"Everybody Is Gone" lets visitors feel the methods of surveillance and brainwashing firsthand - without calling China by name.
In a large room stands a woman in a pressed yellow shirt and black skirt, a pink bandage on her arm. She looks condescendingly at the seven men and women she has instructed to line up in front of her. "Sing after me!" she blathers, intoning with the gesture of a prison guard who sees naughty children in her inmates, articulating precisely: "We are proud and strong, vow to be faithful! / Unity - we are all one!"
A few meters away, a man is reprimanded. "Participant, fulfill the task!" barks a uniformed man. It consists of reciting the words on the index cards that the official holds up in front of the visitor's face: "modern," "progress," "motherland." Then again. And again. Faster. Again. When the man takes too long on one term, the official cuts him off. "Contestant, this is not a difficult task!" read more