Two-channel Video
8K, Sound
59:59 min
“Hostile Landscapes” is a two-channel film revolving around the remarkable true story of Ju Hyeongeon (朱贤健 / 주현건 / Zhu Xianjian), a North Korean defector who was imprisoned in the Jilin Prison, Northeast China, since 2013, for illegal border-crossing, theft, and robbery. In October 2021, Ju escaped the prison with bare hands and managed to elude local police and authorities for 40 days, before he was ultimately captured near the Fengman Dam, a historically significant location with deep Japanese colonial ties.
As a filmmaker hailing from Jilin Province, I meticulously tracked and filmed Ju’s confirmed and potential hideouts, capturing the multilayered local landscapes through a series of cinematic gazes, reconstructing his fugitive odyssey while weaving in other border-crossing East Asian (hi)stories. The work reflects on Chinese/Asian identities and their entanglements with notions of sovereignty, governance, territory, infrastructure, nationalism, and colonialism. Framed within the broader context of modern and contemporary East Asian history, the project explores the geopolitical shifts of the past and the present.
Install shot
