In his video-based practices, Li Ming treats the rampant development of Chinese urbanism as a site for poetry and performance. The works are creative interventions as much as they are dexterous investigations into the rural-urban fringe (Movement, 2014), the forming of the community (Me I We, 2015), and, most recently, the omnipresence of surveillance. The transformation of physical activities into abstract data — the human body rendered as sheer information — motivates the project The Phantom That is Screen (2016). The artist applies the same magnetic ink used by police to collect fingerprints onto iPhone screen covers, which captures a record of individuals’ behavior and access to data. At the same time as compiling a pseudo-forensic archive, these “swipes” produce monochrome, gestural compositions. These patterns are later printed onto the printed kites. In the videos, the artist flyed them on the sky, as if claiming their own shadowy existence.