nanaz666

[nanaz666]

Critical Annotation

The origin of this project is based on the repairing method "Ju" in traditional Chinese culture. In the age of material poverty, people would use this method to repair broken tableware and kitchen utensils. Ju works the same way a staple gun is now, I use it to patch up the urban landscape and nature of Melbourne, then shoot and get this project.

In my critical frameworks, I focus on selecting performance art and land artists to discuss. The themes created by these artists are all about humanistic thinking and ecological protection, which is in line with the theme of my project.

Humanistic care is reflected in the identity establishment and sense of identity with race and community, combined with its own cultural background and living conditions, while focusing on the humanistic care that is lacking or insufficient in a certain aspect of society, the most representative is yellow man's performance art creation. As Asians, in this work our voices are the same.

The ecological environment has always been a topic that artists and scientists have been discussing, and the maintenance of the ecological environment is what I want to convey through this project. When it comes to this topic, land art is a good form of expression. As an artist, the use and creation of land art can easily remind the audience of the natural ecological environment (although sometimes that is not their intention). I have also selected a lot of land art to discuss in my blog, the most representative of which is the one that regards the land as a cloth for sewing.

I don't specifically choose one art form to post and write, because my work is a composite of multiple art forms. Although I work in a photography studio, the camera is more like a tool for connecting time and space in my creations. I shoot the repaired scene, then printed the picture, pasted them back to the original locations, and then shoot again. In this process, the camera carries the past time and scene, and the overlapping of the same location space is artificially chosen. For the practice and application of camera tools, Jeff Wall's photos can be said to be outstanding representatives of this field.

To sum up, my creation is based on the cultural background of performance art and public art in Melbourne, and the exhibition method are mainly still pictures and video recording.

[nanaz666]

Rogan Brown.Ghost Coral. 2021.Paris. Installation, paper art.

Using superb crafting techniques to form paper into the shape of coral, Rogan created a striking visual display of the catastrophic impact of the climate crisis on marine life, showing how issues such as coral bleaching can radiate outward to the wider world.

The artist proposes that coral is a microcosm of the macro world, and coral bleaching reflects the further deterioration of our ecological environment. In this work, two circular reliefs made up of intricate paper cuts flare out, layering fragile lifeforms cut from white paper. The monochromatic pieces are in stark contrast to their vibrant counterparts, which nestle in a mass conservation centre.

Thinking about the environment from an artist's point of view has always been one of the topics I focus on, and I also like to combine manual forms. I have a pop-up book as a journal in my project (it's rough and I still need to learn the production techniques), this pop-up book is used more as a fun presentation.

Handwork is a very unique way of art form due to its uniqueness and unrepeatable nature. The repairing method I discussed also originated from ancient handcrafts. At that time, there was a special profession called “Ju jiang”, which used a working principle similar to a nail gun to repair. I borrowed ancient handicrafts to arouse people's attention to the ecological environment, and added another handmade product to the final work to match the cultural background.

[nanaz666]

Yasunori Matsui.Brier Patch.2022. Madison Square Park,New York. Installation, public art.

The artist's installations lean more towards a material aesthetic, blending desks with trees to make the project, Brier Patch consists of 100 small wraparound desks arranged in a neat grid reminiscent of an elementary school classroom. Each cedar sculpture is different, with bare, bark-covered branches bursting from their seats or tabletops, creating a roaring explosion of impenetrable limbs and branches. He combined stories from his own cultural background and social status quo to express the problem of uneven distribution of educational resources.

He calls these installations "patches". The desk is influenced by the use of trees. The desk's material is taken from the trees, and the trees grow on the desk, which will eventually be cut down and artificially made into a desk. The complex relationship between the two objects is thought provoking.

And the classroom environment he created is obviously not friendly to everyone. I noticed that the artist is black. Although there are continuous voices against racial discrimination, can children living in black areas get the same quality of education as white people? Or people from other non-mainstream ethnic groups, have they, and even their next generation, received enough attention? This is still an issue to be considered globally.

I was also thinking about this question when I made my project, as an Asian living in Australia, what is our social status with distinctive faces and belonging to a minority group? Is it getting enough respect? The obvious answer is that it is not enough.

