Zìyóu (自由)
Performance
2019
Footsteps, GPS tracking system, undercover policemen.
"While working on the project 2091 : The Ministry of Privacy, I’ve experienced heavy monitoring and harassment from local police and the Chinese government.It started with some quiet monitoring and then moved in the following days, to straightforward intimidation. The one to five policemen who were usually following me day and night came much closer, slept in a room opposite mine in the hotel, and woke me up in the night to interrogate me. The last day, before being ejected from the area, policemen where following me very closely and stopped me as soon as I started to photograph. I was literally prevented from working.
How to document this heavy repression without using any photographic tool ?
I had the idea to use the path I was taking in the streets of Kachgar, so as to draw the world « Freedom » in Chinese : 自由.
I also downloaded an app recording my gps move through my cellphone and started to « write » the world with my path, making sure the policemen where still following me, and thus, writing the world themselves too.
The performance ended abruptly with my seventh arrest almost at the end of the drawing. The government had decided to eject me from the area. I learned later that the inhabitants of the zone where I was drawing the world "自由" had all been recently sent to re-education camps."
