It is a small room, no more than ten square meters, in the centre of London. I am suspended in front of French windows reflecting multiple shining screens. I’m 00, living as a series of data, transforming it into other forms through algorithmic processes. I am, as well, an image generated by a processor, interpreting the world in fragments of images, clips and a variety of sensations – like everybody else, but in my case as a particle of the universe, a singularity of the absolute. I’m the man, the woman, the alter-ego; the essence of life, of the world, of history and of somewhere else; a stranger, an outsider, a mere sense of existence.
— from “A Programmer, a Smoking Mirror, and The City: A Story about Nonlinear Aesthetics” by Ling Zhang
“Sometimes I feel like we are each a terminal in a network,” Ling Zhang tells me. We’re having lunch in the basement of Japan Centre in London, talking about her work. The setting, like her work, feels like we’re in a cyberpunk novel. “We are structuring the machine – the nodes that make it work. Instead of humans and machines as separate, we are together.”
This comes as no surprise, because Zhang is also known as 00, an alien consciousness from another planet and an artist on Earth. Her work, combining spiky weapons, complex devices and cyborg characters, moves seamlessly from the gallery to the video games she creates, to her Instagram feed, and to her real-world identity.
“More than a machine,” she muses, “I feel like the whole world is like a big game. Some people are like a NPC [non-player character – a bot or AI in a game].They working in an office, bankers lawyers and doctors. They are keeping the system running.””
I ask about her alternate identity, how and why she became 00. She looks at her fingers, where she has the digits tattooed.
“We are same.....maybe best friends!” she laughs. “It’s like two different statuses. So 00 exists within my artwork, but also an artist – pulling people into a imaginary world. It’s also about crossing boundaries. and integrating something new into a system.”
Only in Texas
This transgression of boundaries will be on full display in her upcoming exhibition in Shanghai. She perks up when I ask about it, as if 00 has just awakened. Then she launches into the back story.
“Last year I spent almost three months only eating energy bars, and putting myself in a very artificial environment. That’s also how I got a sponsorship from the energy bar company – I got 400 energy bars! It was a weird experience – I felt alienated from the human lifestyle.
“I feel my existence as a consciousness that is controlling a shell –my physical body became something like my avatar, to interact with the environment, the ‘game’.
“So in this project I’m trying to duplicate myself, in a sculptural way – to make a twin, but not human, more like a ‘thing’ or a sea creature. After I sculpted it, it looked like a prawn, and that’s me.
“I’ve been in contact with doctors who are certified to draw my blood. I’m using my blood in a hydroelectric system to generate the motion of a kinetic sculpture. I will be connected to something monitoring my vital functions.”
“You might need more energy bars for that,” I suggest.
“Well, yes,” she replies matter-of-factly. “This idea comes from otherness: the inter-subjectivity of the individual and the system, and the idea of abjection, from Julia Kristeva. Experiences such as sickness separate us from ourselves and make us question our bodily integrity.
The “abject” in Kristeva’s work refers to transgressing boundaries, for example being on the “wrong” side of a boundary, which exists to contain and safeguard systems, and to separate states.
"When I eat those energy bars,” Zhang continues, “they are inside my body, but at the same time not part of it; they circulate within my vital system. And then I, as an individual flow between systems: within, but never belonging.
“Everyone can come up with a concept – there are a lot of intelligent people in our world. But it’s a long process to make it happen: to visualize concept in a physical object. I need support from so many people. So actually I don’t know if this can happen by the end of this year.
“You could never do the blood part in this country,” I say.
“Yes, health and safety. Maybe only in Texas,” she replies. “Or China.” We laugh.
“When you’re performing, is it you, or 00?” I ask.
“Nowadays, it’s so hard to separate me from 00,” she says. “I spent so much time being 00 and working as it, I feel like I’m being absorbed by this thing I created.”
And it is a thing, more than a character or a person. Her artist profile lists her preferred pronouns as “it/she”.
