1. Punish aProtect![]()
My project is a video installation called 15” sand economy.It consists of 6 chapters and observed of independent sand-related businesses in the Poyang Lake.
Poyang Lake is the most famous lake for sand mining in China.The Chinese government try to occupy the whole sand business there, so they limit the individual dredging activities.This crisis in the sand economy is changing the life of the local people.
It's impossible to understand the whole story through traditional media.so I use the social media app TikTok as a research tool.It is a 15 seconds video platform.It allows me to explore the perspectives of individual sand business through advertising and the videos showing their work, process and sand.
The main elements of each video on TikTok consist of the name of users, geolocation of media, the performance, and sounds.From that I set up a database of more than 700 videos that show what is happening in Poyang Lake through the eyes of the people who involved in the sand dredging industry.
My project reveals the complexity scenario between personal economy, government policy, and ecological sand crisis.