| dcterms.abstract | Acknowledged by many as one of the most promising artists of her generation, Cao Fei (b. 1978) made her name, in the early 2000s, for employing staged performances to occupy a space of reality that is one degree removed from the rhythm and habits of the everyday. This thesis takes as its central object of study this multi-media project of RMB City (2007–2010), a work that the Chinese artist is by now best known for. First, I will examine how Cao transforms Chinese urban spaces of the post-reform era by converting and transporting the implications of socio-political authorities, global impacts, and plebeian everyday life into the virtual, online game platform of Second Life, within which RMB City was housed for two years in 2009–2010. Secondly, I will situate Cao’s exploration of the Chinese social reality not as one that reproduces an external position of a dissented individual, which Chinese artists are often considered by non-Chinese art critics to embody. Cao appears to provide a new paradigm of a socially conscious artist, and such a position that she occupies sheds a new light on the existing art historical literatures on post-89 generation artists. Thirdly, I will show how RMB City is an effective example of what Michel Foucault theorizes as the “heterotopia,” a real space that is distinctive from any other normative sites in reality but that maintains a connection with reality. If Cao’s initial set up of RMB City explores the dynamic nodal points of connection between different spaces—personal and productive, individual and artistic, real and virtual, and normative and alternative—the content generating mechanism of Second Life invites multiple, willing participants to RMB City to multiply those points even further, thus making RMB City what I call a “garden of heterotopias” beyond the spectacle of political dichotomy. | |
