#lecture 8

http://www.pixyliao.com/experimental-relationship

Experimental Relationship, by Pixy Liao, 2007 - ongoing.

Pixy Liao as a Chinese female artist, challenges the tradition in Asian dating culture with this experimental photo series, questioning gender role, sexual traits, female embodiment and empowerment in the society.

As a Asian female, I have experienced living in both Taiwan and Australia, staying in a Chinese background household, even though my mother is very open minded with my traits and personality, but sometimes it is unavoidably people around trying to teach me about  the things I “needed” to follow to be / performed as a “mature female” (or even mature adult). 

We grew up and unrecognisably slowly shaped to satisfy male gaze, to fulfil gender roles and stereotypes given, following rules, being modified and objectified just because we were born in a female body. 

This mindset comes across dating and marriage scenarios, Asian people suggest dating people at least the same age or older not only because they may be mentally mature, but most of the time they expect to be more “reliable or financially stable”, so they can take care of the female in the relationship. That's the reason Pixy wrote under the website, her friend said ‘To choose a boyfriend the way a man would choose a girlfriend’.

We should try to break the gender role, not only for the female but also making up spaces for any gender which suffers due to the structure of patriarchal society.

“I love the sun and enjoy each sunset knowing the sun will return. The Sun’s Rehearsal, with its pristine monumental sunset imagery transformed into a peeling ruin over the course of the exhibition, is an encounter with a future loss, one which the sun stages daily, as if making ready for the very last time it will ever set. The curtained hollow is a stark reminder of and an anticipatory memorial to the moment of the final fatal sunset, beyond which there will be no human recollection of its beauty. Hynoptic and cyclical, dancer Alice Cummins’ performance directly engages the auratic installation of the sinking sun to ask urgent questions about the life of an ever-warming planet and the life of an aging body.” — Neha Choksi _______________________________

Ice Boat __________________

In Stranger Visions I collected hairs, chewed up gum, and cigarette butts from the streets, public bathrooms and waiting rooms of New York City. I extracted DNA from them and analyzed it to computationally generate 3d printed life size full color portraits representing what those individuals might look like, based on genomic research. Working with the traces strangers unwittingly left behind, the project was meant to call attention to the developing technology of forensic DNA phenotyping, the potential for a culture of biological surveillance, and the impulse towards genetic determinism.

The forecast of Stranger Visions came true. Just 2 years later Parabon NanoLabs launched a service they called DNA "snapshot" to police around the US. For more examples see Identitas and read about their collaboration with the Toronto police.

Since this time I have devoted critical efforts to discussing the limitations and bias in phenotyping technology, which I (and many scientists) do not consider accurate or impartial enough for use in criminal investigations. For a discussion of my concern that this may become a new form of racial profiling see my article "Sci-fi Crime Drama with a Strong Black Lead" in the New Inquiry magazine.