Orange County, 2003-04, from Henry Tsang on Vimeo.
Video installation with 4 projectors. 4 minutes.
Orange County was shot in gated communities in Orange County, California, and Orange County, Beijing, where architects and interior designers from Orange County, CA, were hired by a Chinese developer to create an “authentic” American-style gated community near the site of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Orange County evokes questions about the confluence of urban design, politics and global capital. What does it mean for the Chinese to earnestly replicate authentic southern California residential architecture when the housing design styles offered are defined as “Spanish,” “Italian,” and “French?” What happens when the American Dream is translated into Chinese?
