Shanzhai Style in Artistic Practice:
Mythologising Creativity & Ownership in the Global Rise of China
Chun Yin Rainbow Chan
Thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts
UNSW Art and Design May 2020 Thesis/Dissertation Sheet
Surname/Family Name : CHAN
Given Name/s : Chun Yin Rainbow
Abbreviation for degree as give in the University calendar : MFA
Faculty : UNSW Art & Design
School : School of Art
Shanzhai Style in Artistic Practice: Mythologising Creativity and Ownership in Thesis Title : the Global Rise of China
Abstract 350 words maximum: (PLEASE TYPE)
This practice-led research thesis focuses on the discourse surrounding shanzhai (Chinese counterfeiting of Western brands) through a written dissertation and a large-scale multimedia installation titled Gloss. Shanzhai has been perceived by some as a symbol of resistance through its associations with grassroots innovation and irreverence for copyright. Others claim that there are limitations to the subversive potential of shanzhai in the context of contemporary Chinese neoliberalism, which is complicated by a strong state-market alliance. This thesis considers these contradictory narratives of shanzhai, exploring the central question: How can artistic practice employ shanzhai strategies to critically examine myths about creativity and ownership in the global rise of China? The project’s theoretical framework draws on the writings of Laikwan Pang, Aihwa Ong and Jane Park, as well as the creative projects of Shanzhai Biennial, Stephanie Syjuco and Fatima Al Qadiri. Building on these rich conversations in diaspora studies and artistic practice, Gloss explores the productive potential of piracy, mimicry and mistranslation, which are conceptualised in this project as strategies of “shanzhai style.” Highlighting intimacies between representation, technology and power, this thesis aims to raise important questions about today’s creative economies – how they intersect with race, class, gender and nation, and their potential to morph and transmute along the rogue flows of capital.
Declaration relating to disposition of project thesis/dissertation
I hereby grant to the University of New South Wales or its agents a non-exclusive licence to archive and to make available (including to members of the public) my thesis or dissertation in whole or in part in the University libraries in all forms of media, now or here after known. I acknowledge that I retain all intellectual property rights which subsist in my thesis or dissertation, such as copyright and patent rights, subject to applicable law. I also retain the right to use all or part of my thesis or dissertation in future works (such as articles or books).
22 May 2020 ……………………………………………………… ……….……………………...…….… Signature Date
The University recognises that there may be exceptional circumstances requiring restrictions on copying or conditions on use. Requests for restriction for a period of up to 2 years can be made when submitting the final copies of your thesis to the UNSW Library. Requests for a longer period of restriction may be considered in exceptional circumstances and require the approval of the Dean of Graduate Research. ORIGINALITY STATEMENT
‘I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and to the best of my knowledge it contains no materials previously published or written by another person, or substantial proportions of material which have been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at UNSW or any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in the thesis. Any contribution made to the research by others, with whom I have worked at UNSW or elsewhere, is explicitly acknowledged in the thesis. I also declare that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the project's design and conception or in style, presentation and linguistic expression is acknowledged.’
Signed ……………………………………………......
Date ……………………………………………...... 22/05/2020
COPYRIGHT STATEMENT
‘I hereby grant the University of New South Wales or its agents a non-exclusive licence to archive and to make available (including to members of the public) my thesis or dissertation in whole or part in the University libraries in all forms of media, now or here after known. I acknowledge that I retain all intellectual property rights which subsist in my thesis or dissertation, such as copyright and patent rights, subject to applicable law. I also retain the right to use all or part of my thesis or dissertation in future works (such as articles or books).’
‘For any substantial portions of copyright material used in this thesis, written permission for use has been obtained, or the copyright material is removed from the final public version of the thesis.’
Signed ……………………………………………......
Date ……………………………………………......
AUTHENTICITY STATEMENT ‘I certify that the Library deposit digital copy is a direct equivalent of the final officially approved version of my thesis.’
Signed ……………………………………………......
Date ……………………………………………......
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ii List of Figures iii
Introduction 1
Chapter Nº 1 : Just Fake It. 10
1.1 Defining Shanzhai 10 1.2 The Global Rise of China 12 1.3 The Construct of Creativity 19
Chapter Nº 2 : Maybe She’s Born With It. Maybe It’s Shanzhai Myth. 24
2.1 Shanzhai Mythology 24 2.2 Defining Shanzhai Style 29
Chapter Nº 3 : Thinking Differently. 35
3.1 Shanzhai Style in Artistic Practice 35 3.2 Piracy 37 3.3 Mimicry 51 3.4 Mistranslation 67
Conclusion 84
Bibliography 88 Appendix 100 Acknowledgements
I would like to express my deepest appreciation to my two supervisors, Dr. Diana Baker Smith and Dr. Astrid Lorange. I could not have completed this project without your extensive knowledge, insightful suggestions and unwavering support. I would also like to acknowledge the guidance of Dr. Rochelle Haley, Dr. Lindsay Kelley and Dr. Yu-Chieh Li who supervised this project at different times.
I am indebted to Josephine Skinner, Megan Monte and the team at Cement Fondu. Your assistance throughout the Gloss exhibition was invaluable. Thanks also to my collaborators Hyun Lee and Craig Stubbs-Race. Your respective skills in photography and graphic design were vital to Chamele’s spectacular shanzhai campaign. I’d like to extend my appreciation to Chamele’s body doubles: Rose Chan, Eugene Choi, Ellie Graham and Marcus Whale.
I must also thank 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art for inviting me on two residencies in China between 2016 and 2018. If I didn’t stumble upon those MEIJIAZE SHOES in that small supermarket in Guizhou, the persona of Chamele would have never been born. Your ongoing support has allowed me to grow immensely as an artist and as a person. I’d also like to recognise the curators, galleries and cultural spaces who gave me an opportunity to experiment with different iterations of Gloss. They include Hera Chan at Tai Kwun, Antonie Angerer and Anna-Viktoria Eschbach at I: project space, Autumn Royal at Disclaimer and the team at Liquid Architecture.
Many thanks to Fatima Al Qadiri who I had the pleasure of meeting in Sydney. Your album Asiatisch catalysed my interest in shanzhai culture and led me on this journey to interrogate the complexities of cultural representation. Your knowledge, practical experience and kindness continue to inspire me.
The completion of my thesis would not have been possible without the love and support of my family and friends. I really cannot express my gratitude enough. Special thanks to my partner, Craig, and my unofficial editor, Frosty the cat, whose help and encouragement cannot be overestimated.
ii List of Figures
Figure 1 9 Photograph from my childhood in Hong Kong (circa 1995).
Figure 2 13 “Nat Nat Shoes” and “Goojje” on Time Magazine.
Figure 3 16 Collage of shanzhai products.
Figure 4 18 “Sunbucks Coffee” signage.
Figure 5 21 “Harry Potter Obama Sonic” backpack and parody T-shirt for sale online.
Figure 6 23 President Obama’s shanzhai endorsement of the “BlockBerry” phone.
Figure 7 26 M.I.A Versus Versace campaign image and a shanzhai Supreme bag.
Figure 8 31 Shanzhai “pearPhone” next to an Apple iPhone.
Figure 9 33 Shanzhai I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! and shanzhai Calvin Kleins underwear.
Figure 10 36 Chamele’s live performance on the opening night of Gloss (2019).
Figure 11 37 Installation view of Chamele No. 5 perfume in Gloss (2019).
Figure 12 39 Audience members capturing Chamele’s in store performance on the opening night of Gloss (2019).
Figure 13 42 Images from Shanzhai Biennial No. 1 (2012) and Shanzhai Biennial No. 2 (2013)
Figure 14 43 Shanzhai variations of Adidas.
iii Figure 15 44 Audience members listening to the jingle No. 5 on the opening night of Gloss (2019).
Figure 16 49 Photograph of shanzhai MEIJIAZE SHOES in a supermarket in Guizhou Province.
Figure 17 50 Merchandising strategies of Chanel stores.
Figure 18 Stephanie Syjuco’s The Crochet Counterfeit Project (2006) and photo collage of 54 Syjuco’s collaborators with their counterfeit bags.
Figure 19 Chamele spraying perfume on an audience member on opening night of Gloss (2019). 58
Figure 20 Chanel No. 5 bottle design and installation view of Couplet/Duilian in Gloss (2019). 61
Figure 21 Chamele’s pout and a still from Shanzhai Biennial No. 2 (2013). 64
Figure 22 Photo of Yang Peiyi and Lin Miaoke. 65
Figure 23 Chamele’s live performance on the opening night of Gloss (2019). 68
Figure 24 Khalid Al Gharaballi and Fatima Al Qadiri in WaWa Complex (2011). 70
Figure 25 Kaia Gerber in Chanel’s Spring 2008 campaign, Brad Pitt in Chanel’s 2012 Inevitable 73 campaign, and digital image of Wallpaper (2019).
Figure 26 Stills of Chamele’s face and body in Display (2019). 76
Figure 27 Still of 3D graphic and Chinese animated text in Display (2019). 77
iv Figure 28 78 Air Jordan and Qiaodan logo comparison.
Figure 29 80 Chamele tags gallery wall on the opening night of Gloss (2019).
Figure 30 81 Backstage on the opening night of Gloss (2019).
Figure 31 83 Photoshoot and interview with Black Magazine.
Figure 32 84 Audience member left a bottle of Chanel next to Chamele No. 5.
Figure 33 85 Chamele standing in front of Wallpaper on the opening night of Gloss (2019).
Figure 34 87 “Bizarre ‘Nickey Nouse' Pajama Pants” for sale online.
v Introduction
I am watching a VCD version of The Titanic which has been filmed on a camcorder from the back of the cinema. I put up with the sound of sneezing audience members—the back of their heads an undulating silhouetted mass— and thank my relatives for sending movies like this to us before their Australian release dates.
I remember the street vendors selling counterfeit handbags, shoes and electronics in Hong Kong. Their goods were haphazardly arranged on tarps, ready to be whisked away when the authorities came. Mum says, “Even if I was rich, I would never waste my money on a Louis Vuitton bag. As soon as someone sees me with it, they will assume it’s A-貨 1 anyway!”
One afternoon, my friend from school comes over to play. She points out that my pyjamas say “Nickey Nouse.” How many times have I worn this and not noticed? We laugh ‘til we cry.
The discourse around the global rise of China has heavily relied on the circulation of myths and stories. Over the last forty years, China has undergone a dramatic transformation from a predominantly agrarian society to a global economic powerhouse.2 China is the world's largest manufacturer of goods and the world’s second largest economy in terms of GPD after the United States.3 Despite the nation’s remarkable modernising efforts, Chinese manufacturing is commonly tied to images of cheap labour, poor quality goods and a flagrant
1 A貨 (pronounced A-For) is Cantonese slang for a top quality fake, meaning “A grade cargo.” It is common knowledge in Hong Kong that if an item is being resold on the grey market, the branded label on the garment will have a deliberate rip or be completely torn off. To reflect this, I have used the strikethrough effect. See HK Magazine, "Hong Kong’s Counterfeit Goods Market Stopped Thriving—What Happened?” South China Morning Post, 3 June, 2016, https:// www.scmp.com/magazines/hk-magazine/article/2037970/hong-kongs-counterfeit-goods-market- stopped-thriving-what (Accessed 12 April, 2020). See Adele R. Meyer, “The Facts on Fakes!” NARTS The Association of Resale Professionals, 2020. https://www.narts.org/i4a/pages/ index.cfm?pageid=3313. (Accessed 10 May, 2020). 2 Alvin Y. So and Yin-Wah Chu. The Global Rise of China (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016), 1. 3 Rhys Jenkins and Alexandre de Freitas Barbosa, "Fear for Manufacturing? China and the Future of Industry in Brazil and Latin America,” The China Quarterly no. 209 (03, 2012): 59. 1 disregard for Intellectual Property Rights (IPR).4 Often depicted as a copycat nation, China is perceived with a mixture of fear and fascination in the global imagination.5 Attempts to explain the prevalence of counterfeiting in China have, at times, lapsed into cultural essentialisms.6 While there are notable differences in the concepts of creativity and originality in Western and Chinese cultures, it would be incorrect, and rather absurd, to conclude that Chinese people have a stronger tendency to copy. Contrary to popular belief, counterfeits were uncommon in mainland China before the mid-1980s.7 Although counterfeiting practices in contemporary China are context specific, they should not be confused for being racially specific. Such views not only represent a serious gap in understanding the counterfeiting phenomenon as a transnational issue, they also risk propagating racist attitudes towards Chinese communities. This dissertation takes into consideration these competing narratives in order to highlight the diversity and nuances of counterfeiting culture in China.
When I lived in Hong Kong as a child in the early 1990s, counterfeit products were a normal part of life. One of the observations I made upon migrating to
4 Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) is the umbrella term for the assignment of property rights through patents, copyrights and trademarks. Throughout this thesis I will use the term “IPR discourse” to denote the multifaceted nature of these property rights and the ongoing debates surrounding how IPR rules and regulations should be exercised. 5 Simply type “Chinese counterfeit” into an online search engine. To provide an overview, I have selected some news headlines from the last decade to show the range of sentiments in the global imagination: Viktorija Gabulaitė “85 Hilarious Products From China And Countries That Don’t Care About Trademarks,” Bored Panda, 2016, https://www.boredpanda.com/funny-brand- imitations-knock-offs-china/ (Accessed 14 May, 2020); Associated Press, “Busted: inside the fake Ferrari factory that sold ‘Shamborghinis’ for US$45,000,” South China Morning Post, 17 July, 2019, https://www.scmp.com/news/world/americas/article/3018907/busted-inside-fake- ferrari-factory-sold-shamborghinis-us45000 (Accessed 14 May, 2020); Ana Douglas, “These Hilariously Bad Knock-Offs Are On Sale In China,” Business Insider Australia, 2 August, 2012, https://www.businessinsider.com.au/hilariously-bad-chinese-knock-offs-of-famous-american- and-european-brands-2012-8#adadis-1 (Accessed 14 May, 2020). 6 See Byung-Chul Han, Shanzhai: Deconstruction in Chinese, translated by Phillipa Hurd (US: MIT Press Ltd, 2017). Christine Pratt, “The Aura and Uniqueness of Chinese Copies of Art,” in The Hague Under Heaven, Contemporary Sculpture from China, ed. by Else van Dijk-Staats, Maya Meijer-Bergmans, Jan Teeuwisse (Netherlands: Antique Collectors Agencies, 2012). While there are merits to Han and Pratt’s exploration of Chinese imitation via the notions of permeability and pragmatism in traditional Chinese philosophies, their central arguments fail to critically examine Chinese copying practices under the current socio-economic framework of global capitalism. 7 Jeroen de Kloet and Yiu Fai Chow, "Shanzhai Culture, Dafen Art, and Copyrights,” in Routledge Handbook of East Asian Popular Culture, ed. by Koichi Iwabuchi, Eva Tsai and Chris Berry (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 230. 2 Australia at the age of six was that fakes were “bad” in Western society. I remember the day I asked my grandma to stop buying fake things from street vendors and sending them to me because I was worried she would go to gaol. Truth be told, I was more concerned about not appearing “cool” to my Australian friends. 嫲嫲, don’t you realise these fakes will undo all the hard work I’ve done to assimilate! 8 While there is extensive literature on the history of Chinese imitation, this project focuses on the discourse of shanzhai 山寨, which refers to Chinese counterfeiting of famous Western brands.9 As a Hong-Kong Chinese person in Australia I feel an affinity with what the counterfeit is associated with: imitation, inauthenticity and hybridity. Moreover, I now recognise a level of creativity and humour in knock-off products, which can inspire new methods in art. Building on my lived experiences as a researcher and an artist working across sonic, visual and sculptural forms, this thesis performs an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural critique that is both self-critical and socially-engaged. How can artistic practice employ strategies of shanzhai to critically examine myths about creativity and ownership in relation to the global rise of China? I draw on the impressive scholarship on Chinese piracy by Hong Kong cultural theorist, Laikwan Pang, whose research has been central to this thesis. In her book Creativity and Its Discontents, Pang uses the example of Chinese counterfeiting to critique the linkage between originality and authorship in the context of global capitalism.10 Building upon Roland Barthes’ notion of myth, Pang sees the shanzhai object as signifying multiple meanings at once, which
8 嫲嫲 means paternal grandmother in Cantonese. 9 Although it is convention to italicise non-English words in writing, my decision not to do this here is a politically-motivated one. Italicising non-English words has an automatic Othering effect in the text, because it implicitly marks the English-speaking world as default. My ideological stance here can be linked to Julia Kuehn’s thesis on translation as a form of cultural politics in which she examines the translator’s challenge of deciding what is “native” and what is “foreign.” She notes that the liminal zone in between two languages is an apt metaphor for the complexities of the diasporic experience. The way that this dissertation flows between languages, and discrete spelling and writing systems within those languages, reflects the multilingual reality of my personal experiences as a diasporic subject. My aim is to de-centre the Eurocentricity of critical discourses on race and representation, and the Western-oriented lens of academic scholarship in general. See Julia Kuehn, "China Abroad: Between Transnation and Translation." In China Abroad: Travels, Subjects, Spaces, ed. by Elaine Yee Lin Ho and Julia Kuehn (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009). 10 Laikwan Pang, Creativity and Its Discontents: China's Creative Industries and Intellectual Property Rights Offenses (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2012). 3 is capable of troubling naturalised systems of value.11 Rather than condemning all acts of piracy as a legal perspective, examining the unique semiotics of shanzhai can raise important questions about the way power circulates in creative economies.12 As Pang claims, methods of citation in art are worthy of analysis because “the subjective presence of the creative agent can be expanded into a complex web of self- and social reflexivity.”13 This project takes up Pang’s argument by exploring shanzhai as an aesthetic style, which will be expanded on in the following chapters To provide a broader theoretical framework for this dissertation, I examine Edward W. Said’s iconic work, Orientalism.14 Said coined the term Orientalism in 1978, using it to describe the ways in which the West has historically and materially structured the East as “Other.”15 Since the post- Enlightenment period, Orientalism has been a crucial tool in an imperialist agenda that has propagated the idea of “European superiority over Oriental backwardness” through complex systems of representation.16 Drawing upon Michel Foucault’s concept of discourse, Said frames Orientalism as a Western style of systematic discipline that succeeded to "manage—and even produce— the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively.”17 Orientalism is not merely a fantasy. Orientalism is integral to the development of civilisation and culture, providing an ideological basis for empire and making possible the West’s cultural domination over non-white peoples worldwide Although historical conditions have changed, Said posits that it is Orientalism’s productive nature that enables it to endure. Said states that “Orientalism depends for its strategy on this flexible positional superiority, which puts the Westerner in a whole series of possible relationships with the Orient
11 Ibid, 184. Barthes’ concept of myth will be examined in Chapter 2 of this dissertation. 12 Ibid, 200. 13 Ibid, 228. 14 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin Group, [1978] 2003). 15 Ibid, 2. Coincidentally, this was the same year in which China's economic reforms began. Led by Deng Xiaoping, the “reform and opening up” national policy of 1978 aimed to transform China’s communist socio-economic model into a socialist market economy. This will be expanded on in Chapter One. See So and Chu, Global Rise, 54-7. 16 Ibid, 7. 17 Ibid, 3. 4 without ever losing him the relative upper hand.”18 This can be understood in the Foucauldian sense of the “normalising gaze” which describes how a dominant group naturalises ideas and assumptions about marginal groups in order to subjugate them through that knowledge. In a contemporary sense, the normalising gaze is evident in Western popular media, which Said suggests, circulates Orientalist attitudes on a large scale in film and television. Said writes: “So far as the Orient is concerned, standardisation and cultural stereotyping have intensified the hold of the nineteenth-century academic and imaginative demonology of ‘the mysterious Orient.’”19 While the socio-political implications of communications and technology have become more complex since Said’s time of writing, in this thesis I take up the principle idea that aesthetics and politics are interdependent, entangled together to reproduce disciplinary systems. Unlike overt forms of control such as violence or economic force, cultural influences in capitalist societies constitute what Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci calls “hegemony.”20 Cultural hegemony ensures that social order is maintained not (only) through coercion, but also by the populace’s consent to following established sets of norms and values. Building upon these ideas, I argue that the different values ascribed to shanzhai are intimately tied to cultural hegemony. For instance, my conscious decision to renounce a perfectly good pair of Nickey Nouse pyjamas, even as a small child, demonstrates the insidious influences of cultural hegemony. Before I go any further, I want to acknowledge that the very act of theorising shanzhai could be an act of auto-Orientalisation. Without a high degree of self-criticality, this project could perpetuate what postcolonial studies theorist Homi Bhabha describes as a “passive and unitary notion of suture which simplifies the politics and ‘aesthetics’ of spectator-positioning by ignoring the ambivalent, psychical process of identification which is crucial to the argument.”21 This project is aware of its own implicit biases embodied in the
18 Ibid, 7. 19 Ibid, 26. 20 Antonio Gramsci, The Prison Notebooks: Selections, trans. and ed. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971), as cited in Said, Orientalism, 7. 21 Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (Reprint, London: New York: Routledge, 2004), 100. 5 experiences of a Chinese person living in “the West.”22 Pang alludes to the importance of non-Western scholars exploring non-Western cultures not as case studies, but in a radical reversal of the idea that “things happening in the West can be taken for granted as ‘universal.’”23 My interest in shanzhai culture arises out of personal experiences of being stereotyped throughout my life in
Australia, but also in my travels abroad.24 As Stuart Hall argues, cultural identity is “not an essence but a positioning,” that is, a process of becoming rather than a state of being.25 Not belonging to either Australian culture nor Chinese culture, my positioning is defined by a sense of hybridity and difference, a sentiment which is echoed in diasporic experiences worldwide.26 My voice and body are central to my practice. My identity has always been hypervisible. Commentators have regularly made note of two things—one, that I am female and, two, that I am Chinese. I became highly aware of my “Otherness” in relation to the dominant discourse in Australia, a country I call home. My work was commonly described using racialised and gendered terms, even when my music did not deal with those matters explicitly. At first, I was frustrated by these labels. Why can’t I just be a “musician”? I was also tired of the implication that a man had composed my music (Who produces your beats?) and, upon disproving this, being assigned an ambassadorial role as a female artist in a male-dominated industry (Is your music feminist?) In part an
22 Scare quotes are used here to establish that this project challenges the binary of East and West. Although the dissertation will not do this at every instance, I want to highlight that my usage of these terms should be read as ideological constructions rather than as truths. 23 Pang, Creativity, 23. 24 When I travel, I am often asked where I come from. If I say I am Australian without referencing my ethnicity, my interlocutors usually reformulate their question to enquire about my “origins.” The questioning of my cultural identity is not unique to a Western perspective. I am asked this question when I travel in Asia too, especially in China. Locals are often confused why I look Chinese but cannot speak the native tongue well. As a diasporic person, I cannot simply “be” but have to constantly explain my subject position to others. 25 Hall examines how cultural identity can be understood in relation to an imagined sense of “oneness” within a group of people. However, it can also be understood in relation to critical points of fragmentation, difference and rupture within a collective imaginary. The latter understanding of identification is useful to work through the trauma of colonialism, which has seen the mass displacement of peoples and cultures worldwide. See Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” Identity: Community, Culture, Difference (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990), 225-228. 26 As Hall claims, the diasporic experience is defined “not by essence or purity but by the recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and diversity.” Diasporic identities “constantly produce and reproduce themselves anew, through transformation and difference.” Drawing on Homi Bhabha’s notion of ambivalence, Hall argues that diasporic subjects can challenge colonial authority via a “profound splitting and doubling” of its own Otherness. Bhabha’s concept of ambivalence will be explored later in the dissertation. See Hall, “Cultural Identity,” 233-6. 6 attempt to reclaim agency under the industry's normalising gaze, this study critically engages with the discourse of representation via the productive ambiguity of art. Through artistic practice, this thesis expands upon rich conversations in postcolonial theory and diaspora studies. While this dissertation surveys a wide range of theorists, artists and practitioners, its findings are certainly not exhaustive. I focus on examining shanzhai through the notion of ambivalence as put forth by Bhabha. Using the example of colonial mimicry, Bhabha states that mimicry produces an ambivalence (almost the same, but not quite), which is inherently disruptive to systems of domination.27 In this project, I extend the subversive potential of mimicry to the ambivalence produced by shanzhai practices. The problem with colonial discourse, as Bhabha correctly identifies, is “the concept of ‘fixity’ in the ideological construction of otherness.”28 When we place subjects at the ends of stable polarities, we risk reinforcing the racial essentialisms that we are attempting to deconstruct. Instead, shanzhai can be understood through a postcolonial framing of things being in a perpetual state of flux. This framing adopts a mobile anthropological sensibility that, as cultural theorist Aihwa Ong points out, “retains radical skepticism toward unilinear history and toward the administrative forms of cultural authentication that have reacted against Western modernism.”29 I have developed this thesis via firsthand experiences with practitioners, thinkers and audiences across China, Hong Kong and Australia, engaging with works that speak to a broader community of people working in and on shanzhai, which I outline below. As Ong postulates, postcolonial theory can replicate a “kind of theoretical imperialism whereby scholars based in the West, without
27 Bhabha, Location, 123. 28 Ibid, 94. Said has addressed this issue himself in an Afterword to Orientalism, written in 1994. He observed how his canonical essay has been misinterpreted by some to promote an aggressively xenophobic ideology of Orientalism versus Occidentalism. He laments that such a misreading has giving rise to various nationalist and fundamentalist permutations of his text. He states, “But I never felt that I was perpetuating the hostility between two rival political and cultural monolithic blocks, whose construction I was describing and whose terrible effects I was trying to reduce. On the contrary, as I said earlier, the Orient-versus-Occident opposition was both misleading and highly undesirable; the less it was given credit for actually describing anything more than a fascinating history of interpretations and contesting interest, the better.” Said, Orientalism, 335-6. 29 Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 54. 7 seriously engaging the scholarship of faraway places, can project or 'speak for' postcolonial situations elsewhere.”30 This project does not provide final answers, nor does it seek to speak for anyone. It uses strategies of shanzhai to raise important questions about creativity and ownership – how they intersect with race, class, gender and nation at a specific point in history, and their potential to morph and transmute along the rogue flows of capital. To help illustrate this point, I borrow Ong’s concept of transnationalism from her book, Flexible Citizenship. According to Ong, the idea of the transnational encapsulates the economic, social, political and cultural processes, which stream across spaces in horizontal and relational ways under global capitalism.31 In her words, “Only by weaving the analysis of cultural politics and political economy into a single framework can we hope to produce a nuanced delineation of the complex relations between transnational phenomena, national regimes, and cultural practices in late modernity.”32 I argue that the shanzhai product reveals the socio-political entanglements of our deterritorialised milieu. It is a multilateral junction of desire and control that is always relational This dissertation consists of three chapters and a conclusion. Chapter 1 provides a background to the project by charting the historical trajectory of shanzhai. I then explore linkages between originality and ownership, upon which the global copyright regime is based. This chapter also contextualises this research project by focusing on key turning points in the development of the author function in capitalist societies and how shanzhai can challenge that naturalised history. Chapter 2 offers a semiotic reading of shanzhai in dialogue with Laikwan Pang, who builds on Barthes, in order to explore shanzhai as myth. I expand on the theoretical frameworks of ambivalence and transnationalism as put forth by Bhabha and Ong respectively. These concepts are linked to Jane Park’s notion of “oriental style” which refers to stereotypical depictions of Asian peoples and cultures in popular media that are underscored by high-tech futures. I conclude Chapter 2 by synthesising the literature into an aesthetic framework for this project, which I call "shanzhai style.” In Chapter 3, I
30 Ibid, 33-34. 31 Ibid, 4. 32 Ibid, 16. 8 examine the practical outcome of this thesis, which manifested in an immersive multimedia installation titled Gloss (2019).33 Chapter 3 is divided into three sections that examine key strategies of shanzhai style: piracy, mimicry and mistranslation. I explore shanzhai style via the artistic strategies at play in Gloss and their relation to three case studies—Shanzhai Biennial, Stephanie Syjuco and Fatima Al Qadiri. Finally, I conclude the dissertation with a reflective evaluation of the project’s creative outcomes and suggest further possibilities for research.