Therefore, I also use methods from my own cultural background to interact with the city, so that more people can see my actions and realize my existence.

[nanaz666]

Ememem. The pavement surgeon. 2016. Installation, public art

The artist walks around the city to check for broken sidewalks and roads, and then uses a colorful mosaic pattern to fill in the broken places. This colorful geometric mosaic contrasts sharply with the gray asphalt concrete road, which the artist calls it "Free and spontaneous surgery that both repairs and beautifies."

I think this piece is a fusion of pop culture and public art, the bright colors are reminiscent of Andy Warhol's pop paintings, the accumulation of color blocks is similar to Lego blocks, and it is also reminiscent of the classic decorative painting style . In terms of materials, the artist's choice is mostly shiny stones and crystals, which coincides with the y2k style of the 2000s.

When pedestrians pass by and overlook the decoration made by the artist on the ground, they see beautiful patterns from this perspective, as if looking down at the scenery over the city from an airplane. Repair is more of a decorative effect in this work. Even if the road surface is worn, it does not affect normal use. Therefore, from a practical point of view, this repair is also futile. It cannot be denied that the aesthetic value of this work is extremely high, and the color matching and the proportion of the color block area are carefully selected and designed.

As public art, it is also a unique thing for artists to place their works in the environment rather than in the art gallery. The interaction with the audience must bear the risk of damage to the artwork, but the theme itself is related to repairing. It is also interesting to repair the works after the work has been displayed and worn.

Usually this type of work lasts for several years because it's a project that can go on forever.

[nanaz666]

Estelle Chrétien. Land Operation , 2016-2020. Photography, Land art, Public art

Using a playful, innocent approach to interacting with the natural landscape, the artist's sprawling lawns, fields and wooded gorges around her home in Nancy, France, and elsewhere in Europe, became the setting for mischievous mixed-media interventions. In a playful way she calls pompous, akin to the feeling of playing in the mud or jumping in a puddle, the work develops through chance encounters with the landscape and the objects within. Her work is presented in an "open air" exhibition where viewers are similarly exposed to her work, with the potential to surprise and delight. She stitches cracked earth together and associates tree trunks as legs, and she uses her rich imagination to bring natural landscapes to life.

This kind of public exhibition and interaction with the natural landscape is one of the important sources of inspiration for me. The interesting repair of the natural landscape can make the audience think deeply about the environment.

Relatively speaking, her work contains more handcraft, mine is done by ancient repair methods.

Whether or not the repair is futile in nature, the purpose of this work of public art is to grab the viewer's attention.

The work can be integrated with the place where it was made, which is the unique charm and characteristic of land art. If the production process is recorded by a camera, the work will also add the attributes of performance art.

I chose to record the repair process, because the original intention is that this work is a performance art, and the exhibition method is public art. When people talk about art forms, I don't want my work to be limited to one art form.

[nanaz666]

Jeff wall. Picture for Women. 1979. Photography

Picture for Women is a 142.5 by 204.5 cm cibachrome transparency mounted on a lightbox. Along with The Destroyed Room (1978), Wall considers Picture for Women to be his first success in challenging photographic tradition.

According to Tate Modern, this success allows Wall to reference "both popular culture (the illuminated signs of cinema and advertising hoardings) and the sense of scale he admires in classical painting. As three-dimensional objects, the lightboxes take on a sculptural presence, impacting on the viewer's physical sense of orientation in relationship to the work.”

The reason why I like this work very much is that Jeff widens the angle of the observer in ordinary photography works. In ordinary photography works, we usually only have one angle to observe, that is, the camera. As the audience, we can only see the one recorded by the photographer with the camera. In the picture, we don’t know what the photographer was doing or what the camera looked like, but Jeff cleverly used a mirror, which multiplied the layers and content in the picture, and turned the space into a piece that can be played with. things, which is very interesting.

When the audience sees this picture for the first time, they will be attracted by the ingenious spatial design. The camera is a different observer, the audience is an observer, and the photographer is another angle. Jeff's flat photography works include three-dimensional space, and even some four-dimensional space theories and expressions.

