The finale dress The Dying Swan from Alexander McQueen S/S 1999 marked the beginning of this project as the initial inspiration. I found it so intriguing that when the spray machines started to paint on the model’s white dress, there happened a position reversal between human and machine. Here’s a comment I read about this phenomenal moment:

'... At first, the model and machines were in an equal state with a delicate balance. But the machine soon broke the balance by spraying on her seemingly automatically, turning aggressive while the woman becoming humble and passive.'

If I could see the finale as an artistic performance and the model as the artist, it would offer such an inspiring point. For most of the time, a performer gets to design and conduct the whole process, aware of all the following possibilities. However, seeing a helpless woman teased by two seemingly crazy machines I suddenly came up with an idea of putting the performer/artist, who is used to being in charge, in a passive position when his/her works go out of control and even try to ‘revenge’.

Marina Abramović once pointed the difference between a theatre play and a performance that everything in a performance is supposed to have truly happened while things can be fake in a play. But, as we all know the true world is full of possibilities. This definitely aroused my interest and urge to explore the unpredictability of a live performance once it is 'liberated'.

As one of the initial inspirations of The Dying Swan, Rebecca Horn’s High Moon (1991) also contains an ‘automatic’ machine that can make a mess, especially visually, without a present manipulator. At the same time, the existence of the manipulator – artist in a performance – is weakened and limited to a large extent. Such a state is what I want for this project.

Meanwhile, High Moon is so human-y without involving anyone. It’s even uncanny and creepy to me considering all the pipes and flowing, dripping blood-like liquid are supposed to imitate the circulatory system of an organic body. From my point of view, they in some sense represented the human spirits and desire placed within non-organic mechanical components. They became the products controlled and manipulated by machines. This is a perfect depiction for the state mentioned above.

Also, the conjoint of mechanical elements and blood red colour gives the sense of aggressiveness and psychos, reminding me of not only the uncontrolled mechanical culture but also the unpredictability inside human nature, especially the dark side of it. I think this is going to be another topic I could include to add more reality-related contents.

Something super interesting and inspiring happened during Marina’s performance and mentioned in art critic Thomas McEvilley’s review:

‘…Faced with her abdication of will, with its implied collapse of human psychology, a protection group began to define itself in the audience, when a loaded gun was thrust to Marina’s head and her own finger was being worked around the trigger. A fight broke out between the audience factions.’

Initially I focused on how Marina handed over to audience the leadership of the performance. It, consisting of random objects, voluntary participants and un-known behaviours, carried on as expected in a completely unpredicted way. In a sense, the artist did put herself in a passive position against strangers with different personalities and intentions.

However, mentioned in the quotation above, there appeared a new stage of response that the audience – also participants – started with interfere with each other in a conflicting way. At that moment Marina herself was somehow ignored and the centre was transferred away. This seemed to respond to my ideas of weakening the dominance of the performer/artist with an uncertain situation to come. The guy pointing the loaded gun to Marina and the burst out conflict afterwards served a lively illustration of how far human nature could take people, something I was about to look into as content of my work.

The 2015 Chinese documentary Behemoth took an insight in heavy industries in Inner Mongolia and the severe environment pollution. I found associations from it concerning ‘unpredictability’ in an obvious way and human passivity, veiledly.

‘Behemoth’ can be originated in the Bible, which was portrayed as a huge monster feeding on mountains. In my own understanding, it was used to name the documentary for that the heavy industry, created and raised by human, can eventually grow into a crazy, destructive monster like just Behemoth. It’s an overwhelming power born within human hands but soon out of control, symbolizing the unstableness of human nature. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to deal with this broad theme. Behemoth has served a reminder for me that I have pick a specific approach. A general statement about ‘humanity’ would make my work plain and superficial.

At the same time, this documentary also takes a close look at the grievous, irreversible damages caused by the backward industry, whose main victims are the frontline workers. Meanwhile, this destructive power, as I assumed, will not only target at the disadvantaged. It will eventually trigger chain effects that keep haunting the whole society. Under such circumstances, humans are always puny in a passive position. As I started my idea based on the individual passivity with more attention to one’s personal emotions when threatened. Behemoth, in this sense, expanded my comprehension.

However, after all I still felt my original specific approach towards ‘passivity’ was a better option. Just like the other key concepts, a detailed topic is more suitable to be depicted by a single installation and performance.

I named this session ‘contradictory’ for all the evidence I found in the film that unintentionally reminded people of the on-going reality split and coherence. I categorized them into two main types: contradictory truths and repeated events. The first one includes abnormally different memories and opposite personalities, while the second one indicates a time loop within which scenes from the past will be replayed.

