A work co-created with Gangtie Datui. Cover image photographed by Duan Liyan.
If only humans had built the Tower of Babel. If only everyone were happy.
Last night (actually early this morning), I talked with Nanmei Daxia about compulsive consumption. Especially during the pandemic years, and the years after. I mentioned that when I have no control over my own life, I involuntarily create the illusion of control through consumption.
Today, while chatting with Teacher Weng, we suddenly touched on this point — on my lack of control over my own life, over my own creative work. As we discussed these topics, various events gradually surfaced in my mind: my previous work, Adorno's book, my discussion with Nanmei Daxia yesterday, and so on. I have completely forgotten how such a conclusion came about, and I have completely forgotten what I was thinking at the time, but I must quote here a passage from Adorno in Philosophy of New Music:
The terrified consciousness would like to escape total enlightenment, but finds in new art that the door of escape is locked: the reason is that today, as long as art has any substance at all, it reflects what people wish to forget and brings it into consciousness without compromise.
I'm very sorry that I haven't yet presented my conclusion. However, my conclusion is: my previous work, which had deeply disappointed me, was actually quite good. Even though I didn't think so before.
The previous work had been named Edge, or Blurred Edge, or Study on Edges, or something like that. I believed at the time that the beauty in art and life — what in art is often called tension, what in life is called happiness — stems from the blurred and intermingling edges between things. But my work itself was so blurred that I completely lost control of it, so much so that during the performance, I felt hysterical despair. This is also why, despite it being a work from long ago, I never uploaded it: because I was terrified.
It's only at this point that I can truly state my more important conclusion: my life has been terrified by this loss of control, and in my own artistic creation, I realized the door of escape was locked, so I wished to flee from my own work, my own creation, my own thinking — to escape total enlightenment. But in reality, losing control, having no control over anything, is my current life, and I believe it is a microcosm, a facet of contemporary life.
When chatting with Teacher Weng, we first mentioned control — how the desire to control everything drives humans to imagine and crave power, how it controls humans to create narratives, to consume, to live. But these behaviors are actually fleeing from a truth: that we no longer have any control over our own lives.
I mentioned that I envy a kind of person — those who seem never to have reflected on their true needs; they seem to know their needs more clearly than I do and have the ability to directly obtain them. I don't know whether this fictional group exists, but I used to be like this: I used equipment to control sound as much as possible, to gain the strongest possible control, without even realizing it. So when my work spiraled out of control, I felt dizzy, felt my indisputable failure.
But, as I said: this work is actually quite good.
"Mom, what about those people without talent? What happens to their lives?"
We have all become failures — even if not yet, we will be in the future. What do we do?
2025.10.09
This essay seems so chaotic that I need to write another one to explain it.
I believe I have realized one of the most painful aspects of contemporary society: our complete lack of control over our lives.
The previous work was one in which I completely lost control during performance, and in creating that previous work, I made enormous efforts to achieve total control: I purchased 14 filters, used an audio interface and a computer to control their Cutoff, and used various methods to precisely control their Drive and Resonance — for this I expended a great deal of time, energy, and money.
And the result was: I had absolutely no idea what I was playing.
It's so funny, but it's also very good. Even though I was truly devastated at the time — devastated for so long that I think until today I still felt pain and despair from it, felt my artistic talent being questioned by myself, felt my efforts being questioned by myself, felt the meaning and value of my existence being questioned by myself.
Until today when I realized: having the desire to control everything but lacking the ability to control anything — this is me, and possibly a norm of contemporary society, and also the source of suffering.
Therefore, this work can be interpreted from another angle: oh my god, I tried everything I could, but I could only lie on the ground, incontinent, holding myself, lying in my own excrement.
Thank you all, thank you all for reading my work and my essay, and thank you all for your very existence, thank you all for every effort in your lives. You've all worked so hard. Humans can actually dig fifty meters downward — we all still have tomorrow.
2025.10.09
This is the original concept from some unknown early time.
What is my edge? My skin? The sounds I make? The impact I have on this world? We are all like a blob of sticky slime, floating in the air, sticking to one another.
The edges of everything are blurred.
Three loudspeakers, one microphone, routed into three different effect chains, producing different colors. Under the influence of feedback and delay, these changes are slow. When the microphone moves between different loudspeakers, the nearest loudspeaker gradually shifts the current sound toward its own color.
Gangtie Datui was invited to participate in the performance: he will inject his own color into this sound system.
Three loudspeakers, one microphone — the spatial relationships, movements, and sounds produced between the two performers all create their own blurred ranges, and thus blurred edges. Because the venue Trigger is extremely small, we seem to overlap with each other; whether we approach or move apart, we remain overlapping. Our edges are so blurred that I have never found mine. Thank you all. May you all be happy.
2025.10.09
I'm growing more and more fond of this work. I've been learning about Lacanian psychoanalysis lately, and also read Noise and Capitalism. I won't go into details — honestly, my current state of mind doesn't leave me with much to say. Anyway, I wish everyone well.
2026.06.24
Oh, and happy birthday to me.
2026.06.24