Performative Digital Bodies

Performative Digital bodies (2022-now)

Performative Digital Bodies: Desire, Labor, and Exhaustion derives from my previous project, Digital Landfill, which investigates the image culture on social media to understand this generation's paradoxical urge to perform while feeling utterly exhausted. While Digital Landfill circles around the need to play "dead," this project explores the other side of the spectrum. Performative Digital Bodies gathers images of bodies actively performing for the Internet. Observing the labor where we work and alter our bodies stimulated by the desire to be wanted and seen. I reflect and reimagine the oddly erotic and voyeuristic relationship between images, producers and consumers in digital space through various art mediums, including Gifs, Experimental Videos, VR space, New Media Installation, and Film essays.

Performative Digital Bodies (2024-)
Experimental Video

Performative Digital Bodies is a video essay explores the paradoxical anxiety and desire to remain idle and how the attention economy impacts our identity and relation to others.

Click here

Work It (2022-2024)
GIF, Experimental Video, Motion Graphic

Work It is a series of GIFs created with different bodies performing the same act. Depict the urge to perform and the compulsion to see the new, but eventually only produce variations of the same. These bodies become gears, engines, and fuel to the never-stopping digital content production. They lure us with glamor, vitality, and positivity like propaganda or ads. The project is accompanied with a short essay titled, "Bodies, bodies, bodies, Performative Digital Bodies."

Click here

The Mist (2024)
Animated Collage, Projection Mapping

The Mist is a series of animated collages that utilizes images and videos of social media thirst traps. I modify these bodies into translucent outlines and contours, then overlay them to construct various compositions of mist or pulsating organs. Reimagine the pornographic atmosphere filling social media as the obstruction that clouds our digital experience.

Click here

Enchanted (2024)
Video Installation

Enchanted is a video installation project incorporating rotoscoped videos of faces sourced from TikTok, presented on LCD panels arranged in a well-like structure. The project reflects on the intimate yet fleeting connections formed through digital interactions, particularly those moments of intense eye contact and dramatic expression shared among strangers on social media platforms.

Click Here

Shitstorm of Vitality (2022-2023)
Collage

Shitstorm of Vitality is a series of digital collages that utilizes images of bodies from social media actively performing various basic actions. A desperate attempt to make sense of what exactly the social media space is pushing us to perform. The eager and vital performance of nothingness and soullessness.

Click Here

FFF (Follow for Follow) (2022)
Experimental Video, Projection

FFF (Follow For Follow) is a multi-channel experimental video projection where moving body clips multiply and reconfigure into kaleidoscope-like structures, smoothly transitioning from one to another. Visualize the seemingly harmonious yet vicious attention economy as a never-ending piece of machinery made of everlasting body movements.

Click here

* We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and Ontario Arts Council