The gift exercise / Invitation 5: Xintiandi, Shanghai

China's super app WeChat is a chat service, social media, payment method and translation program all in one. Payments, gifts and orders are made and shared via QR codes, which are omnipresent in public space as interfaces between digital and analog reality.

During one week Willimann/Arai embroidered QR codes of their personal WeChat account in public space using silk thread. The WeChat QR code is a uniquely generated, personal code and serves as a friendship invitation in the digital world. The artists emphasize its uniqueness by augmenting it with the "value" of an ancient and time-consuming craft.

According to Yuán, a concept from Chinese folk religion, silk thread is a metaphor for communication and fateful encounters. Digital communication technologies enable connections across great distances and make it possible to transcend the geographical, political and linguistic boundaries of the analog world. At the same time, they open up possibilities for new kinds of misunderstandings, gradually transforming their users into transparent citizens who willingly and often knowingly share personal information through their interactions.

Inspired and disturbed by these interpenetrations of digital and analog worlds, private and public spaces and their own lack of expression as foreigners, Willimann/Arai challenge the (im)possibilities and of analog and digital communication.