My work also includes a dual discussion of time and space. I shoot for the first time, then print it, and then paste the work back to the original location for a second shot. This behavior can be understood as a "time-lapse mirror".

Humans cannot grasp time, but they can record pictures in the current time and space. The shooting locations of my works are completely overlapping in space, but the time is not the same. The exact same space overlaps with different time, and the camera plays a crucial role in it. It is not only a recording tool, but also a recorder of time.

[nanaz666]

Alberto Mielgo, Love, Death + Robots: Season 3, Ep 9, Jibaro ,2022. Anime

There are two mainstream interpretations of Jibaro: one is that this episode explores Latin American and colonial culture, and the other is that it reveals toxic attachments and relationships.

Jibaro can represent the highest production level of current animation in the field of aesthetics. 3D real-world textures and modeling make the picture look like a real movie scene, and the design of the characters in the play is reminiscent of classic paintings. Some scenes can referent to stories such as Olivia in the Water, Siren Banshees, etc.

I want to explore the part of colonial culture expressed in this animation. The banshee in gold jewelry represents a new continent that has not yet been explored, and the knight in armor represents the colonization of Western countries. When Western countries see the unexplored and rich In the Latin American continent, they frantically competed for wealth, but the final result of this colonization and snatch is also shown in the anime, which is a lose-lose. This kind of harm is self-evident to the colonized, and I think it is for its endless greed and cruelty.

It's very interesting that my project is in Australia, which is also a land with a colonial history, and my country was a country that was colonized. When history keeps moving forward, and I come to this land and use the way in my own cultural background to repair everything here, can this be considered as a new type of anti-colonial creation from the perspective of an artist ? Or can it be called the mutual two-way communication and selection of cultures?

I know people get very cautious when it comes to colonization, no matter how you interpret it, my work is not meant to be about colonization, it's just that this animation reminds me of something from a broader perspective.

[nanaz666]

Lee Wen, Journey of a yellow man no. 13: Fragmented bodies/shifting ground 1999 to ‘The 3rd Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art‘ (APT3)

Lee covered himself with yellow paint on the city streets and in various places. The artist exaggerated and emphasized his ethnic identity of the yellow race. In the end, he put an animal heart on the gallery steps and cracked open, saying "Open your heart." ".

As a Malay ethnic Chinese, the artist discussed the survival of the yellow race, which has been neglected by society for a long time, questioned the cultural behavior and norms of the society, and finally split his heart in front of the gallery to express his thoughts on social integration.

I think this kind of exaggeration and emphasis is worthy of recognition whether it will bring about negative or positive effects. Only when a group is valued and its existence is recognized, it is possible to further explore its living environment and space. .

This performance art promotes my own cultural identity and identity. As a yellow race, I also think a lot about this. When Asian faces appear as a minority in Western society, the impact of a completely unfamiliar culture will be different. The inevitable differences between races always remind me of one thing: It's hard for me to live as a member of this community.

(At the same time, the yellow race also suffers from a lot of racist)

I also use Chinese culture in my own projects. This method itself originated from ancient China and is the crystallization of the wisdom of working people when they were materially poor. When I use this method to repair Western society, this Performance art itself is also promoting its own culture and establishing its own sense of existence and identity.

Black people have the slogan "black lives matter", and the yellow race has always been a group that is not good at speaking for themselves (which has a lot to do with the influence of Confucian culture behind it). When the world gradually merges, the survival and status of each ethnic group are equally important. I want to emphasize our presence as a member of Asians.

[nanaz666]

Pierre Huyghe, Chantier Barbès-Rochechouart, Paris, 1994, Photography, Installation(4x3m).

The artist turned his photographic works into installations and put them back in the original shooting location for a second shot as the final work.

Pierre Huyghe photographed the workers at work, gave a bird's-eye view of the urban landscape under construction, used the city as a stage for display, put the real photos back into the city, and explored what is real. When this kind of realism exists in pictures and photos, what exactly is "real" when interacting with a real scene?

