Charlotte Yao
Fleeing with the Hijacked
Summary
Against the global backlash on women’s rights, the Chinese government is also placing ever more emphasis on traditional patriarchal family values through their political campaign. In this context, where the subordination of women becomes both a prerequisite and the basis of maintaining the legitimacy of the party in power, survival under such turmoil becomes an urgent concern. This research by practice project explores narratives of constraint, fear, violence and freedom through a feminist lens. Working with moving image practice, this research utilises hijacking, appropriation and montage as methods to create allegorical narratives to speak about the politically sensitive and complex subjects of gender violence and inequality within a censorship context. Found video clips sourced from YouTube are cut and layered with sound and voice to create powerful, emotive fragments – a plane flaps its wings and falls gracefully from the sky in slow motion, grasped without a sound in the midst of fear. An informational educational video on the material production of metal chains is layered with violent histories and narratives of their use. A grey car is chased down a highway by a police vehicle and then a helicopter, with a swelling musical score. We identify with this fleeing, flying escapee, evading capture as it adeptly changes lanes and drives forever suspended within this moment of freedom. Although the establishment of empathic connections through covert communication channels is a relatively passive form of resistance, it helps to get messages out under the censorship and stigmatisation enforced by patriarchal authoritarian parties, fostering solidarity and support.
Additional info
Charlotte Yao is a Chinese-Canadian artist and curator who focus on decentration and identity politics, presenting marginalised perspectives of female, migrant, and even post-human aspects. She adopts the strategy of using minoritarian languages to stress the power of the difference-in-itself in many of her works. Her current research explores ways of building empathetic connections as a confrontational strategy for establishing communication channels under strict censorship and stigmatization.
Charlotte Yao graduated from the University of British Columbia with a BA in Philosophy and Royal College of Art with an MA in Photography and MRes in Arts and Humanity.
Tail of the Real
In response to the Chained Woman in Xuzhou incident, as well as the fear that had been cast upon me, I searched for aeroplane crash footage, as the falling of the plane seemed to capture the sentiment that I felt while watching the video of the Chained Woman. I deliberately chose not to use any content from or imagery directly referencing the original video, both to avoid desensitising viewers to the extremity of these traumatic images through overexposure, and also to avoid taking advantage of the sufferings of another. I then found this footage of a plane bursting in the air, its airfoils flapping like the wings of a bird before they detached from the fuselage, finally plunging together towards the ground. I was overwhelmed by its poignant aesthetics.
I named this work the Tail of the Real (2022) to stress the actual presence of fears that were ignored and silenced. This video reminded me of the feeling of being suddenly thrown into a deep hole. I wrote down this frustration as a voice-over, and then played it at a very slow speed along with the video. The extreme slow playback helped to break down the footage into fragmented images, intensifying the poignant aesthetics that I was immersed in. I believe the metaphoric association helps with processing feelings and navigating to sympathetic audiences alike. If one can empathise with a suffering bird, or even a suffering plane, one must be empathetic enough to understand the fear generated by gender-based violence, as well as other similar issues.
The Mythology of the Iron Chain
In the Mythology of the Iron Chain (2022), I hijacked a video explaining how chains are made. Through the use of montage, appropriation, and voice-over, I intensified and emphasised the violent mechanics of gender and other forms of oppression, enforced with the use of chains and shackles. I superimposed different versions of the original video's voiceover to create a cacophonous backdrop, then restated the violent or metaphorically violent terms used in the video to highlight that which has been normalised. Images relating to black slavery, sadomasochism, and even livestock treatment were inserted in the video to evoke deeper associations with power relations and dynamics.
The Mythology of the Iron Chain is meant to generalise and create associations with the Chained Woman in Xuzhou, the Tangshan Assault, and other gender-based violence, but without mentioning them directly in order to bypass censorship towards feminist discussions and social critics. Apart from being able to covertly establish communication channels for empathetic connection, the Mythology of the Iron Chain also attempts to metaphorically expose the predicament Chinese feminist voices face and the reasons behind it.
Run, My Dear, Run!
In Run, My Dear, Run! (2022) I juxtaposed news footage of a police car chase with the well-known tango music Por Una Cabeza to dismantle the power structure and diffuse the tension contained within the footage. The term ‘por una cabeza’ is a Spanish horse-racing phrase that is used to describe a horse winning by just a head. I used such a soundtrack to dismantle the power structure and diffuse the tension contained within the footage. The chase itself signifies the continued efforts of feminists in circumventing constantly advancing governmental censorship and surveillance. At the end of the video, I suspended the scene where the escaping suspect is about to be caught, implying that this chase is not going to end. It carries my aspirations for a feminist future, as well as the lingering perplexity of the present.
