Presenting:
I Hate People but I Love You, 25’04, 2017
Single channel video, color, sound,
For the occasion of screening. Arthub presents an interview conducted by Song Min.
Text, interview by Song Min
“Now I can brag it that I am an artist. But before owning this identity, I am a user of computer and internet. This is how I define myself. Besides the fundamental property as a human in the first place, my second property is a user. I owned my first computer in 1999. It was a Lenovo (at that time before re-branding, it’s called ‘Legend’.) After having the first computer for a year, my father connected internet to it, as we used dial-up cable at that time, so every time I dialed-up, I would pick up the cable phone to listen to it. It was a very nice memory, because it made me feel, ‘Wow, I am connected to the world again. I can share the same information with everyone else.”
“User”, as a digital technology and internet media, has offered every individual a brand-new identity and nature, which is also aaajiao’s major theme for his years of research and art practice. From user’s personal customization, to emotion expression and social communication within social media and mobile technology, to economic models rewritten by complicated algorithm and networks, aaajiao’s artworks captured a special cultural moment in contemporary society, which revisited the fantasy of a symbiotic community of human and machine in classic sci-fi movies, also represented the current reality both echoes and departs from this fantasy, and this is how social media and digital technology transforms the emotion communication and economic transactions in our society.
Song Min: Let’s talk about your work 404.
A: My original idea was to shoot some footage in the server room of SHFE (Shanghai Futures Exchange). I have a classmate who’s doing HFT (High Frequency Trading) as a job, and he had promised to go there with me, but eventually he got terrified and gave up, because it was a highly sensitive issue ever since the 2013 Everbright’s stock market failure and 2015-2016 stock market crash. So I reconsidered it and planned to shoot in Hong Kong, but failed again. This whole experience reminded me of the 404 page, where as a “user”, your access is limited. You do know it exists, but you can’t touch it. It only exists in the imagination.
SM: Many people interpreted it as it’s a response to censorship.
A: I am no longer interested in this topic any more, as it has already become the reality. You can’t always put yourself into this state as a resistant of the persecution and merely repeat “I am a victim. I need sympathy and help” yet lacking points of view or attitude. That’s meaningless. Because then what? Will you stop living your life when you realize you are a victim? It’s the time to find some new points of view.
SM: What is your point of view?
A: The individual is not only confronting this problem in specific, but also a more general problem of being weaker and less important in the society. The reason I talk about “user” is that the internet has become more structuralized, more powerful and overwhelming, has included almost everyone in it. And as a result, everyone is participating in this collective complot no matter he/she realizes it. Individuals entered a state of aphasia. In this circumstance, we need to talk about the necessity and significance to speak out. If you are not the administrator, do you have a chance to speak out? What would you do if you don’t have this chance?
SM: So you think that most of the people are merely “users”?
A: Yes.
SM: Then who is the administrator?
A: The administrator is not a single individual or a single group, but an intangible image built by balancing relationship between several different user groups, which is very similar to what
1984 has described.
SM: Does 1984 have a major influence on you? You were happened to be born in 1984 as well.
A: The great thinkers have figured this out quite thoroughly.
SM: Does this observation relate to your experience of the internet?
A: Now we are living in a post-truth era. We are given new logics, new methods and channels to express opinions, but this logic also trained us after it is formed and drilled. Do we care about what content we see or just expecting some kind of changes? I think many people only care about changes per se. An information is bringing another information, what do you care about? Your attention expand has already failed you to care about more. An individual is no longer capable to proceed so much information to access the truth. I am not saying that there is no truth or there are too many rumors. There are always rumors. It’s just because we don’t have the ability to see the truth.
SM: Is this an inevitable result of information explosion?
A: We have multiple channels to access information. For instance, when something happened, there could only be four different opinions before, and you were able to distinguish them; now there would be 200 opinions, how do you distinguish? Our access is relatively becoming more and more restricted. We could see from a holistic view before, but now we can only see a fragment of it.
SM: It seems like as a user, the freer you are, the more power you would have, but in fact it’s the other around?
A: Yes. Our biological structure limits us from proceeding too much information. That’s why we need to complot with machines. For example, in the HFT, the machines are not only proceeding the trading parts, but also handling quantification. The machines give you adequate power of computing. You still own the intelligence and thoughts, but you need machines to complement the execution.
SM: For the internet in an earlier time, did you have more authority as a user? Or shall I say the previous identity was beyond “user”?
A: It has been transforming to a pure “user” identity gradually from 5 years ago, but it wasn’t that obvious in the beginning. The biggest sign of this transformation is that the opposition between reality and virtuality was no longer a topic being discussed. When this opposition ends, we then accomplished this transformation of identity, but it took some time for us to comprehend this transition.
SM: Is there any solution for this reducing access?
A: I don’t think so.
SM: Do you think that the technological progress has a more positive impact or a more negative impact?
A: The terrifying part is, for a short period, it seems like it has more positive impact on us. But if you consider this from a bigger scale of time, when human finally abandon anthropocentrism, as human been decentralized, that will be an awful reality ahead of us. What you have constructed will eventually dominate you.
SM: Will the identity and access be influenced by locations? Do you feel the difference between living in Shanghai and Berlin? When you are in Berlin, do you feel that you are more than just a “user”?
A: In Berlin, I feel like I am in a decade ago, back to the environment where everything is human centralized.
SM: How do you deal with the flood of information? How to access the truth in the ocean of complicated information?
A: What matters is the mentality. Don’t care about the things you don’t see or missing. The truth is no longer important to me. I already gave up finding the truth. It doesn’t mean to gave up thinking, but to keep alert rather than a binary conclusion of “believe” or “not believe”. The mentality of doubting may has become the only superiority compare to machines. Self-doubt and introspection are the most valuable quality of human.
SM: The audience may not feel the concept behind your artworks. Do you wish them to understand them or you don’t care?
A: I have never put audience in my process of thinking. The professional audience will focus on professional content, and the common audience come to exhibitions to take selfies. I don’t really care. I don’t hate taking selfies. There must be reasons for them to take selfies, either because they think it’s just beautiful or they are reminded of something. Art education can’t be accomplished solely rely on artists, but requires bigger institutions’ actions. What artists can do is to offer the unreadable and the meaningless, because there are too many things in reality are with readability and meanings.
SM: What’s your definition of art?
A: Art is a kind of wisdom under religion. Religion is under ideology, and ideology is on the absolute top of human society. So art is the external methodology of ideology and belief.
translated by Paul Han
The text was originally published on WKLY. Arthub is authorized to repost and translate the text.
