《Human Brain Project(HBP)》 YANG Mu

《Human Brain Project(HBP)》 YANG Mu

STATEMENT

The world of “victims of brainwave control” looks like science-fiction; it is full of technology, miracles, machines, and cyborgs. However, unlike cultural movement promoters such as Italian Futurists or Afrofuturists, these “victims” meet with “Futurism” in a different way. For them, those supernatural phenomena are not conceptions, but the reality. Do sciences progress or regress? Are we pursuing virtual or materialistic gains? Do we live in the world of conspiracy theories or in the Garden of Eden? Human Brain Project documents the questioners, a marginalized group of people who claim to have been remotely controlled by satellites via interference with their brainwaves. So far, their behavior has been recognized worldwide as a type of mental disorder. And they work really hard to prove that they are victims of some experiment, not of mental illness.

Photographs here record the bizarre moments of their daily living. Due to the intangible nature of the photographic subjects - activities claimed to have taken plac e in their minds - prolonged exposure and torchlight are used to mimic the alien world from their perspectives and to approach their mental states. When you walk on the street and see an ordinary building, or hear the screech of a motor vehicle’s brakes, you may suddenly sense an indescribable oddness in the air. And this odd atmosphere happens to be how they feel about the world - building may be surrounded by electromagnetic radiations and spies may hide in the crowd. Human Brain Project expresses no intention to prove or disprove the validity of brainwave control. Rather, I shot in a way similar to documenting certain religious rites and I hope the project paints a heterotopia for the “victims” where we can learn the construction of their ideologies and relevant vocabularies, as well as contemplate on the concept of alienation from a wider angle.