Primary Work
The Blue Screen of Death
The Blue Screen of Death is an ongoing durational digital performance that records the invisible labour of being a self-represented artist while excluding the artwork itself from the log. In dialogue with Tehching Hsieh's Time Clock Piece 1980-1981 and its relation to immigration pressure, BSoD translates the time clock into the AI era: from mechanical clock to mobile GPT check-in, from physical room to online platform, from photographic proof to timestamp and screen snapshot.
What remains is a crash of the system: a blue screen containing class and cultural barriers, immigration violence, and the polarisation between art and technology. Governed by the artist's self-disciplinary rules, the evolving work records AI-assisted administration as a working diary and asks where surveillance, privacy and public accountability meet, and whether AI can be used as a tool for access rather than replacement.
01
overview
Not everything undocumented is insignificant.
Project summary
[YEAR ]
2020
[FORM ]
Durational digital performance, On-going
[PLACE]
The Blue Screen of Death is a live, AI-assisted time-clock performance that records the invisible labour of being a self-represented artist without logging the artwork itself.
Through social media, mobile GPT check-ins, Wix/Velo records and public-facing metadata, the project asks how early-career artists can reduce the hidden burden of visibility, applications and documentation without surrendering privacy, voice or meaning authority.
02
development
key time and events
2020 Interval, the origin point — a single-channel video and performance for camera on the Sussex Coast, refusing full record.
2023-ongoing The Blue Screen of Death established as Collection Blue's digital / archive branch.
2025-ongoing Shitalk, the social-media practice branch.
Project development
The Blue Screen of Death
What it is
The Blue Screen of Death is a durational digital performance by Mingxiang Wang. It is a public,
rule-bound record of artist invisible labour — archiving, writing, applications,
correspondence, accounting for time, that is not the artwork itself.
It follows Interval (2020), in which the body crossed in and out of the camera's frame, withholding
itself from full record. Where Interval refused to record, this work records — under rules. It stands in
the lineage of Tehching Hsieh's durational time-clock performance.
The five rules
1. Do not log the artwork itself.
2. Do not add, edit, delete, or backfill the history.
3. Do not use more than three words per day to express personal feelings.
4. Do not erase other labour, including AI.
5. Do not go against the words written at the start.
The words written at the start
Not everything undocumented is insignificant. Not everything recorded can be art. Remember why you
started and who you are. It is okay to adapt, rest, fail, detach, or restart. Make art.
Be honest, but do not expose privacy.
How to read the log
The public page is a read-only projection. Each entry is a dated record of a session of labour around
the work — never the work itself. The log only grows; it is never rewritten. The austerity is the point:
the page shows the cost of the practice, not its content.
