Ally Yanxiu Luo: Shower Thoughts: On Water, Intimacy, and Digitality

Year: 2024

Published by:  ©Sequence

Pages: 106

Binding: Softcover

ISBN: 979-889692120-2

Edited by: Vince Warne


Design by: Rui Liao 

Description

What is a shower? And how does one begin to untangle the paradoxes and dynamism of showers from their sleek facades? "Shower Thoughts" is an artist book combining social experiments, digital theories, and artwork documentations to explore showers’ potential as embodied network in the post-digital age.

The book examines the eco- and techno-political dimensions of showers as both personal experiences and networked systems, aiming to reveal how showers create the illusion of individual sterility while uncovering the infrastructure of that illusion. By drawing on post-digital aesthetics and science and technology studies, the book reframes our commonsense beliefs about autonomy, illustrating how repetitive bodily actions network isolated “users” into larger systems, much like digital networks, forming an unconscious community. Ultimately, the book explores the blurred boundaries between private and public, wet and dry, and individual and collective.

About the Author

Yanxiu Luo (b. 1998, Hangzhou) is an interdisciplinary artist and writer based in NY. Her work explores the intersection of conceptual systems, anecdotal narratives, and documentary cinema. Luo holds a Bachelor of Arts in East Asian Studies and Film Studies from Wesleyan University and an MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons School of Design. Her work has been showcased in Museum of Chinese in America, theBlanc Gallery, and the Digerati Emergent Media Festival.