In the foreground, a man runs along a metal fence. The billboard is in the back, occupying almost the top right quarter of the photo, partially obscuring the view while directing the visual center of gravity towards itself. In the image in the foreground, five workers in overalls are at work, creating an analogy to the workers in the mid-ground. The background is divided into two equal parts along the vertical bisector of the elongated rectangle of the photo, roughly coincident with the white side of the large raised panel. On the left is a two-lane setback avenue with Morris Columns on its axis. On either side of the central reservation, two rows of trees together with the building's roof provide the main effect of perspective.

This kind of exhibition method of interaction between time, space and urban landscape is my inspiration. Just using a staple gun to repair the urban landscape makes me feel monotonous and boring. As a project of performance art, it is inevitable to interact with the audience in the process. So I chose to re-shoot as it  can not only enhance the public art nature of the work, but also provide more exhibition methods and possibilities for the art form of photography.

Photography is a static medium. This display method can also show the time span between the initial shooting and the second shooting. Although it is impossible to record the whole process like a video, the two completely different time points are again pieced together and the audience can generate reverie that a dynamic medium cannot.

At the same time, the day-to-day work of the workers shown by the artist also draws the audience's attention to the hard work of the infrastructure construction of this society. My project showed the repair of the ecological environment in the initial stage, hoping to attract people's attention, and later broadened the scope of discussion, that is, the consideration of the overall interaction between the city and the audience.

[nanaz666]

John Gerrard, Western Flag (Spindletop, Texas) 2017 at Desert X at Coachella Valley, CA, USA, 2019

Desert X is a contemporary art exhibition framed by the mountains and desert of the Coachella Valley.

Site-specific artworks range from murals and projections to large-scale sculptures and virtual installations. And they take on big themes like fossil fuel use, rising sea levels, and class divides.

Western Flag depicts the site of the 'Lucas Gusher' - the world's first major oil find - in Spindletop, Texas in 1901, now barren and exhausted. The site is recreated as a digital simulation the center of which is marked by a flagpole spewing and endless stream of black smoke. The computer generated Spindletop runs in exact parallel with the real site in Texas throughout the year: the sun rising at the appropriate times and the days getting longer and shorter according to the seasons. The simulation is non-durational (having no beginning or end) and is run live by software that is calculating each frame of the animation in real-time as it is needed. Situated at the very gateway to the Coachella Valley and the city of Palm Springs Western flag acts a stark reminder not just of the willful exploitation and depletion of resources that millions of years ago covered this former sea floor with an abundance of life, but of the energy taken to return the deserted land to its current state of artificial habitation. The invisible gas responsible for climate change is here made visible. Flying the flag of our own self-destruction we are asked to consider our role in the warming of the planet and simultaneous desertification of once fertile lands.

Displayed on an artist–designed frameless LED wall.

This art work combines the method of on-site exhibition. Its exhibition method and topic are what I mainly want to discuss. He put the artwork back on the spot for exhibition and re-integrate with the natural landscape, so as to express the irreversible damage human beings brought to the natural environment. This is an example of the combination of installation art and land art.

The purpose of the artist is to show the audience the real environment and harsh reality. He does not propose solutions and illusory beautiful scenes. This is also the most suitable method for me to discuss the environment either. Sometimes people don't feel much after seeing the bad environment. They need someone to highlight just how bad this is.

*Some references from website http://www.johngerrard.net/western-flag-spindletop-texas-2017.html

[nanaz666]

Francis Alÿs – Paradox of Praxis I (Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing), Mexico City, 1997. Performance art

The performance artist Francis Alÿs pushed a piece of ice cube down the street in the hot summer. As he walked, the ice gradually melted. The entire performance art lasted 9 hours.

He filmed the whole process into a video, in which the audience could see every corner and scene of the city, and at the end the ice cube became very small until they melted completely.

The artist interacts with the entire city in time and space through his behavior. Although the main content of the video is that he is pushing an ice cube to walk on the street. The artist's behavior has left traces in the city, which is also from the artist's point of view. A look at the city and its living environment, while the performance is considered a ridiculous use of one’s effort and time, the act of pushing ice cube around the city center symbolized the efforts of everyday residents of Mexico City to improve their lives condition to endure the frustration.