I try to apply such evidence to my own work by creating uncanny events that are obviously disobeying the settled truth. In the film, those shared experiences only got accepted by some of the eight but denied by the others. Such details caused a lot of confusion that I am considering achieving in my practice by, for example, behaving weirdly in front of others. However, as my descriptions here, this sounds way too broad to conduct and unnoticeable.

In the film, when the Miller Comet visited the coherence between different universes took place, along with encounters between people and themselves and their friends of a different version. They started interfering with so-called 'parallel universes'.

The encounters and interference provide me an opportunity to form up connection between the parallel universe concept and my ongoing research of unpredictability and unstableness of human and society. In the film ended up with a chaos of them interfering with themselves and their friends between different realities and things were heading for a dark end. Except for some versions of the world where they had no idea of the coherence and were just sitting together lovely, the rest of them were so scared of being replaced by selves but also eager for a start-over opportunity.

They viewed themselves and friends from other realities as totally strangers and invaders, treating them in a rude and aggressive way and even trying to eliminate their existences. Meanwhile, when their disappointment and dissatisfaction towards their previous life were magnified by that sudden event, some of them wished to make up some mistakes or exchange to a better version of life by replacing another self.

For me, during this mess the impulse and sensuality inside human nature were profoundly enlarged and presented. It provided a perfect example of possible disasters existing in different realities. Everything could go wrong simply because of the unstableness. We should feel super fortunate to live in such a world.

Or not, because it’s already fucked up(?).

The Other: Rest Energy (1980) is one perfect example of what I intended to research and create during my project.

Quoted here is one part of the introduction from the website: http://www.li-ma.nl/site/catalogue/art/abramovic-ulay/rest-energy/1827# :

‘Our interest is relation, with our “Relation Work” we cause a third existence conjured by us does not depend on us any longer but has its own quality which we call “That Self”.’

This is exactly something I am seeking: an individual soul of the work itself, an uncontrollable force on its own. In this piece the artists were experiencing such a unique situation: when Ulay was holding the arrow and Marina was holding the bow, it seemed that Ulay gained the power to determine where the performance would go. He was holding a weapon that could pose a severe threat to Marina’s life in a delicate balance. But just like what Marina said above, neither of them is leading the ‘game’. They created something and automatically became part of it as components not creators any more. The performance itself turned into a third existence as I expected.

After weeks of idea generation, my motif has been narrowed down to three main points, one of which is ‘reality split’. When I looked back at The Other: Rest Energy again, I suddenly realized it was relevant to this aspect as well. As long as either of them hadn’t unleashed the arrow or bow, at that moment there existed multiple possibilities for future. They might stay still until the end or in the worst situation, someone got injured badly. But none of them, actually, no one on site could foresee. Marina, Ulay, all the audience, everyone was there right before a possible reality split.

Above: Rube Goldberg Machine:

Below: W. Heath Robinson’s work:

Technically, Rube Goldberg Machine stands for various kinds of mechanical structures with a certain level of automaticity, complexity and a sense of humour. It also was mentioned by my tutor during my progress tutorial when I talked about constructing a dominoes system with sequent effects to highlight ‘automatically generating possibilities’. Having gone through some of the examples, I am attracted for that many of them are just like what I’ve pictured in my head – a simple, neat combination of daily objects. They contain various components within which I can visualize other references veiledly. But I am also facing several problems despite such advantages:

At this stage I am considering a system mainly composed of dominoes. However, a good dominoes installation ought to be in a large scale to ensure once triggered, it is capable of running for a period of time. In this case, I am truly worried that long and supposedly entertaining process will draw all the attention, leaving no space for deeper thinking. Neither is it a good way to convey the core motif.

At the same time, the human role is also essential to final piece and will appear in it, which seems impossible or hard to achieve if I decided to go with such a huge structure.

The construction of it also seems time-consuming and highly site-specific, making me consider ruling out this option.

Above: a GIF of double pendulum;

When researching about ‘unpredictability’ and ‘uncertainty’, I was suggested look into chaos theories. It proves to correspond to my own thinking as it focuses on ‘how tiny changes to initial condition lead to completely unpredictable and chaotic motions’.

Within the study of chaos theory, the double pendulum is the simplest example, a dynamic system that vividly depicts such a state. It ‘shows a strong sensitivity to initial conditions’. I’ve made the decision to pay extra attention to double pendulum as the theory behind is highly relevant while the system itself exhibits it in an obvious visual and practical way. This, to some extent, addresses the problem I ran into a lot in this project that most ideas of mine are too conceptual and abstract to realize. Either the pendulum itself or any movements completed by it can be directly applied to my final outcome.