Figure 1. Photograph from my childhood in Hong Kong featuring myself (left) and my younger sister (right), circa 1995. I am wearing a knock-off T-shirt.
33 Gloss denotes the title of the installation work in its entirety. Gloss comprises numerous individual works and can be read as one body of work or as a collection, as fashion industries might call it. However, these works can also be read as independent “pieces” that can continue to circulate beyond the scope of this thesis and outside the physical space of the installation. To show that the artwork hierarchy is ambiguous in Gloss, the individual works within the installation will have italicised titles as well, rather than having their titles inside quotation marks. 9 Chapter Nº 1
✔ JUST FAKE IT.*
In a discount variety store somewhere in Sydney sits a bottle of perfume, labelled CHAMELE No. 5 Paris. Its liquid content is peachy-coloured and sickeningly sweet, maybe even containing traces of urine, bacteria and antifreeze.34 Wrapped unevenly around its plastic neck is a glossy white label, flaunting two interlocking circles in gold. The little bottle is nestled within a white cardboard box, complete with Chanel’s iconic black trim. Two middle-aged Chinese women walk towards the bottle and compare the item for sale with a picture reference, picture, which one of them has pulled out of her Burberry handbag. Inspecting both the object and the photo carefully, the women shake their heads, put down the bottle, and leave. I saunter towards the rejected bottle and purchase it for $5.
Defining Shanzhai
The aim of this chapter is to provide a background to this thesis, locating the notion of shanzhai within current critical debates in postcolonial and diaspora studies, contemporary Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) discourse, and artistic practice. Following a historical trajectory, I first chart the global rise of China, then examine Western notions of creativity and ownership, and finally provide a semiological framework for interpreting the socio-political meanings of shanzhai. I conclude the chapter by linking shanzhai with a brief history of appropriation
* The name of this chapter is my shanzhai stylisation of Nike’s swoosh and slogan: “Just Do It.” 34 This is taken from a statement made by Valerie Salembier, senior vice president and publisher of luxury fashion magazine, Harper's Bazaar, who reportedly found said ingredients during a six-year investigation into counterfeit perfumes. See Elisabeth Leamy and Vanessa Weber, ”Fake Fragrances: What Is Really in Them?" ABC News, 27 January, 2010, https:// abcnews.go.com/GMA/ConsumerNews/counterfeit-perfumes/story?id=9670448. (Accessed 14 May, 2020). 10 art, as well as contemporary practices that play with authenticity, technology and global capitalism. I analyse works of Shanzhai Biennial, Stephanie Syjuco, Fatima Al Qadiri and the creative outcome of this project, Gloss, all of which, I argue, can be described by the term "shanzhai style.” Literally meaning “mountain stronghold” the term shanzhai can be traced to imperial China in popular folktales such as Outlaws of the Marsh.35 In a similar manner to the legend of Robin Hood, these shanzhai narratives depicted mountain bandits as anti-heroes who fought against the corrupt imperial court in the name of the people.36 Around the 1950s, shanzhai appeared in Cantonese slang to delineate low-quality goods produced in small-scale factories and family-run businesses in Hong Kong which operated outside of official control.37 At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the term saw a resurgence in mainland China when it was adopted by netizens to describe knock-off mobile phones with humorous names such as Blockberry, Nckia and iPhoue.38 By 2008, shanzhai was ranked the most searched word in China.39 Not limited to consumer goods, shanzhai encapsulated a wider ideology in the Chinese imaginary, which saw the potential for fakes to challenge state authority.40 Drawing attention to the ways in which shanzhai practices differ from traditional counterfeiting, Yao Qin et al. state that “shanzhai manufacturers increasingly use their expertise to substantially improve products further by adding innovative features that are sought after by local consumers.”41 Shanzhai thus shares a certain self-reflexivity with methods of appropriation in art, which will be expanded on later in this chapter. While there is a temptation to celebrate shanzhai’s emancipatory power, others note that there are limitations to its subversive potential in the context of contemporary Chinese neoliberalism. As Lin Zhang and Anthony Fung highlight, grassroots efforts in
35 Fung and Zhang, “Myth of ‘shanzhai’ culture,” 404. 36 Ibid, 404. 37 de Kloet and Chow, “Shanzhai Culture,” 232. 38 Andrew Chubb, “China’s Shanzhai Culture: ‘Grabism’ and the politics of hybridity,” Journal of Contemporary China Vol. 24, no. 92 (2015): 264. 39 de Kloet and Chow, “Shanzhai Culture,” 232. 40 Fung and Zhang, “Myth of ‘shanzhai’ culture,” 405. 41 Yao Qin et al. “Neither an Authentic Product nor a Counterfeit: The Growing Popularity of Shanzhai Products in Global Markets,” Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences / Revue Canadienne des Sciences de l’Administration Vol 36, no. 3 (2019): 309. 11 digital undergrounds are often co-opted by China’s strong state-market alliance.42 Jian Xu reminds us that the original goal of shanzhai was economic gain, limiting the counterfeit’s subversive power to what he calls “shanzhai media culture.”43 Xu defines this as cultural practices that apply the shanzhai business model of imitation and innovation to media content production.44 In this project, I draw from the meaning of shanzhai as it is understood in China’s online culture and as it circulates in global media. Building on Xu’s notion of shanzhai media culture, I will be calling these innovative citation practices shanzhai style. Instead of using terms such as counterfeit or copy, this project draws attention to Jeroen de Kloet and Yiu Fai Chow’s suggestion that shanzhai can be a helpful qualifier to describe objects that exist outside of a real-fake binary. Taking up their stance, this study uses shanzhai in artistic practice to rethink “notions of the ‘original,’ the ‘authentic,’ the ‘pirated,’ and the ‘fake,’ notions that are mapped onto a discourse of authorship that constitutes the basic underpinning of the global copyright regime.”45 The contradictory nature of shanzhai thus provides useful and novel strategies in artistic practice, both conceptually and materially. In order to contextualise this project’s methodology, which I call shanzhai style, I will now give an overview of China’s rapid economic growth in relation to current IPR discourse.
The Global Rise of China
It is not uncommon to see headlines which paint China as “crazy", covering stories from humorous knock-off consumer goods and electronics, to sinister
42 Fung and Zhang, “Myth of ‘shanzhai’ culture,” 412. 43 Jian Xu, “Shanzhai Media Culture: Failed Intervention to the Disingenuous Neoliberal Logic of Chinese Media,” Journal of Contemporary China Vol 26, no.104 (2017): 252. 44 Ibid, 251. 45 de Kloet and Chow, “Shanzhai Culture,” 229. 12 reports of fake foods, automobiles and pharmaceutical drugs.46 In 2010, Time Magazine even published a top-ten Chinese knockoffs list, which expresses a mixture of fear and fascination towards shanzhai products.47 To name a few, the list included: Hi Phone and Aphone A6, iPed, Goojje, Shanzhai Street, China’s White Houses, and my personal favourite, the Nat Nat Shoes (an ingenious pair of knock-off Converse hightop sneakers, which can be unzipped at the soles to reveal a pair of sandals “allowing the wearer to transition easily from city to beach.”)48
[Figure 2 has been removed due to copyright restrictions.]
Figure 2. “Nat Nat Shoes” and “Goojje” as seen in Time Magazine’s top-ten Chinese knock-off list in 2010.
The phrase “Made in China” signifies anxieties around the loss of jobs in the West, particularly in the USA. With China's current slowing economy and rising labour costs, these anxieties have shifted onto narratives of counterfeits and piracy, giving rise to a new idea – “Faked in China.”49 Since China’s entry
46 See Alexandra Gibbs, “China’s Craziest Counterfeits,” CNBC, 9 April, 2015, https:// www.cnbc.com/2015/04/09/chinas-craziest-counterfeits.html (Accessed 20 March, 2020); Cezary Jan Strusiewicz, “The 5 Most Insane Examples of Chinese Counterfeiting,” Cracked, 19 March, 2012, https://www.cracked.com/article_19742_the-5-most-insane-examples-chinese- counterfeiting.html (Accessed 20 March, 2020); Mamta Badkar, “35 Crazy Things That Only Happen In China" Business Insider Australia, 27 December, 2013, https:// www.businessinsider.com.au/crazy-things-happening-in-china-2013-12. (Accessed 20 March, 2020). 47 Justin Bergman, "Top 10 Chinese Knockoffs," Time Magazine, 22 June, 2010, http:// content.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1998580,00.html (Accessed March 29, 2020). The article begins with a rather derogatory remark, “China's industrious electronics pirates are trying to beat Apple at its own game again.” 48 Ibid. 49 Fan Yang, Faked in China: Nation Branding, Counterfeit Culture, and Globalisation (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2016), 2. 13 into the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2001, China has been forced to play by global IPR regulations. China’s integration into the WTO marked two things: it highlighted China’s vital role in global economics as the world’s largest manufacturer; and it showed China’s inability to control and regulate the nation’s frantic adoption of capitalism. This contradiction is summarised by Pang: “Almost any commodity can be knocked off and reproduced in this 'world factory,' which makes many 'genuine' products as well.”50 The negative image of China is challenged by Alvin Y. So and Yin-Wah Chu in their book The Global Rise of China, which traces China’s modernising efforts over the last forty years.51 Although they recognise that the nation has faced several socio-political issues, So and Chu argue that China’s critics have “gone overboard” with their ideological biases.52 In line with this, media theorist Fan Yang contends that socio-economic scandals in China are repeatedly circulated in Western media in order to brand China as a nation in crisis.53 More importantly, Yang states, these narratives indicate a persistent effort made by Western countries to mobilise economic nationalism, particularly in America, to counter China’s industrial strength.54 This Western-authored stereotype is most comprehensively discussed by Pang who argues, “The powerful and demonic status of China, from both political and economic perspectives, is manifested and unified in its image as a criminal pirate, and this discourse of robbery
50 Pang, Creativity, 186. For more, see Europol and European Union Intellectual Property Office, 2017 Situation Report on Counterfeiting and Piracy in the European Union, (2017) https:// www.europol.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/ counterfeiting_and_piracy_in_the_european_union.pdf (Accessed March 29, 2020). In this report, Europol estimated that IPR crimes amount to USD 461 billion annually, with 86% of these offences originating from China and Hong Kong. The report names China as the “engine” of counterfeiting and affiliated organised crimes worldwide. 51 Alvin Y. So and Yin-Wah Chu, The Global Rise of China (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016), 3. According to their study, 64% of China’s population lived on less than US$1 per day in 1981. By 2006, that figure was reduced to 16%, which shows the merits of China’s modernising efforts at least in a practical sense. They also argue that the party-state has made efforts to address social unrest by attenuating the worst cases of abuses of workers, peasants and disadvantaged groups. 52 So and Chu, Global Rise, 4. 53 Ibid, 42. 54 Yang, Faked in China, 33. 14 supports and is supported by the fervent desire and fear of transnational capital.”55 As I outlined in the Introduction, theoretical frameworks with implicit binaries do not adequately explain the global rise of China. In this project, I adopt So and Chu’s term “state neoliberalism”56 to describe China’s model for development, which encapsulates the combination of China’s rampant state- managed marketisation, as well as the nation’s purported adherence to socialist and Confucian values.57 So and Chu render state neoliberalism as “in part the coexistence of the strategic role played by the Chinese state to guide and propel the country's development, on the one hand, and the irony that part of the effort involves rampant neoliberalisation, on the other hand.”58 Pang argues that neoliberal practices in creative economies have been heavily promoted by the state as a form of cultural pride, which can be seen in official policies such as from “Made in China” to “Created in China.”59 In this light, domestic innovation is seen as a way for the nation to shed its copycat image and upgrade its cultural and economic status in the global sphere.60 China’s political and economic paradoxes have been described by many as post-socialist.61 Arif Dirlik first applied this label to China in 1989, the same year of The Tiananmen Square protests. Other usages of post-socialism describe the pluralisation of power and privatisation of property in the context of Eastern Europe, whereas Chinese post-socialism considers how the totalitarian state framed neoliberal reform under a nationalist discourse. Neoliberalism, according to the Chinese Communist Party, is not a radical break from China’s
55 Pang, Creativity, 187. 56 So and Chu, Global Rise, 18. 57 See Souchou Yao, Confucian Capitalism: Discourse, Practice and the Myth of Chinese Enterprise (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002). 58 So and Chu, Global Rise. 19. 59 Pang, Creativity, 7. Adding another perspective, Fan Yang notes how Joseph Nye’s concept of “soft power” was formally introduced into China’s policy discourse in 1993 under the term “ruan quanli.” Yang, Faked in China, 50. 60 Pang, Creativity, 8. 61 Arif Dirlik, "Post-socialism? Reflections on ‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics,’” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars Vol 21, no. 1 (March 1989). 15 socialist past but merely an extension of it.62 These official markers of progress are worthy of deeper analysis. With the incongruities of Chinese post-socialism in mind, we must recognise that shanzhai is also an issue of China’s class divide, not simply a matter of West/East or global/local. China’s income inequality is one of the worst in the world. While the growing elite can buy “real” brands, a majority of the population cannot afford luxury items. Some have suggested that Chinese people’s eager participation in global capitalism reflects their complex desire for a shared sense of cultural intimacy after years of repression.63 With limited social mobility in China, it is not surprising that counterfeit products are popular amongst non-elite consumers who can at least appear to participate in this cultural imaginary. How can artistic practices problematise the commonalities between progress discourse and shanzhai innovation in art as a form of critique?
[Figure 3 has been removed due to copyright restrictions.]
Figure 3. Collage of shanzhai products.
62 Ibid. Dirlik writes, “As the case of Chinese socialism today would indicate, the fetishism of development is so powerful that socialism has come to be judged by socialists themselves by criteria derived from capitalist development.” 44. 63 Yi-Chieh Jessica Lin, Fake Stuff : China and the Rise of Counterfeit Goods (London: Routledge, 2011), 7. 16 This project aims to reflect the changing anxieties felt by Chinese people towards China’s copycat image. According to Yingying Deng, fake products tend to elicit a different response from Chinese consumers compared to their Western counterparts. She posits that Chinese consumers do not necessarily “embrace the Western assumptions that naturalise the associative links between ideas and goods, producers and creators, and property rights and ownership.”64 On the other hand, Pang suggests this laissez faire attitude is diminishing. For Chinese citizens, growing anxieties around product safety indicate a loss of trust in domestic brands. A prime example of this is the 2008 melamine milk scandal.65 Global media was transfixed by this scandal because of its fatality and because it erupted a few days before another Chinese spectacle began — the Beijing Olympics.66 In an attempt to restore citizens’ faith in Chinese manufacturing and to save face in the global sphere, the state pushed a new agenda, which Pang summarises as “we must create instead of mimic.”67 From my own observations in different parts of China between 2017 and 2018, I saw a decrease in the availability of shanzhai products. This was particularly evident in major city centres, where there were almost no counterfeit goods. From my observations, shanzhai products were relegated to provincial markets, and even then were starting to fade. Substantiating this, Pang
64 Yingying Deng. "The Market for 'Lemons': A Sociological Study of Authenticity in the Chinese Market of Counterfeit Luxury Goods,” Doctor of Philosophy, Northwestern University (2013), 25. 65 This refers to the Chinese food safety disaster, which resulted in the death of six infants and the hospitalisation of over 300,000 after they had consumed baby formula contaminated with melamine, a substance used for plastic insulation. The contamination was traced to one of the biggest dairy companies in China, Sanlu Dairy. See Tania Branigan, “Q&A: China's Contaminated Milk Scandal,” The Guardian, 23 September, 2008, https://www.theguardian.com/ world/2008/sep/23/china.milk.scandal (Accessed 14 May, 2020). 66 As a result of the crisis, foreign formula brands were in high demand in China, often being bought in large amounts and resold at inflated prices in deregulated markets. Several countries began to enforce restrictions on milk powder purchases. See Rebecca Puddy, “China’s thirst for baby formula creating problems for Australian shoppers and staff,” ABC News, 11 December, 2018, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-11/abc-investigation-uncovers-chinese-baby- formula-shoppers/10594400 (Accessed 14 May, 2020). In more severe cases like Hong Kong, which saw the growth of a lucrative black market around the border between New Territories and mainland China, heavy fines and imprisonment were applied to unlicensed formula exports. See “Import and Export (General)(Amendment) Regulation 2013 (with Effect from 1 March 2013) - Quantity of Powdered Formula for Persons Departing from Hong Kong,” Hong Kong Customs and Exercise Department, 13 March, 2013, https://www.customs.gov.hk/en/ whats_new/API/index.html (Accessed 14 May, 2020). 67 Pang, Creativity, 176. 17 contends that under state neoliberalism, Chinese people are “mercilessly exploited by the capitalist market.”68 China’s own increasing shame towards counterfeiting is symptomatic of a nation whose people are “chasing a modernisation dream.”69 Adding another dimension to this, Qin et. al note how counterfeits emerge out of local markets with “low brand knowledge.”70 They use the shanzhai coffee brand “Sunbucks” to exemplify this. But how will consumer habits change as Chinese citizens accrue brand knowledge and realise the cup should say “Starbucks"? What will become of shanzhai then?
[Figure 4 has been removed due to copyright restrictions.]
Figure 4. “Sunbucks Coffee” Signage
There is a common belief that the modernisation project is also a Westernisation project. How did the West manage to control and conquer the rest of the world? A simple explanation for this is conquest, made possible
68 Ibid, 201. 69 Ibid, 201. 70 Qin et. al, “Neither an Authentic Product,” 309. 18 through colonialism, industrialisation and capitalism. Pang makes clear the implicit inequity in the discourse of modernity: “what grounds the development of China’s and other developing countries’ current socioeconomic development is not the culture’s own philosophical history but that of the West.”71 Thus, the normative link between originality and ownership in IPR is the result of a complex play of power, which aims to advance Western values. Returning to Said’s idea that Orientalism is both ideological and material – as discussed in the Introduction – it is important to recognise that imperialism relies on representationalist discourse to demonise and control the Other in ever- changing ways.72 In today’s informational age, as Aihwa Ong claims, the global media system continues to shape and structure translocal publics by disseminating images and narratives along the East-West axis, which is still governed by “a static notion of white supremacy.”73 In this light, I want to reiterate that aesthetics and socio-politics are inextricably linked. Considering the scope of the project, the following summary of Western aesthetics will be necessarily condensed. As a summary, I will provide a close reading of Pang’s analysis of creativity as a product of modernity, rights and labour.
The Construct of Creativity
This section aims to establish two important questions about Western creativity. First, how was the connection between originality, authenticity and ownership historically produced in the West? Second, how is it reproduced and regulated in the global copyright regime today? These questions will help us examine the subversive potential of shanzhai style. The perceived link between creativity and personal aptitude is a construct of modernity that developed alongside the secularisation of Western society. This is Pang’s central argument in her examination of post-
71 Pang, Creativity, 30. 72 Said, Orientalism, 26. 73 Ong, Flexible, 158. 19 Enlightenment aesthetics.74 One of the most important developments was Immanuel Kant’s concept of “genius” which saw exemplary talent as a gift of nature.75 The interrelated concepts of beauty and the sublime moved with Kant from nature to the realm of art. Following the Aristotelian tradition, Kant argues that an ineffable “soul” or “spirit" can be harnessed by man and conveyed in art. Summarising Kant, Paul Guyer explains that the notion of genius signifies “the complex ability to discover both rich and original aesthetic ideas—content—and aesthetically enlivening vehicles for the communication of such content— form.”76 From Kant, we see the roots of the author function in today’s creative economy. That is, originality became an essential quality to creative expression. Creativity can also be understood as a product of labour. Historians agrees that copyright was brought about by the advent of the printing press in Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The main objective of this venture was mass dissemination of the Bible and state information. In order to prevent others from unofficially distributing the same material, rudimentary printing licenses were invented. Pang notes that as print capitalism continued to drive Western economic development over the next century, more concrete copyright laws were introduced to reify the link between authorship, authenticity and ownership.77 The seventeenth century saw an increase in copyright laws across Western societies, which Pang argues were “a necessary byproduct of the new industrial and market conditions, and they individually and collectively witnessed the expansion of capitalism."78 This period also saw the rise of rationalist individualism, which understood property to be a natural right. Stemming out of romantic notions of the author-function, ownership started to
74 Christian Helmut Wenzel, “Fine Art, Nature, and Genius,” In An Introduction to Kant's Aesthetics, ed. C.H. Wenzel (Oxford, UK : Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 98. 75 Pang, Creativity, 33. 76 Paul Guyer, “Kant's Conception of Fine Art,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Vol. 52, No. 3 (Summer, 1994): 280. 77 Pang, Creativity, 69. The first of these was Statute of Anne, which was passed in England in 1709. 78 Ibid, 69. 20 take on a moral dimension, which is a key factor in upholding today’s IPR discourse.79
[Figure 5 has been removed due to copyright restrictions.]
Figure 5. “Harry Potter Obama Sonic” backpack (left); parody T-shirt for sale on threadless.com which appropriates the shanzhai design (right).
