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MOTIVATED BY ANGER:
SOCIETY, MEDIA,PEOPLE

Keyword: OUTRAGED

HSIEH: "Why can everyone look the same? I believe this phenomenon comes from the brainwashing of the media."

Keyword: ANNOYED

TSOU: "Hsieh has always been devoted to the pursuit of peace and mindfulness. I know she values inner stability to an extent..."

“From the beginning, I have been outraged at the public's attitude. The public is too conformed to the norms as if everyone has been imprisoned. Everyone reads the information on the same platforms and wear the same clothes on the streets. I am furious about that. Why can everyone look the same? I believe this phenomenon comes from the brainwashing of the media. This has made me an angry young person.” As I tried to trace the reasons why Hsieh centered her discussion of art among media, this is what she told me. For her, the media is the issue that triggers her thoughts. She considers it to be an unsatisfiable issue with the expression in words. Therefore, she opts for video art to reveal her perspectives and observations toward it.

In the initial stage of Hsieh's discussion among media, she talked about "how the media confuses public perception" in the era of the information explosion. The press featured producing oversimplified images and fabricated information. In What a Wonderful Information Age, she composed provocative headlines and pale article content to allude to such a heinous situation. The work highlights how different meaning is constructed through the different ways of weaving materials, revealing how the power of media affects our perception deeply. 

In the second stage, she focused on "how people are domesticated." She discussed how people have become numb under the media's guidance. In Dangerous Relationship, she replaced the sound of the image of children sitting on a pirate ship in the amusement park with the sound of a Hong Kong protest. She also replaced the sound of the gorgeous fireworks with the sound of bullets. In this way, Hsieh questions how it is unusual for people to maintain a moderate emotional state all the time. 

In the next stage, she pondered "how the media has become a myth of collective worship in the new era." She has been dedicated to depicting how this monster-like power erodes into daily life, and also she has been thinking about the possibility of coexistence with it. The work centered on our discussion, Paradise of Chaos II: Virus Creation, analogizes the media's brainwashing to the invasion of the mental virus. Hsieh uses the three-channel video to discuss how it is produced and affecting modern people's lives.

When Tsou encountered the piece in the museum, she commented the theme to be "very Hsieh-like." She said, "Hsieh has always been devoted to the pursuit of peace and mindfulness. I know she values inner stability to an extent. Based on this, I can understand what she wants to talk about among media as she feel annoyed by people's unstable mindset and collective stupidity." Tsou also asked about why Hsieh adopted new media art as the form during the interview, which is worth bringing up at this point. She guessed that this is because new media is innovative. In this regard, I explained to her the relationship between form and content and how the medium is considered the most suitable expression for the artist's concept. To this point, Hsieh responded,  “I understand that Tsou was unfamiliar with the context of my previous works so I am okay with such a misunderstanding.”

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Review

Hsieh's art

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