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| == Intoxicated and Intoxicating Terroir of ‘Yellow Queer’ Theories: experiences, positions, and subjectivities (20,000 words version) == | | === [[Poetry Muyang|Poetry]] === |
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| | === [[Thesis (20,000 words version)]] === |
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| == ''ADHD'' == | | === [[Tutorial Muyang|Tutorial for thesis to receive a full score of 10]] === |
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| | | === [[Research Muyang|Research]] === |
| Should your attention stray to ducks by the river, as they walk and poop at the
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| same time, forgive yourself, for even ducks are drunk on the spring windblown.
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| == ''A Wor(l)d of Many Wor(l)ds'' == | |
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| Their words cut through my dictionary like a
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| knife. Slowly I learned the words related to
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| “decoloniality”, which they had also learned
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| recently in class. I didn’t understand the joke
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| of the Dutchman who said “Sorry, we also want
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| a World of Many Worlds.” My world was cut apart
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| again. I wondered if theirs was cut apart at all.
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| == ''Animation Brief 動畫概要'' ==
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| This thesis on my animation work, “Octopus in Drag,” explores how animation initiates a practice-as-research method, intertwining with critical theory to articulate knowledge, emphasizing the lived experience of practice before its theoretical articulation.
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| === '''Basic Setup ''基本設置''''' ===
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| Character: A tall, skinny, high-shouldered, feline-looking octopus, with a mouse tail and eyes the color of a cat’s -- vivid green.
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| Scene: A bathroom, which is all made of white porcelain. Over time, this bathroom begins to crack, gradually collapses, and eventually, a hole appears in the wall.
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| Sound: Before writing the thesis, I wanted to collect all the noise in Chinatown, and create an accidental archive, allowing sound to collide and play with chance in time and space. Finally, I directly used “Horse Sings From Cloud” and “The Well” by Pauline Oliveros.
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| === '''''Elements and Movements 元素和動作''''' ===
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| The animation starts with a mug shot of the octopus, then gradually zooms out. The octopus starts doing the circular movement in the bathroom. Its eight legs exhibit diverse movements and tendencies, occasionally expanding into muscular shapes, inflating, or shrinking.
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| The pollutants released and stirred up by the octopus are urine, silver tinsels, and smoke. Smoke can also obscure the viewers’ perception. The rhythm constantly changes, sometimes extremely slow, sometimes intense, and sometimes seemingly waiting.
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| The octopus performs the Dipping (from Voguing dance) and the Crip Walk (from the Hip-pop dance). It is slowed down at “the still point’ after falling down and before getting back up.
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| While the octopus is dancing around in ecstasy, the whole scene starts to burn and the octopus jumps out of the hole. After the fire is out, the destroyed restroom ends up with chrysanthemum blooming and spreading everywhere.
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| == ''Introduction 簡介'' ==
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| This is a strange thesis, which mainly explores race and queerness, both of which are unstable and unpredictable in nature. The starting question for me is: as a queer Sinophone artist, I am subjected to the double otherness of Eurocentric and Sinocentric art, and for an artist who may live in Europe for a long time in the future, how do I approach theory and practice?
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| === '''''Intoxicated Thinking 沈醉的思考''''' ===
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| Drawing on Mel Y. Chen’s insights, there exists a often overlooked nexus where the dynamics of race and queerness resonate powerfully and incessantly. Chen illuminates this intersection as a site of constant flux, a locus where transformation is both inevitable and palpable (Chen, 2023). This realm of change, as Chen argues, is fraught with potential peril -- it can herald the risk of loss, the allure of spiritual departure, or even the promise of revolution. Through Chen’s lens, this space is identified with toxicity, a poignant reflection on the historical intertwining of queerness and exposure to hazardous environments, with BIPOCs disproportionately affected by toxic chemical exposure.
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| My interest in toxicity came from a conversation with an astrologer who learned about my powerful energies stemming from the Taurus-Scorpio axis. My teenage and romantic years were characterized by countless self-harms and controlling, toxic, dark love affairs, and he suggested that dealing with relationships with others was always at the forefront of my mind. Later he said that my Jupiter in the 11th house meant I could enjoy “a great gathering of different guests.”
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| This thesis explores the politics of knowledge within academic contexts, focusing on a mode of knowledge creation that draws on the notions of toxicity or intoxication. This approach suggests a dynamic, ongoing generative process that intertwines personal experience and theoretical reflection, as delineated by Lionnet & Shih (2011). My work seeks a resonance between the self and knowledge, acknowledging the transient nature of ideas and the personal selection of materials that resonate with me, akin to Chen’s (2023) emphasis on seeking intellectual intimacy and engagement with chosen texts.
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| Inspired by Daisy Lafarge (2023), I wanted to be more personal in my approach to writing -- trying to think and remain irreconcilable. In writing, I refer to philosophy, art, religion, and many other things to make my perception wild and amateurish again. Amateurs are “lovers”, and their claims to knowledge are necessarily partial, vernacular, and localized. It is also an obsession or a passing fascination. After all, any object can be an object of love. Therefore, the use of citations in this thesis does not seek completeness or thoroughness.
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| Some citation density will appear in this thesis because this is my way of thinking; here, “differential” finds itself arrayed across many dimensions, nameable and ''unnameable''. I advocate for the function of ''suspension'' to challenge the colonialist impulses of categorization, cognition, and control, and instead to promote the recognition of the inherent complexity and unknowability of existence.
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| Drawing on Chen (2023), I argue that the thinking and writing modes universities advocate are rich in tools and precise vocabulary, including both lexical and physical ones, that can be repurposed. However, these are deeply entangled with the demands of capital and hierarchy, and are intricately linked to explicit efforts of eugenic and colonialist domination, both historically and currently. Chen’s insights further illuminate how neurodivergence subverts traditional academic frameworks, leading to a unique cycle of accretive iteration: quick reading gives way to slow thinking, which leads to quick writing, followed by slow reading, quick thinking, and slow writing. This cycle underscores the complex interplay between academic demands and the need for diverse cognitive approaches in scholarly work.
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| === '''''The Creolization of Theory 理論的克裏奧化''''' ===
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| The situation of being constantly marginalized and isolated in the Netherlands has made me continuously think about the issue of “the Other.” I have tried to raise the issue of racial injustice with other people in the school multiple times. But as Sara Ahmed (2023) said, “When you expose a problem you pose a problem. It might then be assumed that the problem would go away if you would just stop talking about it or if you went away.” Despite the topic of decolonization entering the school’s education, white classmates are more concerned about what “decolonization” as a trendy topic can bring to them, while the most real struggles of BIPOCs are still ignored. As Lee Edelman (2023) said, “College education - these courses are entertainment, they are like programs on cable televisions, like ‘Friends’, aiming to attract you to become an alumnus, get the taste of being educated.” The only issue my classmates are concerned with is what resources or expectations the school can bring them for a better future, contributing to the erection of Eurocentric art.
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| This discomfort with Western education needs to be traced back to when I entered a British university when the whole class was mostly Chinese. I had a memorable experience in a communications class where a teacher from the Netherlands boldly claimed that Chinese students were unable to think about problems like Western people. Throughout the semester, he solely presented Western theories in class. Predictably, I did not succeed in the course. Most Chinese students dislike theories, as they perceive them to be disconnected from their daily lives.
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| It was only recently after taking courses in Sinophone Studies that I realized that this is related to the ''decontextualization'' of the theory. In ''The Creolization of Theory'', Shu-mei Shih (2011) suggests that the fundamental reason for the decontextualization of theories is actually that in American academia, the acceptance process of theory has filtered out the externality and peculiarity of theory, turning it into a textbook-style critical theory and reproducing it within the academy.
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| It’s not just the “decolonization” I mentioned above that has been decontextualized from real human struggles, and represented as a theory (rather than a practice) within the academy. Similarly, the concept of “the Other” is violently simplified in this way. The concept of “the Other”, has been critically reinterpreted through post-structuralism, revealing its various functions in deconstructing concepts of subjectivity, centrality, and presence. However, even as we follow the footsteps of post-structuralism, an unavoidable reality is the implication of “Eurocentrism” and “universalism” embedded within. Based on this presupposition, “the Other” in critical theory turns out to be a form of the “Other of the self,” a trembling posture of the Eurocentric self who is encountering an abstract Other, and a narcissistic exploration of the self’s unknowable aspects (Zhang, 2023). Simultaneously, we seem to confront the conclusion drawn by Spivak, that “the subaltern cannot speak.”
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| Despite not experiencing complete colonization by Western powers, China has undergone a rapid process of globalization. As a result, China consistently finds itself in a situation similar to that of post-colonial societies. Again, after taking the Sinophone Studies courses, I have realized that employing feminist theories or minority theories can assist the Chinese people in navigating the challenges posed by globalization. The book ''The Creolization of Theory'' has been instrumental in guiding my thinking about how minorities and marginalized groups within Western contexts can engage in theoretical discussions with the larger systems they encounter, while also developing theories rooted in their own lived experiences.
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| === '''''Gathering of Notions 觀念的聚集''''' ===
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| Reflecting on how Western academia often mandates its frameworks (e.g., decolonization, the Other) onto diverse discourses, I am prompted to revisit the complexity and nuance in semantic exploration. This reconsideration is inspired by the realization that the dynamic interplay of “living others” within theoretical discussions could benefit from a shift towards a “gathering of notions” rather than a reliance on rigid concepts. The term “notion,” as utilized here, is enriched by its associations with femininity and craftsmanship, suggesting a nuanced, ephemeral entity ripe with creative promise. According to Chen (2023), a notion is akin to a valuable yet subtle commodity, distinguished not by its tangibility but by the vibrant meaning it harbors -- a potential that is both illuminated and obscured by its transient nature. Such notions are inherently interdependent, requiring collective assembly to reveal their full spectrum of significance.
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| This thesis is going to be a little attempt at “gathering of notions”. These notions are expanded from the three main ones: “race”, “queerness” and “toxicity”. Forms vary between dialectical and poetic (some parts are in the form of poetry, as talked about in ''Intoxicated Thinking''). In a conversation between Mindy Seu and Legacy Russell (2021), they mentioned that an essay anthology or digital index, in their presentations of new histories, might serve as maps. By aggregating nodes and markers, hard research, and scattered facts, these containers might surface suppressed voices among the connections they draw, as introduced by Saidiya Hartman’s notion of “critical fabulation.”
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| The form of an alphabet is utilized as a flexible system of organization that allows for endless expansion and combination of terms, offering a way to sequence ideas without a rigid logical structure. This characteristic, celebrated by figures like Roland Barthes and John Cage, enables the creation of new languages and sets of terms, justifying the presentation and potential abbreviation of texts. The alphabet’s combinatory nature allows for the selective removal of words while preserving or refining a message’s essence, leveraging its capacity for endless reconfiguration of language. Different from the traditional alphabet, I hope to recombine my living experience and these notions, repeatedly incorporate personal subjectivity, and guide repeated, skipping, unlearning, and rhizomatic reading.
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| == ''Alphabet單詞表'' ==
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| == ''A for Animality 動物性'' ==
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| I started to notice the importance of animality in Yellow Peril when I was reading Mel Y. Chen’s ''Animacies''. Chen (2012) argues in “Queer Animality” that during the late nineteenth century in the United States, animality played a significant conceptual role in the landscape of racialization. This was evident in visual culture, including popular materials like advertisements and political cartoons, where animalized intimacies were depicted. The economic downturn at that time led to concerns among whites about employment, contributing to the emergence of a competitive and scapegoating sense of Yellow Peril against the Chinese in cultural expression and law. This period witnessed significant turmoil related to shifts in labor, race, and population, with the U.S. government implementing policies to exclude Chinese workers while seeking cheap labor from abroad, which promoted increased Asian immigration.
