Book of Disquiet-Feather, Pearl and Jasmonite

The artwork Book of Disquiet combines the audience’s heart rate, artworks and performance in public space. It explores the tension between the very personal matters of the human body and its relation to public space. The tension that sexuality is suppressed in public space, as the way Chinese government suppress people to speak out their political opinions. It inquires whether the personal and collective experience are able to address the cultural hegemony and postcolonial phenomenon in Chinese public space.

The artwork Book of Disquiet moves and shakes in different ways according to the heart rate of different spectators in responding to the surrounding environment. Although the physiological response cannot represent people’s conscious opinions, the registration of subtle but fundamental affection can produce non-symbolic representations which express Spivak’s subalterns, the class who are incapable of enforcing their class interest in their own name.