The judging workshop for the Water Race Cup was held online and lasted for nearly two hours. (Photo provided by the interviewee)
A nearly two-hour workshop is taking place online. The nine guests who participated in the conference came from different backgrounds, including Japanese and Korean artists, PhDs, top chefs, etc., and the composition was mainly in the art industry, supplemented by lay elites, and they were gathered together in a global art competition - "Water Race Cup International Contemporary Art Grand Prix". As the representatives of the jury of this competition, the guests are conducting art criticism and academic discussion on some of the submitted works.
These works are diverse in form and content, but they are all endowed with profound "connotations" by the creators, and the judges are not hesitant to praise them. The live performance project "Copy the Preface to the Lanting Collection a Thousand Times" was hailed as "challenging the limits of time and perseverance", and the photograph "Epsom", which was photographed with a sour plum flavored sparkling water, was a simple but meaningful composition, which the jury described as "showing the impermanence and change in the flow of life".
The atmosphere of the whole meeting was formal and serious. In addition to the jury representatives, there were also linguists who claimed to have graduated from the University of Paris VIII as interpreters, assisting the judges from different countries in conducting academic dialogues. The host's professional background should not be underestimated, and in her personal introduction, it is written that she has been named "the most influential curator of the 21st century" by an authoritative British magazine.
All this shows the high standard and professionalism of this event. However, some of the details of the meeting, such as the contrast between the identity and resume of a Japanese designer and his broken Japanese, still reveal some clues.
In fact, not only him, but all the guests present at the meeting were fictitious, they were just students. Even, the so-called "Water Race Cup International Contemporary Art Grand Prix" is a fake competition.
Chen Gaoyuan, a senior at an art college in Shanghai, parodies the large and small competitions on the market, packaging the "Water Race Cup" as a seemingly professional, international, and large-scale image to satirize the various "water races" that exist on the market.
"Water competition" usually refers to various competitions with high winning rate and low industry recognition, and the main group is school students. Domestic colleges and universities usually use the "comprehensive assessment" index to evaluate students, mainly including academic performance, cultural and sports performance and moral performance, etc., and the score is linked to scholarships, research and research, etc., and competitions are often one of the important plus points.
On social platforms, if you search for "water competition", you will find various competitions for different professional backgrounds, and some competitions will directly attract participants with the names of "water comprehensive test" and "water scholarship". And the contestants jumped into the sea of the water race for various reasons such as extra points or packaging resumes.
"Exudes an air of high class"
The idea for the Water Games Cup originated at the beginning of 2023, when Chen Gaoyuan was a junior and attended a school that stipulated that students should participate in campus cultural and competitive competitions before their senior year, and complete a certain number of hours before graduating. Among them, the extra points of the competition are relatively simple, and some competitions can get 2 credit hours, that is, 2 points, as long as they are shortlisted or participated.
Many of the students around Chen Gaoyuan are participating in the water competition, and there is even a phenomenon of sharing certificates when adding points - the winners take pictures of the certificates and send them to their classmates, and the students use retouching software to change their names to their own, so that one certificate can be used by different people to get extra points. In some water competitions, the list of winners is not public, and the school has no way to verify it.
Chen Gaoyuan knew that there was not much point in participating in these water races, and most of the students just used it to make up the numbers. He envisions a way to express his attitude and provoke reflection in a way similar to performance art. He referred to the large and small water competitions on the market, imitated their processes, and designed the complete steps from soliciting registration, expert review, award announcement to awards. He also opened his own public account to update the latest progress of the Water Race Cup from time to time, saving a sum of publicity costs.
A poster of the Water Cup made by Chen Gaoyuan. (Photo provided by the interviewee)
The theme of the Water Race Cup is set as "water", and the interpretation of this theme must be rich and abstract enough, so Chen Gaoyuan uses AI to complete, "If it is originally a fake big empty, it will look bullshit, and it is appropriate to use AI to generate it." In the depiction of AI, water is mysterious and flexible, but at the same time chaotic and extremely destructive, and Eliot's "Waste Land" and Taoist "Wu Wei" are excellent arguments, "appearing very high-end".
