Civilized Bodies

Civilized Bodies is an audiovisual installation that investigates the Chinese concept of Wenming (文明）, meaning 'civilization,' 'civilized,' or 'culture' as the interplay between policy, ethnicity, identity, and digital space.

Project Video

Abstract

This audiovisual installation investigates Wenming, which translates to ‘civilization,’ ‘civilized,’ or ‘culture,’ as the interplay between identity, ethnicity, and digital space. While Wenming is often found in street signs, propaganda, and policy in the context of constructing a civilization by economic and technological means, Phoebe highlights how social media platforms like Kuaishou are sites for constructing ethnic identity and cultural authenticity, revealing a corporeal, intimate dimension of Wenming. Wenming works not only on the nation, state, and space but within citizens, bodies, and identities to fixate not ‘what’ is civilization, but ‘who’. Individuals are allowed to self civilize themselves so long as they fit within within the bounds of a racialized, gendered, and orientalized Other. Her building of a public restroom, a pinnacle of Wenming in modern urban space, combines a daily act of corporeal vulnerability with re-imagined Kuaishou videos generated through machine learning to highlight Wenming as a pervasive force that must be understood through its merging of on and offline structures of power and the self. The installation’s integration of a soundscape created through layered tracks of real Kuaishou videos also aims to recreate what it means to behave, consume, and be Wenming in acts of our every day.

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