Below: the planar model of double pendulum in my sketchbook;

From Above:

1. whole view from gallery website;

2. whole view from gallery website;

3. Untitled, 2012;

4. Hiraku 80-62, 2007;

5. Hiraku 81-, 2008;

6. Hiraku 81-, 2008;

7. Hiraku 80-65, 2007;

8. Untitled, 2012;

9. Hiraku 80-72, 2007;

10. Hiraku 79-89, 2006;

11. Hiraku 80-76, 2007;

12. Hiraku 80-88, 2007;

13. details of Hiraku 79-89 (2006);

14. details of Hiraku 79-89 (2006);

 Left: Digital Vistas Llluminate the Complexity of the Mind - Neurons, Astrocytes and Blood Vessels (detail), Blue Brain Project (2018)

Below: Blue Brain Project - Neuroplasticity, Blue Brain Project (2018) [press release]

The Blue Brain Project is obviously more scientific compared with other pieces exhibited, not only for the print and film that are supposed to be seen from the monitor in a laboratory or hospital, but also for its goal of digital reconstruction of the functioning human brain. At first, I thought the print was a sophisticatedly structured sculpture, the complexity of which might be inspiring in terms of the practical making.

This project seemed much less relevant once found to focus mainly on imitating the brain activities. Ornamental and imaginative though, it has not so much conceptual and inspiring to me.

In the press release, artist Ryan Gander is said to ‘embrace a more laisse faire attitude, rather than trying to control time, to stop it or to change it.’ It caught my attention in the first place because I saw a similar ‘negativity’ with part of my thoughts. In my point of view, human nature is not trustworthy thus the uncertainty and unpredictability gradually became one the of the core motifs. It also explained the use of the previous title Behemoth with which I assumed the unlimited human desire would turn into an uncontrolled monster that fed on people themselves.

With the voice of himself occupying the room telling autobiographic stories but ‘shadowed by an overarching sense of anxiety of loss’, the space full of darkness quickly put on a futuristic tone. I didn’t stay for long so the audio I heard is quite limited in duration. The previous research, as well as the content I heard on site, seemed political and society-concerned while the most stand-out sentence in the preview is one from Bryan’s father: ’Let the world take a turn’. Taking into consideration the current global situation of terrorism, political oppression and turmoil, interest conflict between nations… maybe the world is ready for a turn, a repeat of history full of unstableness and tragedy.

It could be linked to my concerns about the unpredictability of human nature and society, from the very negative aspect. However, I somehow sensed that when reflecting the ‘imbalance and mass inequality on a global scale’, what the artist tries to state is from too broad a perspective. The contrast between the flip with low-volume sound that is quite hard to notice and the overwhelming background talking, the atmosphere he created might fit such a motif that is more ‘laisse faire’. But I want my work to be more concentrated, especially I’ve already made the decision to reduce the element of ‘complete unpredictability’ while focusing on the ‘limited reality, limited options within certain range’, indicating the restrained existence of human.

Besides, the cube itself might be a good example of a ‘system’ as I imagined. The panels covering all the surfaces, programmed by the artist in advanced though, still finds its own way to visualize the ‘randomness’ while each of them, black or white, seem to represent one reality or possibility. It reminded me of using similar materials with changeable surface. However, it looks superficial in this way, and I don’t want final piece to be separated especially in terms of themes. Instead, I should avoid designing outcomes by part but as a whole.

From above:

1. The Dandy-Rococo - The Hunting Blinds and Hunting Standards, 2005-2008;

2. The Librarian - The Hunting Blinds and Hunting Standards, 2005-2008;

3. The Glutton - The Hunting Blinds and Hunting Standards, 2005-2008;

4. Tate Thames Dig - Locker, 2000;

5. Bureau of the Centre for the Study of Surrealism and its Legacy, 2005;

I was, admittedly, fascinated by the stack of objects conjoining the pure nature and human life, with a rough and old-fashioned elegance. Unlike a single site-specific installation piece, Mark’s extraordinary collections re-create a lively nature world in an institutional environment. It’s engaging yet uncanny for the use of both living animals and specimen-like sculptures.

