Li Dan

The Swap is the third chapter of the PolEc Trilogy, comprising Wandering Marxwards (1998) and The Three Failures (2006). It features the same character as in the previous episodes, but now reduced to a lost, exhausted soul roaming Shanghai's cityscape from the remotest periphery to the financial district. Another narrative, spoken this one, takes us to September 2008, as gigantic bailouts put the financial system on life support instead of letting it collapse, thus seizing our reality and replacing it with a fiction tailored for the situation. These two streams end up meeting on a Shanghai dancefloor, where unresolved contradictions can finally be performed.

1925年、9歳の少年・小豆子は、娼婦の母親に連れられ京劇養成所“喜福成”にやって来た。そこで彼は少年・小石頭と仲良くなる。やがてふたりは成長し、小豆子は女形に、小石頭は男役に決められ、それぞれ程蝶衣、段小樓と名乗り有名スターになっていく。1937年、中国と日本との戦いが深まる中で、段小樓は娼婦の菊仙と出会い結婚する。段小樓に思いを寄せていた程蝶衣は、2度と共演しないと言い放ち、彼のもとを去る。