A new manifesto

The new question mark concerning the value of my life and work had been raised from the dichotomic and dualistic qualities of pessimism and optimism, multiplicity and discreteness, inorganic and organic, spatial and temporal, good and evil. My quest is to investigate the provocative possibility of ‘pessimism of strength’ through artwork and music that are heterogeneous and indiscrete in nature, and how they could be the means to overcome the terror and absurdity of my family’s current state of affair, as well as my existence in the universe. It is out of this recognition of absurdity and fear, and a naïve hope of experiencing life as an aesthetic phenomenon that I invented art and lifted weights so vigorously in the first place. My interests and endeavors provide a metaphysical comfort for the tenderest and deepest anguish brought on by my new stepfather, as I look boldly and indestructibly into his hazel eyes.

My concern with depicting the Newtonian concept of instantaneous time and discrete space through still photographs and drawings is a thing of the past. In order to capture a reality that is constantly decaying, declining, degenerating, and full of weak instincts, a heterogeneous and immediate experience is needed. By combining three-dimensional inanimate materials, animated bodies, and viscera with the organic montage of moving image and the dialectic montage of the light-image, I am able to extend the qualitative and progressive elements of intensities and emotions in my work beyond a given position in space at a certain moment in time, while creating sensations within my viewer’s immediate consciousness in an undetermined and open looped zone without undermining their future actions. In the quantum universe of infinite possibilities, the shock tactics and the random acts of impetuosity in my performances serve my interest at best. My audiences are at the mercy of anything I made that cannot be programmed, categorized, or easily referenced, as they fail to foresee the unanticipated while expecting the unexpected.

Prompted by a bemused and beriddled female figure by the name of Ruby, I have begun to indulge on foods that are high in saturated fats. Without accompanying this gruesome upheaval with anaerobic meditation sessions in the health club, my fast-twitch muscle fibers are becoming as fatigue resistant as their slow-twitch counterparts. I am however, optimistic about this physical and psychological transformation because without it, my current intellectual and aesthetic pursuits would be weary and problematic. I have suffered in the past, from overfullness of existence. My overflowing health and well-being turned out to be antagonistic in both the potentiality of my reality and the actuality of my dreams. Without the will to fail, my body and spirit were becoming saccharine to the point of femininity, as my testes were gradually evolving into a pair of narcissistic, talking ovaries…

 

Entropy

Artist’s Statement:

For 12 good years that I’ve lived in this room, and I have been asked by the better part of my conscious and a nagging mother to wrestle against entropy by meticulously cleaning, maintaining, and organizing fruitless material objects in a habitual manner. In many ways, the ‘stuff’ we own defines us, and sometimes, the more things we own, the less freedom we have.

On June 3rd, 2008, I decided to put an end to the limitations set upon by my personal consumerism with a quest to blow up my room. I expressed my nuisance through a physical, yet flamboyant mayhem, hoping the result would be a life lesson about freedom through disentanglement with the material world, and empowerment through the engagement of the physical self.

This mission was also a mean to rediscover, and at the same time, letting go of a past that I try a little too hard to control. The room itself and the objects it contained became metaphors for my mind and my memories. Like a healthy and maturing brain that reorganizes itself by weeding out old and futile information, I too, must do the same for my identity and my environment. I found things that are long forgotten, and would probably never have resurfaced otherwise. Among the treasures I discovered were love letters from the 3rd grade, kindergarten year book, used condoms, journals, old photographs, high school report cards, various childhood toys, and other futile evidence of the discontented past of an exhausted and powerless young man.

This act of ardent annihilation also serves as a language to articulate an unspoken rage of an unresolved family crisis, brought upon by the lack of my father’s consistent presence throughout my childhood. Not that I believe terrorizing lifeless objects would be the means to the predicament, but at least it leaves me a mess I can fix.

Mixed emotions of nostalgia, resentment, melancholy, and exhilaration emerged out of my central nervous system, as it demanded much of my fast-twitch muscles to complete a dichotomic workout that is both self-destructing (vomiting) and self-comforting (masturbation) in nature. The experience also allowed me to express my muscularity from a twisted and feminine angle that would most definitely be prohibited in any public and commercial gymnasium. Bounded by the tightness of my mother’s underwear, I extended my body and guts to the limit anyway, and produced as much disorder and energy as I could in the given space and time.

If nothing else, the result of this disturbing anarchic served as a kind of wake-up call, as it raised interesting questions about the nature of my identity and my relationship to the world I made. It was a brutal, yet honest effort, and I have never felt so liberated.

Brutal Deceptions.

 

 

We make pretty good assumptions and judgments about people by their appearances and attitudes, but sometimes we’re just really off about it.

For example, when me and Billy had a conversation about this, he said that he knows a lot of nerds who look like nerds and they are indeed nerds who are smart, good at computers, and all that crap. But then there are people who really fool you into thinking that they are nerds by looking the part and playing the part, but then you talk to them about computers and games and you find out that they really don’t know anything about them, and you’re like “Pshh wtf you’re not a nerd”

Another example is black people who look like are good at basketball, but they really play like white guys. You think some people are awesome at basketball because they rock Air Jordans and Kobe jerseys, wear 5 different wrist bands and have cornrows, huge glutes and skinny calves that make them look athletic and intiminatiing.