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| For example, the advertisement from E. S. Wells Trade Company, contemporaneous with the period in question, promotes a product called “Rough on Rats”, effectively portraying the Chinese as rats, with a conspicuous blank space where their name would normally appear, in close proximity to the phrase “it clears out.” This advertisement for rat poison explicitly intended to sell the product, also capitalizes on the broader anti-Chinese discourses which themselves characterized the notion of hygiene and toxicity in racial terms.
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| Furthermore, I have extensively researched the animality represented by the character of Fu Manchu. This persona is described in a well-known collection of terms outlined in an early Rohmer book, ''The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu'': “Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green.”
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| His femininity hides as felineness, undercutting his otherwise trenchant masculinity by effectively queering it. Chen also pointed out that, in navigating between heterosexual, homosexual, and asexual, Fu reflects the ambiguously sexualized nature of animals (Chen, 2012). In my experience, Asian men are often perceived as having excessive sexual desire (When treated like an Asian woman) at times, and at other times as having no sexual desire (Black males on the other end of the spectrum are seen as hyper-sexual). We are occasionally derogated as “faggot-like,” such as when a Chinese woman rejects a white man’s advances by stating her preference for Asian men, prompting the white man to retort, “You like faggots?” These align with Chen’s analysis of Fu’s animal-like traits.
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| In the end, Chen concluded: “Indeed, Fu Manchu’s queer gendering poses an embodied threat; the filmic representation of this body, it could be argued, suggests the perceived toxicity of a racially gendered body that simply won’t behave. This nonbehaving body echoes the strains of the Yellow Peril, sounding alarms about unwelcome laboring bodies that will not retreat to their country of origin, as well as about the possibility of a rising Asian body of power.”
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| In my design, I chose to create a hybrid creature with the characteristics of a feline, a rat, and an octopus to serve as a trickster figure. And I chose to focus on the octopus in the chapter on monstrousness. Also, the whole image of the character doesn’t seem to be an image of a scary monster, as the presence of the cat displays a cuteness. The mix of animals begs the question: is the octopus wearing a cat-like suit or mask? Does the cat part serve as a protection or a masquerade?
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| If we think about the place this character lives: is it aquatic or terrestrial? Perhaps we can think of the time when Ponyo grows chicken legs in Miyazaki Hayao’s animation “Ponyo’s little sisters” (2008). But both air and seawater are compositions of mixtures, of sex, embodying sensuality, the exchange of breath, fluids, and elements, for which we do not need to feel any specific obligation to any exceptional organs.
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| Also, I used the notion of a trickster to highlight that the images of these animals are not always negative. In his analysis of African American literary works, Henry Louis Gates Jr. explores how the “Signifying Monkey” functions as a critical trickster figure within African American culture, engaging in reflexive language play (Chen, 2012).
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| == ''A for Anus 肛門'' ==
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| In Chinese slang, the anus is referred to as “chrysanthemum” due to their similar appearances. In Chinese culture, the chrysanthemum is associated with “death” and “sacrifice ritual”. Both are almost taboo topics in China and are not to be mentioned or touched. In my youth, I felt ashamed of my fantasy of wanting to be a “bottom”, and feeling “guilty towards my parents and country (China)”, to the extent that I only started exploring my anus very late.
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| Upon arriving in the Netherlands, I faced the violence of being racialized and eroticized on Grindr. The sentiment of “no Asians!” has been adopted as a slogan of a white supremacist gay “community” that coerces Asian men to occupy an unsexy, undesirable position, seen as soft, effeminate, and poorly endowed -- in other words, to occupy bottomhood (Xiang, 2022). On Chinese social media Red, many Chinese gays and women have shown their disgust at the lack of masculinity of Asian men. They show that they don’t hate “yellow fever” because they also only like white men, calling themselves “white fever”. Within the Asian community, I have long been marginalized for behaviors such as dyeing my hair and wearing makeup.
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| The fear of femininity is the common link between misogyny and homophobia, reflected in various social and cultural practices. Beneath this hatred and anxiety, in the modern or colonial context, lies a stigmatized anus, demonized as immoral and associated with transgression or stupidity. Asians and the anus are seen as the opposition of whiteness and the phallus, blacks as bottoms are seen as devalued and enslaved, and the West is simultaneously intertwined with racism and homophobia as aversion to the anus is transferred to the position of the subject of life (Xiang, 2022).
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| Revisiting Paul B. Preciado’s notion of “anal castration” is necessary: “The boys-of-castrated-anus established a community of what they called City, State, Fatherland, whose power and administrative authority excluded all those bodies whose anus remained open: women are doubly perforated as a result of their anuses and vaginas [with] their entire body transformable into a uterine cavity capable of housing future citizens; however also the bodies of faggots, which the power was not able to castrate; bodies that repudiated what others would consider anatomic evidence and that creates an aesthetic of life from this mutation.”
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| My encounter with Paul B. Preciado was because he wrote a series of articles during COVID-19, published in the Chinese edition of Artforum. My bachelor tutor, Luciano Zubillaga, in “Cosas por Venir” (2014), linked the anus with a poem “Wenn die Uhren so nah wie eigenen Herzen schlagen” by Rilke.
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| Here, Luciano explored the anus as a zero point for the deterritorialization of the heterosexual body, its pleasure serving as a metaphor for (sexual) communism.
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| Preciado (2018) has challenged the focus on the penis in Freudian theory by introducing the notion of “anal castration,” questioning the validity of “castration anxiety” and “penis envy.” The anus of Asian men is seen as a tool for white penis pleasure during sex, but it does not produce pleasure in itself. So, I designed the ending of the animation: chrysanthemums blooming in the destroyed restroom, as an anal utopia, and phallic apocalypse.
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| == ''C for Collapse 坍塌'' ==
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| When it comes to collapse, I always think of how I was a delicate and sensitive child from an early age, and I used to cry a lot. Once I cried at someone’s wedding, and later they blamed the marriage’s collapse on me. I have spent the first half of this year reading works by Sophie Lewis, Kim TallBear, and Sara Ahmed, and they inspired my belief in dismantling the “nuclear family” and “marriage”. Dismantling the family is equivalent to the collapse of the world for many people, considering the family is the smallest structure that maintains stability in this “world” (Halberstam, 2022).
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| I’m not interested in the demon fractal collapsing AI fantasy art that has been popular in recent years, but the fantasy of the world’s collapse has always been in my mind. The first time I encountered this notion maybe was in Lee Edelman’s critique of reproductive futurism in his article. Perhaps it was in my conversation with an astrologer, who said that my Saturn is in the 12th house, with a kind of increasing entropy model that could lead to universal collapse. He claimed that my idea of the world collapsing at every moment can be practiced in art.
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| The collapse is always accompanied by a large amount of smoke, sometimes with fires. I want to start with the perspective of the fires. Kathryn Yusoff and Nigel Clark’s ''Queer Fire'' (2018) discusses how fire is always seen as a threat and the fear of irreversible loss of human destruction by fire. This fear is related to deep-seated attitudes towards reproduction. Eco-anxiety and climate justice are always rationally presumed to be the collapse of this world, letting this teleology dominate all other narratives about vulnerability. Or, this ready-made imagination is also a refusal of loss and an obsession with maintaining life, a feature of the resurrection that Christians must dream of recovering. Fires (collapse) are seen as loss rather than renewal, destruction rather than creation, and are closely related to Western ecological and economic conceptions (Clark & Yusoff, 2018).
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| The queer sex (cruising) disrupted this point, “sex for its own sake, sex for the pleasure of it-just like any offloading of economic goods that manages to escape the circuit of reinvestment is pure discharge, non-productive expenditure, a waste of energy.” Jose Esteban Muñoz and Jack Halberstam both focus on queer cruising and 1970s artists, mostly in New York, who engaged in a series of refusals at a very different historical moment, yet still resonate with me today.
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| Jack Halberstam’s “An Aesthetic of Collapse” rejects the advancement posture of capitalism, which demands that we always want to place ourselves in the framework of pharmacopornography of Preciado and always want and be immersed in wanting. “An Aesthetic of Collapse” advocates for not thinking about anything, not proposing, wu-wei, impotence, and using an attitude that embraces “nothingness” (Halberstam, 2022).
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| The main methods of “An Aesthetic of Collapse” that I have appropriated in my animations are:
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| In the animation, I appropriate the break and the dip and have the octopus repeatedly fall on purpose. In the analysis of the dancer’s collapse, Anna Martine Whitehead (2017) recognizes a recurring pattern of intentional detachment of Black bodies from instances of white transgression. Whitehead draws a parallel between the fall of a woman from a slave ship and the act of suicide dipping. According to Whitehead, both the break and the dip serve as a distinct departure from the movement language derived from European traditions, which emphasizes the body’s effort to convey order and rigidness. Instead, the break and the dip present audiences with the allure, the provocation, and the contagiousness of collapse (Halberstam, 2021).
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| I slow down the “still point” after the octopus falls and gets back up, making time almost stand still. It’s a long take. It represents death, pause, silence, the guiding before destruction. The “still point” is a blank space of drama that revolves around the body’s frenzy and excitement (Halberstam, 2021). Or it is an approach that Jane Bennett proposed in her book Vibrant Matter (2010), abandoning the practice of placing energetic humans at the center of an inert world. This is particularly embodied in Cunningham’s ''Sounddance'' (1975). The octopus’s eight legs need to have different movements and tendencies, sometimes bulging into muscular forms, inflating, and shrinking. When all the movements collide fiercely together, then suddenly disappear and stand still, leaving only a ghostly inaudible sound and invisible form.
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| The final movement is that the octopus finds a hole (there will be a hole in the restroom wall) and jumps out. Yves Klein’s “Leap into the Void” was modified in the sense that it would have had a safety net. But Fred Herko also jumped (and died), finding a hole in the structure like Gordon Matta-Clark and willing to go through it, even if there was nothing on the other side (Halberstam, 2021).
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| The depiction of Chinatown residents in Hollywood movies often portrays them as the “Yellow Peril,” showcasing a sense of alienation and serving as a backdrop for racialized dystopian futures. In “Some Sound Observation”, an essay written in the late 1960s, sound artist Pauline Oliveros (2005) lists the noises she can hear while writing (Halberstam, 2021). I try to create an accidental archive of sounds in Chinatown, allowing sound to collide and play with chance in time and space. (This was a decision made before writing the thesis and was not adopted in the final work.)
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| == ''C for Crip (Time) 殘疾(時間)'' ==
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| There is a mistranslation problem between Crip Walk and Cripping, which I pointed out in the final part “‘Trans* Space’: Manual For Use.”
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| Influenced by Chen (2022), I explore the enduring frustrations of chronic STDs, which permeate not just life in general but specifically sexual and romantic relationships, introducing a state I refer to as 'cripping.' This term encapsulates the alienation from normative 'heterosexual' pleasures and the culturally anticipated trajectory toward happiness in love, which now seem elusive and fraught with challenges like obscurity, prolonged waiting, and incurable illnesses. Rather than interpreting 'cripping' as a destiny of despair, I conceptualize it as a dynamic state of coexistence -- living with, dying-with, and improvising within a context where viral presence is a constant. Here, toxicity does not signify an end but rather underscores the complex interrelations that define our existence. This notion of toxicity brings a distinct rhythm to 'cripping': characterized by aimlessness, irregular rhythms, erratic replication, and a necessity for making-do, which becomes an essential part of creation.
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| So, in the animation, the octopus's dance does not have a continuous rhythm, but is sometimes fast and sometimes slow.
