When a self-surveillance Google Sheet becomes performance art | Liang-Jung Chen

— Good evening, everyone. Um, I am Chen Liang Rong, and you can also call me Leah. And um, uh, it was actually in January of 2019 that I bought my ticket to the first ever Nicer Tuesday event. And uh, 7 years later, ta-da, here I am on the stage. So, um, in my practice, I build this situations from everyday artifacts and infrastructures, and I stage tension um, that expand the material materiality beyond the familiar. For example, uh, I hosted a studio party, and I made a rule for my friends that they could only eat the fruits by packing them instead of using their hands. And the other work include a series of um, egg holders that put egg in danger, but also quite secure. No eggs were harmed. And for an outdoor biennial in Austrian Alps, I made portable wind socks that visualized air flows through speed, and they were made of uh, disused parachute textiles. And at the V& A Museum, I worked with stanchion barriers, the retractable barrier system you see in the public, and I extended them and wo- wove them into um, pattern that spanned across three floors, and the pattern shifted whenever one of the belt is being pulled or relieved. Another installation features deconstructed speakers uh, without casing, and exposing the entangled cables, um, and suspending the speakers in the air. And uh, hardware archive, um, a website where I virtually collect hardware items online, and clicking on each of them either lead you to Wikipedia page or Screwfix website. Um, yeah, so as you can see, I tend to work quite resourcefully, and um, I upcycle like situations around me. Um, but today I'm going to talk about a project that is very personal, and to do so, we have to go back in time. So, growing up in rural Taiwan, I went through quite stereotypical uh, cramming education system overloaded with unnecessary information that I couldn't cope with, but I loved taking notes in creative layouts. Same applies to my diaries, and they're always full of like uh, trivia. Oh. And this skill came in handy when I was preparing for my life in the UK test last year for my indefinite leave to remain application. And taking notes has become kind of like a coping mechanism, where I feel like noting them down, noting things down kind of make them feel more manageable. So, I learned so much about the UK in 1 week, and I passed the test, and now, embarrassingly, I think I forgot a lot of them. But however, as a very disorganized person, the real test for me was actually the indefinite leave to remain application fee, which was introduced in 2003 at il- uh, 155 quid, and by 2025, it's now 3,029

pound. Can you believe it? And once I added other costs, I realized I need to save at least like 5,389 pound in 4 months before my visa expired, which gave me extreme anxiety. And this period uh, coincided with um, upcoming group show, and I obviously didn't have time to make work. So, I decided to use this crisis as the work, um, to present the extensive spreadsheet showing all the jobs I took on top of running my art studio. So, over the course of uh, 3 and 5 months, I worked around 71 shifts ranging from 2 to 13 hours, and with hourly pay between 12, 21, uh, 12, 21 pence and 100 of 104 euro. And uh, totaling to 7,732 and 21 pence. I also extended the project across other online platforms, each capturing different aspect of my desperation. Um, inspired by the online creation uh, with those YouTubers commodify their privacy and personal stories for engagement and income, I also made a student video sharing my job uh, experiences in London. It's hilarious, really, um, full of awkward moments and um, small anecdotes, which you can see um, later after the talk, somewhere online. And yeah, it was my comedian moment. I also love like watching vlogs, especially the really boring, mundane ones. So, I set up a TikTok account where I posted a daily um, self-imposed CCTV style video. Um, it's funny to think about. It's kind of like a performative self-surveillance. Um, and these clips show uh, me distributing flyers for my crowdfunding campaign in art museums across London, but without much success, sadly. And uh, on Google Maps, I showed the recording of my commute and the costs. In London, sometimes it just takes so long to and so much money to get to one place to do a job that doesn't really pay that much. And this kind of like repetitive movements um, feels a bit like a geographical uh, geological time that is accumulative and ingrained. So, yeah, so this was my show at Whitechapel Gallery in October 2025, where people came to admire my spreadsheet. Um, I set up a donation point in the gallery, and received 408 pound. — [snorts] — And uh, it was actually a very emotional evening, because so many strangers came up to me to express how much the project has resonated with them. So, after more hustle hustling in December 2025, I received confirmation from the Home Office saying that my status has been granted. And to be honest, it felt like I just passed another exam, and um, it's not just like financial pressure. It's also triggered like existential crisis and identity crisis in me, questioning why I left my home country behind to live here.

Um but at the same time I also want to acknowledge my privilege as in um I am able to move to the UK voluntarily. And to be an artist in London is a like a double luxury. So I would also like to take the moment to express solidarity with all those currently navigating through immigration system. London is a magical place where I meet so many lovely people here and many of whom have fled have come here because of the difficult circumstances back home and now face prolonged uncertainty while laws remain unresolved. So the power of making the numbers and my journey transparent um I hope it will kind of make people feel less alone. And the project has also planted a seed in me where I was thinking, oh maybe I could have make this further into a database where people can kind of like a supple network of migrant. So yeah, so that being said said, what's next? So [snorts] luckily as a Taiwanese citizen, I can go on to apply to British citizenship without renouncing my passport. So yeah, I'm going to do that. The citizenship somehow surprisingly only cost 1,770 and the passport itself cost 94 50 p. 50 Um yeah, it's like half the price of indefinitely to remain. So it's like, okay. And uh yeah, and I thank it's nice that for putting the first 250 pound in for my speaker fee tonight. Thank you. — [cheering]