--- title: Notes towards a Study of Remilia's Art slug: notes-towards-a-study-of-remilia-s-art channel: thought publishedAt: 2022-04-20 excerpt: Remilia's art carries its own vision w/in it, roughly summarized: neo-orientalism, hypercitationalism, jovial irreverence. Neo-orientalism: we're very inspired by east asia's art scene & pop culture, specifically the subcultural niches developed in their own reverse orientialist western fetishism. author: Charlotte Fang tags: - Essay - Culture - Remilia canonical: https://remilia.org/blog/thought/notes-towards-a-study-of-remilia-s-art --- Remilia's art carries its own vision w/in it, roughly summarized: neo-orientalism, hypercitationalism, jovial irreverence. **Neo-orientalism:** we're very inspired by east asia's art scene & pop culture, specifically the subcultural niches developed in their own reverse orientialist western fetishism. Turning that lens back on their own weirded versions of occidentalism is an extremely fruitful dialogue eg, its far more interesting to receive Chinese art & internet culture in mysterious obfuscated glimpses peeping past the great firewall than any "authentic" "postcolonial" survey; and to extend from it from that point of shameless naivety. Same with Japan's post-anime aesthetics **Hypercitationalism**: producing work informed by extensive historical knowledge of art & culture, w a feeling that embedded citation & consequent detournement bolsters its affect, especially when disparately sourced, going beyond mere communication w precedent & never relying on it Perhaps comes out of an anxiety from cultural unmooring, grounding actions & activity into a history that's rapidly being lost in an artistic act of archival. it's also useful in producing more elaborate work, borrowing fleshed out works for a foundations⁠—taking what's worked **Jovial irreverence**: approaching all mediums with a total disregard for appropriate boundaries or precedence, as well as freely engaging between mediums outside one's expertise with naive confidence; all done in childlike fun, cause we love life and love making art. whee!!!! An irreverence towards precedence might sound like a contradiction with the canonical self-awareness inherent to hypercitationalism, but consistently successful irreverence is only possible when well informed; need to know the rules to break them etc. To know and not care. There are probably some other aspects I'm missing I might add here, this is just me musing up a retrospective critical analysis of our own work and artistic process, since there aren't any real art critics anymore to do it for us eg you can see these all embodied in a recent post: edit of Wender's doc on Yohji, audio replaced w an unrelated interview in mandarin, subtitles of a text post edited over that itself detournement of a quote from yohji, talking abt our post-anime project: ](https://twitter.com/Milady_Sonoro) [Sprite Bonkler 💫](https://twitter.com/Milady_Sonoro) [@Milady\_Sonoro](https://twitter.com/Milady_Sonoro) ](https://twitter.com/Milady_Sonoro/status/1509664092566736897) "I wanted to protect the avatars themselves from personas, and at the same time protect the user's identity from something – maybe from the Other's gaze or memetic infohazards... I requested the designs to have a very strong, emphathetic effect." ![Illustration for Notes towards a Study of Remilia's Art](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/8x9419lh/production/5c8397d83f872a5ffe4d103e6b491b154fb76172-1200x699.jpg?auto=format) 91](https://twitter.com/Milady_Sonoro/status/1509664092566736897)\[ 5:49 PM • Mar 31, 2022 ](https://twitter.com/Milady_Sonoro/status/1509664092566736897) behind the scenes, this was produced in casual dialogue between myself & sonora, him sharing the original yohji quote & describing it in relation to milady, me detourning it to expand on that, then making the video & giving it to him to post as his own. easy its like breathing