#SPECCHIO: WELCOME TO AMY’S WORLD | SID & GERI

It is said that finding a wife or husband in China has become a real competition, so much that new schools and courses have sprung up in which they teach men various seduction techniques to get the wife of their dreams. The so-called PUAs (acronym for pick-up artists) are individuals who study and adopt techniques aimed at increasing their chances of success with women but also by using manipulative tactics with the aim of putting their victim in crisis from a psychologist point of view.

For the “training” of suitors, a large business has been activated in China consisting of companies and online platforms. The services are of various kinds, ranging from a simple vademecum to approaches that instead aim to go beyond the limit, often misogynistic, whose purpose is only to get to sexual intercourse.
In this complex socio-cultural context, the Taiwanese art group Sid & Geri tried to analyze the phenomenon from a further point of view, investigating the activities of the alleged Tianwang Wife Training Camp, a school aimed at young Chinese girls to become influencers or pop star trying to achieve a greater success in the sentimental sphere. Amy’s World (2021) is the project in which Sid & Geri investigate Amy, the alleged director of this school, of which, however, there is no certainty or documentation. The installation and web game tries to give life to that hazy world in which young girls can drastically change their appearance in order to achieve those ideals of beauty so pursued by their male counterparts.

Sid & Geri has designed a grotesque experience in which a clumsy, overweight female avatar is placed at the center of a psychedelic world populated by dancing oversized purple babies and creepy, identical cheerleaders cheering on a drastic make-over by chanting slogans. like “Amy will help you get a new face” and “your life would be happier if you married a rich man”, as if they were a mantra to be diligently obeyed. Like the elusive Tianwang Wife Training Camp, Amy’s World promises to make the life of the disciples easier with a rich partner next to them and being able to obtain the fairy tale of “they lived happily ever after“. In exchange, one must only be willing to undergo a drastic aesthetic and behavioral change to respond to precise masculine canons. The interactive third-person experience created by the artists ironically investigates the extremisms of love relationships in a society obsessed with gain, goal and the achievement of perfection in all areas of life. Amy’s World mirrors a social context in which the masking of the self is the goal to be pursued in order to achieve a successful life.

Sid & Geri
Welcome to Amy’s World, 2021
Web Game, video/audio, Dimensions variable, courtesy the artist

12/10/2022