Presenting: Lin Ke, I’m sorry Derek Paul Boyle, 3′39″, Digital video, 2014
Introduced by Mariagrazia Costantino, OCAT Shanghai Artistic Director
In some of his most typical interventions, Lin Ke uses Photobooth and Screenium to record images generated on the computer desktop, or downloaded from the Net, by simply moving the mouse arrow and dragging folders or other icons. Possible articulations of simultaneity are shown this way, as well as the semantic and conceptual boundaries between screen, desktop, interface and user. Lin also explores the aesthetic potential of the screen, using it like a a canvas (with an incorporated palette). In this process the computer becomes more “worldly,” and the world is computerized.
All the mechanisms put in motion by Lin Ke generate a non-stop mirror effect in which the artist becomes aware of his identity when he sees his own face captured by the inbuilt computer camera; facing that “mirror,” he occupies an exact symmetrical position between the “outside” world and the computer.
Mariagrazia Costantino: Your work Derek Paul Boyle is particularly appealing to me: it perfectly embodies your method and integrates different approaches, in particular I see it as a performance, but on a more generic level it is also a bit of a riddle. Can you explain the process that led to it, including the communication with the man Derek Paul Boyle? You occasionally look for random blogs, as in the case of the similar work Download-Rain, because you find their aesthetic captivating, then “appropriate” them for your own work. Of course you try to contact the blogger and ask him the permission to use its content.
Lin Ke: In the case of Download-Rain, I contacted the blogger, but he ignored me.
I have such a thing (my computer), and in it there is all the raw data of my screen recordings, taken over and over again. I have recorded many different things, but also the same things many times, and I did the same in this work, but I only picked some of the material. Actually, I used my laptop to create the work you refer to, and from the same place I can find the file of this work.
M.C.: So for you, looking for a work on your computer is like making another work, it’s the same thing, materially and perhaps also conceptually. The work Derek Paul Boyle was actually done like this.
L.K.: At the beginning I recorded it on the desktop. I thought such a process, I mean opening this person’s website to record a video, was a very good one.
As for Derek Paul Boyle, he is an artist and has many artworks featured on the websites I usually look at, so I visited his homepage and watched his work, because I wanted to make the process complete. The music in it was randomly opened from one of my former interventions. Actually the video of this person was on the Net all the time, it sufficed to move the mouse to play them. I was using the mouse wheel to make his body stand up or lie down: this video is particularly fun, the whole process seems to be recorded like an MV. I then uploaded this video on Vimeo, using his own name as the title and adding the premise “I’m sorry.” One day he wrote me and asked “what are you doing?” I thought I should reply to him, because he is an artist too, he would have understood.
In fact I found such an exchange quite interesting, it produced some key words, as you can see. So to find someone in the vast ocean of the Net, and in this world, it’s not difficult… just putting him/her on a video is enough.
M.C.: Ah, that’s true! Very interesting, so what did he say?
L.K.: He laughed.
M.C.: I think from this piece it could be argued that rhythm is paramount for you. Rhythm is already embedded in your vision; simultaneity and performativity are also very important factors. In fact, more than a traditional artist, you seem to me like a kind of DJ. For you real-time action is essential: I remember you mentioned you have acting classes and studied body language. Can you say something about this?
L.K.: I remember that when I was studying at the new media department of the China Academy of Art, we could choose different combinations of courses. For example, I chose one course called “body acting class,” but also multimedia theater, as well as other online courses. Eventually I realized that these programs had a relatively big impact on me because the course in which we were required to perform entails itself improvisation, the exploration of some individual possibilities, the possibilities of the body, or some possibilities of the space: this was my understanding of this discipline… but what is art in the end? Because when I was a student, I didn’t know what art was, how to put my immagination in motion… it was more like: maybe this is art. Of course after graduating I did a lot of other works, and experimented all sorts of creative modalities.
In fact, because of practical reasons, I didn’t have a physical studio, I could not deal with “real” materials, so I slowly I turned to my computer, that looks very large indeed, as if in the desktop there were more than two thousand levels for carrying on some of my performances, or talking about the conceptual process of visualization. It is just as if a big amount of files, document and heterogeneous materials were placed on the shelves of a real studio. Because I believe that the very concept of a “studio” should be an abstract space, this space is not purely physical, and is one where you can generate a local content. It is not like an office you have to be everyday at a fixed time, for making a creative work.
Later on I realized that many of my impromptu interventions were influenced by the courses I took.
This for me is a “moment of discovering images and not creating images” because as I said before, I have loads of fun things I’ve seen on the screen, and I’ll start from this fun point to operate, and turn the image into a work, but I need to spot the fun part first, like in a videogame.