At the same time, a square block of industrial ice was pushed and slowly melted on the street. I think this also expresses the artist's concern for global warming and melting glaciers. Undoubtedly, walking with an ice cube for 9 hours is very exhausting, but Francis Alÿs's rigor with his work (even an hour more than the 8-hour day) in this performance is also a way of expressing his passion for humanistic care for workers and laborers.

My project this semester is also in the city of Melbourne (also a performance art). Art projects with the city as the background are essential to interact with the space and time of the city. When the city participates as part of the project, the cultural symbols represented are also part of a work of art that must be considered. The reaction when my identity as an artist is broken by an unfamiliar environment is an important aspect of my project. I use my cultural background to repair the unfamiliar city, so as to tear down and reshape my own Cultural identity and personal identity.

[nanaz666]

The Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped. Christo. Paris, 2019, land art&public art

Land artist Christo wrapped the Arc de Triomphe in plastic wrap (in fact, it was done by his nephew a year after his death).

This land art is unprecedented. This is not the first time Christo wrapped the landmark of Paris, but the Arc de Triomphe, as a famous landmark of Paris and the world, in order to get government approval, he worked hard to deal with it, and finally completed one of the greatest land art in human history. It's not the first time the Arc de Triomphe has been wrapped. At Victor Hugo's funeral in 1885, the Arc de Triomphe was covered with a huge black cloth.

This art required more than 1,200 workers at every turn, and it only lasts just two weeks after completion. During these two weeks, the Arc de Triomphe was exhibited to the public as an object, it lost its own qualities, and at the same time, when the artist wrapped it, the artist also blurred the historical significance of the Arc de Triomphe, which is more like an artist's struggle against freedom chase and carnival.

Christo has always been a free artist. He has been stateless for more than ten years. He once lived as an illegal resident of the United States. I don’t want to discuss too much about freedom and politics. His works have the greatest influence on me. It is the processing of the urban landscape. When we are engaged in land art and public art, the meaning of the selected objects becomes part of the work. My project is similar to Christo in that I also take the urban landscape of Melbourne. "De-characterized", these landscapes and objects are just my creative materials. I make futile repairs on these materials. On the one hand, I hope that more people can pay attention to the meaning behind the useless repairs, that is, to cause concern for nature. The concern and protection of the environment, on the other hand, I use traditional Chinese culture to repair another piece of land. This artificial cultural migration and exchange is also part of what I want to express.

[nanaz666]

diary fragment

The Polaroid camera is easy to carry and can get the finished product very quickly. Sometimes I use it as a way to keep a diary because the shooting time is written on the back of them.

This project explores the disposing of private photos, which involve  three protagonists: me and two persons who had close relationship with me.  Without exception, these photos were taken when the relationships were very good. So these pictures are the most authentic and belong to the two people only.

The reasons for taking these photos are rich and varied. Sometimes it is a fun thing for a partner to please another. Sometimes it is interesting to expose the body to the camera. Sometimes it is indifferent.  The attributes of the photos in the first relationship was no difference than the jewelries he sent me, which were used to make me happy, though the form of the expression was different.   In the second relationship, my ex considered it a cool thing to take the photos, and hoped that one day if I could become a famous photographer and she would tell other people that she was my muse.  In her case, the photos were not only fun but also have a touch of investment.

When the relationship breaks down,  they completely transform from the carrier of emotions to the carrier of memory. At this time, these photos with some naked images are degraded from intimate records of two people to some kind of soft erotic images which is ambiguous in ownership and disposing methods.  No one has ever asked me how I disposed these photos, or whether they can have them. This makes me reflect the question:  to what extent two people should keep their space in an intimate relation and what kind of change to the space will be generated when the relation is over. The space during intimacy is difficult to divide, the economic aspect can be measured by numbers, but when it comes to feelings, this line is difficult to tell.  Michael Snow used mirrors and lenses in Authorization to create a wonderful concept of space. This spatial concept has a very strong similarity to that of the intimate relationship. Two people are involved in each other's living space, social circle, daily life and schedule. This relationship is similar to the mirror and the lens. This is a kind of overlapping, the overlapping of space.  It is very easy to end this overlapping by removing the mirror or the lens. When the relationship ends, just delete all the information related to the other party. The lives of the two people can instantly resume to two parallel lines that do not interfere with each other.  

