Tsai, I-Chieh

The ongoing project “小埃💞Iris” critically engages with gender issues embedded within patriarchal and capitalist structures in Sinophone societies. Employing methodologies such as covert participant observation and unstructured interviews, it delves into the loneliness economy and its construction, endeavoring to delineate the contours of gender role dynamics therein, and delicate in depicting collective female imagery within this predominantly heterosexual male-centered industry.

Grounded in field research, the project outcomes encompass a diverse range of mediums. These include audio-based podcast programs titled “小埃💞Iris and Shes📞”, video installations bearing the same title “小埃💞Iris”, audio performance “小埃💞Iris Live: Join me for a Shower”, NFT series, as well as drawings and sculptures.

The title “小埃💞Iris” refers to a dating app handle based in Taiwan and targeted to the Chinese-speaking demographic. This voice-based platform functions within the framework of the loneliness economy. “小埃💞Iris” embodies the persona of a female worker within this industry. Through a year-long virtual performance, she seamlessly integrates with the complexities of gender role play, engaging in activities such as providing paid telephonic companionship, hosting live audio streaming, and staging in virtual forums through text, voice posts, and tempting photographs.

In the video-installation "小埃💞Iris", Iris tells her own loneliness, analyzes her social position as a woman and within the business in the loneliness economy.

In the podcast program, Iris interviews female workers and customers in the loneliness industry in a phone call format. The first season "小埃💞Iris and Shes📞: Get to Know Hers” is aimed to depict the female imagery in the industry. The second season "小埃💞Iris and Shes📞: Join Me on My Sofa🛋️" serves as a discussion panel for important topics related to the loneliness economy.

Sound performance “小埃💞Iris Live: Join Me for a Shower" offers insight into how the loneliness economy operates in relation to gender construction. It highlights the commodification of intimacy and the ways in which gendered dynamics influence engagement within such economies.

小埃💞Iris and Shes📞 2024-ongoing, Audio-based podcast series, 2 Seasons of 6-8 episodes

Host: 小埃💞Iris Guest: 一隻小狐狸🦊(Foxi), 米菲婭.Kemythia🌹 ,安安🎀(Ann),奶油精靈 🧚(Buttercup), 小螞蟻🐜很愛甜❤️(Ant), 22♡, and more… Producer: Tsai, I-Chieh Post-production: Tsai, I-Chieh Co-producer: Julian K. Intro music design: Shun Nakamura Vocal: Miche Moreno Cover design/ Animation: Miki Nigo

In the ongoing podcast series “小埃💞Iris and Shes📞”, the host 小埃💞Iris, a former voice worker in the loneliness economy, interviews the female voice workers and consumers in the industry. The thoughts and stories of “hers” are shared and disseminated, aiming to explore and amplify the voices of women in this predominantly heterosexual, male-centered industry. The project seeks to delineate collective female imagery and narratives.

In the first season “小埃💞Iris and Shes📞: Get to Know Hers”, beyond the introductory Episode 0—where Iris outlines the framework of the podcast and shares her own story as a female voice worker in the loneliness industry— each subsequent episode features conversations with a guest, conducted in the format of voice calls. These interactions replicate the intimate, one-on-one experiences typical of a voice companion.

Screenshot of Podcast “小埃💞Iris and Shes📞" on Spotify platform

All episodes are recorded in Mandarin Chinese and are available on podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify, via the following link:

https://tr.ee/73nWGmc3Y4

Season 1, Episode 0 “Prologue” and Episode 1 “📞/一隻小狐狸🦊(Foxi) “ are also available with English subtitles via following links: https://vimeo.com/946669596 https://vimeo.com/946671699 (DM for Password)

In Episode 1 of the podcast, titled “📞/一隻小狐狸🦊(Foxi) “, Foxi shares her journey in both live audio and video streaming, offering a rare glimpse into how the industry capitalizes on the emotions of love-struck fans: She reveals a seldom-discussed secret of the live streaming world: the use of outsourced operation services. Reflecting on her early career, Foxi shares the challenges of navigating the emotional distance between herself and her audience.

In the second episode, titled “ 📞/米菲婭 . Kemythia🌹”, the soulful singer and voice streamer Kemythia emphasizes that the success of a live stream is not merely a solo effort, but rather the result of building a close-knit community. She also shares the special bond she has formed with her audience, highlighting the joy of connecting and growing together through their daily interactions.

However, the “loneliness economy” is an industry centred on human relationships. Besides its beautiful aspects, she also highlights a commonly overlooked issue faced by frontline streamers who provide companionship services: “emotional labour (overload),” sharing her personal experiences…

In the 3rd episode “ 📞/安安🎀(Ann) “, Ann generously shares her insights and strategies of how she thrives in the field of loneliness industry and has consistently achieved remarkable success...

In the fourth episode, "📞/奶油精靈🧚(Buttercup)," Buttercup not only shares her encounters with the loneliness industry but also her experiences as a companion provider in the economy of 'fulfilling human social and emotional needs.': Beyond her acts of giving, she has gained numerous interpersonal experiences—both negative and positive—ranging from brief romances to deep and precious friendships...

