rarely coexist in the same film. And I like the fact that these contradictions remain unresolved.
 
It was important to show the diversity of the women’s lives. I didn’t want to choose a single person or path; I wanted to open up to a broader set of experiences and practices, even though the six women in the film can’t represent all of them. I try to build tension between individual paths and particular characters, as well as between the contexts of China and the world economy. These personal and political contexts must be held together. It is a question of scale.
 
BC: The film loosely traces the movement of goods, which ends in a final shipment to Africa. How do you construct the different narrative layers in the work?
 
MV: The initial intention was not to trace the movement of goods or any specific narrative. The different narrative layers come from different characters the film follows, and those who are involved in different activities: negotiating with clients or suppliers, buying, packing, shipping. My intention was to create links between those layers. For example, Jackie explains her position regarding original and counterfeit goods; later Julie negotiates the sale of a handbag that probably comes from a Chinese Chanel or Gucci factory; after that, Ada in her women’s clothing shop, tries to sell a Chanel knit shirt to a customer. One character takes over from the previous one. At the editing table, we constructed the film as a kind of chain, linking one woman to another, one theme to another, building visible and invisible bridges between them, and highlighting the constructed nature of this economic system. Consequently, the film is constructed in a way that sort of follows the logic of the system, which starts with buying commodities and ends with shipping them off. We also tried to edit in other ways, but nothing else really made sense.
 
Cai Qiaoling (CQ): You work in a way that allows you to be flexible and react quickly to the situation. Initially you wanted to cast a Nigerian woman who speaks Igbo, but we only found Stephanie, a Nigerian-American woman who runs her own hair business while teaching in a kindergarten. You decided to have Stephanie play herself. When we encountered sellers in the wholesale market shops livestreaming with cellphones on tripods, who were making hundreds of sales every day interacting with followers on Taobao, while trying on clothes, you also included them in the film. How did you make these decisions? What’s their function in constructing the story?
 
MV: I prefer to improvise and follow my intuition on the shoot, rather than following a story or written text. When Stephanie presented herself to us during the casting, her story was much more interesting than the one I’d written for her role. It’s hard to imagine writing something more interesting than life itself—every time I try to write fiction, I end up filming things as they are, people in their real lives. I find that much more exciting. With non-professional actors, it’s better to let them construct their own roles in front of the camera rather than forcing them to stick to a text or character that’s far from themselves.
 
As to the livestreaming we discovered on the location scout, it was indeed fascinating. I thought it was a perfect expression of something I was looking for: the sensation of been overwhelmed by commodities—the overflowing, the overfilling, the over-production, the intensity of production and sales, and the people behind these activities. When I decided to include it in the shooting plan, I wasn’t sure at all whether this sequence would make it in the final edit, but my intuition turned out to be right: the sequence is necessary to give the feeling of the craziness of Guangzhou’s trade on the domestic market.
 
BC: The women in your film are only shown in public spaces. There is only one private scene where a woman talks in front of the camera in a hotel room. Can you talk about this decision?
MV: That was an early decision. In my previous films I worked a lot with historical, political, and labor issues, and I mostly filmed men. It wasn’t a deliberate decision, but the fact is there are more male characters in my films than female ones: men at work, men speaking as a professional of this, as a director of that. Women often stay off-frame, preferring not to be filmed. I never got into the personal life of those men and no one asked me about it. I wanted to film these women the way I always film people—as professionals and key agents in this non-hegemonic process of globalization. I didn’t want to shift focus to the private or intimate sphere, even if it is also politically significant and interwoven with professional life. I think it’s meaningful, but I prefer to insist on something else, especially because they are women.
 
I had already asked the actresses to expose themselves a lot. In this kind of business in China, everything is discreet, even secret: people barely talk with one another about business, what they buy, from whom, where, at what price. Even friends don’t share much about one’s business or life. People sometimes don’t even know if their friend has the right visa or permit. Sometimes a person disappears, and his friends think he might’ve been arrested and deported, but until then nobody knew he didn’t have the proper visa. One’s visa status is regarded as a private issue that could be dangerous to expose, even to friends. So, what I was able to do in Na China, that is to say, bringing some women in front of the camera to explain their business and visa situation, or let me film them at work, trading with clients or suppliers, it was a true miracle. Asking to go inside their apartments and to expose their private life was something I didn’t want to do. Of course, I had private, reciprocal conversations with Julie, Jackie, Ada ... about our life, work, family, but it all happened off-camera. The camera would have made the reciprocity impossible.
 
