Meet Chenghao Wen

We had the good fortune of connecting with Chenghao Wen and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Chenghao, what’s your definition for success?
Success for me is specific on a material level and vague on a spiritual level. Tonight, as the plane I was on passed through Shanghai I was writing this. You can clearly see the success of Shanghai compared to other cities from the expanse of the vast scattering starlight, and so, one could easily define success from the cabin seatings — tonight I got a temporary upgrade to seat 3A here on this crowded little A320. One would recognize 1A and 2A business class as the more successful people — only one person sat in those two whole rows today — and then the regular economy class behind 6A as the less successful people, relatively speaking. In the system of social meanings, in which I also identify with this definition and am deeply embedded in it. But at the same time, I think of many of my dearest friends, and people I love dearly, who cannot enjoy this success, and feel deeply defeated – and I’m sure that if I were to pass the microphone to the passenger sitting in business class in 1A, he would probably feel the same way, that his success is somehow also a failure.

The success of the individual, I feel, is that 1A seat that is built on this deep degree of failing – that success when the seats around you become spacious, when your hotel room becomes empty – is that he gazes at the people around him passing him one by one, holding the gaze at him next to the luggage racks after till the end of cabin.

Success comes when you feel deeply powerless and defeated in the face of that stare. A success could be sitting at the front cabins, but more importantly, the effort to remember, and to love, the people left arounds. As well as understanding the fleeting nature of the gaze of success, and accepting the weight of that gaze. For after the plane lands, the brief successes sink into the sea of people.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
In this short staying my second hometown Beijing I started to think of this question of my professions. I have to say contemporary art is a profession that is sort of anti-professionalism or deconstructing professionalism. But still I am searching my name in my laptop to find my CV and look back at my creative path like looking into another lifetime. I have loads of CV made in these years – for galleries, screenings, submissions, festivals, or for graduate applications, job market, or class projects on wordpress. All of them are, me – but not quite the real, me.

I have to say I am at this crossroad of choosing my path between all documentaries and films I have made, game and digital mediums I have touched, and festivals I have curated. A good artists should know thee path, though. I think the only path I truly feel real is 15 years ago in my junior high school when I first tried to shoot and edit videos and direct a class theater play adapted from of The Matrix and won a small best director in our school’s drama festival. Also I called my stuff “clonedesign” because my close friends called me – Clone, where I get my English name from. And all these years in my life I have learned is that an artists can never detour or start over away from thee original path. Every filmmaker have a private story zero, so this is the story zero of my path.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
If you visit NYC, I would like to introduce you to a week-Long Ferry trip around Manhattan. Ferry trips at daytimes, and cinema trips at nights. Recently I came to realize the best public transport in NYC is the Ferry, as we tend to forget the big apple is still, an island — made of several islands and peninsula, long before it became a metropolis.

1. City tour

Come to visit my university, NYU Tisch School of the Arts!

And also, stop by the New York Public Library at Bryant Park! To get your own NYC library card

Night Event:

Find films/exhibition at

MOMI Museum of Moving Image, Queens.

Night at Flushing:

As Chinatown has become less and less authentic. Flushing has become the real Chinatown has the best Chinese food in East Coast

2 Staten Island Ferry

Staten Island Ferry is a free commute between wall street and State Island, operates 24 hours, even at 2 or 3 am. but more importantly it is a commute that pass by the statue of liberty.

Governor’s Island Ferry

Governor’s Island is the middle stop between State island and Wall Street. Last month I saw some interesting performance art at a new gallery there.

Night Event:

Find films at Chinatown: Metrograph

The one and only Metrograph, the most popular art cinema line in Manhattan.

3 Ferry to Rockaway beach

Ferry from pier 11 to Rockaway is my favorite route because it’s the only route that cruises on the Atlantic ocean, the longest route of NYC Ferry, and Rockaway beach is a chill and quiet community between coney island and long island.

Night Event:

Find films at Anthology Film Archive

The experimental film screenings since the 60s. Love to see Stan Brakage and Paul Sharits there.

4. Ferry to Bronx

At the end of the Ferry line from the city to the suburbs – Ferry Point Park at Bronx, watch the sunset and listen to airplanes from LaGuardia airport.

Along the road the Ferry stops at Roosevelt Island, breathing the wind with the night city view.

Night Event:

Find performance/ film at 66st :

Lincoln Center of Performing Arts

5. Long Island railway to Stony Brook

Let’s find out how long the long island city is! And also visit my friend at Stony Brook University.

Night Event:

Find performances at Little Island near 33 street.

Could you believe there’s an artificial beach in Manhattan! Little Island is the green Island inside Manhattan Island.

6. Ferry to New Jersey

Shortest Ferry to NJ is Hoboken, and farther routes go to Atlantic City.

Robert Smithson wrote about the ruins and desolate landscapes in New Jersey as the materials for his Land Arts. But I think today New Jersey is known as this other side of Manhattan along Hudson.

Night Event:

Find films at IFC film center near union square.

IFC film center and Metrograph are two of the best art cinema lines to me.

7. Upper Hudson trip to Poughkeepsie

At the very end of the north railway there’s Poughkeepsie. One of my best old friends, a famous curator/artist lives there.

I love Poughkeepsie, just to see how vast New York State is and you can see the Hudson from the train windows, as long as you sit on the right side.

Night at Coney Island.

i don’t think coney island is a real Island, it’s an imaginary Island now. With all your wishes and sorrows at the dock towards the Atlantic ocean.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Dedicated to Uranus Yau, 尤歡, who inspired my life and my career for 15 years till today.

I still remember the first time I met her in a special math intensive class in the summer where junior high school didn’t start yet, and we began our first collaboration of helping each other with math and Chinese language assignments.

I still remember when she took me away from home and my horrible parents, when we watched movies together in a library in Beijing with our MP5s, moments of longing for Lady Gaga, Lana Del Rey, and the West Coast lifestyles – movies, freedom, and Uranus Yau had been tied together in my life ever since. And to this day, as co-director of many of my films, and as my most respected contemporary Chinese poet, I appreciate all the material and spiritual support she has given me over the past 15 years, as well as her determination and success in pursuing my freedom. As Uranus has been fighting a tough battle with cancer and depression and having her liver removed recently, I hereby sincerely wish that she will be able to come out of all the pain she is experiencing. I hope that life is above art and that she gets the joy and happiness that is supposed to be her life in Tokyo, and Osaka, Kobe.

Website: clone7.wordpress.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clonedesign/

Other: imdb.com/name/nm13946538/