Qiyun Zheng

Name: Qiyun Zheng

Date: 11/11/2022

Assignment: Prototype

Introduction:

This prototype presents a fragmented experience of becoming aware of internalized censorship in a displaced context. The research question is: How to protest censorship with soft power in a foreign country? By looking back to the wrapping discourse in Chinese cultural background and the history of Performance Art in China, this digital performance experiments with vulnerability, symbolism, and translation while confronting Chinese censorship as a female. The artistic exploration is carried out in the artist’s bedroom, and all the materials involved are from the bedroom only. Instead of providing solutions to break through self-censorship, this prototype invites a growing awareness of internalized/internalizing censorship through a reversed censoring experience.

Prototype link:

hesaysidontexist.wordpress.com

Feedforward:

Further questions raised through this prototype are: How to bridge the different censorship experiences between Chinese and western contexts? How to separate a country’s political situation from its celebrated culture to avoid political depression, or how to practically embrace the conflict? How to make the body more present in the soft-powered protest?