Luring Bad

Luring Bad is an experimental CGI animation that can also be presented as a three-channel video installation. The film presents a green dreamscape produced by artificial light from squid fishing, inspired by real fishing grounds along the Huangqi Peninsula in Fujian, China, which are dubbed the “Fujian Aurora” on China’s social media platform RedNote. This fishing-light technique is widely used across Asian waters. It illuminates coastal waters and skies, spans regional boundaries, and blurs distinctions between human, nonhuman, and island landscapes.

Drawing on my field research at the Huangqi Peninsula, the fishing grounds are digitally reconstructed. The protagonist, modeled on a fisherman I observed (via the virtual avatar of artist Guangli Liu), inhabits two intertwined dream sequences: a driver snores while crossing a sea bridge, and a fisherman dozes while scrolling short videos amid the green-lit squid catch. Each dreams of being the other, dissolving the distinction between dreamer and dreamed.

Luring Bad conveys concern, doubt, sorrow, and helplessness toward historical and artificially constructed images of Asia. It seeks a critical perspective beyond the spectacle of green light, reflecting on a cultural present where realities are dissected, repackaged, and transformed. By juxtaposing snoring with green light, and embedding vocabulary from Yoshimi Takeuchi alongside leftist compositions by Yellow Magic Orchestra, it explores enduring tensions in contemporary Asian geopolitics and cultural identity.

Luring Bad was commissioned by Watershed Art & Ecology. It is also the artist’s cut combining my works Dozing Overpass, Green Light Ties the River, and The Living Are Stained Black.