普罗大众之夜
Nights of Proletarian

普罗大众之夜

Nights of Proletarian

30 minutes 48 seconds, Single-channel HD video, color, sound, 2019

​​

Nights of Proletarian took its name from the book by Jacques Rancière in 1981 then titled Nights of Labor: The Workers Dream in Nineteenth-Century France, which was re-published by Verso Books under the new name of Proletarian Nights in 2012. The work is based on the dramatic life experience of Zuoqing Cao. After becoming the middleweight champion in the 2009 National Judose Classic and the first-ever topping CCTV-5 Judose Tournament for the sixth consecutive time, he decided to head to the US to internationalize the sport of Judose, but it ended in failure. In the aftermath of the setback, Kevin Cao chose to stay in the US and became a wedding videographer, immersing himself in art and filmmaking.

The shift in profession led him to step away from center stage and retreat to unnoticed corners: from the limelight to behind the scenes, from a violent performer to a witness to happiness. As a parallel to his turbulent and displaced life, the work weaves together of wedding videos Cao made in the US, game recaps in his early years in China, and interview clips at his studio in Chicago into a narrative entwined by both fictional and documentary elements.

​​​

​

​

​

​​​​​