The video work RMB City Opera (2010) documents an experimental theatre piece by the Chinese artist Cao Fei from 2009, which interweaves real and virtual worlds.
The performance is inspired by the Communist propaganda operas of the Chinese Cultural Revolution under Mao Zedong. The stage is RMB City, a city founded by Cao Fei on the digital platform Second Life, whose architecture strongly resembles that of the Chinese capital, Beijing. In this setting at the intersection of fiction and reality, actors and avatars interact: they build and explore the city, chat, dance, and fall in love. In fragmented sequences, Cao Fei unravels the interactions between the characters, who act on both the physical and virtual level. In addition, pop-cultural references from film, comics, and gaming run throughout the work.
Cao Fei’s fictions revolve around the rapid growth and simultaneous disintegration of today’s life-worlds, whether in Asian megacities or on internet platforms. In this way, RMB City Opera reflects on the history, present, and future of the People’s Republic of China and raises questions of identity within the tension between physical and digital existence.
