Small towns are by definition provincial but in Germany they occasionally look even more parochial, as depicted in many of the short films by Franco-German artist duo Sylvie Boisseau and Frank Westermeyer. Their works owe much of their tragicomedy to their portrayal of lower middle-class milieus - the petty bourgeoisie, as it is called, somewhat pejoratively, in French and German. Not much seems to be moving in these places, except the wind in the trees around a deserted town square or the sharp tongue of a plump hausfrau as she spreads gossip while sweeping the corridor in her apartment block.
So it is surprising that the couple should be invited by Hong Kong-based curator Cornelia Erdmann to come up with a show that explores the issue of mobility at 1a space gallery in To Kwa Wan, as part of this year's Le French May.
Instead of revelling in the usual Shanghai chic or the oft repeated theme of migrants in the Pearl River Delta, their video installation Mobility - Chinese is a Plus is set in Stuttgart in southwest Germany.
'What's interesting about mobility is not people moving around - that's just the surface - but rather why people move. We wanted to take a good look at the human beings behind the word mobility,' says Westermeyer, 37.
They found them in a Chinese-language school in Stuttgart, where the couple are working as fellows of Akademie Schloss Solitude. The school offers two kinds of Chinese-language classes: one for Germans, mostly adults, and one for the children of Chinese migrants.
By taking these lessons, the older students feel they have moved a step closer to a land of opportunity while the children are brought closer to their ancestral culture.