I felt like the artist’s sincerity made a great contribution to this achievement. He worked exactly as an adventurer instead of an artist. Therefore, most of the pieces were like lively solid diaries with a slight roughness. Well staged though, they didn’t give a settled and contrived impression. For some moments during the visit, I felt like wandering in a natural museum rather than a gallery. This aroused my imagination of adopting a different attitude towards my work. Like how Mark devoted himself to his taxonomic collection, maybe I should see myself as exactly the character as supposed, let’s say, a worshipping human from primitive era. Maybe I should try to participate in the whole making, performing and documenting process with full respect and admiration, which were only included in the performance. I should really put myself in a specific position all through, rather than just acting like it.

Apart from those re-creations of blinds, The Library for the Birds of London (2018) is the most dramatic one from my point of view. When I walked into the cage with all the birds singing around, I felt like standing in a dream-like yet cool fairy tale. To be honest, the use of tree, birds and laid books themselves wasn’t the thing that appealed to me the most. Since Mark aimed to show ‘our inability to truly comprehend the natural world’, the way he placed animals, big plant and human creations together reminded me of the original state of the world and all lives, like Garden of Eden. It, somehow, also made me think of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights. They both brought together different creatures and beings together into a special and holy space. In Mark’s piece, this space is a huge bird cage which adds a sense of oppression to the holiness.

When I read the press release while taking a second look at Jill Baroff’s drawings, I could feel how delicate and sophisticated it is, in terms of not only the outcome but also the process. I always seek the informative and communicative elements beyond aesthetic appreciation when enjoying an art piece in which part Jill made huge success in my point of view. With the help of professional tools, the artist translated information into visual language, while the data used as raw materials replaced her position to determine where the painting was heading for.

It immediately reminded me of my initial idea of ‘the work gaining its own life’ with slightly different features. Jens Peter Koerver wrote in Everything is a Process:

‘... For another, how the details of the drawing, dictated by the material’s own inner life and the unpredictability of the manual workmanship involved, lead to variances, to small interruptions, to irregularities, even going so far as the bleeding of the ink into other areas in spots or over whole areas, or damage to the paper by the writing implement.’

In some ways the work does ‘flee the artist’. The data she collected played the leading role. When an artist was making a piece, he/she should be entirely devoted concentrated. However, it must feel completely different to follow the given orders: you can’t control your pen and your paper, you can’t control the distances between the lines, you can’t decide the details as well as what the outcome will look like. You work for the painting is led by the data you found online. You feel slaved and highly limited while watching the drawing gradually completing, forming up itself.

Now I feel it’s more advanced and elegant a way to weaken the artist’s leadership, not seemingly risky or tense. The similar method, considered from the perspective of my own project, could be seen as a silent torture to the artist with no decisions left for him/her to make.

When reading Everything is a Process such feelings got strengthened even more. Titled Tide Drawing, the series of drawings broaden my comprehension of how to conceive painting, from which I found more supporting inspirations. Jill actually based her works on the water level data which could be dependent on multiple factors: moon phases, weather, geographic conditions, etc. So in fact, much more things than I thought all in a sense modified and shaped her work, ‘manipulating’ the artist. They constituted and enrich the real soul of every drawing instead of the artist.

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That Jill based her work on natural movements intrigued and inspired me as well. In the film Coherence (2013), the Miller Comet is the key factor that caused coherence among parallel realities. In 1Q84 (2010) by Haruki Murakami, the characters identified their locations and authenticated their existences by looking up into the sky. A night sky with two moons indicated the truth that they were in Year 1Q84, a twisted copy of their original universe. Like the abstract concept of universe and reality, nature is another source of overwhelming and undefeatable power that we should fear and admire. In the works above nature all functioned as the ‘manipulator’, teasing or torturing the human beings. Thus I am considering using signs or marks representing nature to add more visual effect or even religious elements.

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At the same time, the unique way Jill adopted in her work using adapted radiographs and drafting compasses could perfectly indicate ‘how the smallest changes gradually lead to major shifts’ (quoted from Everything is a Process). Via rigorous repetition, the circles overlapped together precisely show the viewer how a tiny flaw is enlarged to be impossible to ignore. It’s almost the visualization of Butterfly Effect from slight changes to initial conditions to unpredicted and chaotic results.

Although through the circling the fine line will still eventually form up a rough round. Its movement is strictly limited within a certain area. This is something I also want to apply to the Double Pendulum part of my final piece. In the concept outline, I describe the negative emotions from the human role as the anxiety and depression when manipulated in a passive position, trapped in a single reality, one they treasure so much but turns out to be so random and negligible. The chaos and randomness we observed are still uncomplete and not random with those settled conditions. Just like the two or three-dimensional graphics generated by double pendulum can’t exceed the round or the ball, we are so trapped in our own reality and hold no chance to exceed it.

