Green Diamond is a company, presumed to have existed in Beijing between 1995 and the first half of 1999, whose headquarters were to be found on Jinghai Road. It was a hi-tech technology firm, working to develop particular microchips, GD sensors, able to provoke feelings and sensations related to the natural world in the human body. Between 1998 and 1999, the company hired Gao Yue, one of the most promising acrobats in Beijing, to test the sensors and work on the new “GD gestures”, Green Diamond Gestures. For nearly nine months, Gao Yue and Li Jian Ping (an employee responsible for cleaning the sensors) had a rela- tionship, with Li Jian Ping collecting a large part of their email conversations printed out on paper as well as a large number of documents about the work Gao Yue carried out daily in the company. Rachele Maistrello has put together the historical reconstruction using documents, analog photographs, videos and an array of texts that recreate the amorous exchange between the two employees. Combining recent theories of artificial intelligence and sensations which relate to the natural world, Green Diamond uses the alleged historical archive to create a rhizomatic, labyrinthine narrative. The documentary and historical essence of the photographic document becomes a way to conceive a believable science fiction which looks towards the past rather than towards the future. The document shows what has been constructed to create questions, to muddle the credibility of the story. Green Diamond is a sentimental, visual and critical apparatus for testing the limits of contemporaneity through the scienti c, narrative and destabilising use of photographic language.

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