An Artist’s Statement on Social Media Circle

I began making this new group of works, Social Media Circle, in the second half of 2015. Responding to current social phenomena and problems, this phase of my work draws on WeChat Moments. I download videos circulated there each day outside official media channels and turn them into a video work. It begins with a single moving image; more are gradually added until the entire screen is filled with a moving video mosaic. Sound likewise moves from clearly audible speech to the combined noise of every video speaking at once, until we can no longer hear anything. Screenshots become paintings.

Today, one of the main and most important ways people obtain or exchange information is through apps on smartphones. The shapes of my paintings therefore directly borrow the graphic forms of smartphone apps, seeking to give viewers an instant sense of familiar strangeness. Among Chinese people, who are not allowed to use Facebook or Twitter, these platforms for exchanging information have shifted from Weibo a few years ago to the much more widely used WeChat of the past two or three years. Even the various forms of livestreaming now becoming popular are one-directional, weakly interactive and fleeting. Until they effectively address interaction and storage, WeChat will remain an important app and means for Chinese people to exchange images and text.

WeChat Moments and groups circulate all kinds of videos every day. While we criticise the absence of freedom of news and speech, WeChat seems to offer everyone a free space. As we talk endlessly in Moments, we imagine we have acquired the right to speak and express ourselves freely; this information appears to circulate and be exchanged freely. In fact, that is not the case. It is merely a “freedom chosen for us,” an illusion.

On the other hand, when a mind lacking rational reflection confronts such an immense volume of information each day, it can easily be swept along. Amid the constant chatter of Moments, many people lose their sense of self all the more.