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| === ''On Crip Time 論殘疾時間'' ===
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| I used to hate the irregular pace of my life (studies), it was too erratic, sometimes fast, sometimes slow. I’ve been trying for years to change it (get on track) but I couldn’t. My mind is often too agile.
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| I grew up displaying an amazing IQ. I could solve the most complex math problems, but I couldn’t get the best grades on exams. Because I think too fast, I often overlook the details. In all educational systems, I have suffered a lot. They don’t like my pace. I can’t get grades like other students with stable paces. Their paces are easier for tutors to observe and understand. No one can understand that I can jump between different theories in a short time. Recently, I resonated with Simon(e) van Saarloos’ discussion about crip time in ''Against Ageism'' (2023). As a marginalized person, I cannot get enough care. I can’t spend many years studying Kant like a white man (privileged).
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| Another point I’d like to make is that when I was visiting Berlin this year, when I was trying to cruise in the public space with one guy on Grindr, he informed me that it was almost impossible to find any parks (to cruise) in Berlin in the daytime. In ''Queer Ecologies'' (2010), editors Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Erickson discussed how parks are constructed as a heterosexual catwalk, with trimmed bushes providing visibility and dark corners being completely eradicated.
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| Zairong Xiang, in ''Queer Ancient Ways'' (2018a), proposed that darkness is particularly dear to queers. It compresses linear time into queer temporality and fosters a caring community that embraces delicate and loving “being for others.” The “artists’ studio” at school, which lacks any privacy, places all “artists” together, separated by simple wooden boards. You can easily see what others are doing. The time in the artist’s studio becomes the architecture of normality. There is no such thing as crip time or queer time.
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| When I am not at school or in the studio, I feel very relaxed. When I want to “study” inside, I feel like I have serious “ADHD”. I have thought of going to an ADHD center to “treat” my “attention deficit”, but I have never g one. I think the way to solve it is to maintain an immature attitude and refuse to take it seriously. Do people with ADHD not fit into certain cultural labor, or are they more like inanimate entities? How many times have I thought “death would be better than life,” my (attention deficit) disability makes me feel like an inanimate being, even worse than the dead.
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| == ''D for Drag 變裝'' ==
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| It was during my high school years that male makeup bloggers began sharing Western and Korean-Japanese makeup techniques in China. Being a tall and strong male compared to Chinese standards, I have always been expected to display strong masculine traits since my youth. This made me feel uncomfortable, so during high school, I started skipping classes secretly and began using makeup to transform myself. During that time, I took pleasure in black and blue lipstick, blue eyeshadow, and particularly shining highlights.
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| After starting college, I began to buy many “feminine” clothes: sequins, lace, skirts... Even though I have never performed on stage, makeup and clothing, for me, serve as a daily subdued version of drag, as my primary method of rebellion. In the past several years, I have begun to view “drag shows” from a more critical perspective, seeing it as co-opted by late capitalism and depoliticized, commodifying the queer body... including ballrooms and camp culture, where white bourgeois queers turn it into a set of social norms that gatekeep and police who is a real queer when they emulate it.
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| I would like to talk about another path of my practice. Three years ago, I was researching Sino-Futurism, when a scholar mentioned that the common people in China generally have no idea about the future (Cao et al., 2020). Sino-Futurism is a game for the Western academies (or specifically for the artist Lawrence Lek). Later, I stopped this research because I thought it was too theoretical, abstract, and sometimes very manly.
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| Of course, I did not stop exploring sci-fi. In reading Paul B. Preciado, I slowly changed my mind and freed sci-fi from “hard” technology like spaceships. Paul B. Preciado (2013) introduced the notion of “technobodies” in ''Testo Junkie''. He referred to McLuhan, Fuller, and Wiener from the 1950s, who described communication technologies as extensions of the body. Preciado built on this notion and explores the individual body as “an extension of global technologies of communication.”
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| Preciado (2013) discussed the creation of body narratives through various prosthetic devices such as Ritalin, Viagra, dildos, and contraceptives. These devices contribute to our transformation into beings beyond human, which Preciado refers to as “technobodies”. He used the term “pharmacopornographic” to describe the intertwined influence and dominance of the pharmaceutical and pornographic industries in our postindustrial global and mediatic regime. Preciado labeled all inventions derived from biochemicals, such as hormones, pornography, the internet, brainwashing, cyborgs, plastics, toxics, drugs, cosmetics, and sexual surgeries, as technoscience.
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| In the conversation between Isadora Neves Marques and Grace Dillon (2021), it was mentioned that science fiction should offer a rich path to decolonize the notion of science itself, freeing up space for political imaginations beyond a one-world future. I’m thinking about “drag” as a kind of “science” fiction, this “science” is not only related to what Preciado talks about, but also related to people who have similar “drag” experiences like me, it is “guiding thoughts and stories about the world uniquely based on the lived experience of a group of people.”
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| Drag as the main method of this animation, is mainly influenced by Pauline Boudry, Renate Lorenz.
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| Engel and Lorenz’s work explores how bodies become toxic, challenging traditional views of poison. They discuss queer socialities that emerge from histories of marginalization, using toxicity to question norms around subjectivity and social interaction. Their notion sees bodies and toxic environments influencing each other (Engel & Lorenz, 2013). Additionally, Engel introduces ‘drag’ as a notion that merges bodies with toxicity, creating a space (elsewhere) where reality and fiction intersect, facilitating new identities beyond conventional gender, sexuality, and race. This approach contests prevailing societal norms, highlighting drag’s potential to disrupt and reimagine identity formation (Lorenz, 2012).
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| In the animation, the octopus’s appearance intentionally evokes the notion that its hybrid form is intrinsic to the drag aesthetic. This creature traverses a dance landscape, melding elements from voguing and hip-hop with a disruptive flair, yet it avoids forming a unified narrative. I draw upon the animal and monster imagery associated with “Yellow Peril,” without specifically addressing that era. The octopus’s movements seem to attempt to “cancel the future,” blending colorful smoke and retro-punk silver shards in a nod to the utopian chronopolitics of disidentification, as discussed by Muñoz (2009). This constant interplay of interruption infuses the animation with a dynamic energy. The resulting network of references, characterized by its opacity, symbolizes a dense, entangled web of history, details, and narratives, highlighting transtemporal desires. The metaphor of a virus weaving through my narrative connects time, people, objects, and fantasies into a vibrant network. This connection underscores a desire deeply intertwined with the virus, echoing a queer tradition emblematic of drag shows, as Engel (2011) articulates.
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| == ''E for Errantry and Elsewhere 犯錯出遊和別處'' ==
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| I came across the words “errantry” and “elsewhere” by chance while reading Trinh Minh-Ha’s text about Édouard Glissant in her book ''Traveling in the Dark'' (2023). I have long been haunted by a sense of homelessness. “Realizing the promise of communism contained in the world’s fragmentation demands a gesture...creating pathways between the fragments, of placing them in contact, of organizing their encounter...” I am constantly pondering this passage from The Invisible Committee (2017), and this thesis is also seeking a kind of gesture to carry out creolization through my contact with different realities, and theories, and looking for a new blend and dimension, allowing everyone to root and open up there and elsewhere.
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| My name, “Muyang” (沐洋) means “bath in the ocean” in Chinese. I feel more at home in the ocean, perhaps because the water is denser than the air, so the divisions of the land seem less applicable. I love the erotic sense of envelopment and disorientation that the water gives me. A kind of errantry, and always be elsewhere. There are a lot of hidden things under the surface of the water, and this chaos is a kind of anarchy in the sense that it is also a liminal space between categories, which promises to embrace leakage between them. These categories end up being pointers to chaotic leakage (helander et al., 2021).
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| A scene near the end of my animation: the wall breaks out of a hole due to collapse, the octopus jumps out of the hole and then disappears. Here I borrowed from Jack Halberstam talking about Fred Herko’s death: he was covered in dirt, already in a trance, and his body was shaking. He danced naked around the living room. The window was open and at the moment of the Sanctus, he leaped out of the window to his death (Halberstam, 2022).
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| The shadow of life and death always obscures the broad perspective of change. Jack Halberstam’s aesthetics of collapse talk about the quest for nothingness and death, and I think that nothingness and death are not annihilation, but rather the indeterminacy of the orifice/anus/hole (trou, tour -- towards destruction/construction), with all its potential to become any form of genders and non-genders. He did not go to death intentionally but with an “in/difference”. Using “in/difference”, I mean, one is in a state of insanity/intoxication where one is not even aware of the information and context of “life and death” or some kind of linear time, that is, a kind of in(built) difference. This “in/difference” cannot be understood as “don’t care”, but a kind of “idiot” covered in dirt that cannot be organized or planned, cannot be commodified into a universal strategy (Xiang, 2022).
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| José Rabasa (2014) uses ''“elsewhere”'' to theorize “a spatio-temporal difference that cannot be conflated with the knowledge we Western-trained academics construe about objects and subjects [...] that remain -- in fact, must remain -- outside the languages and methods we privilege in our positive knowledge, hermeneutics, or ontological definition of the world”. In my work, I look for a time and space of difference (elsewhere) through the aesthetics of collapse (which is inside me) and cripping (in/different to life or death). Elsewhere, further away, or closer to the heart, or deeper? Like queer cruising that is always without sights, errors, collapses, and ruins regain their dignity under the protection of gentle darkness (Xiang, 2018a). In the darkness, we errant, crip, and live-with, reopening the broad perspective of queerness as errors.
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| == ''G for Grindr 基達'' ==
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| In European countries, gay male cruising has been completely transformed by capitalism into Grindr, where it has become focused on cruising for money (Halberstam, 2022). Almost no trace remains of whatever anti-capitalist ethos there once was in cruising. It appears that a similar trend is rapidly emerging in China as well, as gay dating apps hold significant economic worth.
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| The emergence of these apps has also led to the decline of traditional Chinese offline meeting places for gay men, like gay bathhouses. Many marginalized gay men, including older and married individuals, have lost their opportunities for sexual encounters. Additionally, these apps have transformed an inclusive, unconventional gay sex culture into a more exclusive one, contradicting the idea of “loving the ugliest gays”.
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| Every gay I know spends a significant amount of time on Grindr, and I can relate to that. I had thought of Grindr, somehow as my battlefield of resistance on which I could challenge Asian stereotypes. Eventually I opted out completely.
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| These apps offer endless networking potential for romantic or sexual partners, allowing users to connect with many people at once, yet keep them at arm’s length. Grindr gives the illusion of choice, of always wanting something for fear of missing out on potential physical pleasure (Khufash, 2021). The anticipation of casual sexual relationships in online dating and through casual encounters has increasingly turned sour, leaving behind more frustration than satisfaction. My use of “An Aesthetic of Collapses” is my firm position of withdrawal and rejection of forced “wants”.
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| As the Western postmodern ideology encourages a constant pursuit of pleasure, the commodification of Otherness through diversity initiatives has led to a romanticized fantasy of the “primitive”. The consumption of the Other in sexual “primitive” fantasy displaces and devalues their history. Research by Wade and Harpers indicates that sexual stereotypes influence partner selection, leading to racialized decision-making processes. This perpetuates racialized stereotyping in gay culture and affects the social acceptance of sexual discrimination. Virtual spaces provide anonymity leading to racist manifestations and microaggressions directed at marginalized groups (Khufash, 2021).
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| I’m in the same dilemma as most other non-white and trans: exclusion, rejection, degradation, and erotic objectification. As an East Asian, if I were to identify as a top, I would face resistance from other gay fantasies that associate hyper-masculinity with “tops.” On the other hand, if I were to identify as a bottom, it would perpetuate the notion of “Asian feminine bottomhood” as a stubborn marker in my self-identification and disidentification. This would occur as I become part of the game, whether by participating in it or resisting it. For example, I might try to prove that Asians are not feminine or appropriate feminine bottomhood as an empowering act of “turning the master’s tool around to dismantle the master’s house” (Xiang, 2022).