As part of the judges, Chen Gaoyuan wanted to emphasize the internationalization of the judging team, and AI once again played a role, with most of the faces in the 45 judges being AI-generated portraits. He asked his friends to provide more formal photos, stitching together these photos, AI-generated foreign faces and some copyright-free portraits, and using a black-and-white composition technique to make the entire judging team "exude a high-class atmosphere".
ChatGPT helped write the detailed essays of three of the judges, all of whom have overseas education backgrounds, have won many awards, and are leaders in their respective fields. Mr. Chen also added some drama, such as the fact that one of the judges was portrayed as a small-town-born, American-made transmedia artist, and that he was given space to depict the romantic love story of another Korean-American artist's parents.
Chen Gaoyuan listed the organizers, co-organizers, and organizers one by one, and the names of "Shanghai Metaverse Science and Technology Art Research Institute", "New York Contemporary Art and Design Association", and "French Dick Cyborg Institute" are loud and advanced. However, none of these institutions existed, "all of them were made up to make this competition appear international and high-end".
The naming of the award should not be too artistic, and the name should contain elements such as gold, silver, bronze or first, second, and third with a clear grade color, so as to attract participants who come for the ranking. Other details have also been carefully polished, such as the entry requirements to be as complex as the app's disclaimer, and the entry requirements to list the conceivable media forms one by one, which seems to be a lot of words......
These designs and details are derived from Chen Gaoyuan's imitation of some water races on the market, in fact, many of the existing water races have even more strange tricks.
Liu Qingshu, a third-year student at a certain college, once signed up for a translation contest, and the name of the contest alone was repeatedly revised four times in half a year, and it was successively called "×× Foreign Language Translation Competition" and "×× Cup Foreign Language Competition", which is confusing. Later, when she participated in the online competition, some classmates around her cheated and won a prize, which made her feel that this event was "really watery". Another translation competition she participated in was suddenly postponed by the organizers after the deadline passed.
Postponements are common, and Chen Gaoyuan has encountered similar situations, with some competitions postponed on the grounds that there are too many submissions, incomplete screenings, or that more people can participate, but in fact the number of entries collected is not enough. For this reason, during the solicitation of works for the Water Competition Cup, Chen Gaoyuan deliberately postponed it for five days.
Hu Lin is a student of the Academy of Fine Arts of a 985 college, and has participated in an art and design exhibition, which is known as an international competition, and will eventually exhibit the winners' works. Hu Lin's work won the award, but in the end, only a list of winners was announced as a voucher, and there was no ranking. He wanted to get the award certificate and sent a message to the organizers, but there was no response, and the work was not exhibited at all.
Qin Shun, who has been promoting events for three years, manages 15 social accounts, is responsible for posting and promoting events on social platforms, and receives nearly 100 event promotion orders every year, some of which are water races.
He has been in contact with some so-called international events that need to be promoted, there are almost no reports about the organizers on the Internet, the registration fee is collected by Alipay, and there is no participation system, and the email address is used directly for receiving manuscripts, and even the collection account and email address of several events are the same. He has specially tested this kind of competition, and he can win any award if he sends a picture or a work.
"This kind of event is obviously a circle of money. Qin Shun told a reporter from Southern Weekend.
"Anyway, I can bluff people"
Chen Gaoyuan eventually received about 70 of his works, but he claimed 5,514 to the public. Most of the entries were submitted by students, and some of them were very confusing, such as a photo of a wet towel and a glass of lemonade, and judging from the content, most of them were aware of the nature of the competition and obviously found it interesting.
But there is no shortage of people who are skeptical. Geng Zhichao used to be a programmer, and he once met Chen Gaoyuan because of a certain game, and accidentally saw the event information forwarded by the other party, and he had doubts, and there was nothing wrong with the poster at first glance, but the information background of the judges and Chen Gaoyuan's student identity obviously did not match. He wanted to find out, so he picked out the photos he had taken casually before from his mobile phone, such as fire hydrants, hot pots, etc., and threw them over.
