Presenting: Miao Ying, Video webpage compilation
MIAO Ying is a net artist who currently resides on The Internet, the Chinese Internet (the Great Fire Wall) and her smartphone. Arthub will be screening three works by Ying: Is it me you are looking for? (2014), iPhone Garbage (2014) and When SMART and wash-cut-blow meet bilibili (2014).
Artwork Introductions:
Is it me you are looking for? includes Lionel Richie’s 1984 music video Hello, in addition to three images from the artist’s LAN Love Poem.gif series (2014), in which ‘website unavailable’ pages from blocked websites are overlaid with kitschy slogans from Chinese internet poetry.
iPhone Garbage is composed of videos, gifs and still images. One video is a screenshot from the Chinese live comment video website Bilibili, the other video is the official iphone 6 advertisement from Apple’s official YouTube channel. Additionally, on the right top hand side of the page, there is a gif animation of water pouring from the bottle through the video player, into the Apple logo pond and finally onto the still image of a real apple being splashed by water.
When SMART and wash-cut-blow meet bilibili samples from two pages (one using YouTube, the other using Youku). One video is a Shanghai K-pop music video made by a Chinese netizen called When smart meets wash-cut-blow from Bilibili, while Dizzy Wright’s Fashion plays in the upper left hand corner. On the bottom left of the page there is a gif and still image of a Fanta can and Wanglaoji, with reference to the story of SMART boy. In the right top hand corner of the page is a fashion model that is seemingly facing the background picture, which has a crowded and chaotic line of people.
For the occasion of the screening, Arthub’s Ryan Nuckolls interviewed Miao Ying in an effort to give viewers a greater insight into her digital world.
Ryan Nuckolls (RN): With the creation of your graduation project Blind Spot (inspired by the group blog Boing Boing), which was later presented at Beyond/In Western New York 2010: Alternating Currents, can we pinpoint 2007 as the first time you self-diagnosed with Stockholm syndrome* or was it with later series like LAN Love Poem (with reference to Taobao) that your love affair with the Chinternet truly ignited?
Miao Ying (MY): In 2007, I was very into physical computing and the relationship between man and machine. The
Blind Spot is more about pushing the limits of being a human. By forcing myself to search for words 10 hours every day I became a flesh machine. My Stockholm syndrome* didn’t really happen in any one way – it has developed over the years, but 2007 is when this relationship first started.
*
Stockholm syndrome is a psychological phenomenon first described in 1973 in which hostages express empathy for and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending and identifying with them. Miao Ying has satirically used the term in reference to her relationship with the Chinese internet.
RN: After returning from your studies in the U.S. you were initially resistant to using Chinese online platforms, though you eventually grew to respect the way the GFW and self-censorship was able to create new dialectical forms of expres-sion. Would you say that your work is now more social criticism, commentary or are you merely an observer of the constantly metamorphosing language of Generation Y netizens?
MY: LAN Love Poem was made at that time, because I wanted to create works that were composed solely of gifs. I wanted to make gif format art, because I think it is iconic of the social media age we are living within. Those browser based works were also made, because I wanted to explore new formats of art, using web browsers and video players.
I want to be straightforward about who I am. I don’t want to erase or amplify my Chinese identity. The things I address in my work are what is around me and what I experience firsthand. I view the Chinternet as a one of a kind material, like a canvas, that is to say there isn’t anything else like it.
RN: Aside from Bilibili (the video-sharing website, which reimagines commen-tary into content) what online platforms trigger your brain hole (脑洞) to dilate?
MY: Douyu TV*, which is a live streaming game site, where visitors react to gamers playing through live commentary. You will see more of Douyu in my work this June.
*
Douyu was founded in 2013 and initially ran a video site with a different name before it launched Douyu TV in January 2014.
RN: The Internet allows Chinese constituents to express their sense of humor through the co-creation of viral memes, mocking poorly edited videos and airing a previously unseen ability to laugh at themselves. In your investigation of the local conditions and exploration of the vernacular variances in China have you found your fellow citizens to be funnier online than they are in person, and if that is true, then why?
MY: I think humor is an essential part of humanity. I don’t think the Internet makes people funnier, but it creates an environment that makes them more laid back and brings out their sense of humor. The great thing about the Internet is that it brings out people’s potential.
RN: Can we assume that the double blindness in your video Is it me you are look-ing for? is a metaphor for your own relationship with the Great Firewall?
MY: Yes,
Is it me you are looking for? is about developing my Stockholm syndrome romantic relationship with the GFW.
RN: For iPhone Garbage you choose a video depicting two pseudo-police officers denouncing the overpriced iPhone 6 in the process of promoting their domestic Jin Li custom smart phone. Were you drawn to this video for its bad design and tackiness (which is ironically why Bilibili visitors presumably like it so much) or are you challenging our contemporary consumerist natures and fetishistic ap-peal to overpriced material goods?
