Backwards (Wenzhou) is the latest iteration of Lishuang Xu’s ongoing Walking Practice series, following her previous works in London, Chongqing, and Shanghai. Continuing her exploration of bodily practices and the poetics of space, Xu adopts the method of walking backward while inverting the temporal flow of video footage. By orchestrating a disorienting interplay of visual and sensory perception, her body appears to move “forward,” while the surrounding streets, pedestrians, and vehicles glide in reverse, creating a paradoxical tension between “advancing in retreat” and “retreating in apparent advance.”
Wenzhou’s spatial identity arises from the confluence of its flourishing small-scale commodity economy and its entanglement with global diasporic networks. The city functions simultaneously as a point of departure for the circulation of goods and people and as a nexus of local production and transnational systems. Xu conceived a 14.5-kilometer walking route extending from a local shoe factory to the Hong Museum, traversing abandoned factories, the unrenovated banks of the Oujiang River, emerging construction zones, demolished shoe material markets, bustling small commodity markets, and finally, the vibrant city center.
Through the act of walking, Xu renders the spatial vitality and ruptures within Wenzhou’s urban fabric into an embodied archive. As urban expansion exceeds the scale navigable by foot, the growing disconnection between the sites of production and consumption becomes a symptom of spatial and social fragmentation. The artist employs her physical body as a medium to traverse and reconnect these ruptures, enacting a nuanced resistance to the imposed rhythms of industrial acceleration.
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