With disturbing honesty, performance dancer Li Ning turned his life in China into a work of art. Using a range of cinematographic means for five often absurd years, swerving between harsh reality and artistic pretensions, between pathos and insight, between perseverance and self-pity.
'A person is nothing more than a series of undertakings', said Jean-Paul Sartre and it is a statement that is very apt for the Chinese dancer and performance artist Li Ning. Not only at his avant-garde performances but also in his private situation, where he wrestles with two 'families': his wife, his son and his mother who accuse him of earning too little money for them and his guerrilla dance group, which is enthusiastic about not very well organised.
In the almost three-hour long Tape, Li records five years from his own life, balancing between the harsh reality and his artistic pretensions, between pathos and insight and between perseverance and self-pity.
He uses a motley collection of cinematographic techniques: observing images, self reflective confessions, and written voice-over and also digital special effects. This story has a jumpy chronology, in which some scenes are repeated. Tape is a recalcitrant, confrontational ego document in which Li succeeds in revealing his own soul and all its nakedness.