Capitalism relies on a naturalisation of market behaviours that are, in fact, always fluctuating and completely manufactured. For instance, the value of exchangeable goods is determined by the labour and machinery required to transform raw materials into commodities. However, compensation for the worker’s labour is only enough to maintain a subsistence. This endless chain of production seeks to alienate the proletariat worker from his or her humanity,
79 Pang notes the influence of thinkers such as John Locke during the Romantic era, who perceived property to be a natural right that is not created by the state but engendered in the inalienable relationship between an individual and his labour. Locke also saw the importance of property for individuals to acquire, grow, or make more than they can use in order to encourage competition in the market. See Pang, Creativity, 70-71. However, the Romantic era also saw several contradictory opinions over the role of the individual. For instance, Hegel saw the freedom embodied in property as a result of a historical and social struggle, and not an innate thing. Property, as Hegel understood it, is a fundamental mechanism of survival and development of the individual, which would ultimately lead to wider social good. See Ashraf Mansour, "Hegel’s Critique of Liberalism and Social Contract Theories in the Jena Lectures.” Marxists Internet Archive, (n.d) https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/txt/ mansour.htm (Accessed 13 May, 2020). 21 whilst keeping the powerful bourgeoisie in power.80 Marx calls this profit surplus value, which is extracted from the exploited worker and appropriated by the capitalist. With Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism, society becomes, almost magically, a series of relationships between exchangeable goods rather than human agents. That is, commodities are treated as if value was intrinsic to the objects themselves, rather than in the human labour expended to produce the object.81 The construction of value within a commodity market is what Marx identifies as reification, a concept that I will be returning to throughout this project. Building on this, Pang draws upon Maurizio Lazzarato’s notion of “immaterial labour” to formulate the argument that the creative economy is particularly exploitative of human labour. This is due to the intangibility of the commodity in creative industries—ideas.82 In her careful examination, she points out the ways creative economies require labour (research and development) in order to integrate a commodity (abstract or tangible) into the capitalist system.83 In order to keep extracting surplus value, creative economies rely on the dual notion of scarcity and abundance in its chain of production together with “genius.” Pang outlines this cycle as “the selection, processing, and recycling of ‘old’ ideas into ‘new’ ones.”84 From this, we can see how capitalism and shanzhai are both parasitic and appropriative. The difference is that the former claims a natural history of ownership, one of the main cultural assumptions that I challenge in this study. This condensed recount illustrates the roots of today’s creative economy and its regulation, which stem from Western post-Enlightenment philosophies. I want to conclude this chapter by stressing that the global copyright regime remains fairly new in historical terms. Despite the power of institutions such as
80 Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Vol. 1, translated by Ben Fowkes (New York: Penguin, [1867], 1990), 284-5. 81 Ibid, 164-5. 82 Pang, Creativity, 47-48. 83 Ibid, 56. 84 Ibid, 56. 22 IPR, WTO, and TRIPS,85 Pang underlines that their goal to tame transnational capital is not only ambitious, it is “unnatural.”86 Unlike in the nineteenth century, legal and moral components of ownership are not as clear today where nothing appears new or original. To make the intangible tangible, IPR discourse needs to reverse engineer a new set of moral norms in order to justify its monopolising imperatives. As I have argued above, commodity value is completely manufactured, yet as Marx observes, market forces naturalise this process through the magical aura of commodity fetishism. In the context of IPR, the commodity is an idea and its value is reified through the fetishism of “originality.” In order to convince people to abide by its rules, IPR discourse adds a moral dimension to the concept of creativity which is naturalised through the “magical” authority of cultural hegemony. It is from these momentary slippages of meaning, power and control where the shanzhai emerges, threatening to expose the artificiality of the value system which buttresses IPR discourse.87 This brings us into the next chapter—the shanzhai myth.
[Figure 6 has been removed due to copyright restrictions.]
Figure 6. An advertisement showing President Obama endorsing the BlockBerry phone.
85 The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) is an international legal agreement between all the member nations of the WTO. 86 Ibid, 71. 87 The way that shanzhai challenges the hegemonic power of IPR discourse will be examined in detail through the notion of myth in Chapter 2 23 Chapter Nº 2
MAYBE SHE’S BORN WITH IT. MAYBE IT’S SHANZHAI MYTH. S h a n z h a i m y t h CHINA*
The universe is infinitely fertile with suggestions.88
Shanzhai Mythology
The aim of this chapter is to provide an interdisciplinary reading of shanzhai in the context of semiology, read in relation to postcolonial studies and artistic practices. In this project, I use the term “myth” to examine shanzhai under the analytic as put forth by Roland Barthes.89 Building on Ferdinand de Saussure, Barthes argues that a sign is the associative total between the signifier and the signified.90 An example of a shanzhai sign could be the link between a bottle of Chamele No. 5 perfume (signifier) and punkish irreverence towards authenticity (signified). However, the shanzhai could be a completely different sign: Chamele No. 5 perfume (signifier) and an unscrupulous, opportunistic parasite
* The title of this chapter is my shanzhai stylisation of Maybelline’s slogan: “Maybe she's born with it. Maybe it's Maybelline.” In 2016, the company changed its often parodied slogan to a shorter and punchier phrase, “Make it happen.” According to Pekka Kujamäki, Maybelline’s old slogan is particularly difficult to adapt into other languages because its sing-song phrasing is lost in translation. See Pekka Kujamäki, Beyond Borders Translations Moving Languages, Literatures and Cultures (Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2011), 66.
88 Roland Barthes, Mythologies (London: Vintage, 2009), 131. 89 Ibid, 135. Barthes argues that semiology by itself is not sufficient to explain cultural phenomena as it is a study of tokens, not truths. In order to achieve a holistic understanding, one must conduct analysis through the dialectal coordination of semiology, formal sciences and historical sciences. 90 Ibid, 135-6. 24 (signified). What holds a sign together is the heavy manipulation of signification, which he calls myth—a kind of speech with a social usage.91 This project explores the notion that a myth is an interpolation, not an eternal truth. As Barthes articulates, “the knowledge contained in a mythical concept is confused, made of yielding, shapeless associations… a formless, unstable, nebulous condensation, whose unity and coherence are above all due to its function.”92 Without claims to authenticity or rightful ownership, the meaning of shanzhai is particularly difficult to define. For instance, how do we evaluate shanzhai products that are more utilitarian or creative than the original? Innovation is clear in shanzhai mobile phones that add extra features such as loudspeakers, waterproof functionality and UV lights to meet the desires of local migrant workers.93 Yet, contemporary IPR discourse would have us believe that all shanzhai products are inherently “bad.” The primary motivation for this myth is due to the fact that shanzhai does not abide by the capitalist mode of production on which IPR is founded, as outlined in Chapter 1. As such, the innovative shanzhai exposes that value is not innate. These rituals are more vulnerable than we imagine. Shanzhai participates in the same economies that it is trying to challenge. Bringing together Marxist and Barthesian terms, I contend that shanzhai troubles the commodity fetish, which is central to the myth that underpins global capitalism. Shanzhai offers an alternative mode of production which problematises the mythic value of creativity through its emphatic inauthenticity. However, we must not forget that the slipperiness of the shanzhai sign is also what makes it vulnerable to co-optation. Warning readers of the fluid nature of myths, Barthes contends that “Myth can easily insinuate itself into it, and swell there: it is a robbery by colonisation.”94 I argue that shanzhai begins as a sign of “decolonisation" through Chinese grassroots innovation. However, it becomes “recolonised” by state-market alliances and other forces of
91 Ibid, 132. 92 Ibid, 143. 93 Qin et al. “Neither an Authentic Product,” 308. The irony is that the UV light is used to detect counterfeit notes. See Chubb, “China’s shanzhai culture,” p. 270. 94 Barthes, Mythologies, 157. 25 neoliberalism.95 For example, M.I.A’s 2013 Fall/Winter collaboration with Versace was a nineteen-piece capsule collection which attempted to capture the "energy of the streets” by copying knock-off Versace designs.96 Another interesting case is the American skate brand Supreme, the most counterfeited label in the world, whose Futura Oblique design is a blatant appropriation of the iconic works of Barbara Kruger.97 As a not-so-subtle critique, Kruger created a performance installation for Performa in 2017, Untitled (The Drop), which was designed to resemble a Supreme store but the skateboards and t-shirts on display were adorned with provocative questions such as “Whose hopes? Whose fears? Whose values? Whose justice?” Like Kruger, my intention in Gloss is to co-opt cycles of appropriation and problematise the flow of transnational capital, which will be explored in detail in Chapter 3.
[Figure 7 has been removed due to copyright restrictions.]
Figure 7. An image from the M.I.A for Versus Versace 2013 campaign featuring the rapper in front of counterfeited garments (left); a shanzhai Supreme bag (right).
Under the rhetoric of IPR theft, shanzhai epitomises Barthes’ notion that myth is speech “stolen and restored.”98 He posits that the myth contains an ulterior motive as it “arrests” the connotative virtuality of a thing and “freezes it into an eternal reference.”99 In this light, myths are important tools in cultural
95 Pang, Creativity, 198. 96 Ella Alexander, “Versus Gets a Rap Makeover,” Vogue, 7 October, 2013, https:// www.vogue.co.uk/gallery/mia-for-versus-confirmed-versace-counterfeit-collection, (Accessed 9 June, 2019). 97 See Jacopo Prisco, “Battle of Supremes: How 'legal fakes' are challenging a $1B brand,” CNN, 18 March, 2019, https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/supreme-italia-legal-fake/index.html (Accessed 9 June, 2019). 98 Barthes, Mythologies, 150. 99 Ibid, 149-150. 26 hegemony that rely on a process of naturalisation to uphold authority. In Gloss, myths are mapped onto the circulation of shanzhai in global media and IPR discourse. As Said reminds us, Orientalism is propagated through the idea that the West must speak for “the poor Orient” as the Orient cannot speak for itself.100 Paraphrasing Raymond Williams, Said stresses the importance of unlearning these cultural assumptions,101 which leads to the question posed at the beginning of this thesis: How can artistic practice employ strategies of shanzhai in order to critically examine myths about creativity and ownership in the global rise of China? Pang elaborates on the implicit Orientalism in current shanzhai discourse, claiming that, in the global imagination, China has the ability to reproduce anything in the capitalist market.102 Underpinning this stereotype is "anger, a sense of insecurity and jealousy,” which is tangled up with “an indirect recognition of a sort of magical power.”103 Elsewhere, Pang formulates this position in relation to Walter Benjamin’s concept of phantasmagoria, which builds on Marx’s application of the term to commodity fetishism.104 In Margaret
Cohen’s interpretation of Benjamin’s thesis, the spectacle of phantasmagoria embodies the reification of value in consumer culture, which is “linked, in however corrupted a manner, to the utopian aspirations of a dreaming collective.”105 Whereas Benjamin applied this magic to the Parisian arcades, I apply this concept to the role of shanzhai in China’s dreaming collective and beyond. Returning to my previous suggestion, “magic” is the psychological and emotional manifestations of cultural hegemony. Through its contradictions, I argue that shanzhai troubles this magic by simultaneously reflecting China’s
100 Said, Orientalism, 21. 101 Ibid, 28. 102 Pang, Creativity, 189. 103 Ibid, 189. 104 Laikwan Pang, “Magic and Modernity in China,” positions: east asia cultures critique Vol 12 no.2 (2004): 299. 105 Margaret Cohen. “Benjamin’s phantasmagoria: The Arcades Project,” In The Cambridge Companion to Walter Benjamin, ed. David S. Ferris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 205. 27 capacity to subvert global capitalism, and China’s aspirations to adopt it via state neoliberalism. Developing an earlier claim in the dissertation, the emancipatory myth of shanzhai is undermined by state-market co-optation. Shanzhai has been reframed by the Chinese state as a kind of pragmatism that has always imbued the national spirit. While China has instigated official policies to curb counterfeiting such as “Dajia” (meaning to fight fakes) many shanzhai ventures have been turned into nation-branding projects.106 For instance, a documentary about Shenzhen’s knock-off mobile phone industry, which aired on CCTV in 2008, used the term shanzhai to commend domestic innovation.107 Byung-Chul Han contends that flexibility is a distinct marker of Chineseness, which is seen most clearly in Chairman Mao’s “shanzhaing" of Marxism.108 While I question the essentialist language in his overall thesis, I agree with Han’s argument that “in its ability to hybridise, Chinese communism is now adapting to turbo- capitalism.”109 Considering this image, recall the melamine milk scandal from Chapter 1. Numerous observers argue that the state-ordained execution of a dairy farmer and a salesman simply shifted the blame away from corporate and government responsibility.110 Returning to Fan Yang’s thoughts on Chinese scandals, she identifies that the state adapts fakery discourse as a strategy to “lead the nation out of crisis but also direct it toward a future – a future that is to be prescribed by the global imaginary of the brand.”111 By punishing obvious fakes, the state reinserts itself into the role of protector. Meanwhile, it turns a blind eye to profitable transgressions such as electronics, media and luxury fashion products. These competing myths of shanzhai are reconfigured through
106 Pang, Creativity, 200. 107 de Kloet and Chow, “Shanzhai Culture,” 232. CCTV or China Central Television is the predominant state-owned television network in mainland China. 108 Han, Shanzhai. 75-78. 109 Ibid, 78. 110 Tania Branigan, “China executes two for tainted milk scandal” The Guardian, November 25, 2009, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/24/china-executes-milk-scandal-pair (Accessed 8 April, 2020). I want to highlight that the two people executed, a dairy farmer and a milk salesman, held relatively low positions of power in the chain of events. Whereas the punishments for corporate executives and government officials, who were sacked and/or life sentences, were comparatively light. 111 Yang, Faked in China, 51. 28 aesthetic ambivalence in Gloss, which I will now examine in dialogue with other artistic practices.
Defining Shanzhai Style
The aim of this section is to establish how Gloss engages with the aesthetic framework I call “shanzhai style.” The name of this framework (and the methodology of this project) is a shanzhai of Jane Park’s notion of “oriental style,” itself borrowing from Said and postcolonial studies scholars to describe the formulation of Asiatic stereotypes in Hollywood cinema.112 Park locates oriental style as part of an ongoing historical process of the “racialisation”113 of East Asians in America, which in effect reduces the heterogeneous realities of those peoples into palatable commodities.114 It is precisely the lack of depth in these stereotypical characters which makes them appealing to Western audiences.115 Building on Said’s thesis that Orientalism is productive, Park asks: “How are the dynamics of Orientalism changing in the early twenty-first century as the cybernetic 'global village' of transnational capitalism meets the print- and nation-based 'imagined community' of industrial capitalism?”116 One fundamental development, Park suggests, is the “yoking of the Asiatic with technological imagery,” which reflects the diminishing relevance of the East/
112 Jane Chi Hyun Park, Yellow Future: Oriental Style in Hollywood Cinema (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 2010). Park’s theory draws on the likes of Stuart Hall, Homi Bhabha, Benedict Anderson, Gina Marchetti, Sara Ahmed and Lisa Nakamura. While many of these cultural theorists have also influenced my work, I have chosen to focus on Park as her reading of Sino-Futuristic style in cinema is more pertinent to the examination of shanzhai media culture in this study. 113 This was introduced by Michael Omi and Howard Winant under the concept of “racial formation,” referring to the process by which social, economic and political forces work together to shape racial categories. These forces are manifested in the actions of the collective and the individual, which are repeated until the assumptions attached to the actions become naturalised as truths. See Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to 1980s (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 61-62. 114 Park, Yellow, ix. 115 Ibid, ix. 116 “Imagined community” here is a reference to Benedict Anderson’s important concept in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991), 1-46. Cited in ibid, 6. 29 West binary in a world gone global.117 I take up Park’s thesis in Gloss by exploring the ways in which technology facilitates the reification of myths about China in the popular imagination. As already discussed in the Marxist analysis of creativity in Chapter 1, reification is manifested in the commodity fetishism of global consumerism, in IPR’s construct of rights, in China’s nationalist discourse of progress, and in global media’s obsession with China-in-crisis narratives. In Gloss, I bring together these interconnected themes via the notion of shanzhai style, a critical framework which examines representation, technology and power in our increasingly virtual world. As Pang reminds us, copyright laws cannot protect an idea itself but only the expression of one—an expression, that is, through technology.118 Returning to Western notions of the author-function, technology makes the intangible (idea) into something tangible (commodity). Thus, technology is not merely a tool for cultural production, it is the main instrument for IPR’s “reverse engineering” of the social norms required to justify the link between authorship and ownership, as explored in Chapter 1. My project builds upon Pang’s idea that the subversion of technology in appropriation art can “embody the intimate and nonhierarchical relationship between the artist and the utilised technology, which brings us to reexamine the current problematic understanding of authorship.”119 By appropriation art, I am referring to a wide range of practitioners who adapt pre-existing images, sounds and objects from advertising, television and consumer culture into new works.120 Appropriation spans across art movements such as Dada, Pop Art, to the works of artists such as Cindy Sherman and Barbara Kruger, through to the vastly
117 Ibid, 5. This imagery is most prevalent in the iconic 1982 sci-fi film, Bladerunner, directed by Ridley Scott. The cultural legacy of this film and its cementing of oriental style will be examined later in Chapter 3. 118 Pang, Creativity, 204. 119 Ibid, 204. 120 The history of appropriation art is far too rich and diverse to examine in the space of thesis. I have acknowledged canonical art movements and artists in this section who are relevant to the practices of this project. However, the list is not exhaustive. In the twentieth century, these artists performed social critiques through quotation and collage, made possible by technological innovations such as tape, photography and later, digital media. See Kembrew McLeod and Rudolf Kuenzli, Cutting across media : appropriation art, interventionist collage, and copyright law (Durham N.C: Duke University Press, 2011), Julie C. Van Camp, “Originality in Postmodern Appropriation Art,” The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society Vol 36, no. 4 (2007). 30 different techniques in music concrète, hip hop and DJ remixes.121 In the context of the twenty-first century, appropriation tactics are evident in what internet entrepreneur Jonah Peretti calls “culture jamming,” a political practice which uses irony to “[turn] corporate power against itself by co-opting, hacking, mocking and recontextualising meanings.”122 To briefly summarise, these heterogeneous practices tend to play with the notion of originality at the level of production, form and structure. Whether implicitly or explicitly, appropriation can add depth to ongoing debates surrounding art, technology and value in “the age of mechanical reproduction,”123 a phrase first introduced by Walter Benjamin in 1935.124
[Figure 8 has been removed due to copyright restrictions.]
Figure 8. A comparison photo of a shanzhai “pearPhone” and an Apple iPhone.
As discussed in the Introduction, this project does not deny its own commodification—appropriation is figured as both resistive and collaborative in its engagement with ambivalence. While the aforementioned (Western) appropriation practices have commonalities with this project, I want to reiterate the thesis’ focus—how shanzhai intervenes within the global rise of China, IPR
121 Van Camp, “Originality,” 247. See Paul Miller aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid, Rhythm Science (Cambridge, Mass. ; London : Mediawork/ MIT Press, 2004). 122 Jonah Peretti, “The Nike Sweatshop Email: Political Consumerism, Internet, and Culture Jamming”, Politics, Products, and Markets: Exploring Political Consumerism Past and Present, ed. Michele Micheletti, Andreas Follesdal and Dietlind Stolle (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), 128. In light of Jonah Peretti’s mass layoffs at Buzzfeed without proper severance pay in 2019, the irony of his ideological stance seems dubious. This is exacerbated by his anti- unionisation beliefs. See Todd Spangler, “BuzzFeed CEO Defends Decision to Not Pay Most Laid-Off Employees for Accrued Time-Off Days,” Variety, 28 January, 2019, variety.com/2019/digital/news/buzzfeed-ceo-layoffs-employees-paid-time-off-1203120493/ (Accessed November, 2019). 123 Walter Benjamin, “The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction,” In Illuminations, translated by Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken Books, 1987) 217-252. 124 Pang, 209. Paraphrasing Benjamin, Pang argues that appropriation art which uses technology reflexively is less susceptible to cooptation. While in Benjamin’s context, the co- optative force was fascism, Pang argues that it can be extended to the copyright regime today. 31 discourse, art and media culture. Online appropriations are uniquely politically charged in China as they express a unique kind of social freedom that is not accessible in other areas of life. As Christopher Rea notes in his examination of Chinese spoofing culture known as “e’gao”, cyberspace is one of the freer publics in China.125 Rea argues that shanzhai set a precedent for the humour and irreverence found in e’gao, via the endless remixing of cultural signifiers, which has a direct appeal to camaraderie.126 Despite the limitations of The Great Firewall,127 Chinese digital spaces represent a discursive site for community-building and social critique.128 In this project, I am interested in how new myths are generated in Chinese cyberspace, reimagining global trends with local inflections. Also of interested is how these myths intersect with global media, consumer culture and state neoliberalism. Thus, the methods of appropriation in Gloss aim to reflect the specificity of shanzhai media culture, as well as the intricacies of its mythic representation. In Gloss, I subvert production technologies in order to transmute oriental style into shanzhai style. As such, Gloss adds depth to 'surface only' techno- orientalist129 imagery—specifically, by over-identifying with its techno-futuristic exteriority—while challenging the magical authority of cultural hegemony. Before I analyse shanzhai style in artistic practice in Chapter 3, it is necessary to provide an overview of some works by Shanzhai Biennial, Fatima Al Qadiri and Stephanie Syjuco, whose works are central to this project. A commonality between these artists is their complication of the real-fake binary through a commitment to ambivalence. As Pang argues, citation practices exist virtually everywhere today so that “the mechanism of appropriation has lost all its
125 Christopher Rea, “Spoofing (e’gao) culture on the Chinese internet,” In Humour in Chinese Life and Culture: Resistance and Control in Modern Times, ed. Jessica Milner Davis & Jocelyn Chey (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013). 126 Ibid, 157. 127 The Great Firewall of China is a nickname given to the combination of legislative actions and censorship technologies enforced by the Chinese state to regulate the Internet domestically. 128 Ibid, 157. For more on Chinese memes, see Min Hui, Guifang Sun, and Lei Zhang. “The English Translation of Chinese Internet Catchwords From Memetic Perspective,” Higher Education of Social Science Vol. 11, no. 4 (2016) 44-49. 129 The term “techno-orientalism” was coined by David Morley and Kevin Robins to describe the tendency for Western media to demonise Japanese and East Asian peoples during the 1980s, when Japan’s bubble economy was booming. See David Morley and Kevin Robins, Spaces of Identity: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries (London: Routledge, 1995). 32 original political power, and commodification is a key factor behind this.”130 As an alternative, I consider how the practices of the aforementioned artists typify Bhabha’s notion of mimicry by producing momentary slippages in dominant knowledge systems in which they also knowingly participate.
[Figure 9 has been removed due to copyright restrictions.]
Figure 9. Shanzhai I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! (left); shanzhai Calvin Kleins underwear (right).
Shanzhai Biennial is an art-fashion crossover “meta-brand,” which links corporate advertising with self-promotion in creative economies. Like the images and found objects in Gloss, the products in Shanzhai Biennial’s projects are sourced from cheap shops in Chinatown. The art collective builds elaborate campaigns for “low” brands as a way to challenge the aura of the commodity fetish. Arising out of a failed collaboration with Shanzhai Biennial, Asiatisch is a concept album by Fatima Al Qadiri exploring the demonisation of China in the West via modern club music.131 Gloss borrows strategies of mistranslation and mimicry found in Asiatisch, which Al Qadiri describes as “soft-synth pirating.”132 She combines stock instrumentation, machine voice, RnB beats and Tang Dynasty poetry, resulting in an unsettling hybrid. While the mimicry of Shanzhai Biennial and Al Qadiri adopt the gloss of high-tech corporate branding, Syjuco’s style can be described as low-tech. Often through a social practice, Syjuco replicates luxury products via everyday materials such as cardboard, paint and yarn. By recreating high-brow objects with low-brow techniques, Syjuco challenges the notion of value in political economies in a similar spirit to Gloss.
130 Pang, Creativity, 206. 131 Fatima Al Qadiri, Asiatisch, Hyperdub, 2014, CD. 132 “Asiatisch: About,” Fatima Al Qadiri (n.d), http://fatimaalqadiri.com/music/fatima-al-qadiri/ asiatisch/file/about-asiatisch/ (Accessed 10 March, 2020). 33 The productive ambivalence of these artists places them alongside the shanzhai style of Gloss, which will be elaborated in the next chapter. Returning to Ong’s idea of transnationality, Gloss amplifies the “flexible practices, strategies and disciplines associated with transnational capitalism” in order to imagine a discursive space which is always in flux.133 One of the principle objectives of this analytical framework is to decentre dominant ideologies of the West and also “the ethnic absolutism born out of nationalism” which sees Chineseness only in relation to the motherland, mainland China.134 At this point, let me introduce my artistic persona of “Chamele No. 5,” a fictional ambassador for shanzhai culture, who is the heroine of Gloss. Chamele over-identifies with the cultural assumptions that have been projected onto my previous works and onto my identity to the point of absurdity. The figure of Chamele will be analysed in detail in Chapter 3 but it is important to establish that her embodiment of shanzhai style aims to challenge existing systems of power that flow multilaterally. The supposed flatness of Chamele’s exteriority (Western gaze) and the supposed origins of her interiority (Chinese gaze) are both deepened via the performative complexities of shanzhai (diasporic gaze). Chamele will now guide us through Chapter 3, which examines three shanzhai strategies deployed in artistic practice: piracy, mistranslation and mimicry. Although these strategies are not mutually exclusive in the practices of the aforementioned artists, I will be focusing on piracy in close conversation with Shanzhai Biennial, mimicry with Stephanie Syjuco, and mistranslation with Fatima Al Qadiri. Each of these artistic practices and tactics will be related back to Gloss.
