The Game of Being ‘I‘(2025)

Single-channel video documentation of a performance

3'36''

In this work, the traditional game of musical chairs is restructured around a single word: 'Success'. Replacing chairs with a solitary sheet inscribed with 'Success', the piece attempts to depict the struggle of the individual to establish their existence through language within a meritocratic society. Language, once a tool for personal expression and worldmaking, has been standardised, regulated, and stripped of individual agency under the metrics of value imposed by a performance-driven culture. The ideology of 'hard work leads to reward, disguises the exclusivity and inaccessibility of language controlled by the structures of power. The continuous progression and elimination within the game replicate the deception embedded in meritocratic myths. Society rationalises the exclusionary nature of language through the logic of achievement, leading individuals to ceaselessly strive to claim fixed terms as a way to affirm their own existence. Yet in the end, unlike the traditional game, there is no winner. Even when we exhaust ourselves, on the path where depersonalized words are used to define and validate ourselves, we can never truly become 'I'.

Previous
Previous

Beneath 'I'(2025)