Performance
Red Envelope
- Year
- 2014
- Medium
- Online performance on WeChat
- Location
In 2014, Qiming Liu used WeChat’s red-envelope function to divide one yuan among one hundred participants. Each received one fen, or one hundredth of a yuan. The work unfolded as participants opened their envelopes and responded to this tiny sum.
In his commentary, Liao Liao interprets this small, equal gift as a transformation of the social obligations, prestige and relationships carried by traditional red envelopes. Sharing, interaction, equality and play become the defining features of an exchange that offers little material gain.
The public images show original system interfaces for receiving one fen, the completion of all one hundred envelopes, the artist’s own sending summary, and an envelope that has already been emptied. They document the mechanism of the work; private conversations and identifiable recipient lists are not reproduced.
In “One Yuan for One Hundred People?”, Dr. Peter Agni reads the participants’ shifting expectations on encountering the tiny sum as an important part of the work, and connects its humour to serious reflection on money and giving.