MAM Collection 010: Fake News?

Participating Artists

Aida Makoto, Yuan Goang-Ming, Zhou Tiehai

“Fake news” is a stock phrase of current US President Donald Trump, and indeed, one undeniable truth is that starting with the false rumors that fly about the internet, it is becoming increasingly hard to tell fact from fiction. MAM Collection 010 will ponder the essence of how information is produced in the mass media, through works by three artists.

In his “Fake Cover” series (1995-1997), Zhou Tiehai turns his attention to the power of the media to create celebrities, transposing his own face and works on the covers of globally influential magazines such as Newsweek. In Aida Makoto’s The video of a man calling himself Japan’s Prime Minister making a speech at an international assembly (2014), disguising himself as Japanese prime minister, the artist gives a speech in heavily-accented English espousing an unconventional approach to foreign relations; one that includes the importance of sakoku isolation. The speech is obviously fake, yet simultaneously satirizes the globalized nature of the modern world. Yuan Goang-Ming’s The 561st Hour of Occupation (2014), documents a scene from the Sunflower Movement of students and civic groups that occupied the Taiwanese Assembly in 2014. As well as serving as a valuable record, Yuan’s film seduces us with the power of its camerawork, showing a way to make filmic image as spectacle.

Works