Using Supernormal Stimuli and Erotics to Create Public Artworks: An Experiment in Countering Cultural Hegemony and Post-colonialism in Chinese Urban Space
This is a practice-led research project that presents a critical analysis of cultural hegemony and postcolonialism in Chinese urban space. It attempts to offer an alternative solution via a series of public artworks and a written thesis. As part of this analysis, this research investigates the deeper sense of colonisation and the role of westernisation in the process of Chinese modernisation in the late 20th century.
The other focus of this research is embodied affect. I use two approaches in the production of my artworks and compare how these two approaches provide a differing sense of affection during the encounter between the viewer and the artwork. By inducing different emotions from the viewers, with the use of robotic technology, AR interfaces and physiological sensors, my art practice aims to provoke a multiplicity of feelings. As the multiplicity of feelings are not available within contemporary hegemonic environments, I would like to bring the multiplicity of sensuousness back to the public space, as an act of resistance.
By escaping the existing political system based around patriarchy, postcolonialism and reason, art can work to liberate sensuousness and bring eroticism and desire into representation. This has the potential to reshape the existing repressive power system of cultural hegemony and postcolonialism.
Key details
School, Centre or Area
Supervisors
Gallery
More about Chang
Biography
Chang Gao is a visual artist using multiple media in her practice production, like sculpture, hologram installation and photographic languages. Her work overlapped with the field of psychology, aiming to trigger audience’s desire and bodily responses. By exploring the relations between the very personal matter of the human body and the public space, her artwork serves as an alternative method to address the pressing cultural issue in Chinese public space.
She worked as a public art researcher at the Public Art Research Centre of China – China Central Academy of Fine Arts. Meanwhile, she is a co-founder and director at the International Laboratory of Social Innovation - China Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA-ILSI). She gave a Ted Talk on May 23rd, 2016 and presented her PhD topic at Collision doctoral conference at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama twice in 2019 and 2020 and IEEE Sentimental Robotics and Automation Conference, Sharing Biological Practice Symposium RCA. She has shown her works internationally, in London galleries like London Art Biennale, Beaconsfield Gallery, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Dyson Gallery at the Royal College of Art, 508 King’s Road Gallery in London Battersea, Korean Collage of Fine Arts at Hongik University in Seoul, together with Japan Tama University and Alto University, Helsinki and many museums and galleries in China. She also held a Double Solo exhibition: Public Intimacy in March 2020 at Dyson Gallery, Royal College of Art.
Degrees
2018-2022 Royal College of Art, PhD in Art and Humanities
2010-2014 Academy of Art and Design Tsinghua University, MA in Sculpture
2006-2010 Academy of Art and Design Tsinghua University, BA in Sculpture
Experience
Chang has widely teaching and working as a researcher and lecturer within UK and in China:
2021.3.24 Visiting lecturer at Bath University, giving lecture and 1 to 1 tutorial to art undergraduate students in United Kingdom
2020.10.09-2020.11.13 Visiting Lecturer at MA group teaching at Royal College of Art, teaching students from different majors across Contemporary Art Practice, Curating Contemporary Art, Sculpture, Moving image, Glass and Ceramic, Jewellery, photography, and painting.
