Recap: Amy Suo Wu’s “Thunderclap”

This was the Australian iteration of a work conceived and first exhibited with similar dynamics at I: Project Space in Beijing, and brought to Sydney by Feminist South, a curatorial project by Sydney-based Kelly Doley, and Beijing-based Antonie Angerer and Anna Eschbach (of I: Project Space). Wu’s practice revives the use of steganography, a traditionally analogue activity encompassing media such as invisible ink, in order to provide an encoded visibility to ideas that have been censored, bypassing 21st-century surveillance. In this case, Wu sheds light on the work of Zhen, co-editor of anarchist journal Tianyi Bao (Natural Justice) whose writings, considered too radical, have gradually been erased from China’s historical records and were only translated into English in 2013.

Wu is a zine-maker who views steganography as an alternative channel for publishing rather than communication. By extension, fashion in her hands is “embodied publishing”—a way to publicly redistribute erased ideas. To do this, in “Thunderclap,” Wu drew from the phenomenon in which nonsensical English is used decoratively on Chinese clothing, and shanzhai (counterfeit) culture, where luxury brand logos and names are co-opted without authorization or are bastardized. In Wu’s project, fragments of text acted as a decorative foil for Zhen’s political messages, which are accessed via QR codes included alongside the words. When scanned, these codes take readers to Zhen’s Chinese-language text. In Australia, however, where the use of QR codes is far less common than in China, the effect of the work was reversed—viewers immediately understand the words, which are less of a target for censorship, and the QR codes take on an almost decorative role (most Australians are unable to read the Chinese text that they link to).

A printed zine was also displayed. Called The Choice of a Translator (2017), it contains transcripts of Wu’s artist talk at the exhibition’s initial iteration in Beijing. Infiltration of the audience by a suspected government spy caused Wu and her Mandarin translator, Zhuxin Wang, to decide to “modify, simplify and omit” some of Wu’s English content in the Mandarin translation,  somewhat neutralizing the content for the ears of this (presumed to be only Mandarin-speaking) spy whilst maintaining meaning for the rest of the Mandarin-speaking audience. The resulting text contains a line-by-line comparison of Wu’s original English, and an English translation of Wang’s Mandarin version. The Choice of a Translator was a fascinating record of a live enactment of steganography in a talk about steganographic practice—an impressive meta-performance.