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| The mug shot featured at the outset of the animation serves as a pivotal example, illustrating the identification mechanism rooted in photography’s foundational approach to depicting violence. This notion, as Engel and Lorenz (2013) discuss, draws upon the historical and societal impacts of the cinematic apparatus, tracing back to the nineteenth century, and critiques its toxic visual culture. The toxic nature of (film) photography’s chemicals, as Du Bois articulates through the metaphor of “The Line/Divide” -- delineating ‘lighter’ and ‘darker’ aspects as inherently divisive and irreconcilable notions (Wynter, 2015) -- plays a role in perpetuating this visual violence.
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| Similarly, mug shots, often underpinned by criminalizing or pathologizing gazes, encapsulate intoxicated bodies, thus reinforcing societal perceptions of toxicity. This toxic subjectivity, proliferated through digital platforms like Grindr, Instagram, and Pornhub, embodies and disseminates across the social body, turning into a self-perpetuating cycle. Engel and Lorenz (2013) further argue that the creation, utilization, and global distribution of these media forms disseminate toxicity in a manner that is both widespread and uneven.
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| == ''F for Fire 火焰'' ==
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| In that baseroom,
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| his seasoned breath,
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| laden with the scent.
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| Of flame drawn deeply,
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| by my being -- a tale
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| infused with aroma.
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| Lingering of embers,
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| alive against his marred flesh,
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| akin to wild beast’s hide.
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| Under a crimson moon,
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| feverishly precise,
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| a blazing inferno.
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| Stained my hollow cocoon,
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| illuminating vividly –
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| this was my home.
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| Where time stood still,
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| in the same moment, forever;
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| what remained inside.
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| Is the sunset, shimmered,
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| uninterruptedly –
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| a timeless glow.
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| == ''H for Homonationalism and Homonormativity 同性戀民族主義和同性戀規範主義'' ==
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| Recently, the Israel-Palestine conflict reminded me of the notion of pinkwashing, which refers to Israel’s efforts to promote itself as LGBTQ-friendly to reshape the narrative of the occupation of Palestine. This notion, explained by Jasbir K. Puar, is a result of homonationalism, using the treatment of homosexuals to assert sovereignty. Israel is often viewed as a pioneer in using the acceptance of certain homosexual bodies to justify its occupation of Palestine. The United States and Israel benefit from homonationalism globally through their financial, military, and ideological connections (Puar and Nyong’o, 2017).
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| I have roughly estimated the number of ethnicities I have dated in the Netherlands and found that the number of white people is the lowest. It’s difficult to draw any conclusions from this; I find it hard to pinpoint any exclusion of other ethnicities by white people, except that Dutch white men are very keen on displaying their national flags on Grindr. However, most of the BIPOC gays I have encountered have had almost no dating experience with whites in the Netherlands. It wasn’t until I read Gloria Wekker’s White innocence, where she discussed homonationalism, pointing out that the most popular political party among Dutch white gay men is the PVV, that I realized this. The nostalgia for the era of safety and imperialism among Dutch gay men has led to the exclusion of other “uncivilized” ethnicities (mainly Muslims) (Wekker, 2016). “Chinese people eat dog meat” is a very typical discriminatory statement against Chinese people, and it has also come up in my dating experiences. This statement is obviously targeted more at Chinese people than at the act of eating dog meat, or it suggests that they consider the “uncivilized” Chinese people who eat dog meat to be lower in the animacy hierarchy than their dogs (as white people’s pets).
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| I’ve been in the Netherlands for too short a time to analyze the Dutch government’s policies, healthcare industry, etc., to understand Dutch homonationalism. I would like to discuss the experience of my coming from China to the Netherlands. Coming to the West to receive an art education is seen as something that only the upper class of Chinese gay people can achieve. This is indeed the case. Due to the class division and huge wealth gap in China, it is difficult for me to connect with most other Chinese gays. As a result of long-term exposure to Western education, I naturally feel “out of touch” with the Chinese gay community. The first two things that can be learned about the Netherlands in China are the red light district and its openness to LGBT. My mother once warned me not to engage in homosexual activities after I arrived in the Netherlands, even though she already knew about my homosexuality but pretended not to. Within the gay community, most people tend to immigrate to Western countries because they believe that the policies and environment of these countries will provide them with freedom. A clear and simplistic binary opposition has emerged: the global North is LGBT-friendly, while the global South is not. At the same time, an interesting phenomenon is that China promotes itself to the West as an LGBT-friendly country (using Taiwan’s acceptance of same-sex marriage as an example) but aggressively suppresses LGBT internally. My disgust towards China, which extends to the disgust towards Chinese gays, as well as towards myself, has been an emotion that has been difficult for me to overcome.
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| Gloria (2016) mentioned Mepschen, Duyvendak, and Tonkens, who argue that “paradoxically, it is the depoliticized nature of Dutch gay identity, ‘anchored in domesticity and consumption’... that explains its entanglement with neo-nationalist and normal citizenship discourses. Dutch gay identity does not threaten heteronormativity, but instead helps shape and reinforce the boundaries of ‘tolerant’ and ‘liberal’ Dutch national culture.” I strongly relate to this. From my observation of white Dutch gays around me, some are artists, but I feel it is difficult for them to engage in any radical resistance. Their works are easily recognized and funded by the Dutch art world, and fit into the discourse of “diversity.” For the grand gay pride event in Amsterdam (as homonationalism), Asian-themed boats only started appearing in 2023, after Pete Wu wrote ''De bananengeneratie''. Unlike white people who are generally liked at pride events, have already come out, and fit into homonormativity, Asians still face many difficulties in coming out to their families and communities.
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| On coming out, Gloria (2016) points out its role in homonormativity: “On the individual level, not only is it desirable to speak out, it is decidedly taken as a negative characteristic if a person does not do so. In the binary speaking/acting, silence about one’s homosexuality carries connotations of tradition, of secretiveness, of being sly and untrustworthy, of being in denial, of leading a double life, and, in teleological/imperialist fashion, not as advanced, evolved as we yet.”
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| I once heard a Dutch-born Asian complain that all the Chinese gays he dated (born in mainland China) ended up marrying women in the end (due to family pressure). Coming out is an extremely long struggle process for many overseas Chinese LGBTs, even after they have already married a same-sex partner. Chinese social media platform “Red” often features accounts that “expose bad gays”, citing fear of promiscuity/STDs/marriage to a woman(not coming out), etc.
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| However, I gradually accepted the fact that I may not come out to my family in my life. This acceptance of myself gave me a great deal of freedom. In my work, the octopus constantly changes shape, elusive, as a trickster figure. Sometimes the image is not visible because the colorful smoke obscures it. By doing so, I not only emphasize the right to transgress, but also emphasize the right to opacity, the right to disappear from view, or to control one’s degrees of visibility, to resist homonormativity.
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| == ''I for Impotence 陽痿'' ==
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| Although male impotence is not directly related to ''Octopus in Drag'', I have highlighted it in my previous work. Male impotence can be seen as an important motivation for my work in the past two years.
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| For example, a common narrative is that Chinese men refuse to date Chinese women who have dated other ethnic groups (especially in terms of sexual experience), and one of the prominent factors is the perception of their sexual inadequacy. This lack of confidence in my sexual performance has been present since my teenage days, and most of my Chinese male friends have similar thoughts, especially when it comes to other ethnicities. This is also why many Chinese gay men believe that other ethnicities have better sexual performance and discriminate against Asian men on Grindr.
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| I don’t want to comment on this narrative about sexual experience that highlights masculinity. Interestingly, however, many people (including “academics” in the universities) have used “impotence”(阳痿) to create new terms such as “artistic impotence”(艺术陽痿), “intellectual impotence”(思想阳痿), “spiritual impotence”(精神阳痿). The meanings of these terms vary in different contexts.
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| For example, if I participate in an exhibition in mainland China, some conservative Chinese art critics will comment that my exhibition is “the impotence of new Chinese artists” because I present a lot of “Westernized” thoughts. Similar to this example, impotence often goes hand in hand with the word “China”, and therein can be glimpsed the ever-involving link between Chinese masculinity and nationalism.
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| Then I read Everett Yuehong Zhang’s book ''The Impotence Epidemic'' (2015), which not only mentions the spread of Western pornography (which usually chooses white males with large penises) into China. And China does not allow the production of pornography. In particular, it mentioned that the Maoist socialist state created a false image of Maoist socialist utopic superiority that -- contrary to its intention of strengthening China’s pride -- exacerbated Chinese men’s self-doubt. Chinese men attribute their masculinity being under siege to China’s global self-repositioning and translate this general social uncertainty into personal anxiety fixated on a physical organ. Perceived male smallness embodies the national sentiment that has re-articulated the desire to become big in the reform era -- an ironic experience amid China’s rise.
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| In addition, an important term is “tong-zhi”(同志). Wai-Siam Hee’s ''From Amorous Histories to Sexual Histories'' (2015) points to a shift in the narrative mechanism of modern China from amorous histories to sexual histories, which goes hand in hand with the nationalist construction of masculinity in modern China. Modern Chinese nationalism is an imagined community formed through print capitalism. This imagined community, which is gradually born from the press and media, connects and consults with each other in the name of “tong-zhi”(同志).
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| Différances of “tong-zhi”(同志) have undergone five stages:
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| Pre-Modern China: People with the same interest
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| Early Republic of China: People with the same political ideals
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| After the founding of the People’s Republic of China: People who believe in the same doctrine
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| Official Chinese media: Specifically members of the same political party
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| Global Sinophone media: Homosexuals
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| I’d like to close by mentioning that “impotence”(阳痿) consists of two Chinese characters. “Yang”(阳) comes from the Daoist term “yin-yang”. “Wei”(痿) is related to muscle atrophy. It’s worth noting that “yin-yang” was never directly linked to gender in ancient China, but today people (including many “experts”) use yang to refer to masculinity and yin to refer to femininity. One of the dominant narratives in China today is that Chinese men lack “陽剛之氣” (which is somehow equivalent to masculinity) and that the Communist Party needs to help young people improve their “yang” qualities. But, In Chinese traditional medicine, too much “yang” is a disease.
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| == ''I for Innocence 純真'' ==
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| The word “Innocence” originates from Gloria Wekker’s White Innocence. In China, many people describe the Netherlands as a beautiful pastoral utopia, where everything seems perfect. But that doesn’t seem to be the status quo. A student learning the Dutch language told me about the shallowness of Dutch culture, with much of the language centered around self-centered Calvinism and a crude “peasant and pirate mentality.” Although I don’t like this extreme description, I still feel some agreement. A Dutch student once referred to themselves as “boring Dutch” in class. How close are the words “boring” and “innocence.” “Boring” adds a layer of self-defense, like a drop of unshed white tear. It immediately reminded me of Mark Aguhar’s final post before committing suicide: “LOL WHITE MEN BORE ME,” this casual, foolish, irrational mockery made me start to wonder what the horizon of a truly queer time-space and elsewhere would look like.
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| During the Dutch election, some Chinese women with Dutch male partners posted on social media about their boyfriends or family members supporting the PVV. Some Dutch people said, “Chinese people are good and work hard. Other ethnicities should leave. This policy is not directed at Chinese people.” Another aspect related to the domain of sexuality is that Asians are considered the cleanest among non-white ethnic groups, as most Asian men have whiter skin, less body hair, and no body odor, which can be compared to “white children.” Notice here that it’s because Asians are close to whites that they are seen as clean. This is also why I chose white porcelain as the material for the scene. White porcelain, the hard white body, was a coveted Chinese item in the West until the mid-eighteenth century. It is associated with purity, whiteness, and durability against cracking or staining, or rather, a state of white “innocence”.
