In an increasingly digital world. Where facial recognition apps allegedly store our aged portraits and smart devices eavesdrop on our most intimate conversations. A growing number of artists are presenting tech-inspired dystopias in their work. New York and Shanghai-based Miao Ying adds an even more bitter cherry on top of this potential, doom-filled future, with her commentary on drastic governmental Internet censoring, and eventual self-censorship, in her home country of China. “Self-censorship is similar to Stockholm Syndrome,” says the artist.
Miao Ying last decade
However about becoming frenemies with censorship over the last decade, since she graduated from graduate school. “I never read George Orwell’s 1984 because I live in it and it’s pretty dark already.
Gif works
It’s easy to think censoring is wrong—few would argue with that.But the artist has been practicing ways of working with it. While playfully bending the rules. Miao showed a GIF of a half-loaded image of Chairman Mao as part of her mixed media installation Chinternet . Plus in the group exhibition The New Normal: China, Art, and 2017 at Beijing’s UCCA Center for Contemporary Art. The cultural bureau, during one of their usual trips to institutions to eliminate “threat”. Deemed the work inappropriate because of the clear resemblance of the former leader’s forehead. The artist’s solution was to raise the image’s pixilation to such a degree of unclarity that she was able to exhibit the work. Which was about China’s economy slowly getting stuck in a manner similar to a buffering image.
Miao’s mixed media installations—or promotional showrooms, as she calls them—bring her web art pieces into the gallery space, but exist almost secondary to her work in the digital realm. For Miao, her work strictly “resides online” and physical installations . She has started showing at museums result from an outside demand to prompt the audience to go to the Internet. “The work always starts with a digital core, which relates to a communist ideology. Starting with an abstract vision and adding up to build an idea.”
Miao Ying Grey Area
“There has always been a grey area to play with; however, that area is constantly getting narrower,” explains the artist. Who believes the current digital-political landscape has reached new realms of horror. With an in-progress credit system to collect personal data, similar to the purchase-based credit system of online shopping platform Taobao. Which grants visa-free access to Canada or Singapore for those holding the desired score. A pilot programme is currently being tested on smaller cities. The new deductive system gives each citizen 1,000 points, which drop based on their online and real-life presence. Monitored through governing web companies and people observing and noting others’ public behaviours. “The plan is to have each Chinese citizen scored by 2020.” says Miao, adding that a low score will limit travel and access to certain benefits.
