CIVILIZED BODIES
Medium: Audiovisual installation, sound art
Tools: Python, Stable Diffusion, Ableton
Shanghai, China, Spring 2024
This audiovisual installation investigates Wenming (文明), which translates to ‘civilization,’ ‘civilized,’ or ‘culture,’ as the interplay between identity, ethnicity, and digital space. While Wenming is often found in street signs, propaganda, and policy in the context of constructing a civilization by economic and technological means, I highlight how social media platforms like Kuaishou, through their visual, auditory, and textual icoonography, reft a corporeal dimension of the term, acting as sites for constructing ethnic identity and cultural authenticity. My building of the public restroom, a pinnacle of Wenming in modern urban space, combines a phsyical elements y with re-imagined Kuaishou videos generated through machine learning and a soundscape of layered real Kuaishou audios. Emulating the corpeal vulnerability of using the toilet, the installation aims to show how Wenming moves though on and offline structures of power, oppression, and identity, fixang not “what” is civilized, but “who”.
Full documentation
Tools: Python, Stable Diffusion, Ableton
Shanghai, China, Spring 2024
This audiovisual installation investigates Wenming (文明), which translates to ‘civilization,’ ‘civilized,’ or ‘culture,’ as the interplay between identity, ethnicity, and digital space. While Wenming is often found in street signs, propaganda, and policy in the context of constructing a civilization by economic and technological means, I highlight how social media platforms like Kuaishou, through their visual, auditory, and textual icoonography, reft a corporeal dimension of the term, acting as sites for constructing ethnic identity and cultural authenticity. My building of the public restroom, a pinnacle of Wenming in modern urban space, combines a phsyical elements y with re-imagined Kuaishou videos generated through machine learning and a soundscape of layered real Kuaishou audios. Emulating the corpeal vulnerability of using the toilet, the installation aims to show how Wenming moves though on and offline structures of power, oppression, and identity, fixang not “what” is civilized, but “who”.
Full documentation