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| One time, I received a white gay’s opinion on “fascism” on Grindr. He stated that fascism is “an Italian (and to some extent German) political system” and has nothing to do with (sexual) racism. He described himself as a highly intelligent person in his profile. I immediately replied, “I am tired of your smart brain,” and then closed the app. The innocent image of white Dutch people on Grindr denying racism and fascism and describing themselves as “open-minded”, and “acceptance of diversity” is very common. In this work, I focus on my experience of sexual racism as manifested mainly in homonationalism and homonormativity, which is the site of embodiment of white innocence that Gloria (2016) focuses on in her book.
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| == ''I for Inscrutability 不可捉摸'' ==
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| It must be said that this work is generally inscrutable to the audience: strange hybrid creatures, a white porcelain floor that seemed to be both liquid and solid... I want to mention Vivian L. Huang’s discussion in ''Surface Relations'' (2022) of “inscrutability” as an aesthetic strategy in Asian American and queer cultures. She argues that this inscrutability not only challenges binary racial, gender, and sexual knowledge production but also represents a form of flourishing for minority groups. Inscrutability plays a significant role in the history, law, and cultural expressions of Asian Americans, allowing them to form their subjectivity without having to defend their existence. Huang also notes that the modern knowledge system relies on portraying Asians as inscrutable outsiders, thereby enhancing the knowledge and subjectivity of the Western cognitive subject.
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| For example, the appearance of porcelain material in the work metaphorically links the inscrutability of Asians, reflected in their difficulty to be penetrated and the specific cultural meanings and prejudices assigned to them. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Chinese porcelain was esteemed for its purity and resistance to staining, and the mystery of its production process -- guarded and hidden from the Western world -- added to its value in international trade. This opacity in the creation and inherent qualities of porcelain mirrors the Western perceptions of Asian cultures as closed and impenetrable, shrouded in mystery, and thus, deeply fascinating yet alien.
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| Similarly, Asian Americans are often depicted as ‘mysterious,’ leading to racial stereotypes and marginalization in Western society. This notion of cultural and emotional impenetrability contributes to stereotypes that paint Asians as aloof or inscrutable, qualities that have been institutionally reinforced by exclusionary policies such as the Chinese Exclusion Act, which codified these misconceptions into U.S. law.
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| The high regard for the material purity of porcelain and the stereotypical view of Asian culture both reflect complex feelings towards the ‘other’ -- a mix of desire for exoticism and fear of the unknown. The simultaneous admiration and apprehension towards these qualities demonstrate a paradoxical dynamic where the ‘impenetrable’ nature of both porcelain and Asian identities is idealized yet ostracized, underlining the intricate movement of attraction and repulsion that characterizes cross-cultural interactions and perceptions.
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| == ''M for Melancholia 憂郁'' ==
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| Recently, I read ''Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation: On the Social and Psychic Lives of Asian Americans'' (2019) by David L. Eng and Shinhee Han. The reading deeply resonated with and discomforted me. Eng and Han observed that students often feel overlooked in classrooms and clinics as if their inner worlds are ignored. The book’s title reflects Anne Anlin Cheng’s 2000 work ''The Melancholy of Race'', which views melancholy, and its dynamics of loss and recovery, as the foundations for racial identity, not just resulting from racism. Freud defined mourning as a conscious process of grieving a specific loss, while melancholy involves an unclear source of grief, pushing us deeper into our subconscious. Eng and Han related this to their students’ persistent sadness, possibly stemming from the losses tied to immigration and assimilation.
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| As a yellow queer in the Netherlands, I frequently experience a profound sense of suspension within a void where fragments of histories -- often unrecorded or misinterpreted -- float around me. I am compelled to piece together these fragments to reconstruct my racial identity. Encountering colonial remnants in historical texts adds particular weight to this process; these fragments not only intersect with my personal experiences but also profoundly influence my current identity.
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| In my animation, I explored a tapestry of historical and cultural narratives that include white porcelain, Yellow Peril, Fu Manchu, Black dance forms, queer cruising, etc. This selection of symbols and movements is not intended to suggest a direct linkage, but rather to uncover the intricate emotions -- such as confusion, loss, and desire -- that resonate within these historical fragments.
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| My relationship with these materials can be likened to the “critical fabulation” described by Saidiya Hartman. This approach is not about restoration but rather points to what is absent in the archives, creating a space like a photographic negative to imagine the lost contents. This method challenges our simplistic restoration of history and our acceptance of its existing forms, emphasizing the constructed nature of history. The cultural symbols and performance styles I use aim to break traditional historical narratives by connecting across archives, cultures, and geographical boundaries, creating new ways of interpretation. This is not just about rewriting a more accurate or inclusive global history, but about emphasizing how our understanding of the past and present is constrained by existing conventions of knowledge and expression.
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| == ''M for Mockery 嘲諷'' ==
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| (This was a decision made before writing the thesis and was not adopted in the final work.)
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| When the results of the Dutch election came out, I was chatting with a friend and casually said “Dutch election is as bad as Dutch erection.” This slightly mocking remark seemed to relieve some of the extreme disappointment I felt at the results. I was reminded that when I watched Isadora’s latest film in the ywy series at 1646 the other day, the woman at the end of the film continued to mocking at a statue for several minutes, and many in the audience couldn’t help but laugh along with her. There is certainly an inextricable link between Dutch elections and Dutch erections, in white supermacy and patriarchy. I’m sick to death of Dutch males (you know most Dutch males look the same and wear the same clothes, which my friend says is a form of fascism).
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| The octopus, acting as a trickster, sprinkles urine in the dance, soiling the white porcelain toilet. It twists, falls, and interrupts in a peculiar manner. In the script, I mimic the mockery of “Dutch election is as bad as Dutch erection,” celebrating inappropriateness. Laughter’s appeal makes people forget time, temporarily disrupting its flow. I am contemplating including prolonged laughter in the film; for instance, the octopus forgetting its lines and breaking into laughter to disrupt the performance. I am considering the notion of carnival, festive laughter as described by Mikhail Bakhtin -- a laughter that is both joyful and mocking, temporarily suspending hierarchies, social norms, and prohibitions (Bakhtine & Iswolsky, 1984).
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| I’m thinking about the rhizomatic network between performer, scenario and audience in Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz’s work. Perhaps the simultaneous laughter of the audience under the influence of contagious laughter led to audience participation in the scene.The traditional division of labor between subject and object of desire is disrupted. As a spectator, one is seduced into becoming the “subject of feminism” or the politicized desiring subject, process and product of queering the audience (Engel, 2011).
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| == ''M for Monstrosity 怪物性'' ==
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| I chose the octopus not only for animality, but also for monstrosity in Yellow Peril.
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| The cover image of the November 14, 1885 issue of the San Francisco-based satire magazine “The Wasp” displayed a devil at the center, seated on a pillar with legs crossed and two tongues protruding from its sinister smile. Ten mutated hands extended from theirs half-fin, half-wing and offered vices to the Caucasian figures portrayed. The illustration, titled “The Chinese: Many Handed But Soulless,” emphasized the persistent anti-Chinese sentiment prevalent in California (Weng, 2020).
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| In the nineteenth century cultural imagination, the representation of a “multi-handed” monster was epitomized by the cephalopod, specifically the giant octopus, which possessed the idiosyncratic ability to reach, grasp, and paralyze everything in every direction with its infinitely extendable arms. When the protagonist Gilliat of Victor Hugo’s 1866 novel ''The Toilers of the Sea'' was ensnared by a giant octopus, a moment of inestimable horror transpired as the monster’s “gigantic hands” with nearly a yard long fingers constricted its prey with irresistible power. This monstrous representation corresponded with the monstrosity of the history of the establishment of California, particularly during the Great Western Expansion and the construction of the transcontinental railroad. The visualization of the enormous red octopus by G. Frederick Keller to represent the irresistible power of capitalist expansion, with its ten arms instead of eight, signified the complete control and oppression of everything profitable. This representation of capitalism as an “iron-hearted monster” engulfing and terminating lives silently expressed the curse of California under the spell of capitalist production in its fledgling era (Weng, 2020).
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| The astonishing aspect is the similarity between the monstrosity applied to the capitalist monopoly and its later application to Chinese immigrants. The fear of capitalism monopoly was effectively replaced by loathing towards the Chinese immigrants. Racist discrimination did not solely arise from cultural differences, but was also formed through structural violence and oppression created by the capitalist scheme (Weng, 2020).
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| I’m using monstrosity here in a similar way to what Amy Ireland (2019) calls “Xenopoetics”. As an object of fantasy, the monster is understood and created through fear of the unknown and that which comes from outside. The monster prompts us to break our inherent categories and rethink. When designing the images, I drew inspiration from Mark Fisher’s ''The Weird and the Eerie'' referenced in “Xenopoetics.” I designed the octopus tentacles to be shiny and eerie in black, including the final collapse of the restroom into ruins.
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| What happened?
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| What caused these ruins and disappearance?
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| What kind of entity is involved?
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| What kind of thing emits such eerie cries?
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| What kind of agent is acting here?
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| Are there even agents involved?
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| == ''O for Orifice/Opening 孔/竅'' ==
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| Both of my grandparents received daily traditional Chinese medicine treatment due to their illnesses, which cannot be cured by Western medicine. Their goal was to maintain a healthy body through traditional medicine, which focuses on keeping one’s orifices open rather than blocked, unlike Western medicine’s definition of health. My father once told me that almost all of the diseases of the elderly cannot be cured by Western medicine. I think the notion of “health” behind this “cure” is also related to a certain cisness and ableness.
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| The term “Qiao”(竅) in Chinese has an etymological origin as a penetrable cave, and it is used as a technical word to refer to bodily orifices. It represents a space in which sexual differences converge into a superimposed opening. In Chinese traditional medicine, the human body is understood through its nine orifices, which are believed to be connected to its five inner organs. According to Yang Yu’s “Shan Ju Xin Yu” (''山居新語''), nine orifices include the eyes, the ears, and the nostrils (each is double orifices); the mouth, the genitalia, and the anus (each is a single orifice) (Xiang, 2018b).
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| The penis is considered to be undifferentiated from the vagina. Anatomically, it contains a hollow space and serves as an orifice for the urethra. The penis becomes the same orifice as the anus. The homosexual infertile penis, which does not penetrate the vagina, is an organ with anal characteristics (Xiang, 2018b).
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| In Chinese, keeping one’s orifices open is called “Tong” (通). In Marcel Granet’s book ''La Pensée Chinoise'' (1934), he translates “Tong” as “interpénétration mutuelle”. The notion of “Tong” is both passive and active; penetrating and pervading. It is, in fact, an ideal state of things.
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| Europe’s “refusal to recognize the penetration of the other” is indeed particularly illustrative of the blockages, or not “Tong”. Perhaps “Tong” could instead focus on a state of pervasion, as orifice/anus exists, where (sexual) difference is entwined with each other, where there is difference within sameness. Difference no longer becomes a problem, but rather depends on difference for the transing of movement and the possibility of porosity.
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| == ''P for Parasite 寄生'' ==
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| I started thinking about parasites from Candice Lin’s report, who suggested that through the word parasite, one can see the intimacy between the beneficiaries of the liberal humanist construct and those who perform the unseen labor to produce it (Lin, 2019).
