Mu Yang

Human Brain Project

[ FUJIFILM/YOUNG TALENT AWARD 2015 RUNNER UP ]

The world of ‘victims of brainwave control’ looks like science-fiction; it is full of technology, miracles, machines, and cyborgs. However, unlike cultural movement promoters such as Italian Futurists or Afrofuturists, these ‘victims’ meet with ‘Futurism’ in a different way. For them, those supernatural phenomena are not conceptions, but the reality. Do sciences progress or regress? Are we pursuing virtual or materialistic gains? Do we live in the world of conspiracy theories or in the Garden of Eden? Human Brain Project documents the questioners, a marginalized group of people who claim to have been remotely controlled by satellites via interference with their brainwaves. So far, their behavior has been recognized worldwide as a type of mental disorder. And they work really hard to prove that they are victims of some experiment, not of mental illness.

 

Photographs here record the bizarre moments of their daily living. Due to the intangible nature of the photographic subjects – activities claimed to have taken place in their minds – prolonged exposure and torchlight are used to mimic the alien world from their perspectives and to approach their mental states. When you walk on the street and see an ordinary building, or hear the screech of a motor vehicle?s brakes, you may suddenly sense an indescribable oddness in the air. And this odd atmosphere happens to be how they feel about the world – building may be surrounded by electromagnetic radiations and spies may hide in the crowd. Human Brain Project expresses no intention to prove or disprove the validity of brainwave control. Rather, I shot in a way similar to documenting certain religious rites and I hope the project paints a heterotopia for the ‘victims’ where we can learn the construction of their ideologies and relevant vocabularies, as well as contemplate on the concept of alienation from a wider angle.

 

 

 

Bio

Mu Yang, born in Sichuan China, started photography in her college. In the past few years, Mu recorded various marginalized groups of people, who were constantly seeking their sense of belonging yet unable to blend in. Compared to exploring their physical conditions, her artworks put more emphasis on their psychological conundrum in this ever-evolving modern society. Mu?s documentaries are imaginative, most of which are ambiguous images steering between reality and fiction.

Mu Yang

 

 

FujiFilm/EPF Young Talent Award is an additional grant for photographers under 25. Using David Alan Harvey’s words “A heart felt thank you also to FujiFilm for making it possible for the EPF to keep focus on the future generations, the young ones, the ones with a vision already making a mark now… and just might make another jump soon…”