Stories are Propaganda

Directed by Philippe Parreno

Stories are Propaganda was created by Philippe Parreno and Rirkrit Tiravanija for the Guangzhou Biennial in China. The artists documented the new city under construction on the Pearl River Delta near Guangzhou. A succession of fixed shots show black factory smoke, piles of trash, words written in the sand, and trees swaying in the wind. Flowing rapidly from general observations of the era to autobiographical details to self-reflection, poetic fragments unroll like snapshots: a Chinese magician making watches and clocks appear at night; a small albino rabbit floundering in a muddy puddle; a snowman made of mud; a shadow puppet silhouetted against the moon. Narrated by a child off-screen, the film creates a feeling of melancholy through its evocation of the end of the world’s ideologies. It is an inverted cinema made of scenes edited according to a temporal protocol.