An Evening with Daphne Xu

Modern Mondays welcomes artist and filmmaker Daphne Xu to present the US premiere of her newest short film, Notes of a Crocodile (2024), which screens alongside previous works. Xu’s exploration of the politics and poetics of place draws on her background in urban planning; her earliest projects pertain to Xiongan, a rural area in China’s Hebei province designated for development into a megacity. Xu’s films are keenly attuned to the movement of bodies in liminal spaces, from the local residents and migrant workers who punctuate A Thousand-Year Stage (2020) with dances performed at rapidly shifting sites in Xiongan, to the nocturnal souls who gather around New York City’s Seward Park in the gently observed ping pong ping pong ping pong ping pong ping pong (2024).

The screening is followed by a conversation with the artist, moderated by Sophie Cavoulacos, associate curator in the Department of Film.