Brother Jiang, It’s Better to Film White People These Days
蒋哥，现在的时候最好尽量拍白人的

2025.3.16-6.8

ARTIST 艺术家
Jiang Zhi 蒋志

DRC No. 12 is pleased to announce the opening of artist Jiang Zhi’s solo project “Brother Jiang, It’s Better to Film with White People These Days,” on March 16, 2025. The project originates from a series of "video gifts" the artist encountered online around the 2022 Spring Festival. While “gifts” have long been a recurring theme in Jiang Zhi’s practice, these particular videos stood in stark contrast to his previous works—they were, undeniably, “bad gifts.” The discomfort and curiosity they provoked led him to investigate further. He soon discovered that such internet video products had been circulating for six or seven years, with an overwhelming number of transactions. Primarily filmed in Africa, similar videos also produced in Thailand, Ukraine, Russia, and Ireland, catering to consumers mainly from China, Japan, and other parts of Asia, with a reach extending globally. Once popular on social media, they sparked widespread controversy and criticism, eventually leading to their removal.

The project unfolds gradually, tracing Jiang Zhi’s role as a client engaging with the customer service teams behind these "video gifts"—negotiating, testing boundaries, and customizing the content step by step until the final videos take shape. The shifting political and social landscape within and beyond China in the first half of 2022, along with the tightly interwoven dynamics between private life and public events, also left their imprint on the work. For Jiang Zhi, this project—realized through online purchases—constitutes a direct intervention into the alienation of cross-cultural consumption, deeply shaped by dominant geopolitical narratives and commodified trade. At the same time, he describes it as a “trial and error” exploration of questions such as authorship in film creation, the artist’s presence in their work, and the limits of individual expression.

12号空间荣幸地宣布，艺术家蒋志的个人项目“蒋哥，现在的时候最好尽量拍白人的”将于3月16日正式开启。该项目源于艺术家在2022年春节前后偶然看到的几段“视频礼物”。“礼物”一直是蒋志长期关注的主题，然而，这些“视频礼物”与他以往的探讨大相径庭——它们是不折不扣的“坏礼物”。观看这些视频所带来的不适与好奇，促使他开始收集资料，并发现这类互联网视频商品已存在六七年，且订单量庞大。它们主要拍摄于非洲，同时也涉及泰国、乌克兰、俄罗斯、爱尔兰等地，而消费者则主要来自中国、日本等亚洲国家，甚至遍及全球。这类视频一度在社交媒体上流行，也因其争议性而引发大量批评，并最终被封杀。

整个项目以递进形式呈现了他以客户的身份，与这些“礼物视频”客服持续沟通、试探边界，一步步定制视频内容的过程及其最终成品。2022年上半年国内外局势的波动，私人生活与社会公共事件之间的紧密张力，亦在其中留下了印记。这个通过购买形式完成的项目，对蒋志而言，既是一场对固着在地缘政治叙事和商品交易中被异化的跨文化消费的临时干预，也是一场关于影像创作的作者定义、艺术家如何在场、个体话语自由度等议题的提取、试错与记录。