We’re back at the White Rabbit Gallery in Chippendale in Sydney to continue our engagement with contemporary Chinese art and today we’re casting our eyes over a few works that are about the way others may be casting their eyes over us.
Firstly, some works from Xu Qu.
This is Scopophilia, a word that means a love of watching, often with sexual overtones just like the word voyeurism.
In Scopophilia (2016) camera lenses are installed in cubes of laser-cut steel to sinister effect. Given that Xu’s camera-cubes are like dice for a giant’s gambling game, the inescapable conclusion is that, whether you throw a pair of sixes or ones, your every move will be recorded for someone else’s pleasure.
Occupation (2016) represents the ubiquity of surveillance. 108 second-hand video cameras are strung like jewellery for a giant, recalling the walnut bracelets worn by Chinese men, especially in Beijing.
Our guide claimed that these cameras had been used and then discarded by the police so there was something haunting and ominous about them hanging there in front of you.
Camera lenses feature again in Zhang Qing’an (2016), an installation of photographs referencing a peasant who declared himself the emperor of China in 1982. Five faces stare blankly like ‘wanted’ posters; camera lenses protrude from where their eyes should be.
Xu reveals the dark underside of an information age:
it is increasingly impossible to hide from the all-seeing eyes of those watching us.
Another artist concerned with surveillance is Xu Bing. In China there are about 200 million surveillance cameras and vast numbers of webcams in homes and offices whose recorded footage can be accessed by subscription,
Xu edited 10,000 hours of surveillance footage and created an 80-minute film about a couple called Dragonfly Eyes
The edited work creates a fictitious story and Xu added voices from actors. The film includes footage of people doing day-to-day tasks in their offices or at home, as well as real deaths.
“There’s plane crashes, car crashes, people getting struck by lightning and beaten up,” Williams says. “All of this footage is readily available. The thing is, that actually happened.”
Lisa and I watched for about 10 minutes. We were unnerved by what seemed to be an accidental drowning in a canal and then, later, a scene where a young woman was being threatened by her boss and sexually harassed. Feeling too much like voyeurs we slipped out of the cinema space.
Do you feel a bit creeped out? All of this surveillance is very disturbing and it took my thoughts off in several directions.
The no-name, no-photo worker.
Job 10:4 Do you have eyes of flesh? Do you see as a mortal sees?
Job 10:5 Are your days like those of a mortal or your years like those of a strong man
Job 10:6 that you must search out my faults and probe after my sin
Job 10:7 though you know that I am not guilty and that no one can rescue me from your hand?
Unease.
Psalm 139:15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth
Psalm 139:16 Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
Accountability.
Psalm 121:4 indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep
Psalm 121:5 The LORD watches over you— the LORD is your shade at your right hand
Psalm 121:6 the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night
Psalm 121:7 The LORD will keep you from all harm—he will watch over your life
Psalm 121:8 the LORD will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.
Assurance.
It would be good to pray for those whose lives are lived under a menacing camera that they would find a truer truth in their trust in the good God who watches in order to love and save and keep.