CHAMELE reaches out her hand and invites you to step into Gloss.
光鲜亮丽 Still the best selling perfume and most famous fragrance (Nº 5) in the world Chchch 香⽔ A woman she says 女性永恒…
133 Ong, Flexible, 19. 134 Ibid, 24. 34 Chapter Nº 3
�® Thinking differently.*
On 7 March 2019, I caught the official opening of Gloss, a concept store created by Chamele No. 5. Audiences were treated to an exclusive in-store performance from the sexy chanteuse herself. Although she lip-synced the whole thing (I’m not sure she can actually sing) the tunes were sick (I wonder who produces for her, cos the beats slap hard!). Chamele brought live art to the event by spraying audiences with her shanzhai perfume, before spraying her logo onto the gallery wall like a hot Asian lady version of Keith Haring. For AUD $100, audiences could buy their own No. 5 T-shirt, which came with a Chamele paper mask. How quirky! For reasons unknown, Chamele exited the party early. But she did leave us a love note – upon the opulent shine of a mirrored plinth was Chamele’s satin dress, platform shoes and her luscious locks, which will probably end up in Hubei.135
Shanzhai Style in Artistic Practice
Under the framework of shanzhai style, this chapter will analyse the project’s creative outcome, Gloss, in dialogue with the practices of Shanzhai Biennial, Stephanie Syjuco and Fatima Al Qadiri. I examine how these diverse artistic practices can be understood as engaging with “undertheorised elements in
* The title of this chapter is my shanzhai stylisation of Apple’s logo and slogan: “Think different.”
135 The final line is a reference to a 2004 news report on CCTV, which revealed that human hair waste was being collected from around the country to be manufactured into soya sauce. The company responsible for this venture was Hubei Xinshengyuan Bio Engineering, based in Jingzhou of Hubei province. See SCMP Reporter, “Firm uses human hair in soya sauce ‘breakthrough’”, South China Morning Post, 5 January, 2004, https://www.scmp.com/article/ 440079/firm-uses-human-hair-soya-sauce-breakthrough (Accessed 10 February, 2020). This description of Gloss has been written in a performative manner. It depicts what actually occurred on the opening night of the project but through the type of gendered and racialised language sometimes used to describe my music in the past, as discussed in the Introduction. 35 Orientalism such as fascination, complicity, and multilateral circuits of exchange” as put forth by Jane Park.136 Situating shanzhai at the intersection of postcolonial studies, semiology and artistic practice, I return again to the central question of this thesis: How can artistic practice employ strategies of shanzhai to critically examine myths about creativity and ownership in relation to the global rise of China? This chapter will critically respond to this question by exploring the shanzhai strategies of piracy, mimicry and mistranslation. As I mentioned in the previous chapter, these methods are not mutually exclusive – rather, they provide useful themes through which it is possible to read “shanzhai style". Reiterating one of the main arguments of this thesis, shanzhai has an ambivalent relationship with global capitalism, capable of both resisting and collaborating with the logic of neoliberalism. Within this critical space between real/fake, global/local, visible/invisible, the shanzhai object emerges as a myth of hybridity. Let us begin the analysis with the first strategy of shanzhai style, piracy.
Figure 10. Chamele and her body doubles perform on the opening night of Gloss. Her No. 5 T- shirts could be purchased for AUD $100 each at the gallery’s gift shop. Cement Fondu, 2019.
136 Park, Yellow, 161. 36 Piracy
According to Laikwan Pang, piracy exposes two things within the global capitalist order: firstly, trademarks are effective because of their metonymic power that is enacted through the all-encompassing myth of branding; secondly, the recognisability of trademarks, unified in a single image, makes them susceptible to being “usurped by other players in ways subversive or not.”137 Numerous corporations, Pang observes, choose not to crack down on counterfeits because the fake products help to generate unofficial publicity for their brand.138 Although piracy is a complex phenomenon worthy of its own in- depth analysis, I make use of this concept in the project to refer to unauthorised usage or reproduction of existing products.139
Figure 11. Installation view of Chamele No. 5 perfume next to its cardboard packaging placed upon a black acrylic floating shelf. Cement Fondu, 2019.
137 Pang, Creativity, 82. 138 Ibid, 198. 139 I am avoiding using the terms real, original or authentic here because this project also performs unauthorised reproductions of “fake” products too. 37 Complicating the real/fake binary, Gloss comprises an elaborate advertising campaign and retail installation for a shanzhai product, endorsed by a shanzhai celebrity, which incorporates both existing and imaginary brand signifiers. The musical component of Gloss is a jingle written for shanzhai perfume brand Chamele No. 5, a found object that catalysed this research project.140 Titled No. 5 my shanzhai jingle gestures towards a long lineage of audio remixing culture which is much too rich to cover exhaustively in this dissertation.141 Nonetheless, I wish to draw attention to composer John Oswald’s innovative term “plunderphonics.”142 As the name suggests, this technique involves sampling existing recordings and reconfiguring them into a new composition with the aim to challenge “originality.” Here, I reframe plundering as “pirating,” linking citational traditions to the project’s focus: shanzhai and the global copyright regime. The global contemporary moment, as Hito Steyerl argues, has seen an intensification of competition under information capitalism, characterised by “swarm circulation, digital dispersion, fractured and flexible temporalities."143 To compete, corporations market themselves multilaterally—a kind of coordinated circulation of commodities across different media platforms known as “synergy.”144 Within this saturated mediascape, Gloss considers two intermediary forces in the music industry as put forth by Charles Fairchild—the “pirate” and the “pop idol.”145 Operating in opposition to the decentralised flows of piracy, the idol phenomenon restores power to the creative industry through synergies, “a series of intertwined relationships with consumers through multiple
140 The jingle No. 5 is located under the “01 No. 5 (Piracy)” folder via the documentation link provided. 141 See Margie Borschke, This is Not a Remix: Piracy, Authenticity and Popular Music (UK: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017). 142 John Oswald’s coined the term plunderphonics in his 1985 essay, Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative, as cited in Kevin Holm-Hudson, “Quotation and Context: Sampling and John Oswald's Plunderphonics”, Leonardo Music Journal, no. 7 (1997): 21. 143 Hito Steyerl, The Wretched of the Screen. (Berlin: Steinberg Press, 2012), 44. 144 See Gerry Bloustien, Susan Luckman, and Margaret Peters. Sonic Synergies : Music, Technology, Community, Identity, (London: Routledge, 2016). 145 Charles Fairchild. Pop Idols and Pirates: Mechanisms of Consumption and the Global Circulation of Popular Music (London: Routledge, 2016.) Fairchild is referring to the Idol reality television phenomenon. He explores how the creative industry first lost control in the digitisation of global marketplaces, namely the invention of the mp3, before regaining control via new mechanisms of control and influence such as synergy. 38 sites of consumption, incorporating television, radio, live performance, text messaging, traditional advertising campaigns, and all manner of internet-based systems of communication and ‘fan management.’”146 As the industry sees the idol/pirate along the axis of right/wrong,147 Gloss challenges this binary through the figure of Chamele, who I introduced in Chapter 2. A celebrity ambassador for a shanzhai brand, Chamele is both idol and pirate.
Figure 12. Audience members capturing and sharing Chamele’s in store performance on the opening night of Gloss. Cement Fondu, 2019.
In Gloss, “synergy” is symbolised via the interdisciplinary nature of the installation, which incorporates video, photography, music, art objects, spatial design and live performance.148 Additionally, Gloss appeals to social media (e.g. with reflective surfaces and flattering lighting) by implicitly inviting audiences to capture themselves in the work and share the images amongst their own
146 Ibid, 3. 147 Ibid, 2-3. 148 See Appendix for the room sheet listing the artworks in Gloss, Cement Fondu (7 March - 7 April, 2019). Please note that I have renamed the jingle from Xiang Mai Er since the exhibition and will be referring to it as No. 5 in this dissertation. 39 networks, thus continuing the unrelenting cycle of information capitalism.149 Adding another layer of signification, the works in Gloss appropriate media objects that I have published for the “real” Rainbow Chan project.150 The main difference between the two projects is that Gloss is emphatically inauthentic, depicted through the figure of Chamele who “shanzhais" many of the Orientalising assumptions that have been projected onto the “real” me. As Rainbow Chan and Chamele both participate in synergistic economies, they both have a parasitic relationship to capital. But the former claims authenticity and rightful ownership, whereas the latter remains ambivalent.151 This notion of ambivalence can also be seen in Shanzhai Biennial’s works which intersect high-end lifestyle branding with shanzhai media objects. Co-founded by Cyril Duval, Babak Radboy and Avena Gallagher, the art collective describe themselves as "a multinational brand posing as an art project posing as a multinational brand posing as a biennial.”152 Like Gloss, Shanzhai Biennial’s works are collaborative and synergistic, participating in the same economies that they challenge. Shanzhai Biennial No. 1 (2012) consists of campaign images for a fashion line that drew inspiration from shanzhai designs. The images were published in China’s mainstream magazine Modern
149 Elements of Gloss have also been disseminated on online platforms including Liquid Architecture’s journal publication, Disclaimer. See Chun Yin Rainbow Chan, “Gloss: a Manifesto on Shanzhai in Artistic Practice by Chamele No. 5”, Disclaimer, no. 1, (2019), https:// disclaimer.org.au/contents/gloss-a-manifesto-on-shanzhai-in-artistic-practice-by-chamele-no-5. (Accessed 29 March, 2020). The way in which Chamele's robotic voice performs her manifesto aloud is how I intend for this dissertation to be heard. This speaking voice was also used in the live performance on the opening night of Gloss which will be discussed later in the chapter. 150 For examples of Rainbow Chan music videos, press shots and merchandise, see Chun Yin Rainbow Chan, "Rainbow Chan”, 2020, https://www.chunyinrainbowchan.com/rainbow-chan (Accessed 10 May, 2020). As “Rainbow Chan” I have shied away from presenting myself within normative standards of feminine beauty in the past (e.g. long hair, seductive make-up, glamorous costumes) which is performed by Chamele. In contrast to this, when I started this project I sported what would be described as a traditionally masculine haircut (a classic scissor cut with short back and sides) and I would dress in androgynous clothing. Over the course of this research project, however, my Rainbow Chan image has started to merge with Chamele's. I have enjoyed playing this character, so much so that the line between the two personas are increasingly blurred. This has led me to examine my own changing constructions of identity and could be taken up as future research possibilities. 151 These tensions between Rainbow Chan and Chamele are also analogous to the logics of capitalism and shanzhai, as discussed in Chapter 1. 152 Harry Burke, “Fake it til you make it,” Spike, No. 45 (Autumn, 2015), http:// www.spikeartmagazine.com/articles/portrait-shanzhai-biennial (Accessed 25 April, 2020). 40 Weekly and the clothing line was launched at Beijing Design Week 2012.153 Although audience members could take selfies in front of a shanzhai media wall, the exhibition itself did not show any actual garments. In Shanzhai Biennial No. 2 (2013) Chinese singer Wu Ting Ting performs a nonsensical Mandarin cover of Sinead O’Connor’s version of Nothing Compares 2 U (1990).154 Wrapped in a sequined dress emblazoned with the shanzhai branding Head and Shouldars (sic), Wu strikes extravagant poses with the microphone to her mouth but does not move her lips. The video work was projected onto a large LED curtain installation at MoMa PS1 and continues to circulate online as an elusive campaign trailer.155 In Shanzhai Biennial No. 3 (2014), the collective attempted to sell an estate for thirty-two million pounds at Frieze London 2014. Working with high-end brokerage Aston Chase, they devised a glossy advertising campaign consisting of video and photo-media, which “shanzhaied” the iconic Chinese Socialist Realist work, Rent Collection Courtyard (1965). Containing 114 life-sized clay sculptures, Rent Collection Courtyard was collectively authored by folk artists, teachers and students at the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts as part of the state’s political and cultural propaganda engine.156 In No. 3, Shanzhai Biennial turned their art fair booth into a fully functioning retail space, raising questions about the circulation of capital in seemingly disparate marketplaces. Throughout these campaigns, imaginary luxury brands are entangled with found shanzhai designs. In marketing discourse, the illusory pedigree or genuineness of a product is known as “brand aura” which is particularly important in luxury items.157 Existing in a mutated
153 ”Shanzhai Biennial Is Definitely Not a Biennial!” DIS Magazine, 24 September, 2012, http:// dismagazine.com/blog/36715/shanzhai-biennial-is-definitely-not-a-biennial/ (Accessed 25 April, 2020). 154 O’Connor’s famous version itself is a cover of Prince. 155 Item Idem, “Shanzhai Biennial: Dark Optimism,” Nowness, 13 May, 2013, https:// www.nowness.com/story/shanzhai-biennial-dark-optimism (Accessed 12 April, 2020); Steph Kretowicz, “Wear the Apple logo, because you can,” Dazed Digital, 13 June, 2013, https:// www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/16351/1/wear-the-apple-logo-because-you-can (Accessed 12 April, 2020); Justin Ray, “Shanzhai Biennial Made a Beautiful Art Film That Sounds Silly on Paper (Video),” Complex, 14 May, 2013, https://www.complex.com/style/2013/05/shanzhai- biennial-made-a-beautiful-art-film-that-sounds-silly-on-paper-video. (Accessed 12 April, 2020). 156 See Pang, Creativity, 210. 157 Nicholas Alexander, “Brand authentication: creating and maintaining brand auras", European Journal of Marketing Vol. 43, no. 3/4 (2009): 551. 41 [Figure 13 has been removed due to copyright restrictions.]
Figure 13. An image from a fashion editorial as part of Shanzhai Biennial No. 1, 2012 (left); Wu Ting Ting lip-synchs nonsense Chinese syllables in Shanzhai Biennial No. 2, 2013 (right) synergistic space, the works of Shanzhai Biennial actively usurp the function of the brand aura in order to produce alternate lineages of desire. Babak Radboy sees shanzhai as emerging out of tensions between technology, IPR discourse and China’s industrial might. He compares shanzhai to the iconic scene Disney’s Fantasia (1940), when the sorcerer’s apprentice enchants a broom but as the spell backfires, the broom multiplies incessantly and overruns the room.158 As Radboy argues, “the things are kind of making themselves. For a factory that does, maybe, Burberry umbrellas and Chanel bags and SpongeBob sweatpants, it makes perfect sense to combine the three because they’re all there.”159 For the collective, shanzhai reflects an alternate attitude towards ‘thing making,’ engendered by a technological determinism that arises out of emerging economies.160 That the world’s factory is now rebelling
158 This refers to the scene in Fantasia when the sorcerer’s apprentice enchants a broom to do the cleaning for him. As the apprentice is not fully trained in magic, his spell backfires. The brooms end up multiplying nonstop and overrun the room. See Radboy Babak as cited in Nate Cohan, “Corporate Aesthetics: Shanzhai Biennial." Art in America, 30 April, 2014, https:// www.artnews.com/art-in-america/interviews/corporate-aesthetics-shanzhai-biennial-56395/. (Accessed 12 April, 2020). 159 Ibid. 160 Ibid. 42 against its Western master can be understood in relation to Aihwa Ong’s concept of “transnational publics.”161 Ong describes this as the structuring of new social norms, made possible by the infiltration of Asian cultural and economic forms into Western spaces.162 Illustrated by the growing economic influence of the Chinese elite, narratives that equate Westernisation with modernisation have been increasingly contested.163 Thus, shanzhai style might produce a new cultural normativity at the intersection of global and local publics which is more nuanced than the monolithic “global rise of China” narrative.
[Figure 14 has been removed due to copyright restrictions.]
Figure 14. Shanzhai variations of Adidas.
Like the tactics of Shanzhai Biennial, piracy is employed in Gloss at the level of form, structure and production. The jingle No. 5 begins with a female voice seductively repeating the word “Chanel” which I ripped from an existing Chanel ad on YouTube.164 As the song develops, this unauthorised sample is pushed into alien territory. Firstly, the pitch is edited so that the voice frantically oscillates between “chipmunk” and “demonic” registers. Secondly, I use the time-stretch function to manipulate the sample’s speed, so it becomes twisted and machinic. As more vocal layers are added, the organic patterns of speech are obliterated through a chaotic cut-and-paste treatment of the ripped audio. Cuts are used in postproduction to ensure that the outcome is coherent and trimmed of superfluous parts.165 For instance, crossfades are used to hide audio cuts. But this has been avoided in No. 5—the cuts are incoherent, misplaced,
161 Ong, Flexible, 159. 162 Ibid,158-9. 163 Ibid, 173. 164 “N°5 L’EAU: the film – CHANEL,” Chanel, 1 November, 2016. Video, 1:00. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLL38X683Qk. (Accessed 20 May, 2020). 165 Steyerl, Wretched, 183. As Steyerl points out, the cut is an economic and cinematic term. But the two realms coalesce if we consider the fact that postproduction has become one of the main modes of capitalist production to increase economic efficiency in the creative industry. 43 and excessive—to emphasise that the samples have been pirated. This strategy not only alludes to the intentional jumbling of letters in shanzhai (abibas, dasabi, adidos) but also to the concept of “postpostproduction” which, as artist and media theorist Hito Steyerl argues, engenders a sense of post- continuity via which subjectivities can be “displaced, humbled and renewed.”166 Here, I extend the flexible spatial-temporality of postpostproduction to include the theoretical framework of transnationalism. As Ong argues, the diasporic subject intersects with "larger questions of displacement, travel, capital accumulation, and transnational processes,” all of which contribute to the increasing pluralisation of what it means to be culturally “authentic.”167 Bringing these ideas together through shanzhai style, piracy is used in No. 5 to explore the notion of displacement as it morphs alongside global capitalism.
Figure 15. Audience members experiencing the jingle No. 5 at a listening station in Gloss. The black trim of Chanel’s packaging is repeated throughout the installation’s spatial design. Cement Fondu, 2019.
To further understand how this is explored in Gloss, let us examine the unconventional usage of tempo synchronisation in No. 5. The “warp” function in
166 Ibid, 183. 167 Ong, Flexible, 24-25. 44 Ableton Live is designed to transform a sample from one bpm to another without noticeable changes in tone quality.168 The primary purpose of the warp tool is standardisation. I propose that this process resembles the logic of assimilation. I discovered by accident that by applying the “beats” warping function onto non-percussive audio creates a sonic byproduct. The mismatched warping inadvertently distorts the original sample and generates digital artefacts. In Gloss, I process the Chanel samples in this manner in order to draw out “unwanted” noises from them. This worked particularly well because of the low fidelity of my YouTube rip. From there, I turn the glitches into a new compositional feature.169 Becoming a hook, the detritus of the pirated sample is reworked into a danceable pop structure.170 In Gloss, I explore the ways that popular music aesthetics intersect with neoliberal capitalism and issues of racism and sexism as argued by Robin James.171 According to James, vocal stuttering in EDM can be understood in terms of neoliberalism.172 In her concept of resilience, female pop divas are read as capitalists who transform their oppression under patriarchal rule into surplus value through a narrative of “overcoming.”173 She maps this onto the way “glitches, rapid and jarring cuts, overdriven synths” are turned into compositional devices in EDM.174 For instance, vocal stuttering first incites
168 A popular Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) and software music sequencer. Beats Per Minute (BPM) indicates the speed of a song. 169 This effect is most evident at 3:25. Stuttering has also been influenced by John Oswald’s plunderphonics song “Dab" in which he splices up Michael Jackson’s Bad into tiny fragments and repeats them ad nauseam, causing meaning to disintegrate and reassemble over time. John Oswald, “Dab," Plunderphonics, Mystery Tape Laboratory, 1989. CD. 170 A hook is a short, repeated idea or phrase that is used in pop music to make a song catchy. See Gary Burns. ”A Typology of ‘hooks’ in Popular Records*.” Popular Music Vol 6, no. 1 (1987): 1–20. 171 Robin James, Resilience & Melancholy: Pop Music, Feminism, Neoliberalism (Winchester, UK: Zero Books, 2015), 6. 172 Electronic Dance Music (EDM) is an umbrella term for a broad range of musical styles in which the compositions are made with computers and/or electronic instruments. House music, techno, drum and bass, dubstep, and trance are the most-notable examples of EDM. 173 Ibid. James uses Lady Gaga and Beyoncé as prime examples. 174 Ibid, 7. 45 dissonance and then resolves to consonance by becoming a catchy hook.175 As James states:
When resilience recycles noise into signal, it intensifies this signal both by amplifying it (giving it more fuel) and making it more efficient (all waste is recouped.) Processes of intensification both generate damage and feed that damage back into the system.176
This description can be related to my unconventional usage of the warp tool, as discussed above. However, I argue that the figure of Chamele aspires to resilience, rather than achieves it. As Chamele never transforms into Chanel, she sits more in line with James’ notion of melancholy, a strategy of a “bad investment.”177 James claims that the melancholic diva can turn resilience against itself by “bending positive feedback loops into vicious cycles.”178 When we invest in Chamele, we invest in the “bad” production of shanzhai. These tensions are explored in No. 5 through Chamele’s robotic singing which is generated by a three-part process.179 First, I pirate Chanel ads and run the text through Google Translate (from English to Chinese). The machine translations tend to have awkward phrasing and grammatical errors. These are then turned into audio files through free text-to-speech (TTS) software. Finally, the audio is processed through pitch-correction. As this software struggles to standardise the machine voice, it generates a byproduct that sounds not dissimilar to the robotic gurgles of Autotune,180 creating what I call “micro-
175 Ibid, 44. Dissonance is the quality of sounds that seems unstable and has an aural need to resolve to a stable consonance. This logic of tension and release has shaped the development of harmony in the Western music tradition, resulting in chord progressions which move in a linear manner. In contrast, harmony in traditional East Asian music is minimalistic. It typically moves in a cyclical manner through the use of drones, repetition and hetereophony (more than one version of the melody being heard at the same time.) See James T. Ulak et. al, “East Asian arts,” Encyclopædia Britannica, 28 May, 2018, https://www.britannica.com/art/East-Asian-arts. (Accessed 20 May, 2020). 176 Ibid, 46. 177 Ibid, 175. 178 Ibid, 175. 179 One audience member said to me that No. 5 was so sonically dense, it felt like her ears were being stabbed! 180 For more on a semiological reading of Auto-Tune, see Jace Clayton, Uproot: Travels in 21st- Century Music and Digital Culture (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), 28-30. Clayton, an American writer, DJ and artist, examines the evolution and global impact of Auto-Tune. He traces the shift in Auto-Tune’s function as a corrective tool to becoming a cosmetic device, now at the front and centre of modern pop songs. Coined “The Cher effect” (it was first used in Cher’s 1998 single Believe) Auto-Tune is detested by vocal purists who see it as a 'loss of soul' in music. 46 stutters.” As James observes, stuttering in EDM is at its most intense during a soar.181 The soar produces a feeling of risk and excitement by blending discrete rhythms into one continuous gush that “crosses the threshold of (human) sensory saturation.”182 In No. 5, the soar begins at 2:25. Over the course of 20 seconds, the original Chanel sample is cut up into increasingly smaller fragments and layered with Chamele’s digital voice, which intensifies into noise. The soar is followed by the drop, a sudden change in rhythm and texture, which appears at 2:42 in No. 5.183 The contrast in sonic intensities at this point of the jingle creates a dynamism, propelling us back into the final repeat of the main theme. This soar/drop trope, as claimed by James, has the feeling “thrusting forward into your seatbelt when you suddenly slam on the brakes.”184 There is an obvious eroticism in the soar/drop, framed by James as turning “musical damage into surplus pleasure.”185 Adam Harper describes the intimacy between technology and humans in modern club music as “digitised love.”186 By combining chopped and accelerated human voices with information-rich digital accompaniments, Harper argues that this type of electronic music embodies “an intense libidinal charge.”187 In No. 5, this eroticism is suggested through the soar/drop – a moment of synchronicity between human (the pirated Chanel sample) and machine (Chamele’s digitally generated voice). At the jingle’s pinnacle is an orgasmic union between life and machine, authentic and shanzhai. But the jingle does not end with a sonic resolution or consonance. Instead, we hear another stuttering vocal loop which bears no tonal relationship with the rest of the song, resulting in a disorienting
181 Daniel Barrows, “A Plague of Soars - Warps in the Fabric of Pop,” The Quietus. 13 April, 2011, https://thequietus.com/articles/06073-a-plague-of-soars-warps-in-the-fabric-of-pop (Accessed 2 March, 2019). A soar is a music compositional device that uses quick repetitions of a single musical fragment to build climax. 182 James, Resilience, 35. 183 James, Resilience, 36. The drop is signalled by a sudden change in rhythm and/or the entry of a distorted bass line. In conjunction with the soar, the pair create a pleasurable effect of tension and release. 184 Ibid, 36. 185 Ibid, 175. 186 Adam Harper, “How Internet music is frying your brain*,” Popular Music Vol 36, no. 1 (2017): 87. 187 Ibid, 87. Harper builds on Jean-Francois Lyotard’s book, Libidinal Economy, in which the controversial thinker writes “[workers] enjoyed the mad destruction of their organic body” forced upon them by capitalism. See Jean-Francois Lyotard, Libidinal Economy (1974), trans. Iain Hamilton Grant (London: Athlones, [1974], 1993), 214. 47 feeling of incompletion. While Chamele embodies the promise of resilience, she reveals herself to be a bad investment – a melancholic, shanzhai diva who only mends her heart so that she can break it again.