      However, at this point, the Polaroid photos that remain in my hand become a blurry part between the two parallel lines.  The lives of the two people can be completely divided, but there are things that cannot be separated easily: the habit that you have formed because of your partner and your partner’s stuffs that have not been discarded. The Polaroid pictures in my hand have the same nature as these things.

Thinking about the ownership of spiritual property after the end of the relationship is the reason why I chose to make it an experimental photography project.  Although I kept it as a diary, it was created by me and another person, and its content also contained the body and mood of another person. The reason why these people agreed to shoot them was under a special situation at that time.  Under that circumstance,  no one has ever thought about who these photos should belong to, or how to deal with them in the future.  In a sense,   these Polaroids are like a baby between me and my partner. When the marriage is complete, the child belongs to both parents and lives with both parents. When the marriage breaks up,  although the child still and always belongs to the parents from the perspective of ethics and physiology, its custody must be attributed to one of the husband and wife  from the legal point of view. The law has a complete system to determine whom the child belongs to, but there is no strict ownership of the intimate and private photos.  Even now, they still exist between us only.  If I privately show these photos to others, or if someone else accidentally see them, can I assume that I have violated the privacy of my ex because I have improperly kept them?

Unlike disposing digital photography by only pressing the delete button, the physical photos of Polaroid has a sense of presence on the one hand, and provides more options for future disposing on the other hand.  Complete destruction is the most convenient way to deal with it. It is the way most people will choose. But the ownership of the photos does not belong to only one party. Destruction means that one party automatically uses the common property without telling the other party.  If the other party remembers the photo and asks for them, the responsibility would fall on the party who destroyed them.  Although this does not involve the law, it is not right in morality. Because of trust, one person entrusted the private photos to the other for custody.  Therefore, the complete destruction is not only the destruction of the physical object, but also the destruction of another person's trust.

A more immoral approach is to upload photos to the web or sell them as pornographic images.  This practice completely violates the privacy of the other party, because the other party did not agree to disclose it when shooting, its role is limited to the emotional level of the two.  Selling or publicizing is a way of profiting from the privacy of others. This profit is not limited to the economic level, it may be done to satisfy one’s own vanity or to satisfy the curiosity of others.  At this point, the photo becomes a profitable item, which is disgracefully spread among the crowds. At the same time, with deceptive attributes, it not only deceives the photographed, forcibly revealing their privacy, but also deceives the audience by telling them that the source of these photos is reasonable.  If the photographed finds and pursues it, this very inappropriate treatment can be raised to the legal level.

     Keeping photos forever in someone's custody is also a method, but the other person must voluntarily give up ownership of the photos, which may be his/her own body images, or  part of his/her creativity and thinking.  But in doing so , the emotional energy in the picture has to be abandoned.

In the end, I thought of the possibility of turning old photos into an exploratory photography project.  I referred to Joachim Schmid's approach.  She collected old photos that were intentionally discarded or destroyed, and composed Pictures From the Street series.  With this approach, I sorted out and put my old photos together.  From a proprietary perspective, I have not undermined the ownership of these photographs. It is still a common property that I temporarily keep in my custody; from a privacy perspective, the act of making privacy public with the consent of the other party will make people look at the picture with a more artistic eye – nudity is an art in the art gallery, and on the street is porn.  The meaning of behavior is far beyond what the picture itself conveys.  Private pictures are converted to a work of art, thus eliminating the possibility of accidental loss or being peeped by others.  I use this kind of treatment to show the past romance, leaving space for the audience to think about, and thus have found a reasonable and legal way to deal with the private old photos.

The most attractive thing is the emotional energy contained in these pictures, but also, they are the product of the primitive impulse of human, which I wanted to get rid of later. Two kinds of contradictory emotions overlapping each other and existing on these Polaroids, which I can't feel on other pictures.  The second thing that appeals to me is the authenticity of the pictures. Unlike the carefully posed pictures, they take off the masks that art photography has always worn. It shows the real life without posing and decoration, the pragmatism and documentary nature of photography is displayed to the extreme. It is a kind of documentary photography with its own unique artistic taste.   The overlapping of emotions, the overlapping of art forms, and the overlapping of personal space in my intimate relationship  all echo  the spatial relationship in Authorization.