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| As an Asian male, I can understand how many Asian men accuse Asian women of engaging in casual sexual relationships with other races (mainly white people). When I see Thai women offering massage services on the streets, I wonder if I can blame them for being accomplices to white supremacy. Women of color providing care labor may have to do so to earn money. Asian bottoms indeed experience a certain degree of liberation and sexual freedom in relationships with other races, perhaps something they cannot attain in their own country or ethnic community. I can refuse to engage in relationships with men of other races because I am an educated, middle-class male in the Asian community, able to have sufficient sexual relationships, thus perpetuating to some extent the history of slavery.
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| Lisa Lowe (2015) in ''The Intimacies of Four Continents'' refers to the fact that Liberal Humanism and its equipping of everyday family life is produced, inculcated, and sustained through little-known intimate relationships with other cultures and peoples. That’s why I wanted to activate specific materials with complex global histories, such as white porcelain, in my video.
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| In the extensive circulation of gay sexual videos prevalent in X, it can be observed that Asian male homosexuals predominantly provide bottom services to many other ethnic groups in North America and Europe. Parasitic exploitation of others is common in the negative portrayal of zombies and their colonial and slave trade roots, as well as the allocation of care labor for BIPOCs (bottomhood as care) to white people, and their children and non-human animals
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| As an Asian providing brief or long-term intimate experiences for people of other races, I consider this intimacy (associated with porcelain and care labor) to be a form of “residual” and “emergent” forms of intimacies as described by Lisa Lowe. These intimate relationships are obscured by mainstream intimacy notions, while mainstream intimate relationships belong to individual ownership and also constitute the private sphere in liberalism.
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| In Candice Lin, Mel Y. Chen, and Jih-Fei Cheng’s talk “What is Contagion? A Roundtable” (2017), Jih-Fei presented: “the idea of the ‘parasite’ as a vector for contagion relies on a nation wherein the “host” is the ‘civilized’ and (close to/often) white heterosexual citizen... bodies of color are generally targeted as “parasites” for immediate or protracted genocide in order to maintain the white supremacy of the “host.” The interrelated meanings of “host-guest-parasite” are foundational to settler colonialism, modern nation-building, viral pandemics, and global security.”
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| When we face settler colonialism, we must address the colonial divisions and interconnectedness between microbiological and global elements, non-sentient and sentient beings, and the various scales and gradations in between (Cheng, 2017). In my work, I discuss the anal utopia, where the anus /rectum serves as the grave of the “human” (white, cis-gender, heterosexual, and able-bodied male), yet it is a thriving ground for STDs/Viruses (representing BIPOCs). And I’d love to ask:
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| Who’s the predator?
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| Who’s the prey?
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| Who’s consuming whom?
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| If our innate instincts drive us to eliminate parasites in order to secure our space as humans, how should we interpret our fantasies and fears of being consumed by parasites?
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| == ''P for Penumbrae 罔兩'' ==
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| In the ancient Daoist text “The Adjustment of Controversies”, the three existences of “penumbrae” (罔兩), “shadow” (景), and “body” (形) appear.
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| “Penumbrae Query Shadow” has become an important methodology in Sinophone’s research on queerness. The relationship between the body and the shadow referencing each other is similar to the East-West referencing, where the West is the center and the East is the periphery. The East always references the West to refer to itself. The absence of “the presence of the body” in this query is more symbolic of the self-referentiality of empire, by which even non-imperialists need to define themselves. Ultimately, the relationship between the shadow and the body on which it relies is always uni-directional reference, rather than looking horizontally at other shadows, or even turning around to look at the penumbrae (Liu et al., 2007).
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| In this parable, the penumbrae asked the shadow why it had no independent integrity. The shadow’s reply questioned the customary assumption that the shadow is always dependent on the body (Liu et al., 2007).
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| The sound beyond binary reminds me that not all subjects identified as “Gay Asians” (representing Homonormativity) normally. In the original text, the questioner is “众罔兩.” Simply put, the penumbrae(s) are asking questions in the form of a mass. The penumbrae(s) could represent all the underrepresented, poorly defined yellow queers. I would like to end this chapter with a poem: '' ''
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| ''Reticence''
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| East wind scatters tales,
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| youth’s fleeting spark,
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| reticence harbors a soul,
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| deeply poetic, stark.
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| A teacher once spoke, under East Asia’s sky,
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| emotions dwell where words shy,
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| sorrows hide, in the deep’s dark sigh.
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| Years chasing queer art’s glow,
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| between Beurs and Blaak, in the flow.
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| Stopped again, she inquires slow
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| of my stance on gay rights’ due –
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| I stall, feigning ignorance, true.
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| Questioned once, on another issue white,
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| I cut his hope, into the night.
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| Household burdens heavy as earth,
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| Dust reborn in endless return,
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| Tasting the boiling water,
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| Stains, years bitter, adjourn.
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| Beneath the family feast,
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| the bitter veins of orange, as if for the first time.
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| Words not heartfelt.
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| ‘Same-sex,’
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| like a curse etched on my face,
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| the rest of my body caged forever.
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| After two attempts to come out, dense,
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| even words became imprisoned.
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| Twice in seven years, ‘girlfriend’ you said,
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| our bond further declined.
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| He returned from cafe’s,
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| outside frosty, inside emptiness.
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| Silence upon entering my room,
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| ‘Do you wish to bathe first?’
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| ‘If displeased, I can leave,’ his voice coy,
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| bold yet grave.
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| Silence, I disrobed, into his arms.
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| Gazing at the ink soaking into the literati’s hall,
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| yet my verses remain unrefined –
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| what remains in this reticence?
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| Innocent till the end,
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| seemingly unrelated to all else,
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| I’ve long ceased to call you mum,
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| Is it envy of the orphaned heart I bear?
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| == ''P for Poetry 詩'' ==
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| Throughout my childhood and university years, I struggled with language classes, focusing instead on sciences and later on math, finance, and computer science. Influenced by Emil Cioran and Hermann Hesse, I questioned the divisions between fields, gravitating towards electronic music, poetics, and Eastern philosophies. My time at a Chinese art institution revealed a resistance to abstract concepts in art education. Despite years of political and theoretical reading, I felt a disconnect from my true interest in poetics and spirituality. Meeting Laura Huertas Millán at PZI reignited my belief in the power of my inner passion, inspired by readings on Trinh T. Minh-ha and Édouard Glissant.
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| I resonate with the feminist idea that personal experiences are inherently political, highlighting how politics pervade our everyday lives and turn mundane aspects into sites of political action. These underlying politics shape our daily reality and challenge us to recognize the unpredictable nature of the everyday, turning the ordinary into the extraordinary. Inspired by Trinh T. Minh-ha’s filmmaking, which values intimate encounters and cultivates new forms of subjectivity through diversity and multiplicity, I also draw on Glissant’s notion of “errantry” from “Poetics of Relation.” This emphasizes the political and poetical importance of engaging with difference and the Other, seeking spaces where differences enhance rather than exclude, pushing boundaries to reveal new connections (Minh-ha, 2023a).
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| Later, when I read Phanuel Antwi's mention of Christina Sharpe's notion of ‘the weather’ in ''On Cuddling'' (2023), which she describes as a constant, all-around force of anti-Black violence that shapes the social and cultural landscape, impacting Black people's lives and identities, I, as someone who is both Asian and queer, see similar forces in my own life.
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| Similarly, inspired by Phanuel Antwi, for me, poetry is not merely a political manifesto. It serves as a delicate means to explore both myself and the society I inhabit. It aids in addressing the influence of history on our current identities. I investigate how discrimination against Asians and queer individuals has shaped our society and contemplate its potential consequences. As a poet, I am compelled to uncover the often hidden presence of Asians and queers in unexpected realms, employing poetry to confront the violence we encounter. I resonate with Anne Carson’s perception of poetry as someone ablaze, swiftly navigating through a structured world -- it is urgent, unpredictable, and intensely emotional.
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| In analyzing the works of Mary Jean Chan, Sarah Howe, and others, I’ve observed a poetic approach where identity transcends essentialism, evolving into a relational, multi-layered, and imaginative construct. Their shared post-colonial Hong Kong origins and migration to the UK enrich their poetry with a nuanced perspective on identity, belonging, and cultural dislocation, resonating with my own experience as an overseas Chinese.
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| For example, in the section on Fire, sentences like “his seasoned breath, laden with the scent” and “alive against his marred flesh, akin to wild beast’s hide” directly refer to the physicality of the body, emphasizing its strength, experiences, and scars. The “toxicity” here metaphorically signifies the depth and complexity of bodily experiences and inner emotions, as well as their enduring impact on the individual. The body becomes a vessel for experience and sensation, as well as a witness to personal history and trauma. At the same time, this poetry unfolds in a form similar to seven Haikus, as I attempt to pay homage to my own East-Asian tradition, establish a dialogue between different poetic traditions, and reflect on the fluidity and multiplicity of identity.
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| == ''P for Porcelain 瓷'' ==
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| To some extent, porcelain is the bread and butter for Chinese artists, both traditional and contemporary. They are often seen as a unique material for Chinese artists, and many immigrant artists also use them. I must say I don’t have any particular sentiment about this, but I have seen it in the homes of Chinese immigrants in the Netherlands as a kind of solace for their “root-seeking.” The lack of a sense of belonging claimed by these immigrants is often a form of solipsism, largely unaware of their strong conservatism. I chose this material for the piece with a different intention than theirs.
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| During the 17th and 18th centuries, Chinese porcelain was highly valued for its superior body, purity, whiteness, and ability to resist staining by foreign products like coffee or tea. It was also used for water filtration due to its density and small pore size. The Pasteur-Chamberland filter, based on porcelain, became popular in American homes and businesses after being showcased at the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition. This marked the spatialization of Social Darwinist ideas of racial hierarchy (Lin, 2019).
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| Porcelain played a crucial role in separating bacteria from water, but its failure to completely control contagion led to the emergence of virology as a new field. Dutch scientist Martinus Beijerinck’s study of the Tobacco Mosaic Virus in 1898, revealed that the contagious properties of the virus persisted even after passing through the porcelain filter. This failure to isolate the disease reshaped the understanding of what it means for something to be “living” (Lin, 2019).
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| == ''Q for Queerness 酷兒性'' ==
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| It wasn’t until my freshman year at a British university that I truly came to terms with my homosexuality, despite my same-sex experiences beginning in high school. I engaged in sexual activities with some male classmates whose sexual orientation was unknown at high school. We didn’t use terms like “gay” or “queer” to characterize this behavior. Relationships, let alone sex, were not allowed in Chinese high schools. Same-sex seems to be available as a way to explore the sexual self usually in the name of games, and male friendship.
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| Until I came to the Netherlands I had never defined myself as a “queer”. I have lived most of my life near Chengdu (the gay capital in China) and Shanghai. Hija de Perra’s 2014 article “Filthy Interpretations” asks: “What is the future of this (queer) theory that runs the risk of being swallowed up and bought at a cheap price by the capitalist system?” In the last few years, the emergence of gay-friendly establishments and the introduction of multiculturalism in gentrifying areas have been showcased by the government as indicators of the country’s progressiveness and a demonstration of its “global” status (as Homonationalism). However, the Chinese government continues to make considerable efforts to suppress the LGBT community.
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| I heard about Wai-Siam Hee’s ''From Amorous Histories to Sexual Histories'' (2015) in a Sinophone seminar. Wai-Siam Hee examined the shift of Chinese males same sex from a traditional preference for sex art to marginalization by the state’s pathological narrative of “sexual history” under the guise of “sexual science,” and the influence of mainstream Western values propagating “homophobia” in China.
