ShanghART Gallery 香格纳画廊
中文

Massage Chairs - Then Edison's Direct Current Was Surrendered to the Alternating Current

This installation consists of six massage chairs whose exteriors are peeled away and soft fillings removed, consequently resembling a row of electric chairs. Once turned on, they begin automatically and respectively to knead and pat, producing a string of rhythmic sounds, powerful and even delightfully energetic. With their skeletal configuration, the general function of the machines, which aims at the relaxation of its users, composes a set of "implicative" contradictions. The title of the work, Then Edison's Direct Current Was Surrendered To the Alternating Current, in fact states how the story of Edison defeating Nikola Tesla ended. The behaviour of the former is simply preposterous yet suggestive of the reality: what is advanced, despite being shrouded once by a vested interest, will embrace a bright future sooner or later.

Note: The history tells that Edison, to defend the direct current that he had promoted enthusiastically, took all sorts of actions to attack alternating current, including circulating the rumour concerning the danger of the latter. In 1890, the American inventor bribed some officials in a prison in New York State for execution of criminals by electricity instead of noose, i.e., the alternating current provided by Nikola Tesla. It was reported at the time that "dying on a chair powered by alternating current is much more horrible than a rope". In spite of such disgraceful conduct that led to people interpreting "alternating current" as synonym of "death" for a short while, its advantages were not consigned into oblivion. Instead, it became widely used in the time of Tesla.

Detail pictures:

Video Clips:

Related Exhibitions:
ShanghART Taopu, ShanghART Taopu, Shanghai 07.01, 2010 -12.31, 2014
Things from the Gallery Warehouse 2, ShanghART H-Space, Shanghai 12.19, 2009 -03.10, 2010
Three Viewpoints to Asian Contemporary Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma/The Finnish National Gallery, Finland 02.17, 2007 -05.27, 2007
Yang Zhenzhong, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, U.K. 09.21, 2006 -10.15, 2006
Second Hand Reality, Today Art Museum, Beijing 2003


Related Texts:
E-Books:
Yang Zhenzhong: "Massage Chairs" and "I Will Die" PDF 2013-08-21


Related Works:
Then, Edison's Direct Current Was Surrendered to the Alternating Current