Carnival 2020
2018
Color digital video with sound
4 min., 53 sec.
 

The Chinese government is building a social credit system to rate the trustworthiness of 1.4 billion people. If you do something ‘good’, like volunteer at a charity and donate blood, your score goes up. If you do something ‘bad’, like jaywalk, cancel a reservation, or if you are friends with someone with a low rating, your score drops. The absurd world in the television series Black Mirror is becoming a reality in China.
 
Carnival 2020 invites participants to simulate the reality of “future credit society”. They will be asked to complete a series of carnivalesque missions to raise their credit scores, and use the earned credit scores to redeem ‘rewards’ and ‘punishments’. This project is intended to let the audience experience the credit system through highly immersive experiences. The participants will experience how the system eliminates the humanism and shamelessly reconstructs our lives.