Jumping out of this level, by making them public,  I added another emotion to these Polaroids - I hope they can be recognized as works of art; Besides,  such an art form overlapped the relationship between me and my ex-friends,  – we are not only ex-friends, but also a relatively formal relationship between the photographer and the model.

[nanaz666]

Diary fragment

Using Polaroid to record life is the idea I got after playing the game Life is Strange.  The Polaroid camera is easy to carry and can get the finished product very quickly. Sometimes I use it as a way to keep a diary because the shooting time is written on the back of them.  The subjects of my filming are varied, but they are all that impressed me on that day.  

This project explores the disposing of private photos, which involve  three protagonists: me and my two ex-friends.  Without exception, these photos were taken when the relationships were very good. When two people are in an intimate relationship, they can't help taking pictures of themselves as records, which are the most authentic and belong to the two people only.

The reasons for taking these photos are rich and varied. Sometimes it is a fun thing for a partner to please another. Sometimes it is interesting to expose the body to the camera. Sometimes it is indifferent.  One ex, who was in a lower position, took the photos in order to please me so that the relationship would be more stable.  The other ex took the photos just for fun. The attributes of the photos in the first relationship was no difference than the jewelries, shoes, bags he sent me, which were used to make me happy, though the form of the expression was different.   In the second relationship, my ex considered it a cool thing to take the photos, and hoped that one day if I could become a famous photographer and she would tell other people that she was my muse.  In her case, the photos were not only fun but also have a touch of investment.

When the relationship breaks down,  these photos no longer have the function of carrying emotions for me. They completely transform from the carrier of emotions to the carrier of memory. At this time, these photos with some naked images are degraded from intimate records of two people to some kind of soft erotic images which is ambiguous in ownership and disposing methods.  No ex has ever asked me how I disposed these photos, or whether they can have them. This makes me reflect the question:  to what extent two people should keep their space in an intimate relation and what kind of change to the space will be generated when the relation is over. The space during intimacy is difficult to divide, though the economic aspect can be measured by numbers, but when it comes to feelings, I find this line is difficult to tell.  Michael Snow used mirrors and lenses in Authorization to create a wonderful concept of space. This spatial concept has a very strong similarity to that of the intimate relationship. Two people are involved in each other's living space, social circle, daily life and schedule. When you participate in the life of another person, that person will definitely participate in yours. This relationship is similar to the mirror and the lens. This is a kind of overlapping, the overlapping of space.  It is very easy to end this overlapping by removing the mirror or the lens. When the relationship ends, just delete all the information related to the other party. The lives of the two people can instantly resume to two parallel lines that do not interfere with each other.  .

      However, at this point, the Polaroid photos that remain in my hand become a blurry part between the two parallel lines.  The lives of the two people in the mobile phone address book, and the contact list of social software can be completely divided, but there are things that cannot be separated easily: the habit that you have formed because of your partner and your partner’s stuffs that have not been discarded.  The Polaroid pictures in my hand have the same nature as these things. They remind me that I had a wonderful past with a person, and I recorded those wonderful days.  Good or bad, I am not going to judge these photos, which are just a small part of my life and are the corresponding behavior I made under the influence of pheromone.

       Compared with the economic value of photographic paper, Polaroid is more like a common spiritual property of two people, a memory hidden somewhere in the brain.

Thinking about the ownership of spiritual property after the end of the relationship is the reason why I chose to make it an experimental photography project.  Although I kept it as a diary, it was created by me and another person, and its content also contained the body and mood of another person. The reason why these people agreed to shoot them was under a special situation at that time.  Under that circumstance,  no one has ever thought about who these photos should belong to, or how to deal with them in the future.  In a sense,   these Polaroids are like a baby between me and my partner. When the marriage is complete, the child belongs to both parents and lives with both parents. When the marriage breaks up,  although the child still and always belongs to the parents from the perspective of ethics and physiology, its custody must be attributed to one of the husband and wife  from the legal point of view. Of course, the law has a complete system to determine whom the child belongs to, but there is no strict ownership of the intimate and private photos.  Even now, they still exist between us only.  If I privately show these photos to others, or if someone else accidentally see them, can I assume that I have violated the privacy of my ex because I have improperly kept them?  When I sorted out these old photos, I put them in my Polaroid album as a private diary at the beginning. Unfortunately, one day, my new companion  saw this album, which caused his great dissatisfaction.  Therefore, I decided to find a proper way to handle these photos.

