Born in China, raised in Australia, and based in the Netherlands, Amy Suo Wu is an artist and designer. Her practice is an exploration into how to (re)activate, amplify, and preserve erased or obscured histories in critical and playful ways. In Rotterdam, she teaches at the Willem de Kooning Academy and Experimental Publishing Masters at The Piet Zwart Institute. She co-organizes Zine Camp, an annual zine-making festival in Rotterdam. Since 2014, she has been immersed in the techniques, aesthetics, histories and politics of steganography—a form of secret writing that disguises secret information within public information. Tactics and Poetics of Invisibilityis the title for this ongoing artistic research project that resuscitates obsolete, low-tech, and analogue steganography. Its aim is to subvert digital surveillance, bypass censorship, and make visible the struggles of minorities and other marginalized cultures. Through workshops, lectures, exhibitions and publications the project also aims to inspire communities to develop their own poetic and playful forms of communication as a way of nurturing social bonds. In 2019, this research will be published under the title A Cookbook of Invisible Writing through Onomatopee.
1.
NONT FOR SALE BY SUDAN ARCHIVES
2018 has been a year of healing, searching, self-care and self-acknowledgement. Released in this year, Nont for Sale reminds that I survived.
2.
SHOPLIFTERS BY HIROKAZU KORE-EDA
Set in Tokyo, Shoplifters is a film about a poor family living on the edge of society that depends on shoplifting to get by. The story takes off when father and son are walking home after stealing from the supermarket and along the way find Juri, a five-year-old girl who is alone and hungry in the cold. They decide to take her home, where we’re introduced to the rest of the family, who eventually adopt her after suspecting that she has been abused by her biological family. As the film slowly unfolds, we learn more about Juri’s new adoptive family, an odd but affectionate bunch. Amongst the many themes explored in this film, the one that touched me the most was the critique of the idea that consanguinity equates to care and protection, and more broadly the dominant heteronormative construction of family in modern capitalist societies. By learning the back stories of each character, we question the conventional idea of home as a safe space and rather see them as cradles of violence. In contrast, although Juri’s adoptive family are petty criminals living in poverty, the love that she receives from them begins to heal her. The film challenges its audience to rethink the definition of parenting beyond blood relations, suggesting that love is not inherent to consanguinity but manifests through devotion and presence. When the law returns Juri back to her biological mother after the police finds out, we are confronted by how society protects, upholds, and prioritizes biological family over chosen family, assuming that biological relations and social class correlate to the ability to care.
3.
SHY RADICALS BY HAMJA AHSAN
The second edition of Shy Radicals was released this year, and I was lucky enough to get a signed copy at Printed Matter’s NY Art Book fair. Upon receiving the pocket-sized book in my hands, I realized the dimensions alluded to Mao’s Little Red Book. As I flipped through its pages, phrases such as “hegemony of the Extrovert World Order,” ” Shy Radicals as the Black Panthers of the Introvert class,” “the Shy People’s Republic of Aspergistan,” and “homeland of oppressed Shy, Introvert and Autistic Spectrum peoples” jumped off the pages and stirred my curiosity. The book is a remapping of identity politics that thinks through the world as dominated by the “Extrovert-Supremacist,” for example comparing terrorism, playground bullies, and Western mainstream popular culture to Extrovert-Supremacy as they all seek attention which is central in “Extrovert ideology.” The author uses fiction to give perspective on the struggles of shy people and their political demands, and asserts the power of quietness as a guerrilla tactic and resistance against Extrovert-Supremacist politics. Although I did question some of the content, in general I found it refreshing because it is a valid plea to stretch our conception of diversities beyond current conversations.
4.
MSHERESIES BY RIETLANDEN WOMEN’S OFFICE
Another treasure found at this years NY Art Book fair. Designed by Johanna Ehde and Elisabeth Rafstedt (Rietlanden Women’s’ Office), MsHeresies was published this June. Printed in two colors, this publication wonderfully stitches together hand-drawn illustrations, ornamental borders, and body text typeset in Mrs Eaves, a font designed by Zuzana Licko. To me the zine-like chaos feels like a deliberate resistance to Modernist design values of order and control. Ehde explains on her website: “The 1977 article Conditions for Work: the Common World of Women by Adrienne Rich is edited, typeset and accompanied by graphic material from various issues of Heresies and Ms. magazine. Heresies has been a common interest and source of inspiration since years back. This project is a graphic friendship/collaboration between the two magazines as well as the two designers. Will be stocked at San Serriffe and De Appel, Amsterdam.”
5.
THE BLACK PETE PROTESTS ON DUTCH SAINT NICHOLAS DAY
In recent years the Dutch holiday Saint Nicholas day (or Sinterklaas) has been becoming increasingly controversial. At the centre of the debate is the character of Black Pete or “Zwarte Piet,” a blackface figure that is clearly a racist relic of Dutch colonialism. On November 17, violence broke out when anti–Zwarte Piet protests occurred across 18 cities in the Netherlands including Eindhoven, Tilburg, Hoorn, and Rotterdam. Many of the anti-Zwarte Piet protesters were met with physical and verbal violence by pro-Zwarte Piet demonstrators. In Eindhoven, pro–Zwarte Piet protesters “stood with Hitler salute in broad daylight.” In Rotterdam anti–Zwarte Piet factions “were physically attacked by right-wing hooligans who jumped out of cars and threw firebombs,” and some of the protesters were “beaten by the police with clubs.” After these protests and watching a documentary on Sylvana Simons, a left-wing, anti–Zwarte Piet politician, I decided to join her political party called BIJ1—a new civil rights party focusing on radical equality and economic justice in the Netherlands.
