Life in the Square

This is a documentation of things that happened in a square within my community in Beijing from March 26th. The final presentation of this project will be an exhibition containing short documentaries of individuals and things that happened around the same location within the square, synthesized maps of these people, and a visual reflection of the overall project. Through this project, I hope to show how the square, as a public space, connects lives during the special time of the coronavirus.

I started to shoot videos from March 26th to August 10th through my window from the same angle. Most of the raw videos last for 30 minutes and were recorded at similar times each day.

During the time of filming this project the situation surrounding the viral outbreak of COVID-19 was starting to get better in Beijing. However, regulations against activities outside communities are even stricter. So, for the sake of convenience, many people would go to the square for entertainment. In China, most of us now live in apartments, so we do not have much interaction with other people within the community, and we sometimes even do not know who our neighbors are. But for the square, it is actually a public space for community members to communicate and connect to each other. Also, since this is the playground for everyone within the community, from children to the old, from residents to gardeners, we can actually see different ways of living.

Initially, I planned to make documentations of different people within the square, but I soon found it impossible as I couldn’t tell everyone apart, expect for those who come on regular basis with some special signatures like a boy riding a red bicycle with yellow wheels. Therefore, I decided to make not only documentation of individuals, but also documentations of things that happened at a certain place within the square, like around the fountain. In this way, even though some people may have only appeared once, viewers can still see their unique experience.

1. Map
2. Certain Places
3. Certain People

When it comes to archives of COVID-19, the mainstream media usually focuses on people within hospitals or those in places where situations are relatively severer. However, things are quite different for me in Beijing. Because we cannot go back to campus, I am currently studying online at home. And since my study area is close to the window, I can easily see what is going on in the square. This gives me the chance to be a spectator and to observe people’s lives. So I decided to record life during coronavirus from my own perspective. Instead of documenting my family, I chose to focus on people within my community, which I thought would show a bigger picture when the base is larger. Even though my project is more like videos captured by a “surveillance camera,” it is actually different as it also records the sound in my room like me typing and talking with my parents. And thus, my family, together with people out in the square, make up the life within our community.