“What’s Outside?” 竹子君
Artist statement
“What’s Outside?”
I have been interested with the topic of media control from the studying of history of Chinese philosophy. One of the philosopher named XunZi has said that with media control, all people will be able to only see what you want them to see and listen to what you want them to hear. They would all be the same rather than having different thoughts on one thing. I think this is adapted to today’s China. The term for it would be “censorship in China” on Wikipedia.
Things are blocked out of the views and reaches of the public since they were children. Topics such as Feminism, Porn, Christianity, historical events that actually happened within China at one point, and even many current events would be blocked from the views of the people on any social media. And of course, this not only happens in China, but in many countries now in the world. The governments decided this was the easiest way to control their people, and to have all of them on the same page.
I came to Canada 6 years ago, and I saw there are things that are interesting. People here don’t know what China is really like, and Chinese people within China don’t know what Canada or other places are like. The internet of China has become an invisible wall within the outside world and China, which is weird. Therefore the public within China would have believed the whole time what the media and the government has told them, and would decide liking or hating something based on that.
Surveillance are everywhere now. On streets, in buildings and online. All of the text Apps would be checked, and all emails can be used as evidences. I was afraid to talk about this with my friends and my mom on Wechat, the most well known Chinese text App. I was afraid that there would be a political issue because I said something or did an artwork on this topic. And this fear is weird, and is problematic, I would suggest. People outside need to know what’s inside, and people inside need to know what’s outside.
So I decided to make my work with Bamboo, which I thought would be a new material for me to play with. It is tall, heavy, non-transparent. And I had a hard time making a standing object with them. Because they were so heavy and large in scale. This wall of bamboos were there to block the outside to see what’s inside. And there would be a voice inside the bamboos, saying things in Chinese, which is what most of the people here won’t understand. This confusion and the frustration of not able to understand and see was what I feel as a Chinese outside of China.
FEB 25, 2019
yuminghee