2020 January 20th, Visiting Lecturer at Liverpool Open University for giving presentation and 1:1 tutorial to undergraduate students, UK
2019 December 3rd, Visiting Lecturer leading RCA SoAH MA Crit with other PhD candidate Fran Young at Royal College of Art, UK
2019 November 16th, Curator leading workshop “Reflection of Oversea Studies as Chinese Identity” at Coventry Biennale, together with Coventry university, Warwick University and Royal College of Art
2019 October 2nd-3rd, Research Candidate giving a talk about the PhD topic: Supernormal Stimuli, Public Sphere Theory Addressing the Post-colonial Phenomenon in Chinese Public Space” at doctoral conference Collision 2019, at Royal Central Academy of Drama and Speech, London
2015.6- 2018.6: Working as Researcher at Public Art Research Centre of China – China Academy of Fine Art Leading teaching and research group as the research leader for the national fund project “The Development History of Public Art in China” in Public Art Research Centre of China Beijing
2015.6- 2018.6: teaching as a Research Fellow at Public Art Research Centre of China – China Academy of Fine Art
Awards
2011.5 Design “Future 20 years” won Honorable Price for the indoor sculpture of Beijing Volkswagen Incorporation, China
2011-2010 recipient of the Tsinghua University Alumna Dc.Yang Scholarship
2010.9 Works Good Memory were awarded with the Excellence Award by Beijing Government and Chinese Sculpture Institute at the First Chinese Marble Sculpture Competition
2010.9 Artworks Good Memory were awarded with the Excellence Award by Beijing Government and Chinese Sculpture Institute at the First Chinese Marble Sculpture Competition
2008-2009 National Scholarship & Tsinghua University First-prize Comprehensive Scholarship
2007-2008 National Scholarship & Tsinghua University First-prize Comprehensive Scholarship
2006-2007 National Scholarship & Tsinghua University First-prize Comprehensive Scholarship
Funding
Full PhD Tuition funding sponsored by Chinese Scholarship Council
Exhibitions
June 30-July 5th 2021, My work Book of Disquiet will be exhibited in Chelsea Old Town Hall in London Art Biennale
27th of May, 2021, My latest series of film work: Erotic Proximity in the RCA research event Entanglement: Just Dreaming (the worlds). The event is organsed and curated by Prof. Johnny Golding and Meg Rahaim-Shakespeare. It showcased together with other RCA PhD PGR Entanglement Researchers along with: Jackson 2Bears, Petra Gemeinboeck, Suchitra Sebastian and Pato Hebert.
2021 March 22nd - February 1st RCA Research Biennale, my research page was published online on RCA Research Biennale website online exhibition and explore research from across the PhD, MPhil and MRes programs. Welcome to join event "Practice Exchange" this afternoon and "How do you give form to Sentimental machines?" on Wednesday 3pm with me, as well we other events highlighting the urgency, vitality and ambition of research across art, design and architecture.
2020.3.4-2020.3.7 Double-solo Exhibition Public Intimacy exhibited together with Hanxuan Jiang at Dyson Gallery, Royal College of Art, Battersea, 1 Hester Road, London SW11 4AN
2020.1.22-2020.1.25 2084 Research exhibition from the School of Art and Humanities, Royal College of Art, Dyson Gallery, Royal College of Art, Battersea, 1 Hester Road, London SW11 4AN
2019.11. 8 Work: Organic Access exhibited at the Exhibition: Re-Imaging Psychogeography at Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, London
2019.10.4-.2019.11.24 The project “The Distribution of Wealth Most Conductive to Human Happiness” cooperated with Dr. Melanie Jordan participated in the ‘Coventry Biennale Contemporary Art 2019”. Meriden, Coventry, England
2019.10. 2-2019.10.3 Hologram installation Emotional Encounter & Prints Organic Access will be presented in Collision2019 Practice-led Research Conference at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London
2019.7.4-2019.7.9 Emotional Encounter-3 exhibited at the Transformation: Art<>Cities<>Mobility<>Products<>Services<>Technology Research Conference at the Senior Common Room, the Royal College of Art, Kensington Campus, London
2019.3.15-2019.3.23 work Emotional Encounter exhibited in MPhil/PhD research exhibition “There is something lurking in the shadow that might be interesting” in Dyson Gallery, Royal College of Art, LONDON
2019.2.12-2019.2.15 Work Organic Access exhibited in Exhibition Backward Reading, 508 King’s Road Gallery, Chelsea London, Britain
2019.1.29-2019.2.10 Work Organic Access and Emotional Encounter exhibited in Entanglement: The Opera in Dyson Gallery and Gorvy Lecture Hall at the Royal College of Art, London, Britain
2018.8.25-Today Work: Art Must Take Side exhibited in exhibition Partician Social Club in Beaconsfield Gallery, London, Britain. Now it’s been permanently installed in Beaconsfield Gallery
Publications
June 2021 Artwork Book of Disquiet has been published in Exhibition Catalogue of London Art Biennale
2021, Artworks Intimate Fantasy, Speaking for the Speechless, my research diagram “Sensuousness against Repression”, Final degree show diagram, as well as my paper: Using Supernormal Stimuli and Erotic to Create public Artworks: An Experiment in Countering Cultural Hegemony and Post-Colonialism in Chinese Urban Space was published in Prova 6, Seasonal Journal produced by School of Art and Humanities, Royal College of Art, London
2020, artworks Organic Access and Emotional Encounter, Book of Disquiet as well as my essay “Using Supernormal stimuli in the production of artwork addressing postcolonial phenomenon in Chinese public space” have been published in Prova 5, Seasonal Journal produced by School of Art and Humanities, Royal College of Art, London
Conferences
2021 June 15th, Sharing Biological Practices Symposium, organised by Royal College of Art Fashion Bio-Platform, my research practice Book of Disquiet was shared in the session “Does the body speak? Future Identities, system and body politics” together with other bio-tech designer and artists.
