再 見 語 言 Goodbye Language
Video, sound installation | China | 2022 | Single Channel
Performing Artist: Yang Xiao
Camera and sound: Chen Sisi
Length: 00:01:08
Keywords: Media Activist, Shanghai Lockdown
Yang Xiao’s ‘Goodbye Language’ documents a performance combined with sound art, completed during the strict lockdown of 24 million people in Shanghai in 2022. This experimental video considers how people confined to their homes became “extras” in a months-long theatre of cruelty.
The artist notes, “our daily lives were gradually filled with bureaucratic language. On the tenth day of lockdown, I randomly combined 600 common news words to generate an article. I then had it read by an AI broadcaster and broadcast it to the entire residential area through a loudspeaker on my windowsill. This broadcast had no end, no grammar, yet sounds vivid, and perhaps could be more suitable to guide this pandemic battle.”
Ames Yavuz Gallery (Singapore)