#xulizhi

[sympathyforthedevil01]

xu lizhi, un tornillo cayó al suelo

en 3 meses cumpliré 23.

[ironmoonmovie-blog]

Chelsea Wolfe：“Iron Moon” was inspired by the poetry of Chinese worker Xu Lizhi

By Maggie Grimason

It was the summer of the height of my tumblr obsession (and swishy shorts and cut off t-shirts for that matter) when a trail of feminist blogs and clicks led me to the audio-only YouTube post of “Pale on Pale,” the ghostly, washed out track on Chelsea Wolfe's second studio album. The whole of Apokalypsis was instantly in my music rotation for the remainder of that marginally employed summer. The voice of Chelsea Wolfe on that 2011 album is quite different than the one on her most recent album, Abyss. Abyss equals much more than the sum of its fuzzed out guitar and thudding industrial synth, and it's Wolfe's confident voice that is the album's spine. More expansive than ever on this, decidedly the heaviest of her five studio albums, Wolfe's vocals dovetail with her guitar, reaching powerful heights on tracks like “Iron Moon” and “Dragged Out.” Abyss echoes Wolfe's earlier work, but in every track a new, broader sound is evident—alternately dense and minimal, the lyrics reveal vulnerability while Wolfe's voice never loses its power. Despite all the distance I have from that summer when I was first introduced to her music, Chelsea Wolfe remains an unfailingly captivating musician. Imagine the fluttering of my heart when I had the opportunity to speak to her in anticipation of her April 26 show at Sister.

What was the first music you made like?

I recorded my first song when I was around nine years old with Casio keyboard beats and sounds, plus my voice. My sisters [sang] backup.

You've said that, to some degree, Abyss is about your sleep and dream life. What do you dream about?

Nobody wants to hear someone else's dreams! … Abyss was written during a time when I finally had a name to put to the strange sleep and dream issues I've had since I was a kid—sleep paralysis. My version is basically waking up from a dream in the middle of the night and my eyes are open, but the figures from my dreams are still in the room with me, coming towards me. So, in some songs on Abyss I was giving a nod to that hazy in-between state and things I'd experienced there. After the album was done, I was talking to my friend Brian Cook ([of] Russian Circles) about it. He pointed out and reminded me how much … sleep paralysis had inspired my past music.

You've visited New Mexico in the past. Do you remember any impressions of the place? Or the desert in general? What landscapes resonate most with you? 

I think New Mexico is a magical place. I always like driving through that part of the country, [seeing] the giant rock formations. I look forward to coming back! I grew up in Northern California, so I've always felt most connections with trees, rivers and mountains. But I've lived in Southern California for years and now live in the high desert above LA—its so different and striking for me so I've played around a lot with photos and videos in the desert and mountains there because of that, especially in the music videos I made for “Kings” and “Carrion Flowers.”

“Iron Moon” was inspired by the poetry of Chinese Foxconn worker Xu Lizhi, who committed suicide. You've also responded to the 2011 tsunami in Japan in your music in “The Waves Have Come” on Pain is Beauty. Is your music a way of confronting tragedy or a way of coping?

It can be overwhelming to consider the world as a whole, so then I’ll focus in on an individual. I watched a documentary about the … tsunami and a lot of it was home video footage—people experiencing and recording great loss as it was happening. So there were these huge shots of the wave coming in, destroying so much at once, but then you’d see a clip from a man who couldn’t find his wife and was distraught … It was so personal and so heartbreaking. That’s where “The Waves Have Come” came from … It’s so important when you connect with someone, whether they’re alive or passed, and whether it’s in person or from reading something [they] wrote. When I read Xu Lizhi’s poems after they’d been released, I felt the full weight of them. The way he wrote was very palpable and heavy, and so intoxicating. I wanted to write a song that would be a tribute to him and what he went through, so the lyrics for “Iron Moon” are that. The world is full of so much bullshit and so much beauty all at once—I’m trying to confront it and cope with it at the same time.

