WICAA | GaoyuanChen

Water Race Cup International Contemporary Art Award（WICAA）

WICAA is an annual spoof art competition that I plan to run from 2023 onwards, with a call for artworks from all over the world.

In Chinese, "water" also means poor quality. I parody the art competitions in the Chinese art world that aim at power and money transactions, and package WICAA in a seemingly professional, international, and large-scale style, intervening and deliberating on issues such as university performance appraisal models, art world evaluation standards, and identity anxiety with a kind of anti-artistic black humour, and dissolving its authority in the midst of absurdity and revelry.

promotional map

Poster for the Call for Entries

Project Origins
Outsiders Leading Insiders, Performance Society and Identity Anxiety

In Chinese art colleges, if you want to graduate, you have to complete a series of extracurricular tasks for points in addition to your courses. The composition of points for extracurricular activities is broadly categorised into competitions, entrepreneurship, campus activities, and work placements, and students must complete a certain number and type of credits before their senior year or they will not receive a diploma.

In order to meet the points requirement, students had to go to a large number of art competitions (+2 points for signing up). The number of credit hours was scored according to the size of the administrative scale of the organisers, ranked from highest to lowest and precisely quantified by national, provincial, municipal and district industry levels.

However, art is inherently pluralistic and decentred, so it is difficult to distinguish between high and low, and it is unlikely that there is a single artistic "authority" that can endorse the quality of the work .

If the scoring were strictly based on this criterion, the Oscars would even score less than some low-quality competitions recognised by the Chinese Ministry of Education, as the former are industry-level and the latter are national.

School credit system page, a friend actually added 4 points with WICAA

When art colleges and universities, directly link grades to the quality of creative work, this in itself is a dangerous thing. However, it is not difficult to understand that the whole art system and even the wider scope is similar.

Graduation schools, exhibition experience, and activity experience as symbolic labels have become authoritative endorsement tools for individual standards, but is there really a single authoritative standard just within art? However, many people seem to think that there is, and there are quite a few college students who really believe that the “water” competitions they participate in can be equated with their professional level, peacocking and showing off. There are also a number of seemingly professional artists who will hang the title of XX Association and the experience of self-improvement activities in the circle on their profiles.

Art is difficult to judge, and because it is difficult to judge, so anyone can judge. So I had the idea of planning an art competition, after all, who can say that the competition I plan and other organisations plan who must be more authoritative?

Competition Production and Operation

I plan to package and market my competition as a large-scale, professional-looking, international competition and put out a call for entries on the Chinese Internet. To do this, I've researched a variety of "recognised" competitions, large and small.

By way of summary, if I want to achieve a similar sense of "atmosphere", my call for entries needs to fulfil at least the following points.

1. The writing is official and serious, with clear sections. The basic introduction of the competition at the beginning should be shortened, avoiding overly literary descriptions. 2.

2. the section "Organisation" should appear in the first half of the article to emphasise the importance of the organisation.

3. emphasise the international nature of the judging team, with European and American faces, and preferably with a group photo of the judging team.

4. the work requirements column should be as broad as possible, but should itemise all media forms imaginable to appear to be soliciting a wide range of work.

5. the aesthetics of the article should be simple, with colourful effects added to the title only, but with lots of words.

6. the naming of the awards should not be too artistic, the names should contain elements with clear hierarchical colours like gold, silver, bronze or one, two, three.

7. Detailed information about the awards (quotas, prizes, etc.) should be given in a regular text format.

8. the entry notice section should be written in multiple articles, which makes it look as complicated as the disclaimer of the software.

9. the poster should not be too trendy, and there should be more words (put the whole content of the call for papers on the poster).

Following the basic criteria above, I compiled a call for entries for a full media placement.

Click on the image to view the original contest call

I have set up WeChat Official Accounts (The best platform for long articles in China) for this competition, which will serve as the main official publicity platform for the event, just like other races.

Accounts specialising in art competition promotion on the popular Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu spontaneously reposted my competition.

Member of the jury

At the same time, I've also placed some elements that clash with the atmosphere of a large-scale production, either explicitly or implicitly, in the body of the text. For example, I put the words "Water Race" in the name as a disclaimer about the nature of the competition. I have also included a sarcastic reference to the judging criteria and the introduction of the judges. Most of the faces in the judges' group photo are AI-generated portraits, and a few are close friends.