Also, the women work so much and in such a difficult context that they have very limited personal life outside work. They rarely go out; they don’t have family in China and don’t want to start any. They work and work and work, late into the night because of the time difference with clients in their home countries. This summer, for the first time in two years, Julie posted on WeChat a picture of something other than work: she saw Black Panther in a movie theater.
BC: Was your role as a white female artist perceived differently in Africa and China?
 
MV: Indeed. In Cameroon I was part of the subject of Tinselwood, meaning the remains of French colonization. I was involved as a French person since a large part of the French colonial history in Cameroon is completely ignored in France, a brutality that is understated if not simply erased. I must work against that. Very few white people pass through southeastern Cameroon, where I filmed; only big game hunters and sometimes priests and religious sisters. It was easy to make my research understandable to anyone and people were quite receptive.
In China, westerners are the outsiders. They are not part of the trade or the administration. I was not walking around unnoticed in those Guangzhou markets, that’s for sure, but at the same time nobody cared about me. That’s why it was more difficult to explain my interest in making a film about business between Africa and China. But when I started to talk about the poor representations of black women in Europe and how Europe was still blindly considering itself as the center of the world, people finally got my point and engaged in discussion.
 
CQ: Before the shoot, you made it very clear that identity and racial issues wouldn’t be the core of this film, though it might be what people expect to see. Why do you avoid digging into the concept of “blackness” or the visual representation of Africa and/or blackness?
 
MV: Indeed, from the beginning my focus is on the interconnections between the global economic issues and the postcolonial times, which of course include identity and racial issues, but they are considered in the historical and geopolitical context I observe in Guangzhou. In that sense, I don’t think I’m avoiding racial issues, but I don’t consider them separately from other questions in this context. Of course, I am speaking from my perspective as a white woman, who needs to take into account that the history and economy regarding the construction of the concept of race begin with the western history of slavery and colonization.
 
As a white woman, I don’t think what I have to say about “blackness” is that interesting or relevant. Other voices must be listened to. As an artist and filmmaker, if I want to fight against structural racism in western society, I should start by producing works that shed light on hidden parts of its history and historical consequences. This is what I tried to do in Tinselwood, and the book La Piste Rouge (2015), which is a collection of testimonies and conversations about forced labor in East Cameroon under German and later French forces up to the early 1950s. I should also look into the future and reconsider the place of western societies in the world: to make visible the counter hegemonic movements, the complexity of the new world exchanges and the provincialization of Europe, and show representations of African diasporas that shatter western biases. My perspective is but one among many others. We need to see more films about the subject, made from different perspectives, because each film is partial, subjective, and speaks from a situated position.
 
BC: You mentioned earlier how Europe still thinks of itself as the center. But many European institutions have also shown great interest in this specific work without even seeing it, while it is still in the making. Why do you think that is the case?
 
MV: When I say “Europe” I’m obviously making a generalization. There are many thinkers, curators, scholars, activists, artists and others who are aware of the postcolonial times we are living in, who are politically active in deconstructing the westerner’s self-centered narratives—with diverse and radical approaches, of course. However, at the scale of European societies and politics, things are moving very slowly, and sometimes even backwards, as we can see in how the European Union is dealing with refugees and migrants coming to Europe.
 
In France, for example, you can have very political exhibitions, books, films, or talks in public institutions, but the President would never make an official statement about the devastating effects of French colonization. The reality is of course very complex: many public and private cultural and art institutions have shown interest in decolonial thinking and decentered (art) histories, but this is often a purely opportunistic gesture, because decolonial artmaking has also been subsumed into the mainstream western art world’s superficial self-questioning. In this context, it’s not surprising that Na China appeals to certain European institutions because it raises issues that are at the crossroads of such questionings.
 
 
 
Marie Voignier is an artist living in Paris. She studied Engineering and then Fine Arts at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Lyon. She is primarily concerned with tied realities, complex stories in which several truths are mixed. Each of her projects is built following a unique approach guided by the subject and the human relationships it weaves. If her works seem fed by a scientific spirit of investigation and testimony, they foil any allocation of the image to reality telling and found their way to get around the post-colonial speech, as to let an active role to the subject itself. “I am not in an ethnographic approach but in a will to historicize the glance,” she says. Her last film Tinselwood earned her a nomination to the Prix Marcel Duchamp 2018. Her films have been shown Centre Pompidou (Paris) , LAXART (Los Angeles), Haus der Kunst (Munich), Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), Berlinale, Viennale, IFFR Rotterdam, FID Marseille and 57th Venice Biennale (2017), La Triennale, Paris (2012) and 6th Berlin Biennials (2010).