As enriching my research about Jill Baroff’s Tide Circle Drawing, that the artist based her works on tide data collected from different oceans all over the globe reminded me of a novel from one of my favourite writers – 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami.

First of all, I was deeply impressed by Jill’s nature-related drawing. Those circular fine line repetitions exhibited some original nature spirits – the power of tides and oceans, through their seemingly plain appearance. As far as I know, tides on earth are affected by the moon’s rotating movement. This immediately reminded me of 1Q84, in which the moon played a key role in the construction of the fictional world. Year 1Q84 actually stands for an otherworld, a twisted copy of the original reality. In Year 1Q84, there are two moons in the night sky, a regular one and another smaller, light green one. This is regarded as the most accurate way to identify the different reality. It corresponds to my previous idea of ‘looking for a system to authenticate a reality’ perfectly with extra elegance. As I always try to reduce the scientific elements, this offers a new direction for me to push forward my piece. Centred around serious theories and interpretations, I want to simplify and conceptualize it by adding more aesthetic approaches.

To develop with, I started looking into astrology. It contains several points that so far have been seen as the driving force of my work: holy figures (heavenly bodies), objective dominant power (nature and universe), unpredictability, human’s passivity (destinies being re-shaped). Even though I won’t refer too much to it, it will still make a great carrier for most of my concepts. It is applicable as well for its rich history and visual recordings.

The delicate balance in Equilibres / Quiet Afternoon (1984) by Peter Fischli and David Weiss reminded me of Alexander Calder’s revolutionary dynamic sculptures. Take Mobile (1932) for instance, I even perceive the air around it as a major component for the hanging piece’s high sensitivity to the air flow. Nonetheless, its subtle movements can hardly correspond to my conception of ‘stillness followed by collapse’.

In the meantime, its neatness and delicacy are profoundly appreciated. The fine form with geometrical colour solids recalls the research about heavenly bodies and astrology. Its moving with the flow of air resemble the celestial motions which, is a mixture of magnificence and subtleness. However, my installation serves part of a performance that requires certain firmness for movements. So I can only draw some inspirations from it without imitating its practical form.

Above: Shamefaced 2 (2017)

Left:     Progression (2017)

I find Grzegorz Gwiazda’s sculptures so fascinating as they have portrayed intriguing human figures out of solid materials. They are actually far from abstract with typical human features yet still poetic. In this way, it tremendously benefits designing my figure for final performance. To be more specific, since I’ve always kept in mind to show passivity, vulnerability, body painting and wrapping garments or other materials are my current approaches to achieve that. Gwiazda’s work like Progression (2017) seemingly puts a spire-shaped piece on top of a walking man, covering half of his body. Yet he maintains a walking pose albeit to me, all his senses are cut off putting him in unsettling darkness. I already thought about covering ears and eyes to experience, hypothetically, anxiety, while these sculptures just develop my ideas upon it to create exaggerated shapes in appearance.

Meanwhile, the Shamefaced series impressed me for its use of colour on the twisted human figure. The paints strengthen the dramatic effect in a decent way. The geometric colour shapes don’t follow the body curve and the edges caused a striking contrast against the dark tone. I could use specific patterns or even text to help spotlight what I will try to convey through body languages.

Left: Untitled (Rape Scene) (1973), Ana Mendieta / Right: 3rd Action (1965), Rudolf Schwarzkogler

In a sense, I do benefit from Ana and Rudolf’s informative performances. Ana recreated a rape murder crime scene, while Rudolf torture-like practice focused on pain, mutilation and despair. Having intended to get inspirations for my look and positions or movements, I eventually also found associations with part of my motif – human passivity and vulnerability.

Both their works spotlight injured human bodies with no doubt. This does correspond to my concepts. The bloodstained exposed lower part of Ana’s body, supposed to be an emotional response to violence against women though, is perceived by me as a perfect portrayal of vulnerability. I also found it similar to my visual conception of covering only my upper body and wearing nothing but underwear when performing. In Ana’s motions, I think showing the naked lower body is not only recreating a rape crime scene in detail, but also for to expose a fragile spot around which are female genital and uterus. This is, from biological standpoint, a weakness of human. The gesture is thus regarded as applicable to my piece.

Meanwhile, I can see a lot of surgical elements in Rudolf’s, putting the wrapped himself in a patient’s position. With the use of gauze bandages, white sheet and thin pipes (I assume they are), it seems appropriate for depicting vulnerability as well as for squirming momvements.