At first when you first step onto the court, you play like a pussy because you treat him like hardcore, highy flying beast you pressupposed in your mind. But as soon they make a few moves on you, you realize that they totally suck. They just like to play the part and do what black people do, or that they just really like basketball and play it a lot but suck at it because they have no talent.

The funny thing is, the fake black guys also have certain presumptions about what kind of player you are and how good you are based on your phsyical apperance, and if you are one of the rare 160 pound Taiwanese boy who can deadlift 500 and jump over 40 inches, you would most definately surprise them of how awesome and fast you are, just like the way they surprise you of how slow and crappy they are while they let their guards down, and you keep your guards up. And when this happens, the table turns, and you start kicking ass. Deception can work both against and for you.

At MICA, there are a lot of people who try really hard to be weird and unique and dress weird, but when you see their artwork, they really suck and they shouldn’t even be at a fine art school.

The worse and the trickest ones are girls who look like sluts but aren’t. You think they are easy, and you try to get into their pants, but they turn out to be good Christian girls. I hate those.


Certain deceptions are more perminant than others. While it’s easy to reveal yourself on a basketball court, other forms of social interactions can be more deceptive and less revealing. When seeing or meeting somebody for the first time, our brains use their instinctive ability to make basic claims, assumptions, and prejudice about the other person. Before any words are exchanged between you and a particular stranger, you’d already have a pretty good idea of what kind of a person she is, what type of music or movies she prefers, whether or not she’s a virgin, if not, what she’s like in bed, what her interests are etc.

Upon approaching that person and speaking to her face to face, you are likely to talk to her and treat her as the person you presume and expect her to be in your mind. You might even alter your image and project yourself in a way in which you think that type of a person like her might like from your previous experiences of dealing with that particular type of people.

In order to establish a connection and make you like her (if that is indeed her intention), that person is likely to conform and project herself in ways that
“match up” to the type of person you presuppose her to be as a reaction to your action, even if the presumptions are wrong.

Her conformance would further justify your presupposition as you think to yourself, “Yap, she’s just like the way I thought she would be”, and then carry on the rest of the conversation based on the (sometimes false) justification resulted from her (sometimes fake) acquiescence with more confidence and assertion while HER brain is processesing and anaylizing you in a similar fashion as both of you attempt to establish further connections with each other.

This projections of prejudices, presumptions, actions and reactions bounce back and forth between the two parties until both of them end up wearing a mask the other person had put on each other. With more more social interactions and experiences, our masks become more prominant, become harder to remove, grow into multiple layers and sets that we put on depending on the people and the situations as other people’s perceptions and opinions of mold you into the person you are.

Foot Rant – Why Artificial Foods are Not So Bad

After WW2, people from America and all over the world pretty much have their stomachs satisfied. They receive more than enough nutrients to satisfy their daily calorie intake. This however, was becoming a problem for the food industry: How do you continue to feed a nation that already has enough to eat? The solution is easy : Target our sweet tooth.

Human naturally crave sweets and fats because they are high in calorie. When we were hunters and gatherers, there wasn’t a lot of food lying around, each meal is hard to come by and you never know when you’re gonna eat again. So to be efficient, we go after the food with the most calorie for our buck so we don’t starve ourselves. We go for fruits that have the most sugar and animals that have the most fat. The fatter and sweeter the better and more nutritious the food and the most chances we have of surviving long periods without food. This is the way we approach food for over a million years, and although we don’t live that kind of a life style anymore, we can’t change the habit over night, so everybody is naturally born with a sweet tooth and is pre-wired to crave foods that are high calorie, high fat and high in sugar.

The food industry have been turning what was essential for us in our evolutionary history against us. That sweet tooth that was crucial for our survival while we were cavemen is now working against us, killing us, and making us fat, since our rbodies really aren’t designed to handle the way we eat today. Not only are foods that are high in sugar and high in fat scarce anymore, they are cheap and they are everywhere and easy to over-eat. Since everybody is getting their nutrients already, how else can the food industry make more money? Easy. All they have to do is produce artificial food with machines and dump in excessive amount of sugar and fat because that’s the way we like them. The sweeter and fatter the junk food, the more we crave it.

A lot of people eat junk food AFTER a meal, in a condition when they are more than well fed. Nobody is starving anymore in this country. People aren’t eating junk food because they are hungry and that they need to eat it, they’re eating it because they crave it. What do you do after dinner? Some cake, few pieces of candies here and there. What do you do after you eat one piece of candy or one piece of chip? You eat another, and another, and another until you realized that those calorie are empty, extra, and useless. But this is exactly where the food industry wants you to be in. They want to add more sugar and fat in your food because the fatter and sweeter it is, the more you want to eat it, and the more you eat it, the fatter you get, and the fatter you are, the more food you need, and the money you give to the people in the food industry, and the more money they have the more junk food and the more advertisement they make to kill you, and so on ..Its a vicious cycle.

