Ten Yuan

Artist’s project proposal

Proposal for a work in the Ten Yuan project

Title of the work: “Reposting Is Lending a Hand; Watching Changes China!”

Forms of presentation: performance, online interaction on Weibo, mobile-phone photographs and mobile-phone video.

A “ten-yuan artwork” means a proposal for a work made with a minimal outlay, capped at ten yuan. Yet in today’s urban life in the information age, we are already held captive by material equipment and infrastructure: computers, the internet and mobile phones have become indispensable to urban cultural life. Under these conditions, if our work uses only the material resources we already possess, does it still fit this project’s premise? After all, the costs of a computer, internet access and a mobile phone cannot be kept within ten yuan. My proposal proceeds by accepting this existing infrastructure as its premise.

Since the beginning of the information age, online life has ceased to be simply a digital space. It has become a very real and important part of people’s lives. Digital and physical spaces influence and reinforce one another. Life in physical space supplies facts to digital space; digital space, in turn, influences or changes life in physical space. Its reach extends to people’s inner lives, behaviour, thinking and views, as well as the direction in which events develop.

“Reposting Is Lending a Hand; Watching Changes China.” The first phrase comes from online remarks compiled by 钭江明; the second comes from the critic Xiao Shu’s commentary… I now bring them together to describe the repeated circulation of words, images and videos on Weibo… “Reposting” may seem like a drop of water, but dripping water can wear through stone. “Watching” may seem silent, but might every pair of eyes among those watching be a video revealing the truth? The truth? The truth.

The internet is a medium for production and everyday life, and also a medium for artistic expression!

When I received the work from the previous stage of the relay, I was due to return from Chengdu to Beijing, so I made that day’s life the main content of my work. I transmitted information about my actions that day through Weibo. Although the people interacting on Weibo did not know that their exchanges had become part of my work, this was precisely what I considered its most valuable and interesting aspect!

Online interaction: Weibo, http://t.sina.com.cn/liuqimingart. (On Sina, one has to open a Weibo account before one can enter and read other people’s Weibo pages.)

Images of the online interaction: screenshots of all the content on my Weibo homepage up to the point when this work was completed.

Performance: my life on the 28th, the day I returned from Chengdu to Beijing. It is presented through mobile-phone photographs and video. (Image and video quality depends on my phone; see Weibo for the specific content.)

Cost of the work:

Online interaction, computer screenshots of that interaction, mobile-phone photographs and mobile-phone video incurred no expenditure.

Because of the way this work is presented, I chose to transmit it online. If the artist at the next stage of the relay requires the “list of personnel” necessary for this activity as a paper copy sent by post, I will transfer two yuan to that artist through online banking to cover double-sided A4 printing.

Total cost: 2 (−2) yuan.