Kunming Chronicles
2025-ongoing
Filmed and Edited by Yiying Wang and Yuqi Gong
Psychogeographic map as film script
Still from film by Yuqi Gong and Yiying Wang
Still from film by Yuqi Gong and Yiying Wang
Still from film by Yuqi Gong and Yiying Wang
Kunming Chronicles is an ongoing experimental documentary that follows a community of amateur fossil hunters in Kunming, China. Their expeditions often lead to sites shaped by stalled real-estate development, including an unfinished housing project where excavation exposed Cambrian fossils. Using the book Guanshan Biota as an informal field guide, hunters locate fossil-bearing areas, identify specimens, and share discoveries. Fossils are gifted, traded, and collected, gaining personal and social meaning beyond their scientific or commercial value. Drawing on my participation in these trips, the project explores how scientific knowledge circulates beyond institutions and how informal exchanges shape relationships to value, ownership, and care. These encounters bring the rapid pace of urban development into contact with the deep geological history beneath the city.
《昆明纪实》是一部正在拍摄中的实验性纪录片，记录了中国昆明一群业余化石猎人的活动。他们常常去工地寻找化石，其中包括一个烂尾的住宅项目—在那里，房地产商大量的挖掘工作意外暴露了寒武纪岩层。化石猎人们将一部本地的地址文献作为指南，据此定位含化石区域、鉴定标本并分享收获。在此事件中，化石被作为礼物赠送、被交易、被收藏，其意义存在于科学或商业价值之外，承载着个人与社会层面的深意。这些活动让迅猛的城市发展与城市地底深处的悠久地质历史产生了交汇。