The photo submitted by Geng Zhichao won the Pioneer Experiment Award, titled "Hot Pot Breaking Waves, Watermelon, Fire Hydrant, Blood Drinking Water After Rain (Detail)". (Photo provided by the interviewee)
Hu Zhanqi is Chen Gaoyuan's younger brother and is named legal counsel in the Water Race Cup. Finding it amusing, he initially cast a parody of a well-known artist's work, "Painting the Ground as a Dungeon", in which he drew circles outdoors with twigs dipped in water from a bottle in the heat of more than 30 degrees Celsius to surround himself. Chen Gaoyuan thought that this work was too serious, so he asked him to resubmit a copy. Hu Zhanqi's neighborhood is the place where the Internet celebrity "Winter Swimming Monster Pigeon", who is famous for winter swimming, often swims, and he took a video of the other party's swimming and handed it in, only 27 seconds, which is also relevant to "water".
In addition to being curious and fun, Chen Gaoyuan guessed that some of the works may really be voted for the purpose of adding points to the comprehensive test, and some of the contestants are freshmen who don't know much about water races, so they voted in confusion when they saw a competition.
In order to add points, Chen Gaoyuan himself also participated in a competition forwarded by the teaching teacher, submitted his past works at will, and won the third prize. When the winners were announced, he found that half of the winners were students from the same school, and some of the works looked like AI-generated images. When Chen Gaoyuan took the award certificate to the counselor for extra points, he was also told that the certificate looked informal.
For example, the Chinese Association of Higher Education publishes a catalogue of university competitions every year, in which the "Challenge Cup" and "Internet +" are among them, and you can get different degrees of bonus points for awards. However, there are also some schools that are not so strict about the rules of the competition catalogue and awards, as long as you participate in the competition, you can add points, and at most stipulate the upper limit of extra points.
Chen Fang is a sophomore majoring in design at a certain college, and his goal is very clear, that is, to get extra points for the comprehensive test and get a scholarship. He has cast more than a dozen water races, with an 80% winning rate. Liu Qingshu's winning rate is even higher, almost 100 percent, but the ranking is high and low, and the registration fee for each event is basically about a few tens of yuan.
Qin Shun has long observed that the direct reason why many students sign up for the water competition is for the comprehensive test, and he grasped this psychology when publicizing it, and played the name of "water comprehensive test" and "easy to win awards".
Some of the entries include a photo of a bottle of sparkling water, a wet towel, and more. (Photo provided by the interviewee)
Li Xixi is a member of the study committee of the class, and when he counted the comprehensive test of the whole class, he found that many students participated in the water competition. Some students have already filled up their competition scores, and there are still award certificates left, relying on the weight of these competitions, the final comprehensive test ranks high. "If I had known, I would have reported a little more. Li Xixi also put it into practice later.
However, even if she participates in the water competition, she will also screen it, the registration fee is not more than 50 yuan is acceptable, hundreds of people will not participate, the event is best related to their own major, the award setting needs to have a clear difference in ranking, the higher the ranking, the more points.
She is well aware that even if the winning rate of these events is very high, "what ranking you get is really a matter of luck, and it does not reflect ability".
In addition to extra points, the water competition also has an obvious polishing effect on resumes and job searches. "To put it bluntly, participating in this kind of competition is to fool the layman and write something on his resume. As an English major, Li Xixi rarely succeeded in signing up for English tutors in the past, but after adding all the winning records of the water competition, her resume looks much richer, in addition to English tutoring, she also successfully voted for a volunteer in an English competition.
Hu Lin, who studied environmental art design, has won two well-known awards in the industry - the bronze award of the "Chinese Habitat Environmental Design Academic Year Award" and the third prize of the "Academy Cup China Interior and Environmental Design Competition", but he still participated in more than a dozen water competitions, wanting to create the effect of "many awards at a glance". "I have to give others a feeling that I'm still more motivated," Hu Lin said, adding that most interviewers don't understand the gold content of the competition when applying for a job, "I can bluff people anyway." ”
For many students who participate in water competitions, even if they have little effect on comprehensive testing and job hunting, even if they only play a quantitative role, they should participate in the competition.
"There are really people who are willing to invest money"
From the preliminary planning to the holding of all aspects of the event, the Water Race Cup has experienced a total of half a year. About a month after the start of the competition, Chen Gaoyuan was approached by a company specializing in the operation of the event to discuss cooperation.
Chen Gaoyuan immediately pulled a group chat, pulled his classmates in, and pretended to be the event staff. The other party introduced his company and the previous event cases in detail, and proposed that the popularity selection link could be added to the competition process, that is, voting, in the form of "free tickets + paid tickets", and the revenue generated by paid tickets would be divided in half. Considering the possible legal risks, Chen Gaoyuan refused.
