ETC (2024) was shot in Hong Kong in the spring of 2023 and captures every facet of life in the city. The feature-length film moves from scenes depicting infrastructural logistics to interpersonal relationships; the dizzying mass of shipping containers arriving and leaving the port by land and sea, to the intimate private gardens of the city’s residents. The goods and services of both daytime and night-time economies come alive, and among the products that are on display and being sold, from Chanel boutiques and catwalks to stalls selling mixed bags of live fish or cheap electronic goods, from masseurs to taxi drivers, we see people meditating and using their environment with digital technologies, but also sharing space more intimately together. We see the scenic beauty alongside the urban detritus and irrepressible growth of the city. A certain inevitability, acceptance, and ubiquity is sensed in the mode of life depicted. It is globally recognisable yet unmistakable of a place and time. It is both universal and unique, the particularities of place almost lost in the dominant evocation of a globally connected market. The pace of the film is dictated by an accompanying soundtrack by Liam Gillick that moves from ambient melodics to energetic techno and the overarching sense of homogenisation is propelled by the sounds of royalty-free music found in generic travel guide YouTube content. ETC is an acronym for Electronic Teller Card, a forerunner to the ATM card used today, designed by Henry Steiner for HSBC in 1979. Etc, short for ‘et cetera’ is an adverb denoting there is more to follow, that something is incomplete but that more is implied. A sense of something ongoing, something growing. In many ways, the Electronic Teller Card paved the way for the kind of commerce and economic systems we see unfold in the film. Hong Kong is a global financial centre, so evocative of the interconnected nature of life under capitalism. In the film and the pun inherent to its title, we see the all-encompassing net of free market capitalism capture, contain and squeeze the life beneath it. Every social interaction a transaction of sorts, colouring our perception of place. In this way, ETC, like other films by Sarah Morris, zooms into the particularities and socialites of a given place, where her paintings give a visual essence. A partnership, that combined, reveals a complex portrait of contemporary life in a global context. Morris has said herself that her paintings are ‘a reference system for every painting that I have ever made and will ever make.’

ETC was commissioned by M+ and Tai Kwun Contemporary.The filmwas exhibited on the M+, Hong Kong facade in 2024 as well as at Tai Kwun Contemporary also in 2024.