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These photos, either of casual capturing of episodes of quotidian life or of poses, call forth an “unconventional” sense that is different from the everyday life routine—— the profile of the tail of a toy chicken, the bowing girl with stomach leaning against the wall, the girl lipsticking in the bathtub with wide open eyes, the boy in the bathtub with a banana in mouth, and the girl vomiting milk, two hands clothed in sperm. Such sense of the unconventional or even uncanny everyday life is particular to this generation or this group of generation, a kind of sense of imaginary existential beauty. I thus got a word, “party”, “our party”, for the exhibition, but Meng Danfeng, publicist of the exhibition, suggested that I change it into “me party”, saying that in New York Times, “me generation” is used to refer to the generation born after 1980s. To combine “me” with “generation” is a good choice, for it is short and ungrammatical, like web language. Moreover, in their lives there is a certain feeling similar to that one can experience online, a state of “party”, different form everyday life. They play houses in their everyday lives, building on their own a stage-like private secret and virtual vacuum with neither the bond of traditional moral standard and customs, nor high-spirited social atmosphere, in which their love, sex, sorrow and happiness are streaming unrestrained through their self-directed and self-performed play of life for self-entertainment.
“In China’s tradition-laden environment, it may seem as if we of the younger generation already have freedom, but it is freedom that we seek.” – Lin Zhipeng
