Embodied experience Sharing a common interest in dance, Yiwei and I are collaborating on a new dance video project titled Questioning the Heavens. This work is inspired by the contemporary representation of the FEITIAN image（The representation of the Feitian draws upon the mural imagery from the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, depicting celestial maidens and divine musicians (apsaras) in Buddhist art.）. We draw on the body language of the FEITIAN to question the heavens, inquiring into the situation that divine figures and relics are gradually stripped of their original historical context in contemporary times. We focus on how cultural heritage is simplified into mere visual stimuli in contemporary times, losing their original complexity and depth. In this process, the broken remnants of divine figures are presented in an aestheticized, romanticized, and spectacularized manner, almost akin to a form of Ruin Porn. People develop a fetishistic attachment to these relics based on what Benjamin calls the Aura*, yet in this act of fetishism, they deconstruct their Aura in turn. Ruin Porn is the aestheticized glorification of decayed sites. The ruin fetish is problematic as it overlooks the (social, political, economic, etc.) forces b -ehind ruination, focusing only on the ruin’s imposing appearance.
Embodied experience Sharing a common interest in dance, Yiwei and I are collaborating on a new dance video project titled Questioning the Heavens. This work is inspired by the contemporary representation of the FEITIAN image（The representation of the Feitian draws upon the mural imagery from the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, depicting celestial maidens and divine musicians (apsaras) in Buddhist art.）. We draw on the body language of the FEITIAN to question the heavens, inquiring into the situation that divine figures and relics are gradually stripped of their original historical context in contemporary times. We focus on how cultural heritage is simplified into mere visual stimuli in contemporary times, losing their original complexity and depth. In this process, the broken remnants of divine figures are presented in an aestheticized, romanticized, and spectacularized manner, almost akin to a form of Ruin Porn. People develop a fetishistic attachment to these relics based on what Benjamin calls the Aura*, yet in this act of fetishism, they deconstruct their Aura in turn. Ruin Porn is the aestheticized glorification of decayed sites. The ruin fetish is problematic as it overlooks the (social, political, economic, etc.) forces b -ehind ruination, focusing only on the ruin’s imposing appearance.