WEBVTT 00:00:06.460 --> 00:00:08.080 [JES FAN] Once you've seen them, 00:00:08.080 --> 00:00:10.160 they're lodged in your mind. 00:00:11.680 --> 00:00:15.820 Especially thinking of them as one of the first few representations 00:00:15.820 --> 00:00:19.080 of the Chinese person as a subject. 00:00:26.120 --> 00:00:28.259 There's a medical missionary called Peter Parker 00:00:28.259 --> 00:00:32.940 who traveled to Canton to perform the surgical incision of tumors 00:00:32.940 --> 00:00:36.410 in the early nineteenth century. 00:00:36.410 --> 00:00:40.520 Lam Qua was a really celebrated painter at the time. 00:00:40.520 --> 00:00:43.960 He was most famous for painting portraitures. 00:00:47.280 --> 00:00:49.880 But I suppose that Lam Qua was also celebrated 00:00:49.880 --> 00:00:52.730 by how accurate he can paint his sitters. 00:00:52.730 --> 00:00:54.920 He's known for this one quote saying, 00:00:54.920 --> 00:00:57.560 "What eye no see, no can do." 00:01:05.220 --> 00:01:07.560 There's something about Chinese-ness here. 00:01:08.560 --> 00:01:12.600 Thinking, like, how did Chinese-ness become a word? 00:01:13.340 --> 00:01:19.220 What are the technologies that's involved in creating this idea of "the other"? 00:01:24.700 --> 00:01:27.000 Why does the shoulder need to be bare? 00:01:27.000 --> 00:01:31.060 Like, the braid of hair is placed. 00:01:31.960 --> 00:01:36.360 It's just so seductive, and I was wondering if that kind of seduction 00:01:36.360 --> 00:01:39.259 has to come in a way that you're able to see 00:01:39.260 --> 00:01:43.340 the sitter as a fellow human. 00:01:48.440 --> 00:01:54.020 ["Jes Fan: Infectious Beauty"] 00:01:58.480 --> 00:02:03.680 I think it made me really try to understand the idea of beauty and seduction. 00:02:03.680 --> 00:02:06.640 I think my work has a lot to do with seduction. 00:02:11.640 --> 00:02:13.520 Nowadays, beauty is really flat. 00:02:14.240 --> 00:02:16.760 There's only one emotion you can emote on social media, 00:02:16.760 --> 00:02:18.760 which is the double tap, right? [LAUGHS] 00:02:18.760 --> 00:02:20.460 That there's only a heart shape. 00:02:20.460 --> 00:02:22.800 When something is beautiful, it's just a flat heart. 00:02:32.300 --> 00:02:34.940 But then, when you think of beauty in the past, 00:02:34.940 --> 00:02:36.840 it's beauty and the sublime. 00:02:37.560 --> 00:02:40.700 It has to come with this suspension-- 00:02:40.700 --> 00:02:41.960 this fear. 00:02:48.200 --> 00:02:50.400 It also meant, in the past, 00:02:50.410 --> 00:02:54.000 to describe something that was so beautiful 00:02:54.000 --> 00:02:56.200 that it almost makes you want to puke. 00:02:56.200 --> 00:02:56.800 [LAUGHS] 00:03:04.880 --> 00:03:08.019 Originally, I grew up in Hong Kong. 00:03:08.020 --> 00:03:10.160 It's very oppressive, being queer there, 00:03:12.920 --> 00:03:16.140 just not being able to see yourself reflected in society, 00:03:16.140 --> 00:03:18.700 nor even within just 00:03:19.760 --> 00:03:22.670 being able to see happy, queer adults-- 00:03:22.670 --> 00:03:24.480 or queer adults in general. 00:03:27.000 --> 00:03:31.660 It's kind of not being able to see a future extension of yourself. 00:03:35.260 --> 00:03:37.920 I had a really rough few years growing up, 00:03:37.920 --> 00:03:40.820 trying to find who I can be. 00:03:56.504 --> 00:03:57.924 [JULIE WOLF] So my understanding of the piece 00:03:57.924 --> 00:04:00.934 is that you make it so that it's a glass shape of something. 00:04:00.934 --> 00:04:04.784 And then, you add the melanin to the piece, 00:04:04.784 --> 00:04:06.804 and then fill it with silicon afterwards, correct? 00:04:06.804 --> 00:04:07.804 [FAN] Yeah. 00:04:07.804 --> 00:04:10.404 [WOLF] What we want to make is melanin. 00:04:11.104 --> 00:04:13.164 It's the final physical form that we're going to make. 00:04:13.164 --> 00:04:15.004 This is called L-DOPA. 00:04:15.874 --> 00:04:19.544 In this case, L-DOPA is a really unstable molecule. 00:04:19.544 --> 00:04:21.854 If you expose it to light 00:04:21.854 --> 00:04:24.074 or ambient temperature, 00:04:24.074 --> 00:04:26.964 it will start to do something called autopolymerizing. 