Group photo of the jury

For the introductory part of the jury, I asked my friend to provide me with more formal photos, and through image posting as well as copywriting, I made the entire jury team exude an uptempo vibe. In terms of personalities, there were Korean new media gurus, PhDs in philosophy, Japanese designers, top chefs, and ideological and political counsellors (a special profession that exists in Chinese colleges and universities, mainly used to guide students' lives, as well as to maintain ideological control and uphold the rights of school leaders). The predominance of the art industry, supplemented by an elite of laymen, makes for a professional, diverse and sufficiently abstract composition.

translation

Chen Gaoyuan

Internationally renowned contemporary artist, founder of Chen Gaoyuan Ruthless Living Studio, member of the Water Race Cup organising committee, graduated from SSA Contemporary Art Practice in 2010, and is now nomadic in Tokyo, Japan. His creations are based on participatory art, trying to generate more possibilities in the solidified social space through postmodern art interventions. His representative works include "GYAB", "Who's Laughing", and "The Washing Machine of Everything". In 2022, Chen Gaoyuan was awarded the Golden Sun Prize, becoming the first Chinese artist to receive the award.

Tadokoro Sawaryu

Contemporary artist and designer, professor at the Advanced Media Design Division of Musashi Art University in Japan, and visiting professor at Metaverse institute in Shanghai. His works involve interdisciplinary integrated media practices such as video games, interactive installations, experimental video, etc. Starting from the issue of contemporaneity, he focuses on the way of interaction between human beings and the society, exploring the new relationship between human beings and the society and the future development, and gaining insights into the phenomena of the new era and the construction of the social relationship. Li Zelong's works have been exhibited in many places around the world, including Southampton University Blackboard, Tokyo Tokai Museum of Art, etc. His representative works include "A Japenese women living in a mobile phone" series, "山東ボードゲーム", and "ECO system".

Chen Zhiguang

D. in Philosophy from the University of Paris VIII. He is currently an associate professor in the Department of Foreign Philosophy at Shanghai Yuan Ze Cosmos College, and the director of the Institut de la Découverte-Sébergue in France. He is mainly engaged in the research of media theory, abstract culture, history of science and game studies. He is the author of "Wet Media Symbolic Engineering", "The South and Cybernetics", "Clues to the Art of Science and Intelligence", "Doctrine and Convergence: Fields", and "Cybercognition and Posthuman Architectural Ecology".

Yong

Born in Wuhu, Anhui Province in 1991, Yiyang graduated from the New York Institute of Illusionary Art in 2016, majoring in hypermedia art, and now lives in New York, U.S.A. Yiyang is an internationally renowned director and dancer, and the founder of Yiyang Transmedia Laboratory. Yiyang's artistic creation focuses on the poetics of space in contemporary society, often using transmedia live video performances as a carrier, paying attention to the search between self-consciousness and subconsciousness and conducting a series of explorations. He seeks a connection between the self and ego, and the social and human culture, psychology, relationship and context, finding a balance between conflicts, and is known for his parody of experimental and structured cinema. Yiyang was awarded the MORGAN ARTHUR AWARD in 2023 for his pioneering video work 'Satan is laughing', the highest award in the US arts and culture industry.

Murphy Nile

A renowned artist of Korean descent, currently living in London, UK. Murphy is one of the pioneering artists in the world of digital media and abstract art today. His work involves media and methodologies such as digital imaging, electronic media, biomaterials, mechanical engineering, machine learning, and interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary collaborations in response to explorations and contemplations of new oppositions and boundaries between man, machine, and nature as constituted by the technological environment itself. Murphy's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at Charcoal Champ Chinese BBQ and Ocean Supermarket in London. Murphy has been nominated for the Golden Sun Award (2023), an annual prize for electronic interactive art, performance art, abstract culture and experimental music.

Yuheng Zhu

Internationally renowned economist, cultural anthropologist, and art critic, he graduated from the London School of Economics and Political Science and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is currently a visiting scholar at Harvard University. His published works include The Law of Fortress Trading, Davis Double Kill and Value Return, Principles and Assumptions of Action Economics, Beyond Landscape Society, and Walking the Tea Horse Road Fiction Collection.