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| However, ''Penumbrae query shadow'', a book of queer Sinophone studies, mentioned that it is too simplistic to oppose the traditional ‘tolerance’ of the pre-West to the epistemological ‘homophobia’ of post-globalization. I don’t want to deliberately show a “different from Western”, or “Chinese” historical experience or mode of thinking to resist the so-called Western hegemony of gender/queer studies (which often presents a unified teleological analysis). Before globalization, the world of “silent tolerance” actually implies an implicit, overarching, universally important order that is quietly taking place beyond everything and is applied everywhere (Liu et al., 2007).
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| My understanding of “queer” refers to deviations from the traditional structure of sex, reproduction, and intimacy, and it also encompasses animate entities diverging from prevailing ontologies and the normative principles they advocate (Chen, 2012). In essence, I propose that queering is inherent in actions that defy established norms and disrupt appropriate intimacies. By using “queer” to define my work, I am neither suggesting that Chinese non-normative expressions of desire and gender are direct and outdated translations of those found and theorized in the Western world nor am I affirming the nativist response to the homogeneity and cultural imperialism represented by the globalization of queerness. Rather, I want to examine how interpretations of queer identities and theories, influenced by the unequal impacts of globalization, move between various settings with shared histories of non-conventional desires, gender presentations, and behaviors, and evolve and reconfigure in the procedure.
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| == ''R for Rimming 舔肛'' ==
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| I drew the death of Laocoon,
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| you traced Wojnarowicz’s painting.
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| We gave up humanity,
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| succumbing to obscure superstitions.
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| I stoop in a semi-crouch, waiting for
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| your cutting tongue, like a serpent,
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| infusing venom into my being.
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| We whirled and danced, becoming dizzy
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| and forgot how to live.
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| We coiled around the Garden of Eden.
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| We buried (again and again)
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| Hegel, Sartre, Freud, Lacan,
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| ''isms, isms, isms, isms, isms,''
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| and those genius ''creatio ex nihilo''.
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| We punctured the colour line,
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| outside to inside, inside to outside,
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| Our fluids mixed with excrement,
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| seawater mixed with earth.
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| A ceremony in the round,
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| between land and sea,
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| between birth and grave.
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| Again, we drew a circle,
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| jumped out, but there was no end.
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| We re-spun towards a new beginning,
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| back to the center of our territory.
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| Burning faggot and slain snake,
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| haphazard and meandering,
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| with poisons, it was our fury.
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| == ''S for STDs 性傳染病'' ==
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| STDs have always been treated special, my upbringing and environment never mentioned it to me. My sexual behavior until the age of 20 was associated with a fear of viruses, especially HIV. Leo Bersani’s psychoanalytic description of the risks of sexual behavior in his article points directly to the issue of death as a risk of contracting a virus for which there was no widely available treatment or means of long-term survival at the time. In early epidemiological investigations in the United States, the distinctive viral characteristics of HIV and its association with gay men confirmed, in retrospect, the role of men in “biological reproduction” in the broadest sense of the word, usually as opposed to viral transmission or bacterial maintenance (Chen, 2022).
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| I started reading Paul B. Preciado and Mel Y. Chen’s articles on the virus starting with COVID-19, so I'm not afraid of it now. From June until now, I have been experiencing recurring STDs. The recurring infections are related to my marginalization, racialization, unstable life circumstances, and a weakened immune system. It was at the time of Venus retrograde that I participated in an erotic writing workshop. I found that the constant slight itching and pain in my anus and rectum did not connect me to “death” or “the grave,” but rather the parasitism of the virus in my body gave me a persistent erotic sensation. This eroticism comes from the fact that behind the pain there is a kind of anal and rectal microbial and viral drama and rampant vitality. If Bersan’s grave is the grave of “man”, what is “man” in the midst of it all? If we consider Sylvia Wynter’s critique of the abiding biocentrism of orders of knowledge, which buttresses the colonially delineated “human” (Man), as well as the retention of a godly positioning while wearing the Enlightenment badge of secular science. This kind of “man” represents whiteness, masculinity, cis-ness, and ability. How do we think about refusing to confront this paradigm of our calling ourselves “human” in the face of viruses? How do we think about this pattern of calling ourselves “human” when we refuse to face the virus (Chen, 2022)?
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| When I went for STD testing, they see Asians as “the Other” who is the source of the STDs. According to Mel Y. Chen, discussions about viruses frequently contribute to the creation and reinforcement of social hierarchies and racist beliefs. Thinking about the connection between the body and viruses is inextricably linked to thinking about the relationship between the “imagined West” and Asia. In Chen’s conversation with Candice Lin, Candice noted that contagion occurs when racialized descriptions of non-human organisms, such as inanimate objects and plants, subvert biological classification and animacy hierarchies (Cheng, 2017).
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| One wonder in particular about the haunted vulnerability of “Western” sites that Elizabeth Povinelli incisively describes as ghoul health: the global organization of the biomedical establishment and its imaginary around the idea that the big scary bug, the new plague. Ghoul health is the prefigure of the notion of the Virus. It is the bad faith of geontopower in which the real threat is not the virus but the contemporary global division, distribution, and circulation of health. It is the bad faith we are living unevenly (Chen, 2022).
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| In an artistic exploration of identity beyond conventional human boundaries, I opted for the octopus's representation in a drag show, aiming to delve into the notion of being inhuman. This choice is influenced by the inquiry "Has the Queer Ever Been Human?" by Dana Luciano and Mel Y. Chen in 2015, which underscores the enigmatic nature of octopuses and viruses. These entities symbolize the elusive essence of queerness -- an identity that defies conventional understanding. Through this lens, the work invites contemplation of alterity, challenging the fixed categories of identity and existence.
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| == ''T for Toxicity 毒性'' ==
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| ... if hurt, they breathe
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| Venom into their bite, cleave to the veins
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| And let the sting lie buried, and leave their lives
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| Behind them in the wound
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| -- '''Virgil''', ''The Georgics.''
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| My thinking about “toxicity” has been long-standing, dating back to my first experimental short film “Verflossen ist das der tag”. This short film was completed towards the end of my 19th year when I was entering my first romantic relationship and talked about my experience with self-harm. This work is a continual process of looking at my own trauma/sickness over and over again to heal/overcome it. Self-harm is the process of feeling compelled to leave traces and marks on my body/mind in the face of chaos, violence, alienation, and loss, to prove and maintain a pure and sensitive heart from within.
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| Taking poisons was commonly used by ancient Chinese literati, especially the famous Wei and Jin period (Daoist) literati group “Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove”. They lived a quiet, wu-wei, and uninhibited life, drinking and singing in the bamboo grove. Their works expose and satirize the hypocrisy of the Sima court. Once Liu Ling (one of this group), after taking poison, took off his clothes and stayed naked in his house. When someone saw this and mocked him, Liu Ling said, “I take heaven and earth for a house, and a house for trousers; why do you all run into my trousers?”
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| The Daoist practice of “undressing” is a kind of retreat, in which “nakedness” frees the body from the constraints imposed by clothes, and at the same time frees the mind from the shackles of ritualistic notions, moral shame, gender differences, and so on. Daoism’s “wu-wei” is the “undressing” of power, and to a certain extent, it is proposed as a cure for the political symptoms of heavy labor and red tape.
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| Also, the seven also have a lot of rumours about “same-sex love”, which I don’t know if they are true or not. But in ancient China, these things - Daoism/hedonism/taking poisons/creativity/same-sex sexual behaviour - were always inseparable. The relationship between queerness and toxicity reminds me of the science new “study says pollution makes birds gay” (talked in Elvia Wilk’s “This Compost: Erotics of Rot” (2022)), which apparently raised people’s anxiety about heterosexual reproduction and the possibility of extinction of the bird.
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| We think that toxicity has an intoxicating effect. Maybe these birds are “screwed up” by a polluted environment, but “it’s fun to be screwed up.” What is entertaining and what is toxic is entirely a matter of cultural attitudes. A state of intoxication can be dangerous, but it can also be enjoyable. Homosexual birds seem to lead long and healthy lives and enjoy intimacy with each other. Anne Pollock compares their intoxicated state to what some theorists might call “queer sociality”. We should celebrate the fact that under the effects of toxicity, birds still have a sexual and social life, if not a reproductive one (Wilk, 2022).
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| We inhabit a polluted environment, encountering extensive plastic exposure and considering genetically modified crops as unnatural. Our bodies and ecosystems are porous, making it difficult to perceive any unaltered, uncontaminated state of ‘nature’ in people and entities (Wilk, 2022). As humans, we dread toxicity due to its potential for harm and negative impact. However, if we resist these effects, how do we define ourselves once affected? If I am altered by toxicity, how can I distance myself from it?
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| Almost all elements in the animation are directly/indirectly related to toxicity. The main notions related to it in this work are “drag” and Jack Halberstam’s “An Aesthetic of Collapse”, both of which challenge the body-toxin relationship. And I used colored smoke, silver tinsels, urine as toxic material. The mug shot in the beginning is a direct reference to criminal toxicity.
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| In ''Animacies'', Mel Y. Chen (2012) discusses toxicity. The notion of immunity stands in contrast to toxicity. Protection against toxicity, although well-intentioned, often leads to the idealization of exclusion and isolation. In “Following Mercurial Affect”, Mel Y. Chen said: “In a schema of toxicity, likely subjects are equally likely objects, despite their location in very different parts of the animacy hierarchy. In a scene of human intoxication, for toxins and their human hosts, the animacy criteria of lifeliness, subjectivity, and humanness (where the human wins) come up short against mobility and sentience (where the toxin wins). And this is before even considering what occurs in that moment and the ensuing ‘life’ of intoxication; toxicity becomes us, we become the toxin.”
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| Here, Mel no longer endorses the discourse of victimhood, which serves the protective fantasy of patriarchy. The protective fantasy of patriarchy dominates our imagination of what might happen, demanding a clear, separable understanding of right and wrong, violence and safety. Under the influence of toxicity, they became emotionally unstable, irritable, and volatile. There is indeed something “unworlding” that occurs in the cultural production of “toxicity”. The established order of the “normal” world is lost, or one might say, collapsed. Here we can see the relationship between toxicity and collapse.
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| Drag as the main method of this animation, is mainly influenced by Pauline Boudry, Renate Lorenz, and the theorist Antke Engel. Engel and Lorenz explore the intertwining of toxicity and queer socialities, presenting the body’s transformation into toxicity as a means to challenge normative distinctions and embrace the complex origins of queer identities. They introduce “drag” as a practice that merges bodies and toxicity, blurring boundaries and crafting new embodiments that defy conventional categories, thus offering a potent critique of gender, sexuality, and race norms.
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| == ''U for Urine 尿液'' ==
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| Imagine being pissed on,
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| my mouth opened like a lamb’s.
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| erase the art and philosophy, on my face;
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| all the archives will bleed.
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| Levitating,
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| humiliated, submerged,
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| lost. There was no time;
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| time collapsing within itself.
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| In the salty and wet oblivion,
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| drowning me,
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| it was 15 years old,
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| and I was led to slaughter.
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| Our high faggot voices,
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| a continuous orgasm,
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| translucent oily bubbles,
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| all the stimulation.
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| Liquidation,
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| after the liquid jet,
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| declare bankruptcy,
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| give up everything.
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| == ''W for Wu-wei 無為'' ==
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| I do nothing, and people transform themselves. I practice tranquility, and people align themselves. I have no involvement in affairs, and people prosper themselves. I have no desires, and people simplify themselves.
