Stories are Propaganda

Stories are Propaganda was created by Philippe Parreno and Rirkrit Tiravanija for the Guangzhou Biennial in China. The artists document the new city rising on the Pearl River Delta near Guangzhou. A sequence of fixed shots depicts black factory smoke, piles of trash, words written in the sand, and trees swaying in the wind. Moving rapidly from broad observations of the era to autobiographical details and self-reflection, poetic fragments unfold like snapshots: a Chinese magician making watches and clocks appear at night; a small albino rabbit floundering in a muddy puddle; a snowman made of mud; a shadow puppet silhouetted against the moon. Narrated by a child off-screen, the film creates a feeling of melancholy through its evocation of the end of the world's ideologies. It is an inverted cinema made of scenes edited according to a temporal protocol.