I took this pictures in 2010 at the Shanghai World Expo, while I was working as an architect in China.

The event “WORLD EXPO” was this dystopian idea of representation of the world. The idea of a place to experience and learn about other countries and cultures was appealing until it became an enormous, crowded and exhausting amalgama of information. Being there I feel how different the world and cultures can be… ( I think the organizers wanted to show the otherwise).

In all the predictions and previous work, the fact that this gigantic space had to be filled every day for months was not taken into account. It was clear that the exhibition grounds would not be filled with tourists, so it would have to be the locals who went to the Expo.

Yes, China has so many people… but Chinese people has not the most relaxed working schedule to spend the day queuing to enter to a National Pavilion (most of the Pavilions had minimum 2 hours line to enter… some 3 or 4 hours).

The Chinese authorities came up with the idea of fleet buses from far country places to bring people to the Expo daily.

The Result is the IMAGES that I took for this piece… more than 50 images taken in 1 day showing people sleeping on the benches along the Expo areas. Some of these “visitors” came from really long distances and only got the chance to visit 1 or couple of Pavilions.

I have keep these images on my archive for 10 years, to found them recently and I was touched by so many memories and images of China and I was encouraged to put them together without editing, photoshop or modifying the original from 2010. I always imagined this piece as a video installation and I decided to add a really soft sound background to get submerged into the images and the details of them…

VIDEO INSTALLATION (STILLS)