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| -- ''Dao De Jing'', 老子
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| I lived in the centre of Daoism in China, and my families were heavily influenced by Daoist ideas. These things left their mark on me from a young age. For my bachelor thesis, I wrote about the topics of Daoism, East Asian eco-art, and the porous body, and explored the ways in which East Asian eco-art is quite different from Western (often activist) eco-art. Wu-wei is a very important notion in Daoism. But I must say that my level of ancient Chinese is terrible, and most of the Daoist texts I read were limited. I’m not a very good researcher of Daoism, compared to my grandparents. I want to give one example of how my works echo the notion of wu-wei. This is not to say that I deliberately apply this notion when creating, but more to provide a new perspective to see if there can be some dialogues to decolonize knowledge.
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| (Again, this was a decision made before writing the thesis and was not adopted in the final work, but all the other sections have something closely related to this concept, such as the still point.) I adopt the strategy in Pauline Oliveros’ “Some Sound Observation,” collecting all the noise in Chinatown to create an accidental archive. This randomness is similar to the mode of praxis for the Daoist, where the artist exists as a catalyst rather than a worker, avoiding the artist’s subjectivity of individual self. The artist emphasizes the specific context of consciousness and an open and accepting attitude towards noise. This specific context is a complex of subjective agencies. The artist catalyzes the dormant (sound) archive, instead of creating the archive as a “worker”, different from the worldview of “creatio ex nihilo” (Miller, 2020). The artist and the environment are not simply “either/or,” but in a process of “transaction” as emphasized by wu-wei. Wu-wei is not simply non-action; in the collection of sound, a transformation indeed occurring -- a generation of a collapse aesthetic -- the collision and play between agencies inherent in noise itself.
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| == ''Y for Yellow Peril 黃禍'' ==
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| I chose the word “yellow” for my thesis title, inspired by Ruby Hamad’s provocative book White Tears/Brown Scars. This choice resonates with one of the major themes of my work: Yellow Peril.
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| Instead of using “Asian queer,” I prefer “yellow queer” to delve into the distinct experiences of Asian queers within Western culture. This terminology is inspired by Anne Anlin Cheng’s concept of “yellow women.” Cheng critiques the lack of attention given to the yellow woman in feminist theory, arguing that mainstream feminist discourses (French, white, black feminism) have overlooked this figure. She uses “yellow woman” to highlight the queasiness and unavoidable racialization that terms like “Asian woman” or “Asian American woman” might not fully capture (Cheng, 2021).
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| The research on gay Asian men may not necessarily use terms like “Yellow Peril” and “Fu Manchu”, but may instead use more direct terminology for gay men, such as “rice queen”. Rice queen refers to a homosexual non-Asian man who is primarily attracted to Asian men, regardless of their age. This term only points out the fetishization of Asians by other ethnicities, which feels too “moderate” to me. In my experience, these “rice queens” have kicked me out of their homes after engaging in sexual activities with me for various reasons. Rice queens are not interested in our real culture and life, but rather hold deep-seated hatred. This is why I use “Yellow Peril”.
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| The fear of people from East Asia is rooted in Yellow Peril propaganda, which is a manifestation of Sinophobia. The proliferation of this phenomenon increased in the early 20th century through depictions of figures such as Fu Manchu, who is portrayed as a villain with a disdain for Caucasians. The repercussions of this stereotype continue to be evident today, with the COVID-19 pandemic catalyzing the surge in Anti-Asian racism (Weng, 2020). Based on my own experience, racist attitudes are intensified in dating and social networking applications such as Grindr and Tinder. The Yellow Peril has infiltrated the queer community, disguised as a preference -- these apps have become an echo chamber of racism. Especially towards Chinese gays -- white queers favor “Korean and Japanese people”, and you can see in many Grindr profiles that their interests are “Korean and Japanese culture.” Alice Sparkly Kat (2020) has raised and analyzed in “WHY WHITE QUEERS LOVE ‘JAPAN’” that white queer individuals’ fondness for Japan is solely the fabricated pseudo-Japan in anime, which I will not delve into here.
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| In STD testing for gay men in the Netherlands, participants are asked if they have had sexual relations in the past six months with individuals from Suriname, the Dutch Antilles/Aruba, Morocco, Africa, Turkey, South or Central America, Eastern Europe, or Asia. Clearly, in the healthcare industry, Asians are still seen as potential virus carriers. Moreover, such questions reinforce the exclusion of gay men from these regions by white gay men in the Netherlands.
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| In 1900, when the plague broke out in San Francisco’s Chinatown, the disease was immediately linked to the “moral decay” of the Chinese community. The already deteriorating Chinatown became synonymous with plague, evil, and death. Plagues occurring in Chinatown could diagnose the pathology of a place. Although the presence of bacteria was detected, subsequent investigations suggest that the origins of this plague might have been a concocted story. In the portrayal of Chinatown in the West, apart from physical and cultural impurity, Chinatown, mixed with visual elements from other Asian cultures such as Japan, has been repeatedly depicted as an alienating place, marking it as a racialized dystopian future. The “Yellow Peril” is manifested here as a projection of future anxieties (Weng, 2020).
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| In the work, I interrogate and re-seize the animality and monstrosity of Asian representations in Yellow Peril, and create a tall, skinny, high-shouldered, feline-looking octopus with a mouse tail and cat-green eyes, symbolizing a unique blend of rat, octopus, feline.
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| == ''Z for Zero 零點'' ==
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| the last number invented
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| here I am
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| just an anus
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| an insertion port
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| the invisible garden
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| the corner of our cruising
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| the unlit room in the club
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| becoming flowers and wild boars
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| making love with Arabs
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| May ‘68 taught us to read the writings on the walls
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| there is no wine, candles, or roses
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| but everything flourishing in the darkness
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| the negative space of being
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| I am the moon, shadow, passivity.
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| I am female, African, Middle Eastern, underclass, terrorist.
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| Put a pencil in the hand of a masturbator,
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| couples are the greatest violence and empire.
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| I refuse,
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| -- the silent tango comes to an abrupt halt.
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| happy (not) together
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| between being and (non) being
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| (non) definition
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| (non) future
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| (non) ontological position
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| between zero and one
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| before fiat lux
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| before language
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| before senses
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| before the before
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| before after fiat lux
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| before after that before
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| no vagina
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| no penis
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| hole
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| whole
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| == ''‘Trans* Space’: Manual For Use ‘跨*空間’: 使用手冊'' ==
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| Toxicity reshapes the physical world, affects emotional perception, and transforms relationships and kinship dynamics, particularly in terms of gender and reproduction. It also influences the movement and categorization of groups over time. The profound impact of toxic substances extends from the individual to broader issues of chemical sex management across communities and groups (Chen, 2023). This movement of crossing/transing is what interests me.
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| === '''''On Translation 論翻譯''''' ===
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| In late 2022, I started reconnecting with the Mandarin-speaking world to build connections. During 2023, I translated articles from several books, which make up the bulk of my thesis citations. Despite the challenging nature of these topics and their niche appeal in China, I shared them on WeChat. Although they didn’t attract many readers, I enjoyed translating them and valued the experience.
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| Readers who can understand Chinese may find that the Chinese and English in this article are not exactly equivalent, and in fact some of these words are in an untranslatable state. For example, the words “陽痿” and “竅” are words that have been used in ancient China, and their original meanings are inherently impossible to arrive at. Others, such as “homonationalism” and “homonormativity”, are difficult to find Chinese equivalents. This is the state I often encounter in the process of “translation”.
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| Translation, from Latin “translationem” (nominative translatio) “a carrying across, removal, transporting; transfer of meaning.” Trans* - something is not quite here, not quite there; something that is in between. Asterisk reinforces the indeterminacy. I wondered what kind of transformation can happen when I carry an English word or a Chinese word in my embodied movement to another language. I will not be held accountable for the authenticity or reality of any of the commitments of language in this process. The notion of study is fluid and changing in the practice of my life; I am in a constant process of “receiving” and the “différance” of these notions is constantly taking place.
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| Trinh T. Minh-ha’s “Surname Viet Given Name Nam” explores the instability of meaning and identity through the reenactment of Mai Thu Van’s “Vietnam: un peuple, des voix” by non-professionals, using translation to question stable meanings and the role of language in shaping perception. It underscores the limitations of language in conveying truth, suggesting that being an insider does not grant ultimate authority over cultural narratives (Minh-ha, 2023b).
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| === '''''(Mis)Translation as A Tool of Betrayal and Resistance''''' '''''(誤)譯作为背叛和抵抗工具''''' ===
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| In the later stages of creating this work, I found that I had confused “cripping” and “crip walk.” To someone unfamiliar with the crip walk, these two terms can be very confusing. However, due to various reasons, I am unable to modify my work. I feel guilty about this cultural misunderstanding, neglect of context, and the potential impact on discourse regarding disability. But what is the significance of mistranslation itself? '
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| The deliberate use of incorrect translations by Minh-ha in “Surname Viet Given Name Nam” serves multiple purposes. It exposes the subjectivity and power dynamics inherent in language translation, challenging the notion of objective truth in documentaries and the Western expectation of unmediated access to other cultures. This act of “betrayal” not only questions linguistic accuracy but also cultural representation, resisting Western-centric views and the oversimplification of non-Western cultures. Furthermore, it acts as a form of resistance by encouraging viewers to critically reflect on their assumptions, thereby challenging entrenched power structures and cultural dominance (Duong, 2009).
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| Also, the misuse arises from historical omissions, like voguing’s roots in Black culture, which doesn’t directly tie to Asian identity. The video aims, echoing Saidiya Hartman, to visualize the unverifiable and address the fleeting visibility of precarious lives. Inspired by Lisa Lowe, it seeks to highlight the “absent, entangled, and unavailable” through the enigmatic qualities of certain elements (like porcelain) and movements, reinterpreting these materials, movements, and histories anew.
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| === '''''Trans-thesis and Reflexivity 跨論文與反身性''''' ===
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| What can a “trans-thesis” look like? How to rethink the ethics of knowledge in an intellectual space? Not only receiving from the outside in but also exploring the inside out, blurring the boundaries between observer and observed, external reality and internal experience. If I no longer speak as a “knower”, I will speak with many gaps, holes, and question marks. I don’t want to be really sure about the meaning of each notion. Gaps, holes, and interstices can be manifestations of confusion and also show how I engage with these notions. They can also open up new possibilities if we don’t try to fill them with the known and familiar.
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| How can a reader use this alphabet? I would like to end with the reflexivity mentioned by Trinh T. Minh-ha. Reflexivity is not just about me, when I try to project something onto myself it comes right back to me. Reflexivity can also happen between one notion and another in the thesis, or between a notion and a story in another notion, which suddenly reflect each other, or where one notion comments on another story, and one story comments on another notion. This reflexivity again breaks linearity, and in this reflexivity, every time I show and tell something - it shows me, or I show something about myself.
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| Of course, it’s also a mirror, or a pair of eyes in a film, looking out at you.
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| == ''Bibliography 書目'' ==
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| 1. Ahmed, S. (2023) ''The Feminist Killjoy Handbook''. London, UK: Penguin Books Ltd.
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| 2. Antwi, P. (2024) ''On Cuddling: Loved to Death in the Racial Embrace''. London, UK: Pluto Press.
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| 3. Bakhtine, M.M. and Iswolsky, H. (1984) ''Rabelais and His World''. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
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| 4. Bennett, J. (2010) ''Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things''. Durham, NC, USA: Duke University Press.
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| 14. Dillon, G. and Marques, P.N. (2021) ''Taking the Fiction out of Science Fiction: A Conversation about Indigenous Futurisms''. Journal #120. Available at: <nowiki>https://www.e-flux.com/journal/120/417043/taking-the-fiction-out-of-science-fiction-a-conversation-about-indigenous-futurisms/</nowiki> (Accessed: 08 January 2024).
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| 15. Edelman, L. (2023) ''Bad Education: Why Queer Theory Teaches Us Nothing''. Durham, USA: Duke University Press.
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