As in season 1, which primarily serves as a “get to know hers” round. Season 2, titled “小埃💞Iris and Shes📞: Join Me on My Sofa🛋️“, features several panel discussions where guests engage in in-depth conversations on specific topics related to the loneliness economy and its broader impact. Some examples of these topics include:

小埃💞Iris Live: Join Me for a Shower

2023, Sound performance, approximately 20 minutes

Performer: 小埃💞Iris Post editing: Tsai, I-Chieh Sound design: Kathleen Chen

https://vimeo.com/889670561 5 Minutes extraction of the documentation

In the loneliness industry, “voice companion” 小埃💞Iris not only provides a charged telephonic company service to lonely heterosexual men but also hosts regular live audio streams featuring her showering routines. These streams feature the rustling sounds of garments being shed and the splashing of liquid against the skin… The underlying motivation behind 小埃💞Iris’s innovative concept of the streaming content is to engage the audience’s imagination through the portrayal of a nude female form, thereby fostering increased monetary contributions and paid interactions.

This sound performance offers insight into how the loneliness economy operates in relation to gender construction, it highlights the commodification of intimacy and the ways in which gendered dynamics influence engagement within such economies.

Lichtung

2023, real-time video installation with sound, size variable

Technical support: Hsun Hsiang Hsu Special thanks to the curator: Claudia Rasztar

Video Documentation: Konstanze Spät Post Editing: Tsai, I-Chieh Thank you: Julian Kretschel

In a time when technology is advancing rapidly, and the ecological crisis is on the brink of a tipping point, nature’s resources are still greedily exploited by humans. Nature is not perceived as a living entity but rather as a “passive” object that can be endlessly dominated.

Humans have perfected the art of instrumentalizing nature: they control it through technologies in agriculture, forestry, fishing, and livestock breeding, transforming it into an efficient food producer without concern for the consequences. Many elements of nature are deconstructed to symbolize the connection of people with nature in their daily lives. For instance, shapes of plants are used as plastic props for interior spaces to create a visual illusion for those living far from nature, aiming to relax or heal them. The high-frequency sounds of forests, rain, or waves are employed to soothe tense nerves or induce sleep. We yearn for a connection with nature even as we simultaneously destroy it.

Can humans satisfy their need for harmony with living nature through instrumentalized nature experiences, even though the future of the environment looks bleak? Is this starting point for the question appropriate, or is it too anthropocentric?

“Lichtung” is an immersive real-time projection installation. It is a place for reflection - a place of the “unconcealment” of the self (Heidegger). Using the concept of “Fractal,” a forest is visually simulated in the exhibition space as if it were growing in a synchronistic parallel world. The viewers perceive the spirit of the forest from the play of light projected onto the walls. The trees themselves are not visible, only their light and shadows, and the sounds of the forest can be heard. The forest becomes “the metaphor of nature.” “Lichtung” provides viewers with an opportunity to reflect, contemplate, and undergo a healing process through their senses of sight and hearing.

The organic form of the light and shadow patterns resembles intricate human blood vessels or neural networks, serving as a metaphor for the inseparable relationship between humans and nature.

Installation view from the exhibition "Into the Woods" at Kulturstiftung Schloss Agathenburg, DE, 2023

I Think of You

Untitled '22 #1

Untitled '22 #2

小埃💞Iris

2021-2022, 2 channal video installation, 15′02″, Size variable

Link of the video: https://vimeo.com/663472297 (PM for the password)

Cinematographer: Tsai, I-Chieh / Leon Sahiti Sound Design: Nakamura Shun Voice Actress: Cheng, Wei-Husan / Chen, Qianxun / Husang, Yuxiao / Tsai, I-Chieh / Ann Wei / Yang, Yi-Jie Violinist: Lina Weber Actress: Tsai, I-Chieh Special Thanks to: Julika Rudelius / 小埃💞Iris

When two souls fall in love, there is this moment: they lie next to each other in the dark and do not even want to stop telling things. The voice of the other, who tells his/her life, becomes central, while the lost sleep becomes dispensable. In a cold world that declares everything to be a commodity, people can also buy this moment. Those who lie sleepless in bed can use the service to get a telephonic companion through nocturnal loneliness.

The eponymous protagonist in Tsai, I–Chieh’s video installation talks about this service in a delicate drastic manner. The hell is always the men. It is men who demand their right to be accompanied; it is men who buy themselves all ears. The women remain vocal avatars, tank for needs of the men. Iris tells her own loneliness in the forest of voices, analyzes her social position as a woman and the business of loneliness. While we listen to her, she draws steadfastly the picture of the men in their banal obnoxiousness. It is an act of quiet but thorough revenge. The men are jerks, for whose loneliness we could show compassion, who believe they can buy the intimacy of new love.