Placed atop a mirrored plinth, a pair of rubber platforms catches your attention. On the front of the shoe is what appears to be Chanel’s interlocking Cs and camellia, but the letters are OC and the flower is a little too puffy. The entire shoe is covered by the Louis Vuitton monogram, but upon closer inspection, the print repeats the initials MJZ amongst the iconic flower motif. You then realise that the initials morphs into another familiar design, taking the place of Medusa’s head in Versace’s circular logo. Instead of a Grecian meandros, you see the block letters MEIJIAZE SHOES.
As I established in Chapter 1, seeing shanzhai as its own unique method can raise new insights within artistic discourse. Harry Burke argues that shanzhai should not be uncritically grouped with other remixing methods in art. Such a view fails to see shanzhai as its own citational tactic, capable of producing “equally complex genealogies of signification.”188 Like the works of Shanzhai Biennial, Gloss employs shanzhai to add complexity to the circulation of power in global capitalism. Gloss celebrates the creativity and innovation inherent in shanzhai practices by incorporating found shanzhai objects in the installation, undisguised and unmodified. Let us now turn to how Gloss not only pirates the authentic but also pirates the pirate. Readymades have appeared in art since the beginning of the twentieth century, when Marcel Duchamp mounted a bicycle wheel on a stool.189 Elevating an ordinary object to the realm of art is hardly new. The blurring of low and high culture in today’s global world is so well-rehearsed, there is no need to expand on it here.190 However, I want to return to Laikwan Pang’s idea that
188 Burke, “Fake it.” 189 In Breton and Eluard's Dictionnaire abrégé du Surréalisme, Marcel Duchamp describes the readymade as “an ordinary object elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist.” As cited in Obalk, Hector. "The Unfindable Readymade." tout-fait: The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal, Vol 1, no. 2 (May 2000). https://www.toutfait.com/issues/ issue_2/Articles/obalk.html. (Accessed 20 April, 2020). 190 The ambiguity of taste, value and aesthetic hierarchies in cultural production today has been conceptualised by some under the idea of “nobrow,” see Peter Swirski and Tero Eljas Vanhanen, When Highbrow Meets Lowbrow, ed. Peter Swirski, Tero Eljas Vanhanen (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). 48 Figure 16. Photograph from when I found the MJZ shoes in a supermarket in Guizhou Province, China in 2016. artistic appropriation can potentially disrupt the linkage between creativity, authorship and ownership by “releasing textuality to its proliferation” through technological interventions.191 In Gloss, I complicate the notion of authenticity as the installation incorporates both pirated goods in their unmodified form and their shanzhai versions. This strategy shifts the readymade into the category of what I call the “readyfake."192 Here, I suggest changing “made” to “fake” so that the citational method signifies the specificities of shanzhai.193 In Gloss, I proudly display the two readyfakes that catalysed this research project—the pair of Meijiaze shoes described above and the Chamele No. 5 perfume bottle mentioned earlier in the chapter.194 The Meijiaze shoes are delicately positioned on top of a custom-made mirror plinth. The Chamele bottle is presented on a black acrylic floating shelf, unashamedly standing next to its flimsy cardboard packaging. I pirate the readyfake’s packaging (which pirates Chanel’s black-outlined packaging) by painting a similar black border on the plinths and gallery walls of the installation space.195 There are no price tags; in
191 Pang, Creativity, 207. 192 I avoid using the term “elevated” because I see the readyfake as existing in a parallel system of value to the “original” object, not a hierarchical one. 193 My coinage of the term “readyfake” also draws on Fan Yang’s thesis which takes the phrase “Made in China” and turns it into “Faked in China” in order to reflect more pertinent debates surrounding piracy, property and creative economies today. Yang, Faked in China. 194 I am indebted to 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art for these shoes as I stumbled across them in a dingy supermarket in Guizhou Province, China while I was on a residency with the gallery in 2016. 195 See Figure 15 on page 44 of this dissertation. 49 place of a sales assistant is a room sheet.196 Like Shanzhai Biennial’s replica boutique in their work No. 3, I emulate a luxury retail environment in order to draw parallels between the circulation of capital in creative industries, art markets and consumer culture.197
[Figure 17 has been removed due to copyright restrictions.]
Figure 17. Merchandising strategies of Chanel stores that I have mimicked in Gloss.
Putting the readyfakes front and centre exposes the project’s own citational microcosm, allowing the audience to see what has been directly pirated. For example, the textile pattern on Chamele’s wrap dress which appears across all the works in Gloss derives from the MJZ shoe pattern.198 The textile print comes from a low-quality photo of the shoe captured on my phone and uploaded to a fabric printing website. I chose not to finesse the tiling of the pattern to evoke a sense of disjuncture. This strategy alludes to Steyerl’s concept of “cuts" outlined earlier, where fragmentary reedits of an image
196 This refers to a well-known business strategy whereby luxury stores such as jewellery shops hide their price tags in order to encourage the consumer to interact with the sales assistant. Having a chance to learn about the “story” of the product, the customer is more likely to purchase the product. See Stacey Vanek Smith, “Why Jewelry Stores Hide The Price Tags” NPR News, 22 September, 2014, https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/09/22/349873785/ why-jewelry-stores-hide-the-price-tags/ (Accessed 20 April, 2020). 197 I am drawing here from my own experiences of working in retail stores, as well as researching the layouts and interior fittings of various Chanel boutiques. See Figure 17. 198 Details of this dress and pattern is located under the “01 No. 5 (Piracy)” folder via the documentation link provided. 50 emerge as “incoherent, artificial and alternative political bodies.”199 Yet, in the images and videos of Gloss, the MJZ textiles pattern (and Chamele’s appearance, which will be discussed later) has been enhanced in postproduction to appear more opulent and attractive, exposing the work’s complicity in eroticised constructions of the Asian female body that it also challenges. Here, I consider Steyerl’s argument that the prefix “post-” has been replaced with “re-” in the global moment because contemporary society cannot break free from capitalist modes of production. She states, “We are not after production. Rather we are in a state in which production is endlessly recycled, repeated, copied and multiplied.”200 I present readyfakes alongside my “shanzhaied" readyfakes within the retail environment of Gloss in order to highlight the nuances in shanzhai methods that resist the monolithic label of “copy.” The political potential of this space can be linked to Bhabha’s concept of successful colonial appropriation, which “depends on a proliferation of inappropriate objects that ensure its strategic failure, so that mimicry is at once resemblance and menace.”201 Gloss reproduces characteristics of global capitalism in a wilfully confusing manner. This leads us into the next strategy of shanzhai style—mimicry.
Mimicry
If we distinguish citational strategies in terms of how much they resemble the “original,” mimicry sits somewhere between piracy and mistranslation. In colonial discourse, the figure of mimicry is understood to be a colonised subject who imitates the language, dress and politics of the coloniser in an attempt to access the same power for him or herself.202 However, Bhabha suggests that strategic mimicry can also produce a kind of ironic double vision which “alienates the modality and normality of those dominant discourse in which they
199 Steyerl, Wretched, 187. 200 Ibid, 183. 201 Bhabha, Location, 123. 202 Bhabha, Location, 125. My usage of “mimic” as a qualifier throughout the chapter, such as mimic object, mimic bag or mimic jelly, appropriates this turn of phrase here. 51 emerge as ‘inappropriate’ subjects.”203 Laikwan Pang extends Bhabha’s concept of mimicry to current debates in the global copyright regime. As Pang argues, colonial authority has been replaced by the ubiquity of global consumerism.204 The shanzhai “mimic object” takes the place of the colonial “mimic man.” It absorbs the disciplinary gaze of Western cultural imperialism and re-articulates it through a productive ambivalence. Understood in this way, I use mimicry in this project to refer to inappropriate imitations that are produced through shanzhai style.205 There is a high degree of self-awareness in the designs of shanzhai objects. They must bear enough of a resemblance to the real thing; yet, they knowingly weave in mutations, substitutions and errors to evade authorities. As Shanzhai Biennial co-founder Cyril Duval states, “a shanzhai good is an intellectual construction and assemblage of cultural symbols and icons that encompasses a power of attraction.”206 Attesting to its complexity, Andrew Chubb compares shanzhai to the concept of “contact zones.”207 Shanzhai practices, by Chubb’s account, exemplify the process of “selective appropriation” of dominant culture, executed by subjugated peoples as they navigate the uneven playing field of globalisation.208 The perceived fixity of Western imperialism is challenged by non-Western subjects within new publics that emerge out of transnationalism, as argued in Chapter 2. In these discursive spaces, dominant cultural forms are mimicked, localised and fed back into the capitalist system. Shanzhai momentarily disrupt the flow of power, but as Pang reminds us, the commodity market easily mitigates the situation by shifting the blame onto China through mythologisation.209 In a sense, shanzhai objects can be read as always already mentally prepared for failure, knowing they will be caught out. Perhaps that is why their embodiment of mimicry is so brazen and
203 Bhabha, Location, 126. For Bhabha, this line of descent of the mimic man can be traced through the works of Kipling, Forster, Orwell, Naipaul and Bipin Chandra Pal. 204 Pang, Creativity, 194-5. 205 I use “inappropriate" here instead of “wrong" or "incorrect" because the term connotes more flexibility in the production of value, an idea we will be investigating in this chapter. 206 Cyril Duval, "Shanzhai." Leap, no. 33 (27 July, 2015). http://www.leapleapleap.com/2015/07/ shanzhai/. 207 Chubb, “China’s Shanzhai Culture” 268. Chubb builds on the notion of contact zones as conceived by hybridity theorist, Mary Louise Pratt. 208 Ibid, 263. 209 Pang, Creativity, 199. 52 creative because they have nothing to lose. How can this irreverence be taken up as an aesthetic strategy in artistic practice? The notions of authenticity, value and global capitalism are similarly explored by artist Stephanie Syjuco, albeit with a nuanced perspective from the Filipinx diaspora.210 Drawing on her lived experiences as a researcher and a practitioner, Syjuco raises questions at the intersection of history, race and labour. As Jan Christian Bernabe comments, Syjuco employs the diasporic experience of “neither here nor there” in her visual language to explore “the political possibilities of an aesthetics shaped by and from the interstices.”211 Like the pirating techniques I have discussed, Syjuco’s “market” works investigate marginalised commodities that arise out of economic inequalities endemic to postcolonial geographies.212 For instance, Everything Must Go (Grey Market) (2006) is an installation resembling a flea market which consists of paper approximations of pirated goods. Adding another layer of piracy, the images on the paper sculptures are sourced from illicit online marketplaces. These low-res images are enlarged, becoming distorted in a similar manner to the print on Chamele’s dress in Gloss. Often based on web-sourced images, Syjuco’s objects “declare their simulation while entering into the same economic exchange system as the artifacts that they reference.”213 While many of Syjuco’s works are relevant to my project, I will focus on her participatory work The Counterfeit Crochet Project (Critique of a Political Economy) (2006-). In Counterfeit Crochet, Syjuco plays with the concept of commodity value as it is embodied in an object’s materiality and in the labour expended on its production. Offering a loose pattern guide via downloadable PDFs, Syjuco invites participants to hand-counterfeit designer handbags that they desire but cannot afford. The crochet bags are inappropriate for two main reasons. Firstly, the bags are based on low-res JPEGs of “real” bags sourced from the internet.
210 Syjuco was born in the Philippines and migrated to the United States at the age of three where she currently lives and works. See Jan Christian Bernabe, “Stephanie Syjuco ‘Blows Up’,” Wasafiri Vol 28, no. 3 (2013): 25. 211 Ibid, 25. 212 See Black Market Series (2005), Black Market Blowout (2005), Black Market Ad Campaign (2013), Market Forces (2014) Stephanie Syjuco, https://www.stephaniesyjuco.com/ (Accessed 19 May, 2020). 213 Genevieve Quick, “Locating Technology: Raiders and Empires.” Art Practical. October 27, 2015, 108. 53 Secondly, they mimic luxury items through the use of crochet, traditionally considered a low art form. These limitations ensure that failure is built into the mimicked bag. The counterfeiters conceive innovative methods to negotiate the constraints of yarn, even embellishing their bags with extra features to suit their own needs. The participants are encouraged to take photos with their finished products; some stage elaborate photo shoots and others take their photo inside the gallery-cum-store. As Sarah Archer claims, “The concept of ‘fauxness’ itself is thus turned on its head, because the resulting creations are very real for those who made them, and they reify Syjuco’s patterns as well.”214 When Syjuco shares these images, she censors the collaborators’ eyes in order to safeguard them from IPR authorities. Whilst this is primarily a gesture of care, the black strips also mythologise the inappropriateness of the project. On her
[Figure 18 has been removed due to copyright restrictions.]
Figure 18. Installation view of Stephanie Syjuco’s The Crochet Counterfeit Project, 2006 at Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco (left); photo collage of Syjuco’s collaborators with their eyes blacked out, details of the handmade counterfeit bags (right).
counterfeiting strategies, Syjuco states, “There’s nothing really resistant in a project like this, it just highlights a predicament that is everywhere.”215 In line with this, Gloss uses the ambivalence produced by shanzhai practices to challenge cultural assumptions surrounding authorship and value. Let us now turn to the object-based work in Gloss titled Couplet/Duilian which consists of eight replica perfume bottles made out of glycerine and
214 Sarah Archer, “Open Source Activism,” American Craft Inquiry Vol. 1, no. 1. American Craft Council, (July 9, 2017): 87. 215 Stephanie Syjuco in Joanna Cresswell, “Copies, Homages, Perversions: an interview with Stephanie Syjuco,” Elephant, no. 30 (2017): 105. 54 plasticine.216 The jelly sculptures have been cast from the project’s readyfake object, Chamele No. 5, which is an obvious replica of the famous No.5 bottle. Suspended in each of the eight jellies is an individual Chinese character. I have mimicked the well-known Chinese poetic form “duilian,” a pair of corresponding sentences often written on scrolls and adhered to the wall as wishes for good fortune. My duilian is made up of a Google Translated Chanel tagline “The feminine eternal/女性永恒” and a human translation of the installation’s title
“Gloss/光鲜亮丽.”217 Duilian is typically rendered through ink brush calligraphy. In my work, the expressiveness of calligraphy and the exoticism associated with it (think Kanji tattoos on Western bodies)218 are reduced to infantile plasticine imitations. Like Syjuco, I challenge the process of reification in Gloss by creating commodities that have been intervened at the level of material and production. To do this, I draw on Marx’s understanding that a commodity-form can be defined by its use-value (its material and utilitarian value which is concrete) and by its exchange-value (its abstract and social value which is determined by market relations).219 To explore the jelly’s potential exchange-value, I build upon Sianne Ngai’s aesthetic category of “cuteness,” which along with the zany and interesting, she sees as the dominant aesthetic in consumer society.220 Interconnected with “the infantile, the feminine, and the unthreatening,” cute objects demand the viewer to care.221 However, the cute object, epitomised by “an undifferentiated blob of soft, doughy matter” can also elicit a sadistic
216 Images of Couplet/Duilian is located under the “02 Couplet/Duilian (Mimicry)” folder via the documentation link provided. 217 The Chinese translated title was suggested by a copy editor in Beijing when I presented the work at i-Project Space. See Chunyin Rainbow Chan: Gloss 光鲜亮丽, 22 September, 2018, https://www.facebook.com/events/312787959301840 218 These tattoos often contain mistranslations, unbeknownst to the wearer. Pop star Ariana Grande was recently ridiculed after getting a mistranslated tattoo that read “Japanese barbeque grill” instead of the name of her single “Seven Rings.” See Agence France-Presse, “Ariana Grande mocked for Japanese tattoo typo: 'Leave me and my grill alone’”, The Guardian, 31 January, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jan/31/ariana-grande-mocked-for- japanese-tattoo-typo-leave-me-and-my-grill-alone. (Accessed March 15, 2020). 219 Marx, Capital, 126-130. 220 Sianne Ngai as cited in Adam Jasper, “Our Aesthetic Categories: An Interview with Sianne Ngai,” Cabinet Magazine, no. 43, Fall, 2011. http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/43/ jasper_ngai.php (Accessed April 20, 2020). 221 Ibid. 55 response as its powerlessness invites poking or prodding.222 As Ngai argues, cute things are denigrated as trivial, small and simple. Despite this, they also shape the desires of commodity-oriented culture by appealing to both tenderness and aggression.223 Noting how they can quickly turn gross or disgusting, Ngai posits that cute things are not as powerless as they appear.224 Instead, cute things are politically ambivalent.225 I extend this to Syjuco’s bags which, in the artist’ own words, are “both homages and lumpy mutations.”226 Their subversiveness is entwined with understandings of kitsch, domesticity and female labour associated with crochet. Through cuteness, the mimic bag displaces the sexiness of the original bag and replaces it with something “unsexy.” In a related manner, the soft contours of my jelly bottles in Couplet/ Duilian can be read as performing cuteness through a shanzhai lens. I suggest that the jellies’ imperfections challenge the fetishisation of Asiatic bodies in Western cultural fantasy. As Jane Park reminds us in her reading of oriental style, racial difference is often commodified in Western cinema through its depictions of "the exoticised eroticisation of Asian women in various service roles.”227 But the jellies in Couplet/Duilian do not resist the logic of commodification. In fact, they take on the form of the feminised commodity in all their cute and misshapen glory, producing an ambivalent reading of the Oriental object as “desirably undesirable.” While Syjuco’s crochet bags are still utilitarian, the jelly bottles in Couplet/Duilian are completely useless. In this sense, they perform the myth of ornamentation that Barthes describes as simultaneously “fleeing from nature thanks to a kind of frenzied baroque” and “trying to reconstitute it through an incongruous artifice.”228 Evoking a similar affect as the blacked-out eyes in the
222 Sianne Ngai, Our Aesthetic Categories : Zany, Cute, Interesting. (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2012), 64. It is worth nothing that, following Ngai’s reading of cuteness, numerous people requested to pet or poke the jellies in Couplet/Duilian. 223 Sianne Ngai, "Our Aesthetic Categories,” PMLA 125, no. 4 (2010): 951. 224 Ngai as cited in Jasper, “Our Aesthetic Categories.” 225 Ngai, “Our Aesthetic Categories,” 951. 226 "The Counterfeit Crochet Project (Critique of a Political Economy),” Stephanie Syjuco, n.d., https://www.stephaniesyjuco.com/projects/the-counterfeit-crochet-project-critique-of-a-political- economy. (Accessed April 20, 2020). 227 Park, Yellow, 71. 228 Barthes, Mythologies, 90. While Barthes is talking about ornamental cookery, I believe the significations of ornamentation here are applicable to the mimicry of shanzhai style. 56 photographs of Syjuco’s Counterfeit Crochet, the bottles’ inappropriateness is highlighted by their anti-utilitarianism. Drawing on Bhabha's notion of mimicry as strategic failure, I chose jelly to be the replicant material because of its inevitable degradation. As the jellies droop, sag and wrinkle over time, they become rather anthropomorphic. Here, I am alluding to the noteworthy passage in Capital in which Marx describes the substance of exchange value as “the mere jelly of undifferentiated human labour.”229 For Marx, jelly or gelatine refers to the remnants of the time and labour expended on a commodity’s production. These traces of labour must be congealed and abstracted so that the commodity-form can become a quantifiable and exchangeable object in the capitalist market.230 However, the jelly bottles challenge this abstraction of labour—their visceral, sticky bodies accrue the traces of my fingerprints as I handle them, communicating the humanness of the labour expended on the object’s production. Similar to the way in which Syjuco’s crochet bags are limited by the “humanity” of their maker’s skills, the jellies in Couplet/Duilian are limited by my unfamiliarity with sculpture-making. Their value is not embodied in success but in strategic failure. In this light, the use-value of the jelly is one of myth-making. The struggle between the jelly’s inappropriateness and its aspirations for perfection through mimicry conjures a performative dissonance that is immanent in shanzhai style. As I mentioned in the piracy section of this chapter, glass is an important signifier throughout the works in Gloss. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, glass architecture has been associated with modernity, freedom and progress.231 In his book The System of Objects, Jean Baudrillard considers how the transparency of glass incites a unique psychological effect or “atmosphere,” one which is a feeling of collusion and exclusion.232 He identifies this in
229 See Nicole Shukin, Animal Capital: Rendering Life in Biopolitical Times (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), 75-76. 230 Ibid. 231 Detlef Mertins, Architecture Words 7: Modernity Unbound (London: Architectural Association, 2011), 93. A prime example of this is Bruno Taut’s iconic Glass Pavilion at the Cologne Deutscher Werkbund Exhibition in 1914, a structure so radical for its time, it became a symbol of human progress. The building’s function was to demonstrate both the potential of glass in architecture and expose the spiritual richness of the material itself. As architecture and historian Detlef Mertins summarises, glass represented a utopian ideal in modernism. 232 Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects (London: Verso, 1996), 42. 57 consumer culture—food packaging, partitions and shop windows.233 Adding another perspective, Park observes how glass, steel and neon are fetishised in sci-fi texts such as Neuromancer, Blade Runner, and The Matrix.234 Drawing on techno-cultural feminist theorists Wendy Chun and Lisa Nakamura, Park examines how the cyberpunk narratives of the 1980s have become naturalised through its repeated deployment in popular culture.235 The overdeveloped modern East Asian city has become a metonym for dystopian futures in which “human beings are emotionally alienated due to the mechanisation of social relations brought on by postindustrial capitalism.”236 How cyberpunk visual signifiers have been appropriated in Gloss will be expanded on under the strategy of mistranslation later.
Figure 19. Chamele spraying her shanzhai perfume on an audience member while others anticipate their turn. Cement Fondu, 2019.
233 Baudrillard, System, 42-44. In Baudrillard’s words, “The psychological function of glass (its transparency and purity) is thus totally recuperated and submerged by its economic function. The sublime ends up as a motivation to buy.” 42. 234 Park, Yellow, 71 and 117. 235 Ibid, 9-11. 236 Ibid, 9. 58 Building on these readings of glass, the jellies in Couplet/Duilian complicate the mythic value of glass as a marker of progress. The hardness of glass is exchanged for the softness of jelly, troubling the positioning of Asiatic peoples and cultures as “nonhuman” in techno-Oriental discourse.237 More specifically, I consider Park’s reading of the model minority who is portrayed as innately inauthentic.238 Park argues that this tokenistic character “performs a necessary but potentially dangerous prosthetic role vis-a-vis the Western subject… dangerous precisely in his or her ability to imitate the Western subject and thus question its humanity.”239 In order to maintain white supremacy, the model minority’s agency must be limited. To achieve this, Park suggests that colonial stereotypes have been upgraded in techno-Oriental discourse which continue to render the Asiatic as nonhuman.240 Drawing on Said, Park critiques how the East has been historically figured as “the eroticised, feminised other that exists to be known, penetrated, and subordinated by the masculinised West.”241 Under the conditions of postindustrial capitalism, this threatening image of the East has shifted onto the human-machine hybrid.242 These tensions are embodied in Couplet/Duilian. The jelly bottles appeal to techno- Oriental imagery through its incorporation of Chinese script that has been technologically intervened through Google Translate. But the bottles transmute the high-tech hardness of glass into the low-tech limpness of jelly. Rather than resisting racialised and gendered readings of the techno-Orient, the jellies mimic and perform it inappropriately through the aesthetics of cuteness.243
237 Ibid, 50. 238 The term “model minority” has often been used to refer to a minority group perceived as particularly successful. In the context of the US, the model minority myth is often applied to Asian Americans who are praised for their successes across academia, business and other cultural domains. As a group, Asian Americans are then pitted against other ethnic groups such as African American or Hispanic peoples. The myth is not only propagated by white people, but is also often internalised by Asian Americans. The myth of the model minority operates to maintain the overall supremacy of white people. This play of power has been referred to as “racial triangulation.” See Ibid, 48-50. 239 Ibid, 49-50. 240 Ibid, 194. 241 Ibid, 3. 242 Ibid, 194. 243 The shanzhai jellies might be read by some as embodying “kawaii" or Japanese cute culture. I agree that there might be some implicit similarities because I consumed a lot of kawaii as a child. However, kawaii has become such a normative soft power in global capitalism that subsuming the project’s jelly objects into the more recognised kawaii aesthetics could risk oversimplifying the complex and culturally embedded aesthetics of shanzhai style. 59 The jellies’ squishiness also challenges the ways in which the Chanel brand is enmeshed with the myth of the modern woman.244 While it is not the project’s intent to single out Chanel in the constellation of trademarks, it is worth noting the brand’s cultural dominance. Chanel No. 5 remains one of the best- selling perfumes in the world and has been described as “the holy grail of ‘timeless classic.’”245 Legend has it that Coco Chanel asked perfumer Ernest Beaux to create a fragrance that “embodied the modern, unconventional woman.”246 She named the perfume “No. 5” because it was the fifth sample that Beaux presented to her. This coincidentally lined up with Chanel’s own superstitions around the number five as being spiritually significant, deepening the mystique of the product.247 The bottle’s clean-cut transparent glass design distinguished the brand from the typically ornate bottles of the time. Embodying the modern woman, the glass bottle’s shape is rumoured to be based on a whisky decanter used by Chanel's lover, Arthur “Boy” Capel.248 Marilyn Monroe further cemented the perfume's mythical status when she stated that she wore only Chanel No. 5 to bed.249 Within these narratives, Chanel No. 5 signifies a certain type of contemporary femininity that is also “masculine" in its boldness and originality, which I argue is at odds with cuteness. Like the layers of degradation within Syjuco’s crochet bags based on a low-res jpeg of the original bag, my cute jellies are based on a shanzhai imitation bottle of Chanel. Through their double mimicry, these self-aware art objects can be understood to be recycling the parasitic imperatives inherent to both capitalism and shanzhai production in order to proliferate critical discourses surrounding authorship and ownership with ambivalence.
