JESS YU
Chicken Republic
When KFC stepped into the Chinese market, its fried chicken became no longer “just”. In 1987, the first KFC in China opened by the Tiananmen Square in Beijing, immediately becoming the most popular spot in the city. Two years later in 1989, the Democratic Movement was incited. Student leaders from all over the country gathered at the Tiananmen KFC for secret organizational meetings. Here, in the double-sided spaces of acculturation and appropriation, KFC and its architecture of POP transforms into a place of refuge.
The KFC both acknowledges difference and is complicit with the clandestine. It accelerates and amplifies cultural change. Extenuated movements, grandeur gestures and exaggerated features become the centerfold for what we should aspire to as progress - only to be reeled in at the discovery of detrimental consequences.
Take the chicken, whose body has become a tortured prison of expanding flesh and bone at a rate guided by decades of selective breeding and the introduction of hormones. The chicken breast is larger per bird, the gut is smaller; this is progress. To compel progress, the project spaces are exaggerated in accordance with their desired purpose - the design follows suit with the desires of the idealized culture of the spaces.
On this site specifically, KFC is dissident, discordant but not in denial of its peripheral cultures. It celebrates the freedom of speech, curates the nature of liberty and acknowledges the persecution of making (a) change.
Four Dissidents
In the precedent studies, a series of drawings were made using a surrealism style; each depicts a story of a dissident.
1. Raoul Wallenberg, was the diplomat of Sweden during the WWII in Budapest. The moment he put his suit on and took the role as a diplomat, he improvised power on himself. Wallenberg handed out hundreds of passports, called ‘Schutz Passes,’ and sheltered many in dozens of protective houses, where he ordered the Swedish flag flown, thus converting them into embassy annexes and shielding the inhabitants from the Nazis.
2. Liu Xiao Bo, has been striving for the democracy rights in China over the past decades, he was formally arrested in 2009 on suspicion of “inciting subversion of state power”. He was the winner of Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. Without being able to show up to the ceremony in person, the committee decided to use an empty chair on the stage to represent his presence.
3. Edward Snowden, left for Hong Kong on May 20, 2013 and hided in a hotel room for over three weeks. During this time, he is deeply worried about being spied on. He lines the door of his hotel room with pillows to prevent eavesdropping. He puts a large red blanket over his head and laptop when entering his passwords to prevent any hidden cameras from detecting them.
4. Muslims from Seven Islamic Countries, were banned from entering US since Jan 31, 2017 due to an order from President Trump. The seven countries includes: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. It also bans all refugees for 120 days, and Syrian refugees indefinitely. More than 100,000 visas for foreigners inside and outside the United States have also been revoked, at least temporarily, a government lawyer said in federal court on Friday.
Two Meetings