Cailin Shi

Photographer and musician, born in Beijing in 1984, graduated from the University of the Arts London with a degree in Photography and Video Production. Her work has been hailed as a profound exploration of contemporary social reality, revealing the complexity of human identity and social issues. Her photographs are full of strong aesthetics and narrative strength, and her style is versatile, full of personality and creativity. Her music works combine avant-garde and traditional elements, blending various music genres to create a unique musical experience full of tension and charm. Her work has been widely noticed and recognised both at home and abroad, and she has been hailed as a representative of a new generation with revolutionary thinking and artistic creativity, and one of the leading figures in the fields of photography and music.

Eve Chen

Producer, video artist and writer.Graduated from MLitt Photography and Moving Image at Glasgow School of Art, UK in 2016, she is currently the Director of Academic Affairs at Shanghai Yuan Cosmos Academy. Her work is not limited to a wide range of media and forms, and is mainly based on fictional writing to produce images and theatre experiments, paintings, and installations. Her work is structured around a critique of the nearness of her own life, using interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary collaborations to enter into the fluctuating nature of the post-human world, exploring gender, identity politics, and technological power.

Jiaye Zhou

A renowned dance artist and iconic entertainer, he graduated from Seoul National University in 2019. His practice includes and is not limited to video, installation, and dance, using intuitive and novel image presentations to provoke people to think about how moral edges and desires can coexist in harmony. One of his video works titled "Boundary" won the "Mijo Award" in Korea. Zhou Jiaye is also a member of the South Korean boy band LIVEBOYZ, under JYMIX Entertainment, and made his official debut on 22 December 2018 with his debut single GIVE ME MORE.

Wentao Zheng

China's youngest professional racing driver and a three-star Michelin chef now works for Team TOE. With unrivalled success on the track and in the kitchen, this multi-faceted driver is a true all-rounder in high-intensity racing and the culinary arts. His professional achievements include leading his team to multiple victories in the 24 Hours of Le Mans Rally, the Cheers International Panorama Street Race (FCIPC) and as a guest chef at Goldsmiths, Hotel of London.

Prize

I've included more funny elements in the prize descriptions at the end of the article. For example, the naming of the top prize as the "Best Water Award", the shortlisted prizes as the "Shortlisted Licence Award" (emphasising the fact that you can get a licence just for signing up) as well as the prizes of customised mugs and the OldAss Prize, have all made the competition a bit of a confusing one.

"

Best Water Award (1, top prize of the competition)
Prize: Hardcover physical certificate + gold customised mug + solo exhibition in New York Times Square

Nomination Award(places are based on the number and quality of entries)
Prize: Paperback physical certificate + silver customised water glass

Grand Jury Award (10 winners, jury representatives will each select one of their least favourite works for the Column Sharp Review)
Prize: paperback physical certificate + customised copper-coloured mug

Finalist Certificate Issuance Award (for all successful entries)
Prize: e-certificate + e-clear mug

Most Influential Prize (1 prize, to be awarded to the most topical and influential entry among the finalists)
Prize: e-certificate + 1 time promotion by Xiaohongshu

Vanguard Award (5 winners, to be awarded to the first 5 entries)
Prize: e-certificate

OldAss Award (1 prize, will be awarded to the entrant whose work is the greasiest and the most Older Than Lights)
Prize: e-certificate + 1 piece of executive jacket

Wettest Award (1 winner, to be awarded to the entrant whose work is the trendiest and most commercial)

Prize: e-certificate + 1 pack of desiccant

Submitted works

During the two-month call for entries, the contest gained a certain amount of buzz, but only nearly a hundred people submitted entries, which doesn't seem like a lot statistically, but compared to most of the other art water contests that claimed to have hundreds of participants, the actual number of submissions was basically the same (and again, the numbers I published to the public were several times more than the actual number), and more than enough to hold up the judging of a contest.

Scan the code to enjoy the registration form

The identity composition of the contributors was rather broad, including students of the Academy of Fine Arts, underground artists, international students of ESSO, old lawyers, middle-aged positive artists, gnawing on the old family squatting, men's rights activists, high school students, and professional contemporary artists, and so on. Most of the older contributors did not realise the true nature of the competition, and there were even art school students who seriously participated in this competition.

