Zhou Tao

TB2023 cinema program

Zhou Tao is a filmmaker based in Guangzhou whose shimmering cinematic works seem to float over a world full of abrasions from some titanic force of nature or industry. The Axis of Big Data  (2023) is the second of a two-part film about the surroundings of the big data valley in Guizhou. Literally turning his back on the data center, Zhou Tao’s camera focuses on the “useless” data surrounding it: the child, the old man, the worker, and their relationship with the landscape beyond the valley. In the film, the camera pans over terraced fields, tracing their slopes as if through the “scroll” of traditional Chinese landscape painting. Throughout the film, the camera often reaches its limit as a technology, struggling to capture a natural landscape reconfigured by the data center, signaling a new relationship between human and nature. In awe of the strangeness of the reflective surface layer of visual reality, we cannot identify the protagonist directing the action, even just to identify the scale at which it operates in time or in space. Perhaps it surpasses our understanding because it is too elemental for the industrial creatures we have become.