445 is a play script I wrote during my sojourn in Beijing at the Beijing Jile Youth Hostel. It is a play about the sex industry in the Tuofangying area. When I was sorting out my hard disk later in 2014, I ran into the script I wrote in 2011, but could not locate the original video I shot at that time.

So I requested a friend from Hong Kong who was living in Beijing at that moment to shoot a video according to the script in one long take. I also used Wechat to contact three other friends of mine who were from the mainland – I call them J, P, and F – and asked them to recite a few lines with the recording function in Wechat. The lines were taken from our chats back in the days when I was in Beijing.

F: You haven’t whored, what the hell can you write?

J: This kind of things were common in our school (Sichuan Fine Arts Institute) back then. Our school is situated at the juncture of wealthy and poor districts, we know they [the sex workers] are called “boxed-lunch hooker.”

F: Clients this early, huh?

P: Yea! People wanna have sex when they wake up in the morning rather than at night

The wechat happened when J was in Kunming, P and F on Mount Fuji, and I in Hong Kong.

「445」是我在北京吉樂青年公寓居住時所寫下的劇本，關於駝房營一帶的性服務行業。2014年我整理自己的電腦硬盤，發現這2011 年所寫下的劇本，但當初拍下的錄影片段卻不見了。

於是，我邀請了一位在北京居住的香港朋友，根據我的劇本內容拍攝一個一鏡到底的鏡頭。同時我用微訊（wechat）聯絡三位內地朋友 – J、P和F，邀請他們用微訊的錄音功能，幫忙演繹其中幾句白，而這些對白的內容正是當年大家閒聊時說過的話。

你又沒嫖過你寫什麼呀 ? — F

這種事以前在我們學校（川美）很多。我們學校是處於一個貧富交界的地區，我們都知道她們叫飯盒雞。— J

這麼早有人幫襯? — F

係o家！朝早起身個陣比起夜晚更想搞野— p

微訊時J在昆明，P和F在富士山，而我在香港。

Law Yuk-mui is a multidisciplinary artist and art educator; currently lives and works between Japan and Hong Kong. Using “expanded cinema” as her artistic expression, and adopting the methodology of field study and collecting, she often intervenes the mundane space and daily life of the city and catches the physical traces of history, psychological pathways of human, the marks of time and the political power in relation to geographic space. Sound is the anchor point in Law’s creation. Her interests comprise of the political and cultural rhetoric of sound, with sound as bodily memory, and orchestrate the interplay among sound, text and visual.

Law Yuk-mui have been named to Foundwork Artist Prize 2021 short list, and received The Awards for young artist (media art category) of Hong Kong Arts development Awards and the Excellence Award (Media Art Category) of The 23rd ifva Awards in 2018.