A bird besides Lake Michigan
"Reconstruction" is a series of my art practices, created to criticize the alienation of capital-driven technology to our lives.
Covid-19 is the background and motivation of this project.
In this quarantine, which is more than half a year long, my life has been swallowed and controlled by technology like never before: social life has been simplified into social media, daily consumption has been handed over to the delivery platform, and meetings are carried out on zoom or google meet. In this half-digital and half-real life, I felt a sense of brokenness and began to reflect how capital-driven technology changed our lives.
In this series, some of my works are from perspectives directly related to technology: the abstraction in space and time, gig economy and ghost work, social media, and persuasive technology.
The others are from a more indirect and personal perspective, that is, the aftermath that I have experienced, including the sense of brokenness and an emotional retrospection of my family.
*In this series, the food delivery driver is a recurring image. It’s because in September, In September of this year, I read a report about the current situation of food delivery drivers in China, about how capitalists armed with modern technology exploit labor more thoroughly.
《重建》是我的一个系列作品。目的是批判资本驱动的科技对人的异化和对如何建立关系的反思。
新冠疫情是这组作品的创作背景和动力。
在这大半年的居家隔离里，社交生活被简化成了社交媒体，日常消费全都交给了快递外卖平台，“附近”这个概念被彻底解构了，我生活的物理空间——一个杂乱的一居室公寓，仿佛是一座在数据宇宙里悬空的孤岛，这座孤岛上，对物理世界的感知是被算法抽象化的，被资本隐秘的控制的。
在这种被科技控制和吞噬的生活里，我开始反思人和科技的关系，人和人的关系，人和物理世界的关系，最终促使我开始了《重建》这个系列作品。因为居家隔离，创作工具有限，创作材料都是日常生活中的物品，作品的形式回归了简单和轻量。
这个系列中，有的作品角度非常直接：算法对时间和空间的抽象，零工经济，幽灵工作，社交媒体，说服性技术。有的则是更情绪化和私人经验的，人作为主体的破碎感和对家庭的回顾。
*这个系列中多次出现了“外卖员”这个意象，这个意象是受启发与2020年九月份的一篇纪实报道《外卖骑手，困在系统中》https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Mes1RqIOdp48CMw4pXTwXw
“附近”这个概念也多次出现，这个概念是人类学家项飙提出