WORK / LIVE 干活 Wei Chengcheng 魏成成, Wu Shuqing 武淑清

The action took place at MCAM Ming Museum in Shanghai, during Precariat’s Meeting, the exhibition curated by Fu Liao Liao in which workers/artists from the Beijing factory led their own public workshops.

With a provocative reversal of meaning and symbol, the worker/artist Wei Chengcheng 魏成成 invited the public to re-enact the traditional Chinese ritual of burning paper money for the dead – but for the living. By changing who the offering is for, he questioned the habits of today’s consumer society, exposed the hypocrisy of empty, self-serving rituals and called for a shift towards empathy and mutual support.

The worker/artist Wu Shuqing 武淑清 took part in the collective action with a moving poetry reading.