Casey WEI is a PhD student in contemporary arts at Simon Fraser University, Canada. Her practice-based research in filmmaking, writing, and performance is informed by participatory activities such as editing, publishing, and programming. Recent works include the book Tuning to Oblivion: an artist residency (M:ST Performative Art, 2023) and the album Stimuloso (Mint Records, 2022) with her band, Kamikaze Nurse. She is the editor and co-founder of ReIssue magazine and the Short Forum Programmer for the Vancouver International Film Festival.

The Involution of Freedom in Yabi Subculture

Yabi is a controversial subcultural phenomenon active in China since 2019. Like the Western ‘hipster’, the yabi mash-up appropriation of styles from the ‘global supermarket of culture’ is deemed messy, superficial, and shamelessly middle class by mainstream critics. Through a historical analysis, this essay argues that the yabi exemplify the return of the feminine supernatural—present throughout imperial and modern Chinese history—as a response to the challenges of the Anthropocene from the present-day involuted generation.

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