In this VR experience, Diagnosia locks us inside Mengtai Zhang's teenage memories of being incarcerated in a military-operated internet addiction camp in Beijing in 2007, where internet addiction and other youth issues were treated as severe mental disorders, and sometimes by violent means.
Exploring the potential of VR as a tool for transplanting secondhand memories, Diagnosia aims to connect the audience to social issues via a sensorial immersion and embodiment in the memories of people who experienced it first hand. Diagnosia portrays Mengtai’s memories of being incarcerated in a military-operated Internet addiction camp in Beijing in 2007, where internet addiction and other youth issues were treated as a severe mental disorder with sometimes violent means. It also raises questions about the extensive research publications that have come out of this institution, and how they entangle with the scientific literature of “internet addiction” on a global scale. By tracing the lineage of “Internet addiction” in China’s cultural context, the work discusses how societies can create or manifest pathologies as a tool for social control.
Diagnosia had its World Premiere as part of the DocLab Competition for Immersive Non-Fiction at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) in November 2021, and will have its North American Premiere as part of the New Frontier section at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/602336011/040bb85dbe
Mengtai Zhang and Lemon Guo are graduates of the Columbia Sound Art MFA program