Unlike disposing digital photography by only pressing the delete button, the physical photos of Polaroid has a sense of presence on the one hand, and provides more options for future disposing on the other hand.  Complete destruction is the most convenient way to deal with it. It is the way most people will choose. But the ownership of the photos does not belong to only one party. Destruction means that one party automatically uses the common property without telling the other party.  If the other party remembers the photo and asks for them, the responsibility would fall on the party who destroyed them.  Although this does not involve the law, it is not right in morality. Because of trust, one person entrusted the private photos to the other for custody.  Therefore, the complete destruction is not only the destruction of the physical object, but also the destruction of another person's trust.

A more immoral approach is to upload photos to the web or sell them as pornographic images.  This practice completely violates the privacy of the other party, because the other party did not agree to disclose it when shooting, its role is limited to the emotional level of the two.  Selling or publicizing is a way of profiting from the privacy of others. This profit is not limited to the economic level, it may be done to satisfy one’s own vanity or to satisfy the curiosity of others.  At this point, the photo becomes a profitable item, which is disgracefully spread among the crowds. At the same time, with deceptive attributes, it not only deceives the photographed, forcibly revealing their privacy, but also deceives the audience by telling them that the source of these photos is reasonable.  If the photographed finds and pursues it, this very inappropriate treatment can be raised to the legal level.

     Keeping photos forever in someone's custody is also a method, but the other person must voluntarily give up ownership of the photos, which may be his/her own body images, or  part of his/her creativity and thinking.  But in doing so , the emotional energy in the picture has to be abandoned.

In the end, I thought of the possibility of turning old photos into an exploratory photography project.  I referred to Joachim Schmid's approach.  She collected old photos that were intentionally discarded or destroyed, and composed Pictures From the Street series.  With this approach, I sorted out and put my old photos together.  From a proprietary perspective, I have not undermined the ownership of these photographs. It is still a common property that I temporarily keep in my custody; from a privacy perspective, the act of making privacy public with the consent of the other party will make people look at the picture with a more artistic eye – nudity is an art in the art gallery, and on the street is porn.  The meaning of behavior is far beyond what the picture itself conveys.  Private pictures are converted to a work of art, thus eliminating the possibility of accidental loss or being peeped by others.  I use this kind of  treatment to show the past romance, leaving space for the audience to think about, and thus have found a reasonable and legal way to deal with the private old photos.

These photos are not very beautiful pictures, but are the products of pure pragmatism. Compared to other well-organized and carefully photographed works, they are more like the fast foods on the 711 shelves and can be easily taken to satisfy one’s stomach.  However, the most attractive thing for me is the emotional energy contained in it. It is the product of the primitive impulse of human, which I wanted to get rid of later.   I have thought about it a lot, two kinds of contradictory emotions overlapping each other and existing on these Polaroids, which I can't feel on other pictures.  The second thing that appeals to me is the authenticity of the pictures. Unlike the carefully posed pictures, they take off the masks that art photography has always worn. It shows the real life without posing and decoration, the pragmatism and documentary nature of photography is displayed to the extreme.  It is an exclusive documentary of my own life. It is a kind of documentary photography with its own unique artistic taste.   The overlapping of emotions, the overlapping of art forms, and the overlapping of personal space in my intimate relationship  all echo  the spatial relationship in Authorization.

Jumping out of this level, by making them public,  I added another emotion to these Polaroids - I hope they can be recognized as works of art; Besides,  such an art form overlapped the relationship between me and my ex-friends,  – we are not only ex-friends, but also a relatively formal relationship between the photographer and the model.  I deliberately placed a mirror and a lens for these shots, and they overlap again in emotion, artistry, and living space—there is another layer of spatial relationship in Authorization.