The channels are projected side-by-side, and on the left we begin by following a figure through the concrete conduits of the Brunswick, before seeing him front-on in the adjacent frame. Nonchalant and hiply dressed in a denim jacket, beanie and sunglasses, and carrying a leather backpack, this is to be our flâneur, providing the gaze and voice through which the piece unfolds. “I am a foreigner here,” A synthesised voice narrates on his behalf. “I really must culture myself. Just walking around won’t do it. I’ll have to educate myself in local history.” These noble, autodidactic intentions—unsubtly reinforced by a shot of our hero reading a book in the Brunswick’s second-hand bookshop—are, much like the artist’s attempt at making a film that is open-ended, announced with a conviction that is never substantiated and regrettably narrow in scope. The result has more in common with advertising than art.

With the trendily unsaturated palette now common to any moving image aspiring to seriousness—from mainstream blockbusters to television commercials—the piece moves on to shots of rapidly developing East London, with the narrator setting up an ensuing recounted monologue by announcing reverently how “the architect welcomes me into his big, bright atelier.” What follows is nothing short of marketing spiel. On the left channel, the flâneur saunters along canals and developments, looking at advertisements for new construction projects and benign graffiti with equal, undiscerning indifference; on the right, buzzwords from the marketing patter—mostly connecting quality housing with productivity—fly toward the screen through a scrolling red and blue CGI cityscape.

The artist ostensibly offsets the pure commerciality of the monolog with subtle—in fact, too subtle—extracts from Franz Hessel’s Walking in Berlin (1929), which expressed a keen awareness of another inexorably changing city in the thralls of constant development. However, there is nothing in them to reveal such skepticism, as there is no indication of irony to countervail the powerfully pro-development narrative. Instead, we are offered earnest images, in soft light and shallow depth of field, of a hand playing with the leaves of a potted plant, gently moving curtains and a freshly made bed—visions of a sterile, idealized domesticity that would again be at home in an advertisement.

There can be no doubt that Zhu is aware of the complexities of her subject, and there has been a conscious effort to make The Details Are Invented a piece that presents rather than proselytises. However, only one idiom and narrative predominates. Following recent events, many visiting Londoners will see irony and critique here, but this will be rooted in the prevalence of the issue, not in the work itself.

Xiaowen Zhu’s “The Details Are Invented” is on view at the Brunswick Centre, London, until August 13, 2017.

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