Preview:
OPEN CLASS VIDEO FILE
Performance in digital video
29 :00
In the summer of 2018, Zhang visited a county primary school in Hunan Province, China. There she conducted an open language class with fourth-graders. In this class, Zhang told these children to be confident to learn language, and directed the students to express an important sentence, “I am great”, in different languages. The whole process was recorded in the form of an open class video file.
In this project, Zhang discusses how people behave when they are set to perform a specific identity through a social mechanism such as pedagogy or indoctrination. These mechanisms not only guide the way people behave, but also reflect the political and cultural features of the entire social region. People usually behave under the discipline of their identity, just as student usually obeys the teacher’s instruction.
These social dynamics function unawares to most and builds social phenomenon. In Zhang’s class, it seems she inspires the students to feel confident, yet she also bring attention to the social ill of repeating what we are told and even repeating “everything is great” when indeed it is not.