Rirao

The World

The central premise of my world is that instead of moving milimetres at a time, land masses are able to move a few metres in a year. This explains why Los Angeles was able to detach itself from US and Rio De Janeiro was able to detach itself from Brazil, and for them to float together to form Rilao.

In this world, all islands are in constant danger of floating into and joining other landmasses. Larger islands are prone to losing parts of themselves to the Drift. Thus, the countries in this world experience geopolitics in constant motion.

Nicholas Bourriaud: "To be radicant: it means setting one’s roots in motion, staging them in heterogeneous contexts and formats, denying them any value as origins, translating ideas, transcoding images, transplanting behaviors, exchanging rather than imposing (...) The immigrant, the exile, the tourist, and the urban wanderer are the dominant figures of contemporary culture."

The Island

I envision Rirao as a new transnational space dominated by the Asian “Other” - the orientalised Americas, the Asianised West. Its name in Chinese is "日绕", which means “the sun revolves around it”. The initial mispronunciation of its name in Chinese has become its dominant pronunciation.

The increase in Chinese/Asian Migration into Rirao not only results in cultural displacement to both the migrants and 'native' populations in Rirao, but there is also the danger of reductionist condensations of what it means to be oriental or asian. Ethnicity, race, and nationality are all performances.

This is not strictly about being Asian or presenting something that is "oriental" (as opposed to "occidental"). Whilst I am interested in which forms a counterpoint to the hegemony of the west, I think it is not about a backlash of presenting ideas which as Asian. I can't even claim to be Asian in thought - my education was entirely in English, I have only studied English and French literature. I think that such a transnational space needs to break out of it.

• Altermodernity
• Supermodernity
• Nonplaces
• Second or third-order simulacra

Rirao at the Venice Biennale 20XX

The Venice Biennale is a monumental, sprawling all-year affair in which countries display their art, presumably to one another, in various pavilions and venues in and around the city of Venice. Every two years, it becomes a global meeting point, a prestigious and international stage for cultural exchanges and discourse, but also a place of contradictions, in which artists might be seen more as representatives of their country, effectively tasked with producing and showing work for displays of some form of national identity, even though national borders are very tired and outdated boundaries for one’s imagination, and artists may also be migratory, of mixed heritage, or may not even necessarily be rooted or resident in their countries of origin.

Looming over this, is also the larger question of who, or which national agencies gets to decide which artist and which artworks have the ultimate ability to represent each nation. Whilst it is certainly not a straightforward issue, the selection process at work at the Venice Biennale also has the ability to produce some interesting artistic results, for this system does allow for each country (or region, or group of people) to approach it from very different ways, allowing for the possibility for alternative narratives, and even minority and counterhegemonic voices to be heard on an international stage. On the other hand, one could perhaps read a decision not to participate as selective mutism, or perhaps as a kind of statement on its own. However, these are only speculative readings.

My project is concerned with curating/designing Rilao's submission for the Venice Biennale.