244 See Jessa Krick, "Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel (1883–1971) and the House of Chanel." In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000-) https:// www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/chnl/hd_chnl.htm. (Accessed April 21, 2020). 245 “Chanel No 5,” Marketing, Gale Academic OneFile, 25 July 2012, 18. On the official Chanel website, the product description of the No. 5 perfume reads: “N°5, the very essence of femininity. An aldehyde floral bouquet housed in an iconic bottle with a minimalist design. A timeless, legendary fragrance.” See "No 5,” Chanel, n.d., https://www.chanel.com/au/fragrance/ p/125530/n5-eau-de-parfum-spray/. (Accessed April 21, 2020). 246 “Chanel No 5,” Marketing, 18. 247 Tilar J. Mazzeo, The Secret of Chanel No. 5: The Intimate History of the World's Most Famous Perfume (US: Harper/HarperCollins Publishers, 2010), 9. 248 “Chanel No 5,” Marketing, 18. 249 John Ayto, Ian Crofton and Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, ”Chanel No. 5,” Brewer’s Dictionary of Modern Phrase and Fable, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 60 [Part of Figure 20 has been removed due to copyright restrictions.]
Figure 20. Chanel No. 5’s bottle design over time (top); Installation view of Couplet/Duilian. Displayed in acrylic boxes, the Chinese characters inside these jellies translate to “Gloss.” Displayed the other side is a Google Translation of “The Feminine Eternal.” Cement Fondu, 2019.
With these narratives in mind, let us revisit the tagline “The Feminine Eternal” that I have pirated from a real Chanel ad and reimagined in Gloss. The phrase “The Feminine Eternal” is woven into three interconnected works in Gloss. As I noted earlier in the chapter, it appears in the jingle No. 5 via pirated samples and in Chamele’s digitised vocal stuttering. The phrase also appears in Couplet/Duilian as Google Translated plasticine approximations, frozen inside mimic jelly bottles. In the installation’s image-based works, the phrase appears as typographic animations, which I will examine later under the strategy of mistranslation.
61 What does this feminine eternal look like in the context of shanzhai? The shanzhai version refutes the tagline’s connotative fixity. I draw upon Park’s notion of the “conditional present” to conceptualise the self as “continually changing and growing as it touches and is touched by others.”250 There could not be a more fitting description of identity under the lens of shanzhai, which only comes into being through contact with Others in transnational publics that move alongside global capital. This movement “opens up” an alternate time and space, as argued by Park, which is “the critical space between visibility and invisibility, reality and potential.”251 This moment of disruption demands a closer look at what is sitting in front of us, asking us to acknowledge that this present is a condition of the past and future which are "always intertwined and under construction.”252 Building upon Park, I argue that it is the conditional present within which the figure of Chamele inhabits, not the feminine eternal. One of the central conditions of this alternate space is mimicry—there must be a pre-existing brand that the shanzhai imitates. In this sense, there is an initial lag in the spatiotemporal relationship between the “authentic" and the shanzhai. Here, I consider how lip-synching can represent this tension. In traditional music criticism, lip-synching is abhorred because it undermines the core value of performance, that is, “liveness”, on which the myth of authenticity in rock culture depends.253 Lip-synching has even been viewed by some legislators as a matter of consumer fraud in the context of live concerts.254 However, lip-synching is an important tactic in the practices of marginalised groups such as in the drag community.255 Looking at the popularity of lip- synching videos on YouTube, Merrie Snell argues that lip-synching can
250 She builds upon Elspeth Probyn’s coinage of the term. Park, Yellow 26. 251 Ibid, 25. 252 Ibid, 25. 253 Philip Auslander, Liveness [electronic resource] : performance in a mediatized culture, (New York: Routledge, 1999), 94-95. Auslander makes a distinction between the feelings towards the use of lip-synching in rock and pop music performance. He notes that the usage of lip-synching in pop music is not surprising to audience members because the genre itself is already conceived to be contrived. For a list of "lip-sync fails”, see “The Ten Most Infamous Lip Sync Incidents in Pop History: Where Does Mariah Rank?” Billboard Magazine, 4 January, 2017, https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/7640807/most-infamous-lip-sync-incidents- videos-mariah-carey. (Accessed April 21, 2020). 254 Auslander, Liveness, 74. 255 Carol Langley, “Borrowed Voice: The Art of Lip-Synching in Sydney Drag,” Australasian Drama Studies, no. 48 (April 1, 2006): 5–17. 62 empower amateur producers via the dual processes of fragmentation and appropriation “wherein the silent bodies of the lip-synchers recombine with the disembodied voices of recorded song to create a new rearticulation of both.”256 My exploration of lip-synching in Gloss sits in dialogue with these marginal tactics. Specifically, I build upon its deployment in Shanzhai Biennial’s work No. 2. As I outlined earlier in this chapter, Wu Ting Ting lip-synchs to a cover of Nothing Compares 2 U rendered in gibberish Mandarin. Performed by Beijing- based singer Helen Feng, Shanzhai Biennial’s cover is an adaptation of an amateur video that the artists sourced from YouTube. Originally, Shanzhai Biennial asked Fatima Al Qadiri to produce “a cheap Chinese instrumental” for Helen Feng’s a cappella.257 The collective thought what Al Qadiri created was “too sophisticated” and thus rejected her demo. However, the failed collaboration led Al Qadiri to create a concept album centred around Western stereotypical portrayals of China, titled Asiatisch (2014).258 Al Qadiri’s album will be examined in detail under the strategy of mistranslation, but to reiterate, these themes are not mutually exclusive. I argue that Al Qadiri’s song mimics Shanzhai Biennial’s work, which mimics an amateur cover of Sinead O’Connor’s single, originally written by Prince. In this light, the strategic use of lip-synching in Shanzhai Biennial’s No. 2 indexes this complicated cycle of borrowing. Whose voice are we actually hearing? Building on No. 2, a similar tactic of mimicry is deployed in the live performance of No. 5, which was seen on the opening night of Gloss. My voice as Chamele throughout the performance, titled In Store Appearance, is pre- recorded.259 As outlined earlier, Chamele’s voice is generated by text-to-speech
256 Merrie Snell, Lipsynching: The Study of Sound (UK: Bloomsbury, 2020), 137. 257 Fatima Al Qadiri as cited in Sasha Frere-Jones, "A Non-Resolution to Elect Fatima Al Qadiri to Non-Office,” The New Yorker. 12 May, 2014, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/sasha-frere- jones/a-non-resolution-to-elect-fatima-al-qadiri-to-non-office. (Accessed 25 March, 2020). A cappella is a piece of vocal music sung without instrumental accompaniment. My reasoning for not italicising this Italian musical term follows the same logic as choosing not to italicise Chinese words in this dissertation. 258 Al Qadiri’s album was another catalyst for this research project. The album opens with the rejected cover titled “Shanzhai” which both pays homage to its collaborative origins and sets up the album’s thematic framework. Al Qadiri’s song was actually how I first came across the term ‘shanzhai’ even though counterfeits were normalised in my life. Upon discovering this term, I began researching the nuances of this cultural phenomenon, reflecting on my own relationship with authenticity, and was able to situate the counterfeit objects which I owned within a wider discourse of creativity and ownership. 259 Images, video and audio playback of In Store Appearance can be found in the “03 In Store Appearance (Mimicry)” folder in the documentation link provided. 63 software, as well as pirated audio samples from Chanel ads. Adding another layer of dissonance to the performance, I mimic speech, but my mouth does not correlate to the playback. The lip-synch is made more inauthentic through my exaggerated feminine gestures – batting my eyelashes, flicking my hair (obviously a wig), pouting, smiling and blowing kisses at the audience. I argue that the negative connotations of lip-synching can be extended to Barthes’ criticism of the myth of ornamentation, as previously discussed, which he sees as being “an incongruous artifice” that both tries to flee from nature and reconstitute it. However, Chamele does not try to achieve success as prescribed by the feminine eternal or the timeless classic myths of Chanel. Rather, Chamele zooms into the conditional present and momentarily disrupts its flows of capital and power through the ambivalence produced by bad lip- synching. Shifting Bhabha’s concept of colonial mimicry to the context of transnationalism, shanzhai reproduces the authentic brand “across a body politic that refuses to be representative, in a narrative that refuses to be representational.”260 The contestation between real/fake, past/future, West/East, visible/invisible opens up a space in which alternate affects and desires can be imagined.
[Part of Figure 21 has been removed due to copyright restrictions.]
Figure 21. Chamele’s pout. Cement Fondu, 2019 (left); Still from Shanzhai Biennial No. 2 showing Wu Ting Ting lip-synching with a microphone, 2013 (right).
Before I turn to the final section of this chapter, I want to draw attention to a prominent media scandal which politicised the lip-synch. During the 2008 Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony, a nine-year-old girl by the name of Lin
260 Bhabha, Location, 126. 64 Miaoke had the momentous task of singing China’s patriotic classic, Ode To The Motherland. In her small red dress, a lone Lin sang a heartfelt rendition of the song with fireworks blazing above. Lin was celebrated globally and earned the nickname "smiling angel” in local media.261 However, it was later revealed that Lin lip-synched to a recording and that the angelic voice belonged to seven-year-old Yang Peiyi. According to media reports, Lin was chosen to be the face of the event because Yang’s crooked teeth and chubby face were deemed to be not “cute” enough. However, Lin’s singing was not good enough, so the directors decided to use both children, albeit in a hybrid form.262 Needless to say, China was criticised by the international community for perpetuating unhealthy standards of beauty in young children.263
[Figure 22 has been removed due to copyright restrictions.]
Figure 22. The voice, Yang Peiyi (left); The face, Lin Miaoke (right).
261 BBC News, ”Chinese Pop Stars Face $12,000 Lip-Synching Fine,” BBC News, 23 January, 2010, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8476769.stm. (Accessed 15 March, 2020). 262 See Tania Branigan, “Olympics: Child singer revealed as fake,” The Guardian, 12 August, 2008, https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2008/aug/12/olympics2008.china1; ABC/Reuters, “Chinese child singer 'too ugly' for opening ceremony,” ABC News, 13 August, 2008, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-08-13/chinese-child-singer-too-ugly-for-opening-ceremony/ 474482; Jim Yardley, "In Grand Olympic Show, Some Sleight of Voice,” The New York Times, 12 August, 2008, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/sports/olympics/13beijing.html. (All accessed 15 March, 2020). 263 It has been reported that since this scandal, China has banned lip-synching in important live performances such as the annual CCTV Spring Festival Gala. See BBC News, ”Chinese Pop Stars.” 65 Rather than blaming anyone involved in the Lin and Yang scandal, we should focus on why this instance of mimicry is particularly unsettling. What is inappropriate is that there is a double faking – a perverse ventriloquism, if you will – which challenges the normative linkage between authenticity, authorship and property. Furthermore, the stolen thing is not objective/external but inherently subjective/internal – a little girl’s voice. What deepens our outrage is the fact that the mimic and the mimicked subjects are two incredibly “cute” little girls. Under a similar logic to global representations of the melamine milk scandal that I discussed in Chapter 2, the cuteness of these victims is amplified in the media. Recalling Ngai’s argument that cute things bring out both our caring and sadistic tendencies, I wonder whether some observers might even enjoy the helpless struggle of these victims because their vulnerability attests to China’s perceived demonic character? The cuter they are, the more evil China is! Of course, I am not equating the lip-synching incident with the fatal baby formula scandal. I am highlighting how these narratives are lumped together in popular discourse in order to paint China as a nation in crisis. Fakes, counterfeits and shanzhai are distinct practices, as I have been arguing throughout this dissertation, but popular discourse is yet to develop a sophisticated vocabulary to discuss these heterogeneous issues, and perhaps wilfully so. On this note, I want to mention that Syjuco received a cease and desist letter from Louis Vuitton regarding Crochet Counterfeit in 2009.264 The company also sent her a rather dramatic article in Harper’s Bazaar which links counterfeiting designer goods with child labour, human trafficking and terrorism.265 In the eyes of IPR discourse, Syjuco’s art project is implicated in a nefarious network of criminal activities. Media articles like this perpetuate the idea that counterfeiting is a monolithic phenomenon and is also intrinsically “bad.” As I argued in Chapter 1, the global copyright regime relies on the
264 Jenny Lower, “So You Want a Dior Handbag? Make It Yourself,” Los Angeles Magazine, 2 March, 2013, https://www.lamag.com/theclutch/so-you-want-a-dior-handbag-make-it-yourself/. (Accessed May 10, 2020). 265 Dana Thomas, ”The Fight against Fakes." Harper's Bazaar, 9 January, 2009, https:// www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a359/the-fight-against-fakes-0109/. (Accessed May 10, 2020). 66 construct of rights in order to justify its artificial rules. This section has challenged some of these naturalised links by presenting the diversity and productivity of shanzhai practice through mimicry. The myths of our conditional present can be disrupted most spectacularly via the final shanzhai strategy of this chapter, mistranslation, which will now be discussed.
Mistranslation
If we compare the three citational methods, mistranslation can be understood to be the greatest deviation from the “original." Building on Aihwa Ong’s concept of transnationality, mistranslation can generate dissonances which aestheticise “both the new modes of subject making and the new kinds of valorised subjectivities”266 that emerge out of global capitalism. For Ong, the prefix trans- provides a useful lens in diaspora studies as it denotes "both moving through space or across lines, as well as changing the nature of something.”267 This double movement can be seen in mistranslation. A mistranslation can indicate struggles of power engendered by contact between things, as well as the struggle felt within things as they are transformed by that contact. In this project, mistranslation refers to a transferal or displacement of an utterance from one context to another which intentionally produces incoherence.268 This understanding of transnationality is represented in Gloss via a performative polyglotism, not limited to verbal forms but manifested across visual, material and gestural signs. Here I consider Andrew Chubb’s argument that shanzhai can communicate multiple “languages,” that is, different semantic meanings and ideological positions in a single utterance.269 As shanzhai “simultaneously worships and jeers at authority," its discrete significations bleed
266 Ong, Flexible, 19. 267 Ibid, 4. Here, I make a distinction between Ong’s concept of the trans prefix from the usage of “trans” as an abbreviation of transgender or as an umbrella term for gender non-conforming identities. 268 I use the term incoherence here to signify the productive potential of this strategy which seeks to subvert power through confusion. By this, I am referring to the way that 'incoherence' connotes a feeling of suspension, in-betweenness and multiplicities. I find this more useful than 'incorrect' or 'error' which connotes a fixed and static notion of truth. 269 Chubb, “China’s Shanzhai Culture” 263 67 into one another which, Chubb claims, embodies Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of "polyphonic hybridity.”270 Mapping Bakhtin’s thesis onto a postcolonial context, Vanessa Guignery claims that the study of hybridity is more important than ever as global capitalism and cultural standardisation threaten to flatten differences.271 However, these conditions also give rise to the revival of essentialised identities.272 Drawing on Bakhtin’s notion of the “intentional semantic hybrid,” Guignery argues that self-conscious transcultural intermixing can displace the notion of fixity in constructions of identity and community.273 Gloss takes up this project and uses mistranslation to complicate the authoritative gazes of Western imperialism and Chinese ethnic absolutism. I argue that shanzhai’s transnational voice produces a polyphonic dissonance that can be mobilised in art.
Figure 23. Audience members appearing to be both confused and entertained by Chamele’s polyphonic gaze on the opening night of Gloss. Cement Fondu, 2019.
270 Ibid, 263. The concept of polyphony (borrowed from music) is central to Bakhtin’s analysis which denotes the coexistence of multiple languages in a single utterance. He describes this as multiple voices and views being represented in a piece of writing, liberating its communicative style from the domination of one authorial voice. See Ian Buchanan, “Polyphony,” A Dictionary of Critical Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). https://www.oxfordreference.com/ view/10.1093/acref/9780199532919.001.0001/acref-9780199532919-e-535 (Accessed 11 May, 2020). 271 Vanessa Guignery, Hybridity: forms and figures in literature and the visual arts, ed, Vanessa Guignery, Catherine Pesso-Miquel, and François Specq (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2011), 6. 272 Ibid, 6. 273 Ibid, 2-6. 68 The potential for cultural hybrids to challenge issues of race, gender and sexuality is explored in the works of Fatima Al Qadiri. Born in Senegal, raised in Kuwait and currently based in America, Al Qadiri’s cultural background is difficult to define. Like the diversity of her lived experiences, her practice also takes on many forms, spanning photography, video, film scores and experimental club music. Across her work, Al Qadiri challenges the politics of representation by indexing the aesthetics of popular culture, often inflected with localisms from the Arab Gulf. Her critiques are overlaid with a queer sensibility that complicates dominant understandings of cultural fantasy. For example, in a collaboration with Khalid Al Gharaballi titled WaWa Series (2011), the artists subvert the markedly heteronormative representation of Arab pop divas. In these photographs, the artists challenge the assumed nonexistence of Arab lesbianism by exaggerating the butch/femme trope. Parodying iconic album covers, Al Qadiri takes the place of the lustful male suitor through the butch stereotype known locally as “boyah" while Al Gharaballi’s coquettish appearance is based on a type of hyper-infantilised femininity known as “Baby Lady” in the Arab world.274 Noor Al-Qasimi argues that the playful representations of gender in WaWa Series draws upon the growing visibility of queer identities in the transnational pan-Gulf community, mediated by social networks.275 The artists layer these marginal identities over the language of mainstream consumerism through hyperbolic self-styling. The tension produced in the images evinces an ambivalence which I extend to the notion of mistranslation in shanzhai style. A similar intentional incoherence can be seen in Gloss’ image-based work, Wallpaper. Upon entering the installation, the audience is met with what appears to be a large advertisement for Chamele No. 5 perfume. Measuring 650cm x 298cm, the image covers the entire gallery wall. Digitally printed on vinyl wallpaper, the work has a semi-gloss finish, softly reflecting the diffused spotlights used to mimic the ambience of a luxury boutique. A larger-than-life figure of Chamele reclines on a red velvet chaise lounge. Her long-length wig
274 Noor Al-Qasimi, “The ‘Boyah’ and the ‘Baby Lady’: Queer Mediations in Fatima Al Qadiri and Khalid Al Gharaballi’s Wawa Series (2011), ”JMEWS: Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies Vol 8, no. 3 (October 1, 2012): 139-140. 275 Ibid, 140. 69 has a loose perm and is parted in the middle to frame her feminine features. Her face and body have been digitally enhanced through contouring. Her eyes are smoky with a touch of metallic blue and her lips are deep red to match the sumptuousness of the velvet lounge, but her realistic-looking makeup has actually been Photoshopped on. Upon closer inspection of her shellac nails, we find the Chamele logo which "shanzhais” Chanel’s logo. Instead of interlocking Cs, Chamele’s logo is an overlapping O and C. This design comes from an ornament attached to the readyfake MEIJIAZE SHOES. Adding another layer of complexity, the shanzhai logo was actually meticulously painted on Chamele’s fake nails by a manicurist. This logo is repeated throughout the installation: as a decorative diamantéd object in Logo; as a graffiti tag in In Store Appearance; and as gratuitous watermarks in Wallpaper.276 A popular tool in IPR discourse, the watermark is employed to prevent unauthorised reproductions of an image. As this has been applied to a shanzhai logo in Wallpaper, my misuse of the watermark can be understood as a mistranslation.
[Figure 24 has been removed due to copyright restrictions.]
Figure 24. Al Gharaballi as “Baby Lady” and Al Qadiri as “Boyah” in WaWa Complex. Part of the WaWa Series, 2011, C-Print, 30 x 50 inches. Edition 1 of 3.
276 Logo is located under the “06 Installation View”; In Store Appearance is located under “03 In Store Appearance (Mimicry); Wallpaper under “04 Wallpaper (Mistranslation)” folders via the documentation link provided. 70 Like Al Qadiri’s recycling of popular media aesthetics, I overlay marginalised cultural signifiers onto mainstream discourses in order to problematise the production, circulation and consumption of value. Wallpaper speaks to the well-rehearsed pose of the reclining nude. Often referred to as “odalisque,” this pose was popularised in nineteenth-century Orientalist art.277 A famous example is Édouard Manet’s painting Olympia (1863-1865), modelled on Titian’s Venus of Urbino (1534) which was based on Giorgione’s marble sculpture, Sleeping Venus (1510). In Olympia, the nude depicted is not a goddess or nymph but a well-known Parisian sex worker named Victorine Meurent.278 Seeming to dissolve the classical illusionism of the Western art tradition, Olympia became scandalised for depicting “the cold and prosaic reality of a truly contemporary subject.”279 Olympia was later appropriated by Japanese artist Yasumasa Morimura in his 1988 photographic work Portrait (Futago). Morimura reimagines the odalisque via a queered and racialised perspective by replacing the female sex worker with his own likeness. Editing his face and body onto the protagonists of Western artworks and celebrity press shots, Morimura uses appropriation which he calls “hotchpotch” to challenge existing systems of power.280 Wallpaper adds complexity to the Orientalist history of the odalisque and what can be understood as its contemporary iterations in global advertising through shanzhai style. While Morimura’s work can be read as pertaining to Ong’s concept of trans- in terms of gender and race, Wallpaper adds another layer to the trans- signification that is explicitly linked to transnational capital. In my work, various Chanel advertisements have been hybridised into an imaginary ad for Chamele. For instance, her hand gestures and hitched-up legs recall Chanel’s Spring
277 Odalisque comes from the Turkish term “odalik” meaning a female concubine in harem. 278 See Michel Leiris, The Ribbon at Olympia's Throat (US: Semiotext(e), 2009). 279 “Olympia," Musée d’Orsay, n.d., https://m.musee-orsay.fr/en/works/commentaire_id/ olympia-7087.html. (Accessed 5 May, 2020). Staring directly at the viewer, the nude figure is accompanied by a black cat (a symbol for prostitution) and a servant of African descent. Manet’s painting provoked a violent reaction from his contemporary audiences who described the nude figure as “a sort of female gorilla, a grotesque!” For a feminist reading on the figure of Olympia, see Eunice Lipton, Alias Olympia : A Woman’s Search for Manet’s Notorious Model and Her Own Desire, (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 2013). 280 Finding a subversive humour in Morimura’s work, Kasahara Michiko argues that “the politics of the gaze and sexuality; race, folklore, and social classes; hierarchies and values of art are all overturned.” See Michiko Kasahara, ”Morimura Yasumasa—Portrait. (Futago),” Art in Translation, trans. Lena Fritsch 4, no. 4 (2012): 505 - 507. 71 2018 campaign featuring teen model Kaia Gerber reclining on Coco Chanel’s couch. More directly, the layout of Wallpaper is modelled on Chanel’s 2012 Inevitable campaign which featured a rugged-looking Brad Pitt gazing out towards a bottle of Chanel No. 5.281 In the top left corner of Wallpaper is the text “No. 5.” To achieve this typographic uncanniness, I sourced a free typeface named Couture from the internet which plagiarises the Chanel font. Like the foreground of Inevitable, Chamele gazes out towards a large perfume bottle. In my version, the perfume bottle is a 3D rendering of the readyfake object.282 Unlike the jellies in Couplet/Duilian, the virtual replica of the perfume is high- tech, smoothing out any imperfections of the actual Chamele bottle. The 3D model enhances the perfume’s liquid content through colour grading and adds an alluring luminescence to both the bottle’s materiality and the product label. This strategy of mistranslation ensures that the digital reproduction deviates from the shanzhai readyfake and even further from the Chanel reference. Moreover, the different iterations of the Chamele bottle (the pirated readyfake, the mimicked jelly, the mistranslated 3D model) actively trouble the citational microcosm within Gloss. Displayed side by side, these shanzhai utterances can be read as intentional semantic hybrids which recycle the tensions immanent in global capitalism. Mistranslations are also evident in Fatima Al Qadiri’s album Asiatisch as mentioned in the previous section. Resisting simple genre definitions in popular music, this work is situated in a multifaceted dialogue with Orientalism. As critique, Al Qadiri reconfigures stereotypical music in Western cinema often used to demonise Asian villain characters.283 As homage, she borrows from a subgenre of electronic music loosely termed “Sinogrime" emerging out of East London, which saw predominantly non-Asian people using Asian motifs in their
281 Audio samples of this commercial have been pirated throughout the jingle No. 5 in Gloss as I discussed earlier in the chapter. 282 I am indebted to motion graphic designer Craig Stubbs-Race for this 3D graphic. 283 These racist-themed songs were often used to portray villains such as Sax Rohmer’s notorious fictional character Fu Manchu. See Ruth Mayer, Serial Fu Manchu: The Chinese Supervillain and the Spread of Yellow Peril Ideology (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2013). Another musical example with which Asiatisch engages is The Siamese Cat Song in Disney’s animated film, The Lady and The Tramp (1955). This problematic scene has been edited out of the film’s 2019 remake. See Andrew Pulver, “Siamese cats to be dropped from Lady and the Tramp remake,” The Guardian, 7 May, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/film/ 2019/may/07/siamese-cats-to-be-dropped-from-lady-and-the-tramp-remake-janelle-monae (Accessed 10 May, 2020). 72 [Part of Figure 25 has been removed due to copyright restrictions.]