June 4th 2021, Sentimental Machines: IEEE international Conference on Robotics and Automation, giving speech about research project and practice together with other professors and researchers from UC Berkley, beingAI (France), King’s College of London, Nanyang Technology University, UCL, Imperial College, RCA as well as Tsinghua University.
27th of May, 2021, My latest series of film work: Erotic Proximity in the RCA research event Entanglement: Just Dreaming (the worlds). The event is organsed and curated by Prof. Johnny Golding and Meg Rahaim-Shakespeare. It showcased together with other RCA PhD PGR Entanglement Researchers along with: Jackson 2Bears, Petra Gemeinboeck, Suchitra Sebastian and Pato Hebert.
February 24th, 3pm, 2021 panelist to attend the RCA Research Biennale Event: How to give form to sentimental machines? An Affective Future Round Table Event The event is organised and moderated by Information Experience Designer & PhD candidate from SoC RCA Carolina Caroline (Yan) Zheng
February 17th 2020, I was presenting as a panelist and organiser at SoAH research Presents: REPRESENTATION the event was organised together with my PhD supervisor Dr. Josephine Berry and presented with Ama Josephine Budge.
Wednesday 22nd July 2 - 4.30 pm (BST) / 1 - 3.30 pm (UTC) 2020 Organiser and host the Panel Discussion & Art Making Workshop: Sense, Non-Sense and Art This event will be a live, participatory art-making workshop and discussion organised. It will include Harry Baxter-an experienced art educator of disabled people and Professor Hannah Thompson an author and critical disabilities studies scholar and James Taylor Foster - a curator of contemporary architecture and design at ArkDes.
2020 25th of June, 5-9pm SoAH Research Presents Entanglement: Just Gaming Entanglement is a SoAH and RKE cross-college research platform in the face of surveillance, AI, crypto currency and online intelligence.https://www.rca.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/soah-research-presents-entanglement-just-gaming/?fbclid=IwAR0dLC3mx7EefumxkCMDFMo-ZQMLJWxNizvyaywbF3GeqHpmmneZ0OGZe4M
2020. 06.24 Wednesday BST 17:30 The Architecture of Loss Live on Zoom: What is the relationship between architecture and loss? How can loss be understood as a mechanism that is distributed unequally across intersections of race, ability, sexuality, gender, geography and class? How is loss spatialised? How does ritual figure in the history of urban loss? What is the relationship between urban change, memory, ritual, loss and grief? Organised by MRes Architecture research students at the Royal College of Art @rca_mres_arch , I will present on the problems and characteristics of Chinese public space during globalisation and urbanisation, welcome to join the webinar. More details please see: https://www.rca.ac.uk/news-and-events/events/architecture-loss-3rd-annual-mres-architecture-colloquium/
2020.5.21 Together Apart: Going New Places-Round Table Discussion: I attended as a keynote speaker talking about the shift of public space and public art under the policy of social distancing in China and Europe, Video link: https://www.facebook.com/culturalchcuk/videos/588936631732809 The project is organised by the Cyprus High Commission in the UK – Cultural Section and sponsored by the Cultural Services – Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports and Youth of Cyprus.
2019 October 2nd-3rd, Collision 2019, Giving talk about the PhD topic: Supernormal Stimuli, Public Sphere Theory Addressing the Post-colonial Phenomenon in Chinese Public Space”, Royal Central Academy of Drama and Speech, London
2016 May 23rd, Ted talk about the research topic entitled “Your Vision Isn’t Shielded Only By Eyes” at Tsinghua University, TED TALK-Tsinghua
2011.9 Giving speech as the Outstanding Student at the “2011CO-COR Exhibition in Seoul(Korea)" held by Korea Collage of Fine Arts at Hongik University, Japan Tama University, Tsinghua University and Alto University, Helsinki
2009.10 Giving speech at as the Chinese National Scholarship Prize winner at Parsons New School for Design, New York