Identity and reading "The War on Culture"

In Carole S. Vance’s “The War on Culture”, the author uses Andres Serrano’s artwork “Piss Christ” and Robert Mapplethorpe’s “Perfect Moment” as examples to show how the art from the minority groups struggling with the public taste.  When we read the article, we need to have some background information. The article was written at early 1990’s, which was far different from the time we are living right now.  During the 80’s, as the beginning of the “Culture Wars’, was a throw back to the 1950’s when the McCarthyism reigned.  As the nation faced an economic recession, a health pandemic with the emergence of AIDS, and the increasing social problems as homelessness and homosexual issues, the Conservatives fought to regulate and moralize the culture. That is why Alfonse D’Amato and other senators were outraged by Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ”.  For the same reasons, Robert Mapplethorpe’s “Perfect Moment” has to be cancelled under the congress’s depression.  The article brings up the issue of how marginalized groups within the capitalist society of the United States of America are treated. The article also brings a related topic, which is about the artist’s identity.  At that time, if you are an artist from a “different group”, you have to be careful to march the main stream’s value and taste.  Time has changed. As an artist living in the current time, I think the artist identity is fading and keep changing.  Philosophically, I'm more interested in becoming than being.  Much more interesting, to me, is not the identity of who we are, but the question of how we become.  For we become not by staying the same, but by relating to something different.  If identity is a valid concept, then to me it is still a process.  We think of identity as the identity of a person.  But people are far from one thing only, just as identity is far from always the same.  Identity is not a static thing.  In this essay, I use my Internet identity, my social identity, and my identity that appears on my works to support my statement.

Firstly, my Internet identity is not a static thing.  It's been said, I don't recall by whom, that we experience ourselves as complex and differentiated, but that we see others as a whole.  I think this is very good to explain the online identity.  I use myself as an example.  I spent at least five hours on line every day, which means I spend much more time on line than on anywhere else.  But somehow, the online identity is not important at all.  I always invite my friends to my website to see my works. The identity of my website is the domain name, but that is not a fixed property. When I create my website, I only purchase that domain name for 5 years, which means, if I didn’t continue pay for it, the name would be somebody else’s.  I have different identities on different web 2.0.  I create a cartoon character’s name to write online journal, I use my dog’s name to chat on Skype.  On Twitter my ID is a series of numbers.  I use these different Ids following people’s post, make comments, share videos, photos with other people and chat with them.  These “other people” I mentioned earlier, yet I do not know them face-to-face.  I know them by their IDs that they registered on line.  I don’t pay attention to their ID.  I have interest on them because of their postings or comments, or, they and me share some same interest.  I don’t care “they” are female or male, white or black, married or unmarried. On some level, I only see myself is different but all others are the “same”.  On Internet, I see myself as a “one” but all others as a “whole”.  So, who cares about the online identity?  To me, it is not necessary to pay attention to somebody’s online identity.  The online identity only reflects that someone’s interest or taste, and it can be changed as time goes by.

Secondly, a person’s social identity is not static either.  One can be involved into different groups, and be tagged on with different identity.  Identity might also be how a person presents himself or herself to others, may be clear in how they talk, and will most certainly be involved in who and how they relate to.  But as this person is always changing, the identity would not be the same along his changing.  If someone asked me “what is your identity”, I wouldn’t have so much to say.  Sometimes I am not sure what is “Identity” in our reality life means, although it seems it is a very important issue for everyone.  I was born in China, which means I was born as a “Chinese”.  But it is not very true.  I only can say that before I immigrated to the United States, I was a Chinese.  After immigrated to America, I was a Chinese the first two years, and then I become a Chinese American.  People in school think I am a Chinese because of my Chinese background, the culture I inherited and the way I look.  The U.S government considered me as an American and I even got a letter for recruiting for U.S Navy.  I plan to go back to china to teach after I got my MFA.  If I were really to do so, I would be a Chinese who has U.S citizenship.  That will cause me some inconveniences when I live in China.  . The Chinese government wouldn’t think I am a Chinese, I need to get the residential permission to stay first.  So, what is Identity?  I use my nationality as an example. What I want to point out is that the identity is not a static thing. Identity is always changing, it is not something about “being”, and it is always about “becoming”.

             Thirdly, the identity that appears on my works is not static. When I got in the MFA program two years ago, I was trying hard to find my form, as everybody else did. Many questions bothered me. If technology brings us to a communicational age, are we all connected?  If we were all connected, can we understand each other earlier than before? If communication brings us understanding, why we still have to face war and even more conflicts than before? These questions didn’t related with my personal identity, because I was thinking I was “globalized”.  On my first year of MFA, I had a show called “"Globalization". In my show, I use three different languages (Chinese, English, and Russian) to present the variation of "globalization" definition from Wikipedia. The underlying concept of the exhibition is to show the "Globalization" present in something that is known and being used worldwide: Wikipedia.  For each language, I use 57x57 inch frame. The texts are electronic printed on canvas. Right below each canvas frame, I put the English translation of that language so the audience can see and compare the different meaning of the word "globalization" in each language used, and the audience can easily find out different language speaking people have different explanation of a same thing. Though "Globalization", we can see “localization”. (See image #1 & #2)  Also at the first year (2007-2008) of my graduate study, two things attracted my attention. One was the U.S government band Chinese toxic toy.  Later, some American store announced that they refuse to sell the products “made in China”.  Of cause, “made in China” is not just a simple label. What is behind?  First, it represents a miracle of China's economy. But to many western consumers, “made in China” is not only representing an inexpensive, but also low quality products from China. As a result, it poses a threat to the merchandises at home. Based on my research, I had another show “Made in China” on early 2009. I made a life-size shipping container in a small gallery. The shinny orange golden color shipping cargo occupied most of the space in gallery.  Along with the shipping box, I presented the database that shows the merchandise list imported from China (to U.S) in year 2008. (See image #3 & #4)  When I create this work, I didn’t really think of my “identity”. Not because of I have Chinese background, I got more sensitive with “made in China”. I was interested on the identity of “made in China”, the social perception of a brand. This was nothing to do with my personal identity.  My latest work was “Tea Time”. The inspiration was form my trip to Israel. My brother was stays in Israel for about 10 years. Culturally, I became a Chinese American and my brother became a half Chinese half Israelee.  I was still thinking I was “globalized”, and same as my brother.  What "globalization" happened to us was not only our own identity changing, but also effect the whole family.  I invite people to the galley for a family teatime, but some of my family members were physically absent.  Visitors were able to talk to them on Skype.  In this work, although “identity” was not my theme, but people can realized that “identity” is a stage of changing, and it is not static. Currently I am doing some researches on how Internet changes people’s behave and I hope to develop that concept and incorporate it into my works.  Again, when Identity meet internet, the concept of identity become a gray zone. When I look at all my work, my personal identity didn’t play any significant role.

We need to consider the issue of identity is like flux, a stage of changing and ongoing.  As an ancient philosopher said, a person cannot cross the same river twice.  The technology allows the world changing faster than ever before. The lower cost of transportation allows people travel around the globe more frequently and to places that were not accessible before.  We are facing more opportunities.  If we pay too much attention on our identities, we limited ourselves to merge into many more interesting aspects of life.