Investigation and denunciation always work in the world of XR. They work especially well in 180-degree formats, both in reportage work and in more fictional work. What makes All I Know About Teacher Li interesting is the intermedial nature of the piece, paired with the technical-expressive choice of mixed reality and interactivity. The occasion is perfect: an American production denouncing China’s repressive policies at the time of COVID told by a Chinese media activist residing in Italy, known as Teacher Li. A favourable astral conjunction that allows director Zhuzmo to tell us everything and show us everything by using a narrative structure that uses the potential of mixed reality and the right dose of interaction capabilities.
The narrator tells us who is Teacher Li and how he acts. We are invited to throw origamis that look like Twitter’s former logo or Telegram’s paper plane onto a grid-based space where the activist’s videos play one by one.
Teacher Li has been banned on Weibo, the Chinese social network he used to publish his comics, fifty-two times. He then moved to Twitter in 2015 and became the voice of the libertarian protests that were silently spreading in China. The images of the students of the White Paper Revolution holding blank sheets of paper to protest censorship became famous at the time.
Paper is back: the symbol and the expressive suggestion that counterpoints XR’s impalpable immersive three-dimensionality. White paper sheets fold into origami that we are asked to pick and throw forth. There is interaction, but it is a kind of well thought-out interaction, it’s not just for the sake of it. At one point, the origami throwing that is needed to push the experience forward takes place in a mixed space, both real and virtual, that launches us into the ‘here and now’. We emerge from our virtual bubble and are called into action. These expressive choices prove the media’s efficacy, rely beautifully on its peculiarities, and attest the maturity of makers who seem to, finally, dominate it and forge it into their ideas. This come after many pieces that have been clumsily bent into shape to fit the media, and that’s saying something.
ALL I KNOW ABOUT TEACHER LI
by Zhuzmo (USA, 20’)