Text: Hannah Wolf, 2021

(pic. 1-4) Installation view at Städtische Galerie Bremen, 2022.  Photo Credit: Franziska von den Driesch

(pic. 5) Installation view at GAK, Bremen, 2021 Photo Credit: Jiwoo Park

The project “Mit Haut und Haaren (With Skin and Hair)" discusses bodies using my own body as the media. In this project, my body is deconstructed and reorganized. New images and aspects are made out of it. It is a fragmentation, an exploration of my self-portrait, and a representation, visualization of femininity. The exhibited formats are digital painting, model, video, and photographs. The works deals with the body, or rather the appearance, because it influences a lot on how others treat one person, which causes first impressions, prejudice, stereotype, and even racism. Besides, it is always a big issue for women living in a patriarchal society. We constantly alienate our bodies.

In digital paintings, the concept of "texture" from the 3D modeling is used to disassemble my 3-dimensional appearance and flatly extract it on 2-dimensional canvases. Thereby, the planarity of the painting is further discussed. In addition, the poses in the self-portraits are appropriated from two paintings, "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" by Pablo Ruiz Picasso, and "Nu descendant un escalier n° 2" by Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp. It is a conversation with the art history about how to represent reality on 2-dimensional Surfaces, and how to express the speed- that is to say -the time on a still surface. More important is that, to twist the female body in art from being an object to being a subject; from being gazed at or observed by male masters, to self-representation, self-performing from women ourselves.

During the process of scanning using photogrammetry, small amounts of movement were compressed into the final model, implanting imperfect, blurry, and failed details into the cold digital world. The Aura shows in the video “An Examination of The Self-Portrait, Descending A Staircase” just like it shows in those long exposure photos at the time photography was invented.

An Examination of the Self-Portrait, Descending a Staircase

2020 / 1 channel video / 05:36 mins

Link: https://vimeo.com/394700943

No Title ‘20 #2

2020 / Digital print / 40x60 cm

No Title ‘20 #3

2020 / Digital print / 40x60 cm

No Title ‘20 #4

2020 / Digital print / 40x60 cm

No Title ‘20 #5

2020 / Digital print / 54.93x40 cm

No Title ‘20 #1

2020 / Digital print / 40x67.3 cm

No Title ‘20 #6

Self-Portrait, Descending a Staircase #1  

2020 / Digital print / 144.53x144.53 cm

Self-Portrait, Descending a Staircase #2

2020 / Digital print / 144.53x144.53 cm

Self-Portrait, Descending a Staircase #3

2020 / Digital print / 144.53x144.53 cm

Self-Portrait, after Descending a Staircase

2020 / Digital print / 144.53x144.53 cm

Self-Portrait, Red Scarf Held up High 

2020 / Digital print / 144.53x144.53 cm

Self-Portrait, Cloth Hanging on the Left Thigh

2020 / Digital print / 144.53x144.53 cm

Self-Portrait, Cloth Knotted at the Waist

2020 / Digital print / 144.53x144.53 cm

Self-Portrait, Red Cloth Draped around the Body

2020 / Digital print / 144.53x144.53 cm

Self-Portrait, Thinking next to a Still Life

Defence

2019 / 3D model, Touch screen/ Size variable

Defence @ meta/lawn

Reflections on the ) ) )

2019 / Delegated Performance / 00:10:00  

Percussionist: Liu, Ching-Wen

Special thanks to: Raphael Sbrzesny

Photographer: Tsai, I-Chieh

(2 Minuten Beispiel)

Match Me if You Can

2018 / Video-Installation / 3:53:34

In the debut novel “Whatever” by the writer Michel Houellebecq, the unnamed main character sensitively and precisely registers “the progressive extinction of human relationships.” The Main storyline of the novel revolves around a terror of sexuality in capitalism, in which sex acts alongside money as a system of differentiation, dividing people into winners and losers. Thus, as early as 1994, Houellebecq anticipated the development of social Darwinism, which reaches its peak two decades later with dating apps like Tinder.  

  The search for love and sex takes place in social media through self-staging in the form of profiles. Starting from self-portrait/image, to an optional description text, as well as information on gender, age, and sexual orientation are thrown out like bait into the net. The work “Match me if you can” abandons the typical criteria such as photo, age, and name, but rather to focus on the descriptive texts, which changes in a time interval of 20 seconds. Displaying only texts of the users, the work reflects the contemporary canon of written self-staging and raises questions about individuality and self-marketing. 

  Text/ Jenny Kropp from Fort Collective, Berlin, 2018 

(pic.1, 2) Installation view at Hochschultage, HfK Bremen, 2019

The Tides

2018 / Graffiti / 3m x 10m / spray paint, stencil

The sea is a constant fascination to me, especially the tides. Compared to the visible Phallus-Center, the sea is shallow, broad, and wide. She is invisible. The tides are endless waves after endless waves, like a feminine orgasm. 

  The colors were selected and inspired by the Werder river, which made this work on the embankment relevant to its space. The work also uses stencils to depict the relationship between yin and yang. The shapes of the flood were changed by spraying from Yang (masculine) to Ying (feminine).