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Out of Print, Rare Artists Book, Vinyl Binding
Cao Fei\'s bilingual (Chinese/English) artist\'s book is the definitive primary document of her landmark online project RMB City (2007-2011). At 84 pages and fully illustrated in color, the book is designed for reading as much as looking. A loosely inserted sticker sheet, printed with imagery from the project, gives the publication a characteristically irreverent material edge, marking it as active artefact rather than institutional record.
The book opens with foundational texts by China Tracy herself, Cao Fei\'s Second Life avatar and alter ego, including the RMB City Manifesto and the RMB City Development Instruction. These are primary source documents as much as they are artworks: part theoretical proposition, part satirical urban planning brief, part poetic declaration.
RMB City belongs to a pivotal moment in the history of digital art. When Cao Fei began working within Second Life in 2007, the platform was barely understood as an artistic medium, building within it required specialist technical teams, and in China such expertise was almost non-existent. She was among the very first major artists globally to adopt Second Life and a persistent avatar identity as a primary artistic practice rather than a novelty or experiment, and the first to do so at institutional scale with sustained critical ambition.
Central to the project is Cao Fei\'s avatar China Tracy, philosopher, guide, and alter ego, who had appeared earlier in the machinima trilogy i.Mirror (2007). Institutions and collectors were invited to purchase virtual land and buildings, creating a parallel civic economy. The machinima films made within RMB City are among the most significant works Cao Fei produced during this period, shot entirely inside Second Life, they occupy a unique position between documentary, fiction, and performance, and established machinima as a legitimate medium for serious artistic inquiry. These include People\'s Limbo in RMB City (2009, Guggenheim collection; screened MoMA, New York), Live in RMB City (2009), and the RMB City Opera (2009), a staged production for simultaneous physical and virtual audiences referencing China\'s Cultural Revolution \'model works.\'
Having debuted internationally at the 52nd Venice Biennale and the 10th Istanbul Biennale in 2007, RMB City had its New York premiere at Lombard Freid Projects, in February 2008. Subsequent major presentations included the Serpentine Gallery, London; Shiseido Gallery, Tokyo; Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin; Museum of the Moving Image, New York; and the Bienal de São Paulo.
Today, Cao Fei is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential contemporary multimedia artists working internationally, her practice represented in the world\'s leading museums and collections, and her early pioneering work in virtual and digital media recognized as foundational to the field.\"
