Qian's Inspiration Bank

Also interestingly, Abramović’s art is in the thin delicate layer in-between reality and performance. – So are everyone’s social beings (online or offline). I found such “heightened consciousness” or “the intensification of life” (Dewey,1934) best illustrated by Abramović and Ulay’s hopelessly romantic breakup, before which they made art symbiotically for twelve nomadic years.

As every relationship comes to an end, ours went too… We walked the Great Wall of China to say goodbye. I started at the Yellow Sea, and he started from the Gobi Desert. We walked, each of us, three months, two and a half thousand kilometers. It was the mountains; it was ruins; It was going through the 12 Chinese provinces, it was before China was open in ‘87; it was difficult. And we succeeded to meet in the middle to say goodbye. And then our relationship stopped.

Since his early works in NYU ITP, Rozin made a series of object mirrors (this one is my personal favorite). These responsive and submissive installations can always easily put a smile on my face.

An exhibit of Jill Magid’s also displays a similar human-artificial-agent relation, yet through a much more critical lens. She sets up a bedroom-size space, with walls all displaying endless crowds slowly and mindlessly flocking to you. Visitors of that exhibit say: After a while in that room, I feel like god.