6.
DEEP LISTENING AND EDUCATION
In September I began my position as the practice teacher within the Cultural Diversity minor at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam. Together with sociologist Teana Boston-Mammah and art historian Jan van Heemst, we question notions of race, gender, sexuality, and “whiteness” and how they intersect, taught through an inclusive pedagogical approach. As the practice teacher, my first task was an attempt to decenter Eurocentric standards and representations. Prior to that I taught in the Graphic Design department and an elective course called Hacking. Needless to say, it was a challenge because Cultural Diversity was completely different in content but also in approach. From a personal perspective it was difficult because it coincided with my own journey in unraveling my identity and past. But more than that it was also incredibly confronting because I realized just how institutionalized I had become, despite identifying otherwise. It has been as much of a process of unlearning calcified institutional modes of thinking as much it has been about learning new ways of reconnecting back to the body. 2018 has also been the year of my conversion to deep listening! For the kickoff of the course we began with practically implementing deep listening exercises lead by Clara Balaguer and saw the beneficial results in how students relate to each other but also in navigating the emotional and intellectual complexities of the subject matters we address. We followed this video of Pauline Oliveros giving a master class on the Taoist face wash. It went so well that we brought deep listening into the Experimental Publishing Masters at Piet Zwart Institute where Clara and I also co-teach.
7.
TEACHING TO TRANSGRESS BY BELL HOOKS
In preparation for the Cultural Diversity course, I started to read the book Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks. As the subtitle suggests, the book departs from the standpoint that education should be emancipatory and not function as yet another oppressive force that teaches obedience to authority. Written in 1994, this book is just as relevant and useful today as it was when it was written. Through her writing I was introduced to the work of critical pedogist Paulo Freire and Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. While I was writing this, I also found the whole series that i’m very much looking forward to reading: Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope and Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom.
8.
HUTONG WHISPERS EXHIBITION
For my solo exhibition this November at Drugo More, I got the chance to present the work that I developed during my Beijing residency at I:projectspace last year. The exhibition Hutong Whispers is a steganographic catalogue of steganographic publishing projects camouflaged as a laundry line. Hutong Whispers co-opts three omnipresent elements in the Chinese urban landscape—bedsheets; Shanzhai fashion, a Chinese phenomenon that features nonsense English; and QR codes—exploring them as covert media to publish sensitive and suppressed knowledge. This installation is designed to be eventually placed back into the traditional residential alleys, or hutongs, of Beijing, so that it may return back to its natural habitat, the context by which it was originally inspired. The show reconfigures my previous work into hidden information. The first piece, Thunderclap (2017), is a steganographic zine that piggybacks on fashion accessories as a publishing surface for the erased writings of Chinese anarcho-feminist He-Yin Zhen (1886–1920). Another work featured is The Choice of a Translator (2018), the transcription of a talk on censorship and steganography given in Beijing wherein a suspected government spy was part of the audience. The transcript reveals how the translator reshapes and depoliticizes the content of the talk, positioning the act of translation as a tool for censorship and steganography. Hutong Whispers also includes its genesis, a selection of tactical and strategic uses of steganography that inspired the exhibition. As a whole, the project functions as a basic technical primer on steganography as a type of secret writing. Last but not least, the show includes related projects and references submitted by Clara Balaguer (Hardworking Goodlooking), Dušan Barok (Monoskop), Kelly Doley, Jessie Yingying Gong, Linda Zeb Hang, Elaine W. Ho, Janez Janša (Aksioma Institute), Woodstone Kugelblitz, Javier Lloret, Silvio Lorusso, Nadine Stjins, and Nathalie Wuerth.
9.
AYA BAMBI
Here’s another “better late than never” discovery. I <3 these kick-ass Asian Fem voguers.
10.
SEMI-AUTONOMOUS ZINE
Asia Art Archive published an interesting article called “The Semi-Autonomous Zine: Charting Margins and Peripheries in Independent Publishing” that focuses on highlighting independent publishing cultures in East and South East Asia. It is written by artist-researcher Elaine W. Ho and writer-researcher Ming Lin of Display Distribute, who have defined their publishing practice as Semi-Autonomous Zine (S.A.Z.).
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ADDENDUM
PEOPLE WHO GRACED MY LIFE IN 2018
Clara Balaguer: Sister, co-conspirator of Gynaehorror film series, and co-book midwife at the Experimental Publishing Masters at PZI. Amongst others, we share a love for sparkly, bombastic and kitschy paraphernalia.
Clementine Edwards: Sometimes she looks like my non-Asian twin. Her intellect, emotional intelligence, delicate and punk sensibility for materiality and humor has helped me thru the darkest of moments.
Darija Medic: For remaining a dear friend despite the kilometers between us.
Elaine W. Ho: Nushu sister and Asian twin, for our continued conversations and commitment to networked friendship and potential collaborations.
Rotterfam + the newest member, Max Procter Sender: For being there thru thick and thin
Teana Boston-Mammah: My inclusive pedagogy mother
Tim Braakman: My unconditional rock
R.I.P Gitta Scheenhouwer (1990–2018)
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