China's International Relations and Harmonious World: Time, Space and Multiplicity in World Politics by Astrid H M Nordin

Author:Astrid H M Nordin [Nordin, Astrid H M]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781317370031
Google: 4AURDAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 30082068
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-04-28T00:00:00+00:00

The rivercrab metastasizes in similar ways into numerous constellations – some very close copies, some with more creative distance. The rivercrab recurrently appears on blogs and can be found in an online dictionary compiled by China Digital Times (Xiao Qiang, 2010; China Digital Space, 2011a), where it appears together with dozens of other characters and expressions that have metastasized from similar homonymic wordplay and in reaction to governmental harmonization. It also appears as a permanent feature on the cap of another Internet meme, the ‘Green Dam Girl’ (lübaniang 绿坝娘). The Green Dam Girl is an anthropomorphism of the ‘Green Dam Youth Escort’ software (lüba huaji huhang 绿坝·花季护航) that was developed under the direction of the Chinese government to filter Internet content on individual computers.32 The Green Dam Girl and rivercrab also appear in merchandise (Xu Yuting, 2009; Gaofudev, 2011; Lotahk, 2011), numerous cartoons (Hecaitou, 2009a; Hexie Farm, 2011) and music videos (Hrehnr 2009a, 2009b; Stchi, 2009; Tutuwan, 2009; DZS manyin, 2010) that typically work through copies of copies, interweaving the themes and symbols discussed throughout this book.

This mixing of online lingo and symbols is reiterated also in art offline For example, Ai Weiwei’s world-famous art has included the Hexie installation, where 3,500 porcelain crabs crawl and spread, as menacing copies of one another. The work is a reference to the party held when the Shanghai studio he was asked to build for the 2010 Expo was demolished (Fuchs, 2014). In 2013, he released a metal music video that depicted his time in prison, with lyrics and imagery reflecting egao culture, including river crabs in a dirty prison toilet (Ai Weiwei, 2013).

With a similar set of references, in a 2011 art exhibition at the Postmaster Gallery in New York, Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung exhibited his mixed media installation, The Travelogue of Dr. Brain Damages (Hung, 2011). The installation was a response to the increasing harmonization of artistic and netizen expression in China, and explored the role of the Internet in facilitating ‘both freedom and suppression’ (Hung, 2011). The Chinese title Naocan youji (脑残游记) is a word-play on Lao Can youji (老残游记), ‘The Travelogue of Lao Can’, a late Qing dynasty novel attacking the injustice and hypocrisy of government officials at the time. The project thus questioned whether the Internet in China is an effective tool for social change, through remixing Chinese netizens’ meme languages with Western icons.

Figure 4.5 ‘Ping, ping, no pong’.

(source: Kenneth Tin-King Hung)

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