Luo Ran participates in the group exhibition "What happened after Nora left?" at UNITED ART CENTRE
What happened after Nora left?
Luo Ran
2024.03.02-2024.04.07
UNITED ART CENTRE
“Looking back on the past, Nora grew increasingly indignant and could bear it no longer. At last, she walked out, and the door slammed shut behind her.”
What Happens after Nora Walks Out? (1923) is a critical essay by Lu Xun examining Nora’s predicament within family and social life in Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House. At the beginning of the play, Nora is content, believing she has found her place amid the turbulent currents of society. Through dialogue and soliloquy, she repeatedly immerses herself in and reflects upon her own circumstances, eventually realizing that “she herself is not the only marionette pulled by strings; the dolls her children hold and play with are as well. Extending this logic, she does whatever others direct her to do…” And so she leaves. All that can be heard is the sound of the door closing, followed by the curtain falling…
Today, as historical coordinates shift and individual values evolve, we extend the discussion of Nora’s departure and the assertion of personal agency to consider how contemporary artists are affected by, and adapt to, the broader technological fervor of our time. The complex and ever-changing media forms generated by the surging tide of technological development have blurred the boundaries between media and produced visual characteristics that are increasingly difficult to distinguish. Yet the relationship between humans and their tools is by no means a deterministic binary of “master and slave.” As Nicholas Carr (2015) argues through his concept of the “glass cage,” behind the praise for technological liberation often lies a disregard for human labor. Advanced machines and software, as products of technology, rapidly enter everyday life, yet their widespread adoption can also provoke self-doubt among human creators and workers. “When pilots complain about automation, they are questioning not only the technology itself, but also searching for their own sense of identity.” This leads to a thought-provoking question: Are they masters of the machines, or their servants? Are they performers, or spectators?
Within the relations of production shaped by contemporary society’s productive forces and technological media, Nora’s ongoing struggle to reclaim and strengthen her agency seems to form a parallel across time and space. Nora’s departure brings the play to an abrupt end, but behind the darkness that follows the falling curtain, the tides of historical change and technological progress never cease. The gears of sociocultural production continue to accelerate under the growing dominance of technicism. These changes not only influence and challenge how the value of artists’ labor is assessed, but also place media shaped by cutting-edge technologies and the labor of the body at the center of a new set of tensions, jointly circumscribed by the forces of history, society, and media revolution.
* Lu Xun, “What Happens After Nora Leaves?” Originally delivered as a speech at the Literary Forum of Beijing Women’s Higher Normal School on December 26, 1923, and subsequently edited into an essay.
* Nicholas Carr, The Glass Cage: How Our Computers Are Changing Us, W. W. Norton & Company, 2015.
What happened after Nora left? Installation View
What happened after Nora left? Installation View
Adverb (Smile)
2023
Acrylic on canvas
160 × 120 cm
Adverb (Peaceful)
2023
Acrylic on canvas
160 × 120 cm
