Clone Wen is a new media artist and documentary filmmaker from New York, United States. From At six, his photo of Hong Kong Aberdeen dragon boat race, landing on the front page of local newspaper. At eight, he interviewed construction workers on the ruins of Beijing National Stadium. At twelve, he recorded his classmates’ daily lives on a tape recorder. These experiences not only ingrained his instinctive passion for documentary but also shaped his creative philosophy of "using images as archives." Currently, he is pursuing a Ph.D. in Cinema at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, on Asian performance arts and posthuman ecologies.

Clone Wen explores the tension between digital life, media fiction, and bodily reality. At the age of surveillance that WeChat and health codes generating a game of immortal digital truth. In this context, documentary film no longer serves as a vessel for "reality" but rather as an extended-life medium—capturing ephemeral moments that flow through dreams and performances. He says: "When I sleep in class, it means something. In my dreams, I’m at the Tower of Babel; in my dreams, I am an artist."

In recent years, he has been active in major international film festivals and live art events. His acclaimed works — Heaven Can Wait(2019), Ants Dynamics(2021), The Vietnam Action(2023), and Alibi of the 5th Cement Park Live Art Festival(2025)—have won awards and been archived at festivals such as Yamagata, DMZ, GilooFest, BIFF, and UMDFF. He also curates cross-border art festivals, bridging performance art and local cultural practices in Shanghai, Guangxi, Vietnam, and Singapore, constructing a multilayered archival network of avant-garde Asian art through his lens.

In July 2025, he was invited to join the Asian Art Association Singapore (Video Art and Short Films).

WeChat has become game, and life has become a performance. The very definitions of "performance" and "game" render them unreal—yet WeChat, as evidence, is granted a kind of systemic authenticity—hypocritical truth. The digital lives constructed through WeChat—ID cards and health codes—are virtual yet false, cyborg symbols. Digitally sanctioned lives, validated by the system itself. These illusions could have collapsed in the face of reality, but the digital is immortal—virtually immortal—and has already triumphed over real, fleeting moments.

"Truth" no longer matters in this age. Thus, documentary film no longer carries truth—only carries cinema itself. Although cinema extends life threefold, what it prolongs is merely the digital’s hollow eternity. Even sleep has meaning. Sleep is emotionless death. So cinema is the dark coffin that we should sleep to die for, just as what we live to die for. I noticed this at very young age—that’s why I keep sleeping in all classes as a child. Sleeping in class meant something. In my dreams, I once stood at the Tower of Babel; in my dreams, I was an artist.

2019
June – Heaven Can Wait won Best Documentary at the Beijing International Student Film Festival – "Ban Xia Memorial".
October – Heaven Can Wait screened at Du Fang Winter Screenings, Wuhan.
November – The Loner selected for Guangzhou International Documentary Film Festival – Pitch Session.
November – Heaven Can Wait screened at Tutu Gallery, Brooklyn, New York.
December – Heaven Can Wait nominated for the China Documentary Academy Awards.

2020
January – Heaven Can Wait screened at UC Davis Chinese Film Studio.
June – The Loner & Deep Blue Thoughts awarded Outstanding Graduation Project at Communication University of China.
October – Heaven Can Wait screened at "Silent Screen: Young Filmmakers Academic Exhibition".
November – Heaven Can Wait featured in Auto Doc special media screening, Beijing.

Nationwide Independent Screenings – Heaven Can Wait screened in 60+ venues, rated 8.1/10 on Douban.
Ants Dynamics screened at DMZ International Documentary Festival (South Korea).

2021
Ants Dynamics screened at Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival (Japan).
September – The Quarantined Rooftop featured in CCCD Hong Kong Arts for Resilience Online Festival.
August – The Quarantined Rooftop exhibited at OCAT Contemporary Art Terminal, Shenzhen.
November – Heaven Can Wait academic screening at CUC Spirit Film Event (interview: "The Texture of Time").
Hong Kong International Documentary Festival (HKIDF) – Heaven Can Wait awarded 3rd Place in Chinese-Language Feature Competition.
End of 2021 – The Kinetics of Ants archived in Chinese Independent Film Archive, Newcastle University (UK)

2022
February – Lights and Timescape Series NFT collection auctioned via ALI Digital Art.
September – Sidewave won Best Documentary at Beijing International Film Festival – ReelFocus.
September – Sidewave awarded Best Documentary Director at Visual Youth Award(Beijing).
December – The Wandering City selected screening for 8th Asia University Film Festival – Global City Program (China and USA).
December – Intuition Program nominated for China Documentary Academy Awards.

2023
August – "The Way We Exist" Chenghao Wen Solo Exhibition, Thornback Bookstore, Beijing.
Curated – Dongxing International Live Art Festival (China-Vietnam Border).
Curated – 6th Cement Park Live Art Festival, Shanghai.
September – Alibi of the 5th Cement Park Live Art Festival awarded Jury’s Grand Award and Investment Prize at GilooFest Taiwan.
October – Uranus Diary screened at Dali Youth Music Festival, Hunan.
World Nomad Film Festival – Uranus Diary awarded Special Jury Prize.

2024
"To the Sea Urchins" Group Exhibition, Peanuts Art Gallery, New York (featuring performance art documentation from Dongxing Live Art Festival).
March – Heaven Can Wait archived at Chinese Independent Film Archive (CIFA), Newcastle University.
April – The Vietnam Action awarded Best Film at Rough Cut Film Festival, New York.
May – Alibi of the 5th Cement Park Live Art Festival (40min short) exclusively streamed on Giloo (Taiwan).
May – The Snow Dharma selected for ReelFocus Pitch Session, Beijing International Film Festival (BIFF).
July – Curated 2nd Dongxing-Hanoi International Live Art Festival.
November – The Vietnam Action awarded Best Documentary at UMDFF.
World Nomad Film Festival – Alibi of the 5th Cement Park Live Art Festival listed in Top 10 Documentary Shorts.

2025
January – Uranus Diary screened at A Space Gallery, Brooklyn (New Chinese Independent Cinema Series).
March – The Vietnam Action screened at AAS Film Expo, Chicago Convention Center.
April – Shower Man (2018) featured in NYU Tisch School of the Arts Student Showcase.
May – The Wandering City & The Vietnam Action screened at Taiwan University Film Festival, streamed on Giloo.
June – "Make Cigarette Boxes Great Again" group exhibition, Your Mother Gallery, Singapore.
June – "Land of Deities" Perfomance Art Video exhibited at Chua Soo Bin Garden, Singapore.