The World of Lines (Film and Publication)

The World of Lines is a long-term research project conceived by Ho Rui An that examines an over-hundred-year history of the textile industry and its many afterlives between the ends of two major river systems in China, namely the Pearl River and the Yangtze. With a focus on the shifting relations between labour, technology, and capital, the project considers a history that encompasses the industry’s origins in Shanghai and its surrounding cities in the late nineteenth century, its displacement to Hong Kong in the 1940s where it boomed through the 1970s and its “return” to the mainland through technological and capital flows as Hong Kong began deindustrialising in the 1980s. Building upon years of fieldwork and archival research across the two regions, the project culminates in a feature-length artistic documentary and long-form book that present the different stories and perspectives collected by the artist and his collaborators.