00:04:26.964 --> 00:04:28.914 It's going to start to make a polymer, 00:04:28.914 --> 00:04:30.914 which is a repeated subunit, 00:04:30.914 --> 00:04:32.984 which is going to be related to that melanin. 00:04:33.984 --> 00:04:37.064 So what we're going to do is to make the conditions 00:04:37.064 --> 00:04:40.344 as unstable for L-DOPA as possible, 00:04:40.344 --> 00:04:43.724 so that we can bypass the biological process 00:04:43.724 --> 00:04:45.944 and just get right to the melanin. 00:04:51.184 --> 00:04:52.424 So it's not as dark, 00:04:52.434 --> 00:04:54.464 but you can see that there's the flakes in there. 00:04:54.464 --> 00:04:56.284 [FAN] So crazy that they're warm. 00:04:56.284 --> 00:04:57.284 [WOLF] Yeah. 00:04:57.284 --> 00:05:00.184 [FAN] It would be great to have them... 00:05:00.664 --> 00:05:03.404 something that you can identify or trigger, 00:05:03.944 --> 00:05:06.134 and sort of hope that is that. 00:05:06.134 --> 00:05:07.864 Because the plates you gave me 00:05:07.864 --> 00:05:09.824 with the E. coli, 00:05:09.824 --> 00:05:11.604 they look exactly like molds. 00:05:12.044 --> 00:05:15.404 So let's hope that these will grow happily 00:05:16.824 --> 00:05:20.264 and into more slurry-like, you know? 00:05:43.004 --> 00:05:45.643 A lot of what I'm trying to do with 00:05:45.643 --> 00:05:47.823 what we consider as gendered materials, 00:05:47.824 --> 00:05:49.384 or racialized materials, 00:05:49.384 --> 00:05:52.504 they're just really, really absurd. 00:05:58.004 --> 00:05:59.504 It's like a cooking show. 00:05:59.504 --> 00:06:00.744 I have semen, 00:06:00.744 --> 00:06:01.804 blood, 00:06:02.204 --> 00:06:03.144 melanin, 00:06:03.144 --> 00:06:04.484 and pee. 00:06:04.744 --> 00:06:05.644 [LAUGHS] 00:06:07.944 --> 00:06:10.544 So at the time I was thinking a lot about how race, 00:06:10.554 --> 00:06:11.923 especially in the U.S., 00:06:11.923 --> 00:06:13.904 is seen as infectious. 00:06:13.904 --> 00:06:16.324 Think about China and coronavirus. 00:06:16.673 --> 00:06:18.944 Think about SARS and being in Hong Kong. 00:06:18.944 --> 00:06:22.644 And think about Jim Crow era, not sharing bodies of water. 00:06:23.604 --> 00:06:26.304 That idea of it being infected. 00:06:32.184 --> 00:06:36.544 These days in Asia, the beauty is smooth, 00:06:36.544 --> 00:06:39.024 has no corners, does not repulse. 00:06:40.264 --> 00:06:41.534 There's something about... 00:06:41.534 --> 00:06:44.573 doing this is subverting that balance, 00:06:44.573 --> 00:06:47.484 it's showing the labor to acquire that smoothness. 00:06:47.484 --> 00:06:50.764 And by showing it, it looks like these infectious rings. 00:06:53.284 --> 00:06:57.364 But then, also the materials that's carried in these bulbous forms 00:06:57.374 --> 00:07:00.194 are actually semen that's decaying. 00:07:00.194 --> 00:07:02.804 I find that very funny. 00:07:02.804 --> 00:07:05.844 [LAUGHS] 00:07:10.544 --> 00:07:14.204 It's very much about having forms fitting into each other 00:07:14.204 --> 00:07:18.564 and somehow evoking a sense of this uncanniness, 00:07:18.564 --> 00:07:22.684 but simultaneously so erotic that you can't stop. 00:07:22.684 --> 00:07:25.144 But to be attracted to it, 00:07:26.324 --> 00:07:28.104 that eroticness 00:07:29.004 --> 00:07:30.144 seduces you. 00:07:33.404 --> 00:07:34.963 It's beauty in the gloss, 00:07:34.964 --> 00:07:37.954 and the possibility to see your own reflection in it. 00:07:38.904 --> 00:07:39.904 At the same time, 00:07:39.904 --> 00:07:42.524 you're actually staring at something that repulses you, 00:07:42.534 --> 00:07:46.204 that actually is considered infectious 00:07:46.204 --> 00:07:47.464 or unclean. 00:07:57.364 --> 00:08:01.684 My therapist says that I'm so familiar with oppression 00:08:01.684 --> 00:08:05.874 that danger and risk and oppression makes me feel at home. 00:08:05.874 --> 00:08:09.604 So I slave myself away in the studio. 00:08:09.604 --> 00:08:12.634 Or, like, I deprive myself of pleasure 00:08:12.634 --> 00:08:15.634 because I'm not oppressed as a queer being here. 00:08:15.634 --> 00:08:16.624 [LAUGHS] 00:08:18.804 --> 00:08:21.784 So I oppress myself now. [LAUGHS] 00:08:24.444 --> 00:08:26.944 Because I can't go back if I fail.