“Stories usually end tragically,” according to the narrator of Lo Lai Lai Natalie’s ten-minute video Cold Fire, 2019–20. A majestic stream-of-consciousness disquisition on the subject of fermentation, the piece moves through stories about the cartoon protagonists in airplane-safety instruction manuals to shots of hands kneading sticky bread dough. We look down onto an expanse of fluffy white clouds, as if viewing them from the heavens—or from a plane window. Tranquil footage of glassware used in the fermentation process transitions to a scene of black-shirted protesters shining their cell-phone