Figure 25. Kaia Gerber in Chanel’s Spring 2008 hand bag campaign, reclining on Coco Chanel’s couch in the Paris flagship store (top left); Promotional image from Chanel’s 2012 Inevitable campaign featuring Brad Pitt (top right); Digital image of Wallpaper in Gloss, 2019 (bottom). Photo by Hyun Lee, 3D graphics by Craig Stubbs-Race. productions.284 Like Gloss, Al Qadiri’s album is a critical examination of these cultural representations through an ambivalent lens, which Sasha Frere-Jones describes as “non-resolution.”285 I extend this non-resolution to the strategy of mistranslation. This thematic dissonance is evident in her deployment of a stock Asian midi kit to create a “simulated road trip through an imagined China.”286 Al Qadiri layers software instruments such as bamboo flutes, gongs, monastic voices, and glassy pads on top of militaristic beats which Adam Harper calls “distroid,” a portmanteau that combines the words “disturbing, dystopian,
284 The term “Sinogrime" was coined by Hyperdub label head Kode9 to describe a thread of Asian musically-influenced grime tracks, which he had collated in a mix in 2005. However, it is unclear whether these producers and artists self-identify with this term. See Frere-Jones, “Non- Resolution.” 285 Ibid. 286 Al Qadiri, “Asiatisch: About.” 73 android and steroid.”287 The conflation of dystopian futures with Asian-inflected spectral forms, as Jane Park reminds us, stems from a lineage of techno- Oriental cinema which renders the East into a palatable commodity.288 In line with this, Al Qadiri states that her album examines “the dislocation of stereotypes over centuries,” a cultural inquiry which I also take up in this project through the framework of shanzhai style. Like Gloss, Al Qadiri’s work reflexively acknowledges its complicity in the complex circulation of capital and (mis)information. As the press release of Asiatisch states: “The carefree pirating of Western brands blurs into a soft-synth pirating of Chinese musical signs.”289 One particularly unsettling musical effect that Al Qadiri employs is the digital voice which, as Adam Harper argues, epitomises ambivalent aesthetics through its innate uncanniness.290 In “Jade Stairs,” Al Qadiri reinterprets Li Bai’s famous classical poem Jade Stairs Resentment through a computerised voice.291 As Chinese is a tonal language, Al Qadiri’s monotonic, robotised version strips the reified text of its semantic and cultural meaning. Adding to this alien quality, the album’s title Asiatisch, German for “Asian” is designed to further distance the work from the “real” China, which Al Qadiri had not visited when she made this album.292 Returning to the album’s opening track, which I mentioned in previous section, “Shanzhai” transfers the notion of ‘“incompatibility” within a Western love song onto global sociopolitical issues, as Meilin Chinn argues, “in an ongoing time of Yellow
287 Adam Harper, “Comment: 'Distroid' – the muscular music of hi-DEF doom,” Dummy, 13 July 2012, https://www.dummymag.com/features/distroid-gatekeeper-fatima-al-qadiri-adam-harper (Accessed 7 March, 2020). For Harper, this genre is characterised by “lithe, brushed-steel syncopations, cold crystal timbres, and angry angularity” which, he argues, evokes a distinctly twenty-first century aesthetic. This exaggerated sonic palette is also evident in the musical production of Gloss. In the jingle No.5, I draw on Al Qadiri’s musical language and utilise midi flutes, gongs and erhu in order to mimic a cliched Oriental sound. 288 The soundtrack of Blade Runner, defined by “the electronic strains of Vangelis punctuated by Asian instruments and singing,” has assisted in cementing techno-Oriental tropes within the Western imagination. Park,Yellow, 71. 289 Al Qadiri, “Asiatisch: About.” 290 Adam Harper, “How Internet music is frying your brain*.” Popular Music Vol. 36 no. 1, (2017): 95. 291 I am using quotation marks here to denote individual song titles from the album. Li Bai was a Classical poet from the Tang Dynasty. He is generally considered to be one of the most important literary figures in Chinese history. 292 Frere-Jones, “Non-Resolution.” 74 Peril.”293 Al Qadiri’s work encapsulates the contradictions in the social performance of race and authenticity through a new shanzhai aesthetic which invites further appropriations. Al Qadiri’s strategic use of production technologies to generate aesthetic mistranslations can be related to another work in Gloss titled Display.294 Consisting of two short video loops which are presented via a pair of wall- mounted flat-screen monitors, the work mimics digital displays found in shopping malls and kiosks. On one screen, we see a close up of Chamele smizing, a term coined by supermodel Tyra Banks to denote “smiling with the eyes.”295 On the other, we see a wide shot of Chamele holding the perfume bottle and revealing her leg through a slit in her wrap dress. Chamele’s eroticised movements appear stunted because they have been digitally generated by a free 3D face animator app called “Mug Life.”296 I hack the app’s face detection technology by overriding its automatic settings. I manually map out the co-ordinates for Chamele’s face onto inappropriate points in the photograph.297 As the face-detection struggles to compute my instructions, it generates low-quality glitches. Similar to the audio glitches in the jingle No. 5, the digital artefacts in Display can be read as mistranslations. Chamele’s alien and seductive appearance in Display builds upon Jane Park’s reading of the virtual geisha billboard in Blade Runner as an “electronically pulling face” that spectacularly “transforms the foreign East Asian body into palatable consumer iconography.”298 Given that the Chinese state uses face-detection AI
293 Meilin Chinn, “Race Magic and the Yellow Peril,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Vol. 77, no. 4 (September 2019): 431. 294 Display is located under the “05 Display (Mistranslation)” folder via the documentation link provided. I am indebted to photographer Hyun Lee for the digital image. 295 “Smize,” Slang Dictionary: Dictionary.com, n.d., https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/smize/. (Accessed 10 May, 2020). 296 “About,” Mug Life, n.d., https://www.muglife.com/. As described by the company, “Mug Life applies the latest advances in computer vision to instantly create stunning photo-real clones of friends, family, and celebrities.” (Accessed 10 May, 2020). 297 For instance, I placed the coordinates on her knees in the video where Chamele is standing. In the close up video, I placed the coordinates on several overlapping points on her forehead and eyes. Detailed screenshots of these glitches are located under the “Videos” folder via the documentation link provided. 298 Park, Yellow, 72. 75 technology to monitor ethnic minorities and political dissidents, Chamele’s pulsing face creates a menacing undertone to this strategy of mistranslation.299
Figure 26. Stills from Display showing mistranslated, glitched movements generated by my deliberate hacking of the Mug Life app.
On both screens in Display, the 3D Chamele perfume bottle appears intermittently, spinning in front of a backdrop of animated Chinese text. Here, I recycle the Chinese title of the installation “光鲜亮丽” which also appears inside the jelly bottles as discussed earlier. Unlike the plasticine approximations, the
299 The Chinese government has invested a significant amount of money on this technology as a way to monitor its citizens. It is widely reported that the government uses face-detection to target its Uyghur Muslim population. See Darren Byler, “China’s high-tech war on its Muslim minority,” The Guardian, 11 April, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/apr/11/china- hi-tech-war-on-muslim-minority-xinjiang-uighurs-surveillance-face-recognition. (Accessed 9 May, 2020). 76 Figure 27. Still from Display showing a 3D rendering of Chamele perfume spinning in front of animated text. The Chinese characters are a translation of “Gloss.” 3D graphics and animation by Craig Stubbs-Race.
Chinese script in Display is sleek, bold and constantly flowing. This frenetic energy builds upon Jane Park’s reading of the interplay between tightly packed Asian bodies and flickering neon signs in oriental style. She claims:
Like the Asian script flashing in neon above, the bodies on the streets below take on a compressed and unintelligible quality meant to dislocate the presumed Western viewer.300
Park argues that the disorienting East Asian iconography in techno-Oriental cinematography reflects both a feeling of alienation and fascination.301 Again, we return the tension between fear and fascination in the Orientalising gaze. As Laikwan Pang reminds us in the case of shanzhai, these paradoxical feelings towards China also endow the pirate nation with a kind of magical power.302 Display highlights these tensions by presenting a seemingly Asian space via Chamele’s racialised presence, shanzhai iconography and kinetic Chinese script. At the same time, this “ethnicised” space indexes global advertising and consumer culture. These tensions give rise to an alternate public that is
300 Park, Yellow, 63. 301 Ibid, 63. 302 Pang, Creativity, 190. 77 distinctly transnational. Park suggests that this space assigned to Asiatic bodies can be read as a visual “middle space” which typifies the myth of the model minority.303 As a buffer between white and black presences, the conditional presence of the Oriental subject is politically ambivalent. I extend this to the deployment of shanzhai style in Display which produces an ambivalence that is simultaneously dizzying, hypnotic and spectacular.
[Figure 28. has been removed due to copyright restrictions]
Figure 28. Comparison between the logos of Air Jordan and Qiaodan (left); Qiaodan sneakers for sale online.
Hybridity becomes even more complex when we examine the process of transliteration, the reinterpretation of words in foreign languages with the goal to approximate the original pronunciation. Here, I want to draw attention to the Michael Jordan v. Qiaodan Co. case, a widely circulated example of the contestation between shanzhai practice, transliteration and IPR discourse. Qiaodan is a sportswear company based in Fujian whose name is a Chinese transliteration of “Jordan.” The company’s logo is a silhouette of a man holding a basketball, strongly resembling the famous Jumpman design for the Nike- owned Air Jordan brand. Jordan first filed a lawsuit in 2012 against the Chinese company for using his name and trademarks without his permission. Jordan was unsuccessful and then was countersued by Qiaodan for $8 million in damages.304 When the case escalated to the Supreme People’s Court in 2016,
Jordan only succeeded in stopping the company from using “乔丹” (Qiaodan in Chinese characters) to promote their products, but not in pinyin.305 In a flagrant
303 Park, Yellow, 64. 304 Chao Meng and Qinglin Ma, “The Analysis of Trademark Dispute Cases in China – A Cognitive Perspective” in The Fourth International Conference On Law, Language and Discourse (LLD) October 18 -19, 2014, Xi'an, China. (USA: The American Scholars Press, 2014), 104. 305 Pinyin is the romanised spelling of Chinese words. 78 disregard for the assumed morality which underpins the global copyright regime, Qiaodan’s defence statement claimed that the company name actually refers to a species of tree in South China.306 From this spectacular example of shanzhai, we can see that the brand name is more vulnerable than it appears, especially when we consider the potential slippages that arise out of phonetic translations, not just semantic ones. As global capitalism enters into local markets, commodities become increasingly “ethnicised" in their production, circulation and consumption. In these transnational publics, multiple versions of the brand are spawned, sometimes legitimate and other times not, which are often made in China. These tensions are highlighted in Gloss through mistranslation. For instance, I deploy the nonsense phrase “Xiang Mai Er/香买⼉” which is Chinese transliteration of Chamele. The transliteration appears in the jingle No. 5 as well as in the live performance during which Chamele tags the gallery wall with her logo and name.307 The slippage in meaning in Chamele’s Chinese name is only registered by people who can read Chinese script.308 Like the way that Al Qadiri’s song “Shanzhai" is sung in nonsensical Mandarin, there is a layer of deception in Chamele’s transliterated name which mocks the Orientalist tendency to exoticise what it does not understand. In another instance, Chamele’s transliterated name is processed through an online text-to-speech (TTS) reader and utilised as audio samples in the jingle No. 5. Whilst TTS software approximates human speech, it never quite achieves perfect realism. Presented with nonsensical transliterations to reproduce, the machine readers are set up to fail. Resulting out of this technological intervention are various playful pronunciations of Chamele: Shamel, Shamelay, Chameel, Camel. I integrate these mistranslations into the world of Gloss and like the shanzhai
306 Meng and Ma, “Analysis,” 107. 307 Images and videos of the graffiti performance is located under “03 In Store Appearance (Mimicry)” folder via the documentation link provided. 308 I highlight a difference in being able to read, write and speak Chinese. An logographic language, Chinese written language is particularly difficult to master, which often makes it less attractive for children of diasporic communities to learn. Hybridity scholars have examined the cultural assumptions for the diasporic Chinese subject to be able to speak, read and write Chinese. Refuting these essentialising assumptions or standards, they illuminate the disparate nature of “Chineseness” in the global world. See Ien Ang, On not speaking Chinese: living between Asia and the West (London; New York; Routledge, 2001); Rey Chow. Not Like a Native Speaker: On Languaging as a Postcolonial Experience (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014). 79 garment, offer a new perspective on aestheticisation of cultural hybridity through shanzhai style.
Figure 29. Chamele tags her logo and Chinese name onto the gallery wall on the opening night of Gloss. Cement Fondu, 2019.
This brings us to examine why I chose the word “gloss” for the installation’s title. “Gloss” conjures a plethora of images at once. In one reading, “gloss” denotes the lustrous materiality of consumer culture, such as glossy magazines and the reflective surfaces of screen displays and shop windows, all of which are appropriated in my retail installation. Here, I return to Jean Baudrillard’s reading of glass as a symbol of progress. He argues that glass connotes a future which disavows the body and its organic functions “in the name of radiant and functional objectivity (of which hygiene is the moral version for the body.)”309 This clinical image is echoed in Jane Park’s reading of the Orientalised woman in Hollywood cinema as pure surface whose “wholly exteriorised subjectivity” is likened to the transparency of glass.310
309 Baudrillard, System, 43. 310 Park, Yellow, 75. Here, Park is analysing a scene in Blade Runner which features the death of Zhora who is a replicant or a bioengineered being within the film’s narrative. In this scene, Park notes how Zhora’s exteriorised nonhuman identity is echoed in her outfit, a clear plastic raincoat, as well as the panes of transparent department-store glass into which Zhora crashes during her death. 80 In another reading, “to gloss” means to conceal the true nature of something through a deceptively attractive appearance.311 Returning to Roland Barthes, I draw on his argument that myth is “entrusted with ‘glossing over’ an intentional concept” by which he means the way myth strategically hides the political motivations for its formulation in order to naturalise its social usage.312 Here, I employ the word “gloss” to describe the mythical language of global capitalism and “synergistic" marketing which I index in the retail installation. As I have argued throughout the dissertation, however, Gloss does not gloss over its parasitic motivations or the “constructedness” of shanzhai style. Rather, the work accentuates its own logic of myth-making through strategic failure. Highlighting its complicity and political ambivalence, Gloss momentarily gives rise to alternate affects and desires which are deliberately open to further co- optation.
Figure 30. Chamele’s body doubles and my “real” self backstage, getting ready for the performance on the opening night of Gloss. Cement Fondu, 2019.
311 “Gloss,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary, n.d., https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gloss (Accessed 20, May 2020). 312 Barthes, Mythologies, 154. 81 Through an etymological reading, “gloss” can be connected to the Greek noun “glôssa" which means tongue or language.313 I suggest that the “shanzhaied” utterances in Gloss generate their own mythical language, suspended in between the local inventiveness of emerging economies and the interrelated authoritative voices of IPR discourse and global capitalism. Here, I draw on Min Ling and Alexandra Tatarsky’s article “The Shanzhai Lyric,” which frames the counterfeit as “a mass aggregator of appropriation poetics" capable of producing its own unintelligible glossary.314 Treating the shanzhai garment as a lyric that “speaks through mangled references,” Ling and Tatarsky posit:
This nonsense language often recalls the phenomenon of glossolalia, or “speaking in tongues.” To read these texts is to grasp after meaning, stumbling to make sense of the sounds.315
Ling and Tatarsky compare the logic of shanzhai to the destabilising effect of creolisation which “enables an experience of immediate encounter with unforeseen relations, between words and between the cultures that espouse them.”316 However, creolisation tends to be an organic process which, as Guignery suggests, exemplifies Bakhtin’s notion of “unintentional hybridity.”317 Shanzhai mistranslations are, more often than not, produced in an intentionally polyphonic manner. This nuance is important to establish as it sheds light on the purposive nature of shanzhai’s hybridity. Drawing on Babak Radboy’s observations on shanzhai production, the mistranslated objects, images and sounds in Gloss do not try to “pass it off as the original” but are “referencing it in a way that’s self-consciously absurd.”318 Through the nonsensical, polyphonic and ambivalent nature of the works in Gloss, the installation’s deployment of shanzhai style can be described as a kind of glossolalia of transnational capital. This chapter has analysed the deployment of shanzhai style in artistic practice through the tactics of piracy, mimicry and mistranslation. On one hand,
313 “Gloss,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary. 314 Min Ling and Alexandra Tatarsky, “The Shanzhai Lyric,”The New Inquiry, 28 September, 2015, https://thenewinquiry.com/the-shanzhai-lyric/ (Accessed 12 April, 2020). 315 Ibid. 316 Ibid. 317 Guignery, Hybridity, 2-3. 318 Radboy Babak as cited in Steph Kretowicz, “Wear the Apple logo.” 82 the works in Gloss embody a subversive potential through the strategic failure and inherent inappropriateness linked to cultural assumptions of inauthenticity and unoriginality. On the other hand, this inappropriateness is precisely what makes them highly appropriate in contemporary art markets which, as Laikwan Pang reminds us, is oversaturated with appropriation. As I have examined in this thesis, capitalism, shanzhai production and artistic practice all have parasitic imperatives. But within each of them exists a different perceived value system inextricably tied to the notion of creativity as a construct of rights. These systems of value modify each other across different contact zones—whether it is a gallery space, an illicit online marketplace, an institution’s library catalogue, or a torrent archive—generating what I have been calling the rogue flows of capital throughout this dissertation.
Figure 31. Photoshoot and interview with Black Magazine featuring my “real” self in front of various works in Gloss. Photograph by Tanja Bruckner, styling by Chris Lorimer, 2019.
83 Conclusion
When the exhibition of Gloss was over, Chamele discovered that an anonymous audience member had left her a secret love letter. Standing beside the bottle of Chamele No. 5 was a miniature half-empty bottle of Chanel No. 5 perfume. “How cute!” she thought.
Figure 32. An anonymous audience member left a small sample bottle of Chanel perfume next to the Chamele bottle during the final week of the exhibition. Cement Fondu, 2019.
This project has drawn on my lived experiences as a researcher, practitioner and a Hong Kong-Chinese-Australian diasporic person. The strategies of shanzhai style undertaken in Gloss are highly personal, motivated by my own complicated relationship with the Chinese language. The loss of fluency in my native language, Cantonese, has been a source of shame for me. I often communicate in Cantonese and Mandarin with the aid of Google Translate, which has led to several embarrassing mistranslated exchanges. What is even more devastating is that I struggle to converse with my parents without the aid of Google Translate. In a futile attempt to reconcile this sense of loss, Gloss pushes communicative signs into the realm of the absurd and remains suspended in a state of non-resolution. On the surface, Gloss performs a
84 Figure 33. Chamele standing in front of her digitally enhanced self in Wallpaper on the opening night of Gloss. Cement Fondu, 2019. certain kind of aspirationalism that speaks to the fantasy of perfection and opulence that luxury consumer culture sells us. On closer inspection, this luxury tableau is, in fact, a failed assemblage of dissonant voices. The performative ambivalence of Gloss can be linked to Ling and Tatarsky’s description of the shanzhai garment’s inauthentic charm: “A surface-level sheen makes visible the deceit of the counterfeit (its pasted-on words are sure to peel off) and yet it also beckons and glints.”319 My Chinese skills too are “peeling off”, a process that is spectacularised by the deployment of shanzhai style in Gloss. By participating in the same economies that the project critiques, the works in Gloss reveal my personal aspirations for accruing cultural capital in the interconnected realms of art, academia and popular culture. Indeed, as the personas of Chamele and Rainbow Chan become increasingly blurred, I question how my own values towards authenticity, representation and complicity have changed over the course of this thesis. I now participate in brand endorsements and feel more comfortable with styling myself in a stereotypically
319 Ling and Tatarsky, “The Shanzhai Lyric.” 85 feminine manner.320 A few years ago, I would have seen my present self as “selling out.” This attitude now seems rather simplistic as “authenticity” was never stable to begin with. My research and practice has been expanded by the rich debates in diaspora studies and diverse artistic practices that understand identity and community formation to be a dialectal process, not a binary. For the final time, let us return to the central question of this thesis: How can artistic practice employ strategies of shanzhai to critically examine myths about creativity and ownership in relation to the global rise of China? This project demonstrates how the ambivalence inherent in shanzhai can illuminate alternative perspectives on the relations between originality, authorship and property. The project critically explores the circulation of power in contemporary creative industries which is inextricably tied to China, the world’s factory. As I argued in Chapter 1, shanzhai culture should not be attributed to the stereotype that Chinese people have an innate tendency to copy. Such views risk propagating racist sentiments towards the Chinese community. Rather, shanzhai must be understood as arising out of the conflicts between emerging economies, global capitalism and inconsistencies within IPR discourse. As I examined in Chapter 2, popular discourse surrounding China’s rapid economic growth has relied on stereotypes which amplify the incongruities of China’s post-socialist milieu. Reflecting a combination of fear and fascination, the popular image of the Chinese pirate in global media—a stereotype which has been internalised by Chinese people themselves—continues to mythologise China as a nation in crisis. While shanzhai can be seen as anti- authoritarian, the multiplicity of its significations also makes shanzhai culture open to co-optation by the state-market alliance and the neoliberal interests of global forces. The project has examined these competing narratives of shanzhai in order to highlight the diversity of counterfeiting practices in contemporary Chinese. Chapter 3 explored the productive potential of piracy, mimicry and mistranslation in art under the aesthetic framework “shanzhai style.” Examining my own artistic practice in dialogue with the works of Shanzhai Biennial, Stephanie Syjuco and Fatima Al Qadiri, I explore the productive ambivalence of
320 I am currently an ambassador for Yves Saint Laurent in the YSL Beauté 2020 Partnership. 86 shanzhai culture that trouble Western notions of authorship and property. Instead of capitulating to the West and East binary, however, I investigate the global consumerist economy via the concept of transnationality. Importantly, the project refutes the stable categories of real/fake, global/local, visible/invisible and takes up a flexible diasporic lens which sees the world as being perpetually in a state of flux. Through artistic interventions at the level of production, form and structure, Gloss critically examines how these interconnected systems of power can potentially morph and transmute along the rogue flows of capital. This moment of disruption opens up a discursive hybrid space—a conditional present—in which alternative affects and desires can be imagined, before they ultimately become subsumed under global capitalism. I write the concluding sentences of this dissertation in the midst of a global pandemic, which has seen the rise of vitriolic, racists attacks towards Chinese people and Asian communities more broadly. It is more important than ever to interrogate the intimacies between cultural representation, technology and power in a world that grows more divisive with the increased circulation of fake news, propaganda and public opinion. In these precarious and unstable times, we must remind ourselves of the manipulative quality of myths and critically analyse how contemporary modes of production, circulation and consumption intersect with race, class, gender and nation.
