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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Mechanical reproduction of a work of art, however, represents something new. Historically, it advanced intermittently and in leaps at long intervals, but with accelerated intensity. The Greeks knew only two procedures of technically reproducing works of art: founding and stamping. Bronzes, terra cottas, and coins were the only art works which they could produce in quantity. All others were unique and could not be mechanically reproduced.

Note: Innovation=Art?
Note 创新: Innovation is ultimately identified as art.
Note 强烈: Fragments after the intense
Note 不可进行复制的: Theatre, body
The unique performance becomes the battlefield for capital to chase after the profit.
The contemporary era