So junk food like liquid calorie and pocket meals (small bags of chips) are pretty much all new inventions and the pocket and liquid calorie is the new diet. They are made to satisfy the current American lifestyle. People are so busy running around and working like dogs these days that they never have time to eat or prepare food anymore. People spend more time than ever behind the wheel to commute to work. I mean you can’t really blame people when they stop by the gas station and buy a bag of chips and a bottle of soda and just stuff them in their pockets or bags because that really is the fastest way to go. 1 out of 5 meals is eaten in the car in America today. I mean, I eat with my mom’s boyfriend, but that’s still gotta be better than trying to eat and drive at the same time.

In America, poor people are the fat ones, but everywhere else in the world you are more likely to see the opposite. In China if you see a fat kid on the street he’s probably well off and eats golden rice everyday. But in America, fast/junk foods are cheap, and healthy food is expensive and hard to come by. So poor people eat poor food and they get bloody fat, not to mention the fact that they don’t have the money to buy a gym membership.

But anyway, that’s the bad side to artificial food. But how about GENETICALLY MODIFIED food? A lot of people nowadays think they are healthy by going organic and all natural and the like. The more naturally it is, the better, right? Not exactly. If you just think about it for a moment here, there is nothing bad about genetically altered food. In fact, in many cases, natural food is actually more dangerous and worse for your health than genetically modified food.

Many studies that have conducted to prove that genetically modified foods pose no risks to human health or to the environment. This is nothing new to biologists.

Genetically modified food are not anymore dangerous than natural food and they are fundamentally the same. Also, you aren’t going find any “natural” food if you live in the modern world. Whatever you think is “organic” or “natural”, chances are it’s genetically modified. Every vegetable, animal that’s been sold in supermarkets or health food stores have been “genetically modified” by selective breeding and hybridization. Nothing is natural. Even rain is genetically modified.

Everyone gets freaked out nowadays over corn beef, corn syrup, corn this corn that. What’s wrong with those corn? Probably nothing. You wanna see a real, natural carrot? It looks thin, tastes bitter, has white roots. The ancestors of corn, real corn, are equipped with an inch long cob and rock-hard kernels and is pretty much inedible.

Plants and animals have been evolved Darwinian style for millions of years so they WOULDN’T get eaten, so of course they aren’t going to go out of their way to be tasty, healthy, easy to grow and harvest. On the contrary, they do just the opposite : Animals and plants go out of their way to keep us from eating them by evolving toxins, bitter-tasting components, and irritating features. So there really is nothing “healthy” or “safe” about natural foods. Food with natural flavors are often times indistinguishable by the tongue from artificial flavors of the same food. And usually the natural flavor one is the more dangerous one.

Our fear of genetically modified food is irrational, and it could also make food more expensive, thus less available to poor people.

Another reason why people value “natural” food and are so against genetically modified food is due to human being’s standard intuition for the essence and wonderment of living things. People all over the world are obsessed with animals and plants and flowers.

Over the millennia and across all cultures, people have been obsessed with living things, especially animals. With the lack of understanding of biology and evolution, people who see an awesome and powerful looking animal immediately think they have some sort of invisible essence residing in them that gives them the power and form that they have.

I mean who doesn’t like animals? When I first came to the States 11 years ago, I would get psyched up every time I see a squirrel or a deer. It’s like they are celebrities or something. I even convinced my mom to buy the house that I live in right now just because it’s got a huge backyard filled with birds, snakes, foxes and deers.

Which of you didn’t grow up watching animal planets, playing with animal toys, reading about animals, watching Disney movies (which is basically just animals talking and falling in love with each other).

Most sport teams use animals as their symbols or logos…The logo for this country is a fricking bird for crying out loud. Find any restaurant that doesn’t have any paintings or sculptures of animals, I’ll take you there and get you free food.

Walk into a girl’s room, chances are you’ll find bunch of animal stuffed animals lying around. Oh yea, don’t get me started on dogs. People treat dogs better than they treat other people. Mike Vick killed some dogs and it was on the front page of every newspaper. Every day more black kids die on the street of Baltimore, how come they don’t make it to the news?

It’s not strange that we are generally afraid of genetically modified food. They don’t have that pure plant or animal essence that natural foods have, and the environment they grow in don’t contain rejuvenating powers. Genetically modified food are thought to be contaminated by factory or laboratory, which takes the essence out of them.

It’s kind of the same deal with fake flowers. I personally hate real flowers because they go bad and smell bad, and I much prefer plastic ones. Why can’t moms or girls everywhere just accept fake flowers? They last way longer and you can always just recycle them on the next anniversary and just paint it a different color like gray or black or brown or checkerd style. Plus they are water proof.

Anyway, It’s pretty much impossible to follow the old 0 carb, 12 eggs in the morning Frank Yang diet anymore, since I’ve been forced to eat junk food every other day. I had pop corn coated with table sugar for lunch today 😦

But I think it’s still a good idea to watch what put inside your body, since it’s the only thing you are born with and you get to take to your grave. I mean, a dead person might not have a mind but at least it still has a body right? A fat dead man is probably the worse looking thing there is.