Photography, Ritual, and the Beijing Underground
From 2017 to 2020, Whenhe Zhao took over 10,000 photos while drifting in and out of Beijing’s underground live music scene—first with a bulky Canon camera, later with a compact point-and-shoot. His aimless, unintentional snapshots were less a deliberate act of documentation than a way to immerse himself in the moment, negotiating reality through the lens. Over time, these photos took on new meaning, becoming anchors of retrospection after the underground scene vanished in 2021.
The Houhai and Gulou area, famed for its traditional hutongs and lakes, was the epicenter of China’s rock explosion in the late 1980s. Pioneering figures like Jiancui, He Yong, and Dou Wei were among its first wave of artists. Unlike Chaoyang or Xicheng, Dongcheng District long resisted urban modernization—until the 2008 Olympics. Many buildings were dilapidated courtyard homes without plumbing, deemed “uninhabitable” but offering cheap rent. This neglect made the area a breeding ground for underground punk, noise rock, folk, and experimental bands like Joyside, P.K.14, Xiao He, and Carsick Cars, along with countless others. In the 2000s, dive bars and live houses such as School, Jianghu, and Fruityspace weathered waves of gentrification, mapping the Forbidden City with an alternative spatiotemporal narrative. The abrupt closure of iconic venues like Yugong Yishan, Dusk Dawn Club, and Mao Livehouse in 2021 marked a seismic shift.
Having witnessed the end of an era—one that was culturally and emotionally constitutive to him—Whenhe revisited his photos, attempting to assemble an archive. But the effort faltered, he admitted. The faces, gestures, and fragments of moments captured in these images floated in a cryptic haze, their significance illegible to outsiders. At Accent Sister’s newly opened Union Square location, this “failed” archive has been curated by Whenhe’s friend Serena Hanzhi Wang, who was part of the scene herself—her radiant smile appears in one of the photos, in the exhibition The Last Glimpse through April 27. Influenced by Adorno’s critical theory, her thesis, Sinofuturism as Spatial Praxis, examines diasporic identity and community art in postindustrial contexts and influenced her curation. Born and raised in Beijing, China, Wenhe’s childhood and adolescent experiences in Beijing have been the greatest nourishment for his creative endeavors in a variety of media.
Whenhe’s initial impulse was never documentary, so the photos function more as an index, each pointing to memories or anecdotes too trivial or personal to be told. There’s no coherent way to organize them, they’re simply evidence of a time that no longer exists. Yet some images stand out, like those taken on the day Mao Livehouse shut down. Whenhe recalls the band Residence A smashing their instruments and inviting the audience to perform karaoke onstage. “No one wanted to leave,” he said. “They kept singing the same songs over and over again.”
To fight the melancholy, Whenhe later isolated random fragments of the photos and processed them through Runway and VJ software, animating the stills. Onscreen, a beer bottle or window frame spins or flickers endlessly, suspended in dark ether—flat yet eerily omniscient, defying interpretation. After Zero-Covid and the Blank Paper Movement, this absurdist gesture became his way of processing collective trauma.
The decoupling of urbanization and subculture was inevitable. What followed was the rise of the reality TV show The Big Band (2019–2023), which featured underground bands as contestants. Capitalizing on their bygone misfit allure and romanticizing their quirks, the show became a big hit. Amid the ever-tightening “main melody” of national discourse, it carved out rare space for unconventional voices while offering struggling artists financial rewards. Bands like Wutiaoren, Jiulianzhenren, and New Pants became mainstream symbols of grassroots authenticity. As rockers adapted to the algorithms of the attention economy, the sad, discontinued history of subcultural resistance was sutured.
In 2020, Whenhe found himself practicing a form of “athletic dreaming,” conducting dream exercises to summon and dismiss people. His growing fluency in this state convinced him he might someday steer reality. He began dreaming of major news events before they happened: flying with Kobe Bryant the day before his death, standing with the Croatian national team during the World Cup quarterfinals, witnessing Gaza bombings before the BBC reported them. In dreams, he became a dog refusing dusty bacon, selected clocks to wake at precise times, and watched the universe collapse. These visions blurred the line between sleep and awake, exhausting him until 2023, when he crafted the “Ritual Utensil”—a kinetic brass instrument that never rests upright but tilts like a shipwreck. With it, the dreams ceased. Perhaps his displaced abilities were encoded into this object, locking away their chaos.
The “Ritual Utensil” is the exhibition’s sole object with mystical undertones, acting as a mediator that binds the show together. The object exists in a state of deliberate ambiguity—its form simultaneously evokes and rejects familiar instruments of measurement. The metal sphere atop the structure suggests a sundial’s gnomon, yet casts no discernible shadow, the spiral rod mimics a seismograph’s recording stylus, while the curved, boat-like base approximates a compass, but its orientation remains indeterminate. Neither precisely any one thing nor entirely nothing at all, the object occupies a space between function and metaphor. It taps into the unknowable realms of collective consciousness yet refuses direct ties to any religious tradition. This work lies precisely in the refusal: to be either sacred object or mundane tool, it becomes instead a vibrating conduit between presence and loss. Through it, Whenhe finally articulates a language for flux, signifying absence with an anonymous presence.
The show moves away from just being sentimental. In the dialogue between spinning liquor bottles and the precariously tilted brass instrument, the space becomes an active summoning ritual—a failed archive standing against oblivion. In what way do we memorize? Last Glimpse offers a slow but determined way of looking back in this changed world.
Wenhe Zhao The Last Glimpse at Accent Sisters through April 27, 2025. 89 5th Ave #702, New York, NY 10002. See their program @accentsisters.
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