However, he was shocked that "there are really people willing to put money into it".
When it came to the selection process, Chen Gaoyuan had already thought that the final award must be determined, because "many competitions also do this". Before announcing the list of winners, Chen Gaoyuan deliberately set up a nearly two-hour live broadcast of the discussion to publicly comment on the works to maintain the popularity of the competition.
He wrote a review script for each of the judges, and the English lines were written for the judges who made a certain person a Japanese artist. In order to conform to the character design, the judge specially asked Japanese students how to speak Japanese-style English, and then practiced privately, and professionally added a few paragraphs of Japanese during the live broadcast.
Geng's casual photo won the Pioneer Experiment Award — even though the rules of the award say "to the first five contestants," and the deadline for his registration is long past the deadline. Chen Gaoyuan explained that this was deliberate, and he did not select the awards according to the written rules, but focused on selecting some works with a lot of work, not much connotation, and at the same time recognizable, and gave them a ranking.
The winning work is designated as the "Best Water Award". (Photo provided by the interviewee)
The highest award was the "Best Water Award in the Audience", which was finally awarded to Chen Gaoyuan's teacher Huang Wei. The work he submitted was an invitation letter, saying that it was an invitation letter, but in fact, it was just a few lines of words and screenshots with a mobile phone memo, asking the organizing committee to award him the "Best Water Award". He claimed that it was a "participatory artwork" and that it was only when the organizing committee awarded him the award that the work could be completed and the competition was well deserved.
In the end, Chen Gaoyuan awarded the highest award to Huang Wei due to the title of the work, the amount of work, the personal relationship with the organizer, and the commitment to sponsor the follow-up prize fee of the organizing committee.
The prize, which claims to be a solo exhibition in Times Square in New York, is actually a proxy auction service purchased for 400 yuan on Taobao, which claims to be able to place a 15-second video on a large screen in New York Times Square. In the video provided by the seller, it can be seen that on the streets of New York, the outdoor screen of the building does play the solo exhibition information of the Water Race Cup, on the left is a large English introduction of the inside story of the competition, and on the right is the photo of the jury and the face of the winner who is enlarged and prominent.
After 15 seconds, the Water Cup was replaced by another projection advertisement. Coincidentally, the following is the overseas exhibition information of a "famous Chinese artist".
Chen Gaoyuan spent 400 yuan on Taobao to buy a 15-second projection service in New York Times Square, which provided a so-called solo exhibition for the top prize. (Photo provided by the interviewee)
Huang Wei, who teaches interactive media art to students, believes that using parody to trigger a certain kind of reflection is also a demonstration of students' talents, but this kind of behavior is difficult to quantify into the existing assessment indicators, and the school's evaluation of students' abilities still relies on comprehensive test scores.
In fact, the recognition of individuals by society itself is still at a very superficial level, as if there is no other way than quantification. Huang Wei told Southern Weekend.
After the water race cup awards were announced, a man in his fifties received the "Silver Cup Nomination Award". In his resume, he introduces himself as a freelance artist, a former newspaper reporter, and a member of a provincial photographers' association and writers' association. He submitted a group of paintings related to "water", which seemed to have taken a lot of work.
During the competition, he forwarded his works in the competition group from time to time, and Chen Gaoyuan cooperated with his classmates to praise them. Until the end of the competition, he did not realize the nature of the Water Race Cup, and also made an acceptance speech in the event group and thanked the organizing committee seriously.
After the event, a student was curious about whether he could get extra points for the comprehensive test, so he took the award certificate that Chen Gaoyuan gave him - a "Silver Cup Nomination Award" and a "Most Rich Award", and reviewed it for the counselor, who only glanced at it and said, "2 points".
About half a month ago, Chen Gaoyuan found that the contestant in his 50s had updated his resume, with a line that read: "Won the silver medal in the first WICAA Water Cup International Contemporary Art Grand Prix".
Water Race Cup Award Certificate. (Photo provided by the interviewee)
(At the request of the interviewee, Hu Lin, Liu Qingshu, Li Xixi, and Chen Fang are pseudonyms)
Southern Weekly reporter Weng Rongrong and Southern Weekly intern Dong Jiadi
Editor-in-charge: Li Muyan