Nowadays, video and mass media is no longer the carrier of mechanical reproduction. They smash the previous physical experience of people, and then revitalise them, to make modern expression of Scientism to be invalid. Meanwhile, contemporary thoughts still pin their hope onto “red” or “blue” modernism, to make a critical judgment about contemporary society.

Before an exhibition in 2014, Shao Yi had a discussion with young scholar Zhang Wei through annotating the excerpts of Benjamin’s writing “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. Then he made silk printing on the mirror glasses and smashes them in the exhibition space. By using the glass as a metaphor, Shao Yi presented the violence in peaceful daily relationships between flesh and object, body and object, so that to compel the original feeling between human and object.

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The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced. Since the historical testimony rests on the substantive duration, the former, too, is jeopardized by reproduction when substantive duration ceases to matter. And what is really jeopardized when the historical testimony is affected is the authority of the object.

Note 可继承: So, contemporary technology inherits everything.
Note 摆脱: It controls the human control forces, like HIV.
Note: The worst performance of Faust in the countryside is better than a movie of Faust in any case --- Folk worship