Once Nearly Drowned in Ink in the Middle of a Composition, Cheng Yiyao, Performance

Spit 100 times , Lee Dong Yang, performance

CV submitted by one of the oldest participants. The content is all about various official government organised conservative competitions, exhibitions

Wasted Water Drops, Zhai Yingqi, poster design

The Chinese words in the picture are: For every drop of water wasted, there is a drop of water wasted

Damp Towel, Liu Zijia, photography

Selection period of works

Selection Criteria

In the actual selection of winning works, I will not follow the selection criteria mentioned in the article. I will focus on selecting some works with low workload and quality, but with recognisability and memorability (75%), a small number of mediocre and uninspiring works similar to graduation works of art majors of comprehensive colleges and universities (15%), and some pioneering and experimental works that are very cleverly titled, but with no watery workload (10%).

Exposure MaintenanceIn
order to stay active during the judging period leading up to the announcement of the winners, I began by posting three Judges' Introduction columns. I refined and expanded the personas of Yong, MurphyNile, and Eve, enriching them with details of their lives while interspersing some personal expressions and metaphors. Yong is portrayed as a small-town-born contemporary transmedia artist who became famous in the U.S. MurphyNile, a Korean-American artist, has added drama to her part by giving some space to describe her parents' love story (a tragic love story between a North Korean agent and a Seoul-based artist), and Eve's part is adapted from my own real-life experience, focusing on satirising the school that I went to, as well as other art colleges' The phenomenon of outsiders instructing insiders and group bullying by the faculty management.

"The way of water, the way of water," says Yiyang

Virtual Body Presence in the Metaverse - Ziyi Chen

The Future is the Past - Murphy Nile

Click on the image to view the original articles

Interesting interlude.

Even during the selection period, a company specialising in the operation and promotion of the event seriously approached me, wanting to give us sponsorship. Several "judges" and I played the organising committee staff to build a group to negotiate with him, he not only introduced us to the company's past project cases, but also promised that we do not need to provide funds, the proceeds of 55 shares. Of course, because the competition is adhering to the non-profit nature, but also to prevent the other party to sue us for suspected fraud, we finally avoided the company's proposal with cold violence (not return messages).

L:Hello

R:Hello, you want to join the group(Participants’ Communication Group)?

L: I saw on the public number that your WICAA is about to start, I am a tournament sponsorship platform, do you have any partners now?

R: No, what is the name of your platform?

L: We are **** (business licence picture). We can show you some cases of our previous tournaments, which are very effective, and you can take a look at them first. I will introduce it to you.

The full version of the chat transcript is on the right, you can right-click to open it for a larger image

Academic Conference Live Streaming

In May 2023, close to the announcement of the winners, I planned another live online academic conference, to which I invited the previously introduced WICAA judges to live-stream critiques of some of the submissions, with high energy throughout. Several of the judges would be styled according to personas and performatively critiqued according to the frames and copy specified within the script, contrasting the seriousness of the atmosphere with the low quality of the work, and then making the conference effect even more hilarious by expertly blowing off steam about the work.

Award Announcement

Based on the previously mentioned criteria, I announced the final winners on 26 June.

Click on the image to view the original article

Of course, the internal appointment of people is also an essential part of the operation. The Chinese artist Wong Wei won the Best Water Award because of the title of his work, the amount of work he did (he wrote a letter asking the organising committee to give him the Wateriest Prize), his personal connections, and his commitment to sponsoring the organising committee's subsequent prizes.

Screenshot of a text work submitted by Wong Wei, which he describes himself as participatory art. The text asks the judges to select him as the winner of the Best Water Award, so that he can provide financial support for the subsequent production of prizes and other costs.

I also kept my promise and organised a so-called New York Times Square solo exhibition for Wong Wei (a 15-second video placement purchased from Taobao for 400 RMB), presented him with a customised mug (some of the older art competitions are particularly fond of giving away customised logo mugs) and a certificate.

Screenshot of live video from New York Times Square

Order Record

Mugs and hardcover certificates

Ending

I gave all the other winners prizes for their respective awards, and all the finalists received electronic copies of their certificates, plus a comprehensive test or CV enrichment. The other "judges" also received souvenirs.

The first edition of WICAA is now completely finished, and many of those who didn't make it to attend are still asking when the second edition will be held. As a participatory art project similar to a social experiment, the Water Race Cup is undoubtedly an extreme group mockery of the traditional concepts and power structures in the art world, and a response to the identity anxiety of contemporary people; a second edition could be organised, but it is not necessary.

Finally I will show some of the winning entries. You can access most of the submissions from this cloud drive：

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zsD1yoMuIaVxXfpuLAZGWK69cJuXt2o0?usp=drive_link