[ironmoonmovie-blog]

#XuLizhi from #GlobalFactory died in 2014. His excellent literary work has spreaded awareness that the harsh conditions, struggles and aspirations of Chinese #Migrantworker.

[ironmoonmovie-blog]

#XuLizhi is a symbol of #ChineseWorkers. A unique #WorkerLife has showed reflects the specific hardship and exclusive emotion from them in China

[ironmoonmovie-blog]

Why we call our #documentary as #IronMoon? What does #IronMoon mean? What’s kind of story we want to share?

Why we rename our #documentary as #IronMoon? Anyone remember #Xulizhi? Have you ever seen the word #IronMoon? No? Because it only came from Xu’s work. What’s #IronMoon? #Xulizhi told us that “They refer to it as a nail”. Nail is trivial to the image of an ordinary industrial worker. But what’s the behind? It’s the oppressive situation of # MigrantWorker status in China today.

I Swallowed an Iron Moon

I swallowed an iron moon they called it a screw

I swallowed industrial wastewater and unemployment forms bent over machines, our youth died young

I swallowed labor, I swallowed poverty, swallowed pedestrian bridges, swallowed this rusted-out life

I can’t swallow any more everything I’ve swallowed roils up in my throat

I spread across my country a poem of shame

Hundreds of thousands of people travel from China’s countryside to its cities to work in factories, building devices for international consumers and trying to assemble better lives for themselves, and a few of them, like #Xulizhi, manage to write about their experiences in deeply moving ways. #IronMoon follows five of these worker-poets through their daily lives, showing the pressures of their work, and the poverty in which many of them survive.

Meanwhile, #IronMoon is the first in a series of three #documentary films and three corresponding anthologies of poetry that will continue the stories of the first. #IronMoon has already won major film awards in China and been nominated in Taiwan and #IDFA(International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam) , and been shown more than 500 times across 112 cities. In online forums and messaging apps alone, discussion of the film has reached more than 80 million people. It’s fair to say that with their first film, and without the support of major distribution or box office profits, filmmakers Qin Xiaoyu and Wu Feiyue have created a true cultural phenomenon in China.

[ironmoonmovie-blog]

Chinese migrant workers: Their lives & their poetry

By Jaya Mahajan

One of the most inspiring projects that I came across during the Asian Side of the Doc during February in Xiamen was an upcoming documentary that looked at the lives of migrant workers in China, through their poetry.

The subject matter and treatment of the documentary – Iron Moon– stood out amongst all the other documentaries that were pitched by Chinese producers. There are over 300 million migrant workers in China, more than the entire population of France and Germany combined. One typically does not associate poetry and literature to be written by manual workers – by miners spending their days 800m under the earth or workers assembling Apple iPhones. But there exists this rather prolific group of poets in China, who just also happen to be migrant workers. Iron Moon follows the lives of some of the poets as they share their experiences of being part of China’s “economic reforms”.

Well-known financial writer and economist Wu Xiaobo is one of the key team members of this project: “I was handed over some of the poems by a poetry critic. Impressed, I decided to pursue the poets” said Xiaobo when I met him at the sidelines of the conference, “I was surprised to find an entire underground movement amongst migrant labourers who were writing poems about their lives and working conditions.”

We ran along the railway Arriving in some place called “The city” Where we trade in our youth and our muscle. Finally we have nothing to trade, only a cough And a skeleton nobody cares about.

“Sleepless” Midnight. Everyone is sleeping soundly, We keep our pair of young wounds open. These black eyes, can you really lead us to the light? “Night Shift” The issue of suicide amongst migrant workers in China had hit mainstream media in 2010. A spate of suicides at Foxconn, China’s biggest private employer, had led the company to take drastic measures for workers welfare as well as management of its public relations. But according to Libcom.org and Nao, a website about workers and peasants against exploitation, the suicides have continued. They just don’t hit the headlines anymore, as they are “managed” better.

The documentary producers are using the poetry by the workers as a way of gaining insight into their lives.