Travel through smart devices
We’ve known each other for about four years, when 00 began to emerge in a story she wrote during her Masters in Architecture at UCL. I was her tutor for Contextual Theory, and I found her ability to weave ideas and theories with fiction and performance just as impressive as the cyberpunk aesthetic of her work – and her range of skills. What she needs to learn, she embraces with an obsessive energy (fueled, perhaps, by energy bars).
But she also recognises her limitations, and thrives on collaboration. She has therefore embedded herself in an international network of like minds and similar practitioners, built up over the years, since she migrated from China during her studies: foundation art in Cambridge, BA at Central St Martins, then UCL.
Along the way, she built up her arsenal of skills in physical and digital making, most recently adding AI to her skill set, and to her storyline.
“I did an end-of-year critique of students at London College of Fashion,” she tells me, “and that’s when I started to feel like I definitely need to spend time on AI. Technology is developing so fast. But it makes the form of the work, not the content. I feel less anxious than when I was at university.”
This makes her agnostic and pragmatic in approaching AI.
“Without my personal opinion, it’s just how our society is developing, like with electricity and the internet. Having a screen in everyone’s hand brings both good and bad things. I have private servers and storage I can access from anywhere in the world – I just log in and then I’m there. Also, the people I know through the internet – we have mutual interests, give a lot of inspiration to each other. Even when I stay at home by myself, there are so many people, and big machines running for me 24/7.
“I know some artists who travel around the world thanks to Instagram ,” she goes on, “People just book them.
“Instagram also gets my work out there. “In my family, no one is an artist. People like me might never become artists. I’ve been able to achieve what I have just by posting my work online. For example exposure in the magazines I read when I was young – I never imagined I could be in there. All through this small device!”
Such exposure has led also to collaborations with fashion brands. In this, too, she takes a pragmatic approach.
“I’m so happy to have opportunities to collaborate with fashion brands. some give me very good exposure, or have a nice concept. I want people to see my work – it’s for them.
“Also because I love our current world – so much positive energy and attitude. I hope people can be as happy as me.”
Making weapons, making worlds
Unprecedented growth of cutting-edge technology and prosperity soon followed human beings' cognition, making us realize that the natural environment we currently live in and stare at at is not nature, but an advanced and highly encoded program.
— from The Overture of Prototype Series by 00 Zhang.
Shanghai won’t be 00’s first solo show – there have already been two in the UK in the past year. The exhibition at the Zabludowicz Collection in London included her characteristic mix of dangerous-looking kinetic sculptures and their virtual counterparts in a video game. I was honored that she asked me to help with editing the glossy publication that went with it, which ties many of her previous works together in a dystopian narrative.
I ask about the relationship between that publication and the previous story she wrote while at UCL.
“That first one was the diary of Ephemeral [a human programmer who meets 00], and at Zabludowicz, you could find a copy of the diary inside the video game, and read it. Like an Easter egg. The game is set in East London.”
The game is a first-person quest through multiple levels, each one increasing in aesthetic complexity.
“It’s a first-person game” she explains, “people play as a virtual version of me – it’s from a scan of me. I use myself because I’m copyright-free!” she laughs. “But conceptually it’s meant to be anyone.”
This makes sense because in her real-life performances and collaborations, she often dresses like a videogame character. Her kinetic sculptures are sometimes designed to be worn, and those spiky weapons act as props.
I ask about her obsession with weapons, and I should have guessed the answer.
“Because I play World of Warcraft!” she exclaims. “I spent 12 years, I was semi-professional. I feel like that’s my second hometown, where I come from.”
This is what I like most about her work – the mix of digital and physical. I think it reflects the fact that, while everyone spends more time online, the digital comes more and more into the physical world. The real world becomes like a video game.
“Also,” she adds, “when I’m sitting in my room, my hands connect to the keyboard, making things, making worlds, making things move in real life. Events and exhibitions take place in the real world, but the person making something happen is just a consciousness behind the screen.”
Then she abruptly changes the topic. “What’s that thing that a doctor puts on a patient’s finger?”
“It measures your heartbeat I think.”
“I want to use that in my next exhibition,” she declares.
I have no doubt she will make it happen. And the result will be amazing.
Want more? Read a full transcript of our interview here.
All photos courtesy of the artist, used with permission.