Challenging digital and mediatic binarity. Post-cinematographic experience in LuYang’s work

Abstract

Through the corpus of Chinese artist LuYang, this article aims to prove how artistic practices involving transmediatic crossovers affect both the conditions of creation, circulation and reception of a work. Using tools of media archaeology, it compares two of the artist’s recent exhibitions and puts this corpus in perspective with previous historical examples, locating his work in the path of cinema as a “post-cinematographic.” It also examines how Postmodernism is impacting contemporary artistic practices in New Media, in production, content and form, disseminating its terms in both the work and the discourse of artists. Finally, this article also delves deeper into LuYang’s artistic practice and introspection and considers how (binary) digital devices are paradoxically used as media for individuals to express and affirm their sexual or gender identity beyond binary oppositions.

Keywords

• media archaeology transmediality, intermediality, transidentity, gaming