Figure 34. Upon completing this dissertation, I found the same pyjamas from my childhood listed under “Bizarre ‘Nickey Nouse' Pajama Pants” on varagesale.com. Unfortunately by the time I saw the pants, they had already been sold for 5 pounds.
[Figure 34 has been removed due to copyright restrictions.]
87 Bibliography
“2017 Situation Report on Counterfeiting and Piracy in the European Union.” Europol and European Union Intellectual Property Office (2017) https://www.europol.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/ counterfeiting_and_piracy_in_the_european_union.pdf. (Accessed March 29, 2020).
ABC/ Reuters. "Chinese Child Singer 'Too Ugly' for Opening Ceremony." ABC News, 13 August, 2008. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-08-13/ chinese-child-singer-too-ugly-for-opening-ceremony/474482.
“About.” Mug Life, n.d., https://www.muglife.com/. (Accessed 10 May, 2020).
Agence France-Presse. "Ariana Grande Mocked for Japanese Tattoo Typo: 'Leave Me and My Grill Alone'." The Guardian, 31 January, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jan/31/ariana-grande- mocked-for-japanese-tattoo-typo-leave-me-and-my-grill-alone. (Accessed March 15, 2020).
Al Gharaballi, Khalid and Fatima Al Qadiri. WaWa Series, C-Print, 2011.
Al Qadiri, Fatima. Asiatisch, Hyperdub, 2014. CD.
Al-Qasimi, Noor. "The 'Boyah' and the 'Baby Lady': Queer Mediations in Fatima Al Qadiri and Khalid Al Gharaballi's Wawa Series (2011)." JMEWS : Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 8, no. 3 (October 1, 2012): 139–142.
Alexander, Ella. ”M.I.A for Versus Versace: Versus Gets a Rap Makeover." Vogue, 7 October, 2013, https://www.vogue.co.uk/gallery/mia-for- versus-confirmed-versace-counterfeit-collection. (Accessed 9 June, 2019).
Alexander, Nicholas. "Brand Authentication: Creating and Maintaining Brand Auras." European Journal of Marketing 43, no. 3/4 (2009): 551-562.
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1991.
88 Ang, Ien. On Not Speaking Chinese: Living between Asia and the West. London; New York: Routledge, 2001.
Archer, Sarah. "Open Source Activism." American Craft Inquiry 1, no. 1 (July 9, 2017): 86-88.
"Asiatisch: About.” Fatima Al Qadiri. n.d., http://fatimaalqadiri.com/ music/fatima-al-qadiri/asiatisch/file/about-asiatisch/. (Accessed 10 March, 2020).
Associated Press. "Busted: Inside the Fake Ferrari Factory That Sold 'Shamborghinis' for US $45,000." South China Morning Post, 17 July, 2019. https://www.scmp.com/news/world/americas/article/3018907/ busted-inside-fake-ferrari-factory-sold-shamborghinis-us45000.
Ayto, John, Ian Crofton, and Ebenezer Cobham Brewer. “Chanel No. 5.” Brewer’s Dictionary of Modern Phrase & Fable. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Badkar, Mamta. ”35 Crazy Things That Only Happen in China." Business Insider Australia, 27 December, 2013, https:// www.businessinsider.com.au/crazy-things-happening-in- china-2013-12 (Accessed 20 March, 2020).
Barrow, Daniel. ”A Plague of Soars - Warps in the Fabric of Pop." The Quietus, 13 April, 2011, https://thequietus.com/articles/06073-a-plague- of-soars-warps-in-the-fabric-of-pop. (Accessed 2 March, 2019).
Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. London: Vintage, 2009.
Baudrillard, Jean. The System of Objects. London: Verso, 1996.
Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." In Illuminations. Translated by Hannah Arendt, 217-252. New York: Schocken Books, 1987.
Bergman, Justin. “Top 10 Chinese Knockoffs." Time Magazine, 22 June, 2010, http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/
89 0,28804,1998580_1998579_1998575,00.html (Accessed March 29, 2020).
Bernabe, Jan Christian. "Stephanie Syjuco 'Blows up'." Wasafiri 28, no. 3 (2013): 24-33.
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: New York: Routledge, [1994] 2004.
Bloustien, Gerry, Susan Luckman, and Margaret Peters. Sonic Synergies : Music, Technology, Community, Identity London: Routledge, 2016.
Borschke, Margie. This is Not a Remix: Piracy, Authenticity and Popular Music (UK: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017).
Branigan, Tania. "China Executes Two for Tainted Milk Scandal." The Guardian, 25 November, 2009. https://www.theguardian.com/world/ 2009/nov/24/china-executes-milk-scandal-pair. (Accessed 8 April, 2020).
———. "Olympics: Child Singer Revealed as Fake." The Guardian, 12 August, 2008 https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2008/aug/12/ olympics2008.china1.
———. "Q&A: China's Contaminated Milk Scandal."The Guardian, 23 September, 2008. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/sep/23/ china.milk.scandal. (Accessed 14 May, 2020).
Breakey, Hugh. "C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke." In The Oxford Handbook of Classics in Contemporary Political Theory. Edited by Jacob T. Levy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, Web.
Buchanan, Ian. “Polyphony.” In A Dictionary of Critical Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/ acref/9780199532919.001.0001/acref-9780199532919-e-535. (Accessed 11 May, 2020).
Burke, Harry. "Fake It Til You Make It." Spike (Autumn, 2015). http://
90 www.spikeartmagazine.com/articles/portrait-shanzhai-biennial. (Accessed 25 April, 2020).
Burns, Gary. "A Typology Of 'Hooks' in Popular Records." Popular Music 6, no. 1 (1987): 1-20.
Byler, Darren. "China’s Hi-Tech War on Its Muslim Minority." The Guardian, 11 April, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/apr/11/china-hi- tech-war-on-muslim-minority-xinjiang-uighurs-surveillance-face- recognition. (Accessed 9 May, 2020).
Chan, Chun Yin Rainbow. “Rainbow Chan." CYRC. 2020, https:// www.chunyinrainbowchan.com/rainbow-chan. (Accessed 10 May, 2020.)
———. Gloss, Mixed media, 2019, The Project Space, Cement Fondu, Sydney.
———. “Gloss: a Manifesto on Shanzhai in Artistic Practice by Chamele No. 5”, Disclaimer, no. 1, (2019), https://disclaimer.org.au/ contents/gloss-a-manifesto-on-shanzhai-in-artistic-practice-by- chamele-no-5. (Accessed 29 March, 2020).
"Chanel No 5." Marketing, Gale Academic OneFile. (July 25, 2012): 18.
"Chinese Pop Stars Face $12,000 Lip-Synching Fine." BBC News, 23 January, 2010. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8476769.stm.
Chinn, Meilin. "Race Magic and the Yellow Peril." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 77, no. 4 (September 2019): 423-433.
Chow, Rey. Not Like a Native Speaker: On Languaging as a Postcolonial Experience. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.
Chubb, Andrew. "China's Shanzhai Culture: "Grabism" And the Politics of Hybridity." Journal of Contemporary China 24, no. 92 (2015): 260-279.
Clayton, Jace. Uproot: Travels in 21st-Century Music and Digital Culture. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016.
91 Cohan, Nate. "Corporate Aesthetics: Shanzhai Biennial.” Art in America, 30 April, 2014. https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/interviews/ corporate-aesthetics-shanzhai-biennial-56395/. (Accessed 12 April, 2020).
Cohen, Margaret. "Benjamin's Phantasmagoria: The Arcades Project." In The Cambridge Companion to Walter Benjamin. Edited by D. Ferris, 199-220. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
"The Counterfeit Crochet Project (Critique of a Political Economy)." Stephanie Syjuco, n.d, https://www.stephaniesyjuco.com/projects/the- counterfeit-crochet-project-critique-of-a-political-economy.
Cresswell, Joanna. ”Copies, Homages, Perversions: An Interview with Stephanie Syjuco." Elephant, no. 30 (2017): 104-107. de Kloet, Jeroen, and Yiu Fai Chow. "Shanzhai Culture, Dafen Art, and Copyrights." In Routledge Handbook of East Asian Popular Culture. Edited by Koichi Iwabuchi, Eva Tsai and Chris Berry, 229-241. Routledge Handbooks Online. Abingdon: Routledge, 2016.
Deng, Yingying. "The Market for 'Lemons': A Sociological Study of Authenticity in the Chinese Market of Counterfeit Luxury Goods.” Doctor of Philosophy, Northwestern University, 2013.
Dirlik, Arif. "Post-Socialism? Reflections On Socialism with 'Chinese Characteristics'." Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 21, no. 1 (1989): 33– 45.
Douglas, Ana. ”These Hilariously Bad Knock-Offs Are on Sale in China." Business Inside Australia, 2 August 2012, https:// www.businessinsider.com.au/hilariously-bad-chinese-knock-offs-of- famous-american-and-european-brands-2012-8#adadis-1.
Duval, Cyril. "Shanzhai." Leap, no. 33 (27 July, 2015). http:// www.leapleapleap.com/2015/07/shanzhai/.
Fairchild, Charles. Pop Idols and Pirates: Mechanisms of Consumption and the Global Circulation of Popular Music. London: Routledge, 2016.
92 Frere-Jones, Sasha. "A Non-Resolution to Elect Fatima Al Qadiri to Non- Office.” The New Yorker, 12 May, 2014. https://www.newyorker.com/ culture/sasha-frere-jones/a-non-resolution-to-elect-fatima-al-qadiri-to- non-office. (Accessed 25 March, 2020).
Fung, Anthony, and Lin Zhang. "The Myth of 'Shanzhai' Culture and the Paradox of Digital Democracy in China." Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 14, no. 3 (2013): 401–416.
Gabulaitė, Viktorija. ”85 Hilarious Products from China and Countries That Don’t Care About Trademarks." Bored Panda, 2016, https:// www.boredpanda.com/funny-brand-imitations-knock-offs-china/. (Accessed 14 May, 2020).
Gibbs, Alexandra. ”China’s Craziest Counterfeits." CNBC, 9 April, 2015, https://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/09/chinas-craziest-counterfeits.html (Accessed 20 March, 2020).
“Gloss,” Merriam-Webster Dictionary, n.d., https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/gloss. (Accessed 20, May 2020).
Guignery, Vanessa, Catherine Pesso-Miquel, and Francois Specq. Hybridity : Forms and Figures in Literature and the Visual Arts. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2011.
Guyer, Paul. "Kant's Conception of Fine Art." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 52, no. 3 (Summer, 1994): 175–85.
Hall, Stuart. "Cultural Identity and Diaspora." In Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. Edited by Jonathan Rutherford, 222-237. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990.
Han, Byung-Chul. Shanzhai: Deconstruction in Chinese. Translated by Philippa Hurd. US: MIT Press Ltd, 2017.
Harper, Adam. "Comment: 'Distroid' – the Muscular Music of Hi-Def Doom." Dummy, 13 July, 2012. https://www.dummymag.com/features/distroid- gatekeeper-fatima-al-qadiri-adam-harper. (Accessed 7 March 2020).
93 ———. "How Internet Music Is Frying Your Brain." Popular Music 36, no. 1 (2017): 86-97.
HK Magazine. "Hong Kong’s Counterfeit Goods Market Stopped Thriving— What Happened?" South China Morning Post, 3 June, 2016. https:// www.scmp.com/magazines/hk-magazine/article/2037970/hong-kongs- counterfeit-goods-market-stopped-thriving-what.
Holm-Hudson, Kevin. "Quotation and Context: Sampling and John Oswald's Plunderphonics." Leonardo Music Journal 7 (1997): 17-25.
Hui, Min, Guifang Sun, and Lei Zhang. "The English Translation of Chinese Internet Catchwords from Memetic Perspective." Higher Education of Social Science 11, no. 4 (2016): 44-49.
"Import and Export (General)(Amendment) Regulation 2013 (with Effect from 1 March 2013) - Quantity of Powdered Formula for Persons Departing from Hong Kong." Hong Kong Customs and Exercise Department, 13 March, 2013, https://www.customs.gov.hk/en/ whats_new/API/index.html (Accessed 14 May, 2020).
Item Idem. ”Shanzhai Biennial: Dark Optimism." Nowness, 13 May, 2013, https://www.nowness.com/story/shanzhai-biennial-dark-optimism. (Accessed 12 April, 2020).
James, Robin. Resilience & Melancholy: Pop Music, Feminism, Neoliberalism. Winchester, UK: Zero Books, 2015.
Jasper, Adam. ”Our Aesthetic Categories: An Interview with Sianne Ngai." Cabinet Magazine, no. 43 (Fall, 2011). http:/www.cabinetmagazine.org/ issues/43/jasper_ngai.php. (Accessed April 20, 2020).
Jenkins, Rhys, and Alexandre de Freitas Barbosa. "Fear for Manufacturing? China and the Future of Industry in Brazil and Latin America." The China Quarterly, no. 209 (March 2012): 59-81.
Kasahara, Michiko. "Morimura Yasumasa—Portrait.(Futago)." Art in Translation. Translated by Lena Fritsch 4, no. 4 (2012): 499-512.
94 Kretowicz, Steph. ”Wear the Apple Logo, Because You Can." Dazed Digital, 13 June, 2013, https://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/16351/1/ wear-the-apple-logo-because-you-can. (Accessed 12 April, 2020).
Krick, Jessa. "Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel (1883–1971) and the House of Chanel." In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000-, https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/chnl/hd_chnl.htm. (Accessed April 21, 2020).
Kuehn, Julia. "China Abroad: Between Transnation and Translation." In China Abroad: Travels, Subjects, Spaces. Edited by Elaine Yee Lin Ho and Julia Kuehn, 23-41. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009.
Kujamäki, Pekka. Beyond Borders Translations Moving Languages, Literatures and Cultures. Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2011.
Langley, Carol. "Borrowed Voice: The Art of Lip-Synching in Sydney Drag." Australasian Drama Studies, no. 48 (April 1, 2006): 192–209.
Leamy, Elisabeth, and Vanessa Weber. ”Fake Fragrances: What Is Really in Them?" ABC News, 27 January, 2010, https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/ ConsumerNews/counterfeit-perfumes/story?id=9670448. (Accessed 14 May, 2020).
Leiris, Michel. The Ribbon at Olympia's Throat. US: Semiotext(e), 2009.
Lin, Yi-Chieh Jessica. Fake Stuff: China and the Rise of Counterfeit Goods. London: Routledge, 2011.
Ling, Min and Alexandra Tatarsky. “The Shanzhai Lyric.” The New Inquiry, 28 September, 2015, https://thenewinquiry.com/the-shanzhai-lyric/ (Accessed 12 April, 2020).
Lipton, Eunice. Alias Olympia: A Woman’s Search for Manet’s Notorious Model and Her Own Desire. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 2013.
Lower, Jenny. "So You Want a Dior Handbag? Make It Yourself." Los Angeles Magazine, 2 March, 2013. https://www.lamag.com/theclutch/so-you- want-a-dior-handbag-make-it-yourself/.
95 Lyotard, Jean-Francois. Libidinal Economy. Translated by Iain Hamilton Grant. London: Athlones, [1974], 1993.
Macpherson, C B. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism : Hobbes to Locke. London: Oxford University Press, 1962.
Mansour, Ashraf. ”Hegel’s Critique of Liberalism and Social Contract Theories in the Jena Lectures." Marxists Internet Archive, n.d, https:// www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/txt/mansour.htm. (Accessed 13 May, 2020).
Marx, Karl, Capital. Vol. 1: A Critique of Political Economy. Translated by Ben Fowkes. London; New York: Penguin Classics, [1867], 1990.
Mayer, Ruth. Serial Fu Manchu: The Chinese Supervillain and the Spread of Yellow Peril Ideology. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2013.
Mazzeo, Tilar J. The Secret of Chanel No. 5: The Intimate History of the World's Most Famous Perfume. US: Harper/HarperCollins Publishers, 2010.
McLeod, Kembrew, and Rudolf Kuenzli. Cutting across Media: Appropriation Art, Interventionist Collage, and Copyright Law. Durham N.C: Duke University Press, 2011.
Meyer, Adele R. “The Facts on Fakes!” NARTS The Association of Resale Professionals, 2020. https://www.narts.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm? pageid=3313. (Accessed 10 May, 2020).
Meng, Chao and Qinglin Ma, “The Analysis of Trademark Dispute Cases in China – A Cognitive Perspective.” In The Fourth International Conference On Law, Language and Discourse (LLD) October 18 -19, 2014, Xi'an, China. Edited by Le Cheng, Qinglin Ma, Jinbang Du, Lisa Hale, et al., 103-108. USA: The American Scholars Press, 2014.
Mertins, Detlef. Architecture Words 7: Modernity Unbound. London: Architectural Association, 2011.
Miller, Paul. Aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid, Rhythm Science. Cambridge, Mass. ; London : Mediawork/ MIT Press, 2004.
96 Morley, David, and Kevin Robins. Spaces of Identity: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries. London: Routledge, 1995.
Ngai, Sianne. "Our Aesthetic Categories." PMLA 125, no. 4 (2010): 948–958.
———. Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2012.
"No 5." Chanel, n.d., https://www.chanel.com/au/fragrance/p/125530/ n5-eau-de-parfum-spray/. (Accessed 21 April, 2020).
“N°5 L’EAU: the film – CHANEL,” Chanel, 1 November, 2016. Video, 1:00. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLL38X683Qk. (Accessed 20 May, 2020).
Obalk, Hector. "The Unfindable Readymade." tout-fait: The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal 1, no. 2 (May 2000). https://www.toutfait.com/ issues/issue_2/Articles/obalk.html. (Accessed 20 April, 2020).
"Olympia." Musée d’Orsay, n.d., https://m.musee-orsay.fr/en/works/ commentaire_id/olympia-7087.html. (Accessed 5 May, 2020).
Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to 1980s. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.
Ong, Aihwa. Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999.
Oswald, John. Plunderphonics. Mystery Tape Laboratory, 1989. CD.
Pang, Laikwan. Creativity and Its Discontents: China's Creative Industries and Intellectual Property Rights Offenses. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2012.
———. "Magic and Modernity in China." positions: east asia cultures critique 12, no. 2 (2004): 299-327.
Park, Jane Chi Hyun. Yellow Future: Oriental Style in Hollywood Cinema.
97 Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.
Peretti, Jonah. "The Nike Sweatshop Email: Political Consumerism, Internet, and Culture Jamming.” In Politics, Products, and Markets: Exploring Political Consumerism Past and Present. Edited by Michele Micheletti, Andreas Follesdal and Dietlind Stolle, 127–142. London and New York: Routledge, 2017.
Pratt, Christine. "The Aura and Uniqueness of Chinese Copies of Art." In The Hague under Heaven, Contemporary Sculpture from China. Edited by Else van Dijk-Staats, Maya Meijer-Bergmans and Jan Teeuwisse. 65-82. Netherlands: Antique Collectors Agencies, 2012.
Prisco, Jacopo. “Battle of Supremes: How 'Legal Fakes' Are Challenging a $1b Brand." CNN Style, 18 March, 2019, https://edition.cnn.com/style/ article/supreme-italia-legal-fake/index.html. (Accessed 9 June, 2019).
Puddy, Rebecca, and Rhett Burnie. "China's Thirst for Baby Formula Creating Problems for Australian Shoppers and Staff." ABC News, 11 December, 2018. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-11/abc- investigation-uncovers-chinese-baby-formula-shoppers/10594400 (Accessed 14 May, 2020).
Pulver, Andrew. “Siamese cats to be dropped from Lady and the Tramp remake,” The Guardian, 7 May, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/ film/2019/may/07/siamese-cats-to-be-dropped-from-lady-and-the- tramp-remake-janelle-monae. (Accessed 10 May, 2020).
Qin, Yao, Linda Hui Shi, Barbara Stöttinger, and Erin Cavusgil. "Neither an Authentic Product nor a Counterfeit: The Growing Popularity of Shanzhai Products in Global Markets." Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences / Revue Canadienne des Sciences de l’Administration 36, no. 3 (2019): 306-321.
Quick, Genevieve. "Locating Technology: Raiders and Empires." Art Practical, October 27, 2015: 108 - 111.
Ray, Justin. ”Shanzhai Biennial Made a Beautiful Art Film That Sounds Silly on Paper (Video)." Complex, 14 May, 2013, https://www.complex.com/ style/2013/05/shanzhai-biennial-made-a-beautiful-art-film-that-sounds- silly-on-paper-video. (Accessed 12 April, 2020).
98 Rea, Christopher. "Spoofing (E’gao) Culture on the Chinese Internet." In Humour in Chinese Life and Culture: Resistance and Control in Modern Times. Edited by Jessica Milner Davis and Jocelyn Chey, 149-172. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013.
SCMP Reporter. "Firm Uses Human Hair in Soya Sauce 'Breakthrough'." South China Morning Post, 5 January, 2004. https://www.scmp.com/ article/440079/firm-uses-human-hair-soya-sauce-breakthrough. (Accessed 10 February, 2020).
Said, Edward W. Orientalism. London: Penguin Group, [1978], 2003.
Shanzhai Biennial. No. 1, Mixed media, 2012.
———. No. 2, HD video, LED curtain, sound, 2013.
———. No. 3: 100 Hamilton Terrace Project Native Informant, Mixed media, 2014, Frieze London.
"Shanzhai Biennial Is Definitely Not a Biennial!” DIS Magazine, 24 September, 2012. http://dismagazine.com/blog/36715/shanzhai- biennial-is-definitely-not-a-biennial/. (Accessed 25 April, 2020).
Shukin, Nicole. Animal Capital: Rendering Life in Biopolitical Times. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.
“Smize.” Slang Dictionary. Dictionary.com, n.d., https:// www.dictionary.com/e/slang/smize/. (Accessed 10 May, 2020).
Snell, Merrie. Lipsynching: The Study of Sound. UK: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.
So, Alvin Y., and Yin-Wah Chu. The Global Rise of China. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016.
Spangler, Todd. ”Buzzfeed Ceo Defends Decision to Not Pay Most Laid-Off Employees for Accrued Time-Off days." Variety, 28 January, 2019, https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/buzzfeed-ceo-layoffs-employees- paid-time-off-1203120493/. (Accessed November, 2019).
99 Steyerl, Hito. The Wretched of the Screen. Berlin: Steinberg Press, 2012.
Strusiewicz, Cezary Jan. "The 5 Most Insane Examples of Chinese Counterfeiting." Cracked, 19 March, 2012. https://www.cracked.com/ article_19742_the-5-most-insane-examples-chinese- counterfeiting.html (Accessed 20 March, 2020).
Swirski, Peter, and Tero Eljas Vanhanen. When Highbrow Meets Lowbrow: Popular Culture and the Rise of Nobrow. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
Syjuco, Stephanie. The Crochet Counterfeit Project (Critique of a Political Economy), Installation, craft, participatory, workshop, 2006 -.
———. Everything Must Go (Grey Market), Digital prints, foamboard, paper, tape, foam, 2008.
"The Ten Most Infamous Lip Sync Incidents in Pop History: Where Does Mariah Rank?" Billboard Magazine, 4 January, 2017. https:// www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/7640807/most-infamous-lip- sync-incidents-videos-mariah-carey. (Accessed April 21, 2020).
Thomas, Dana. "The Fight Against Fakes." Harper's Bazaar, 9 January, 2009. https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a359/the-fight-against- fakes-0109/.
Ulak, James T., James R. Brandon and William P. Malm. “East Asian arts,” Encyclopædia Britannica, 28 May, 2018, https://www.britannica.com/ art/East-Asian-arts. (Accessed 20 May, 2020).
Van Camp, Julie C. "Originality in Postmodern Appropriation Art." The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society 36, no. 4 (2007): 247-258.
Vanek Smith, Stacey. “Why Jewelry Stores Hide the Price Tags." NPR News, 22 September, 2014, https://www.npr.org/sections/money/ 2014/09/22/349873785/why-jewelry-stores-hide-the-price-tags. (Accessed 20 April, 2020).
100 Wenzel, Christian Helmut. "Fine Art, Nature, and Genius." In An Introduction to Kant's Aesthetics. Edited by Christian Helmut Wenzel, 94-105. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2008.
Xu, Jian. "Shanzhai Media Culture: Failed Intervention to the Disingenuous Neoliberal Logic of Chinese Media." Journal of Contemporary China 24, no. 104 (2017): 249-262.
Yang, Fan. Faked in China: Nation Branding, Counterfeit Culture, and Globalisation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016.
Yao, Souchou. Confucian Capitalism: Discourse, Practice and the Myth of Chinese Enterprise. London : RoutledgeCurzon, 2002.
Yardley, Jim. "In Grand Olympic Show, Some Sleight of Voice." The New York Times, 12 August, 2008. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/sports/ olympics/13beijing.html.
101 Appendix
102