MY: I’m showing the reality of these consumerist relationships—how apple products influence our lives and aesthetic. In China, these products are too expensive when compared with how much people are actually making and yet they continue to buy them. The video is also just fun to watch.
RN: In your video work Dats Fashion do you believe that the aesthetic of the localized SMART subculture 杀马特 (also known as shamate) is a parody of international consumerism? In what ways is the work responding to the shanzhai (slang for pirated and fake goods) sub-culture?
MY: Shamate is a result of what happens when young people from the village move to the city. Once they arrive, these people do not fit in, yet they cannot go back to their villages. The music video is a shanzhai K-pop song, which was re-mixed by a Chinese netizen into a love song about the story of SMART boy, who falls in love with a girl and wants to be more fashionable in order to impress his future father-in-law. Drinking Coke, Fanta and Wanglaoji (TCM tea) together are ways of achieving a happy life.
SMART’s understanding of “fashion” encompasses a major conflict within Chinese society, a culture full of shanzhai electronic users and Internet cafes. I’m depicting a minority subgroup – one that mainstream society does not talk about – together with other elements, such as pictures of people buying apple products, which is considered very in fashion, even for white collar city dwellers. I think what constitutes as “fashion” is a complex subject in China amongst other things, fashion is a combination of Western cultural colonialism, fast urbanization and shanzhai culture.
RN: Your video player work iPhone Garbage was born from your interest in the shared viewing experience. These embedded moving images – on sites like Bilibili – exist as canvases, rather than as the focal points of the screen. Could you tell us more about your process of collaging these appropriated materials together?
MY: Trending videos on BiliBili are only popular because of their bad editing. It’s not because they are good videos, but actually because they are quite bad. This is what is interesting to me.
The average salary in China is still relatively low, which makes the already expensive iPhone, unattainable for most consumers; the phones are even highly taxed. That is why this new brand was invented, because people could not afford real iPhones.
Every aspect of
iPhone Garbage relates to each other: the water represents smuggled iPhones, the two police officers are selling fake iPhones, and then there is the real iPhone advertisement in the background. Apple products do not just influence Chinese people, they influence the whole aesthetic.
RN: After receiving your BFA from the China Academy of Fine Art in Beijing you lived in New York for several years. During this time you have described yourself as being idealistic – you viewed censorship as a limitation and were determined to activate change. Considering how your artistic voice has been shaped and influenced by the Chinese virtual reality you inhabit, can you imagine living abroad at this point in your career? This would undoubtedly change your method of production – is this something you’re interested in pursuing now or in the fu-ture?
MY: Overall, I don’t think it really matters where you are based, but due to personal reasons I will actually be working between New York City and Shanghai this year. America has shaped me in a lot of ways. I went there when I was very young; your early twenties really affect who you are. I am looking forward to going back. And I don’t actually need to be in China to experience the Chinese internet, so this shouldn’t change the way I work.
RN: Most Chinese artists are ingrained with an understanding of where the red line is (meaning: how far they can politically and socially challenge the constructs of the country they live within). Have you ever felt the need for self-censorship in your own work? Are you fearful of the repercussions of crossing that line?
MY: I don’t want to cross the line; I don’t think that I need to.
RN: With increasing internet regulations and web filters in China can you predict for us what the next decade holds for netizens in the mainland and artists such as yourself, who have found a dual identity within their digital home?
MY: What makes China, China, is that you cannot predict anything about it.
Arthub would like to thank Ying for the opportunity to share her work online. For questions and comments feel free to reach out to the team at info@arthubasia.org.
About the Artist
Ying Miao received her BFA from the China Academy of Fine Art’s New Media Arts department, and her MFA from the School of Art and Design at SUNY Alfred University, with a focus in Electronic Integrated Arts.
She has been focusing on Internet art with an emphasis on the Chinese Internet since 2007, when she made
The Blind Spot (words censored from google.cn), exhibited in the
Beyond/ In Western New York Biennial. Her works address her Stockholm syndrome relationship with censorship. As a participant and observer, her work also explores self-censorship, which is the source of creativity of the Chinese Internet, and has given rise to much more interesting and creative forms of self expression by Chinese netizens, such as memes, video sharing with bullet comments and WeChat gif stickers.
Ying Miao deliberately applies a thread of humor to her works. She inspects the visual language born from the Internet, and it’s effect on how it changes us as we interact with it. A pioneer, utilizing experimental formats, such as: Browser, GIF, APPs, Social Media and Second Life. Her works have a strong awareness of main-stream technology and it’s impact on our daily lives. She has shown her works in the Chinese pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale (Italy)，KW institute for Con-temporary Art (Berlin), State Gallery Linz(Linz), OCAT Shanghai (Shanghai), Times Museum (Guangzhou), CAFA Art Museum(Beijing), Ullens Centre for Con-temporary Art(Beijing), Museum of Contemporary Art (Taibei), Shanghai Art Museum (Shanghai) and The Wrong—New Digital Art Biennale (online).
Find out more about the artist on her website
here.
