b. 1976 in Hong Kong

Lives and works in New York, NY

GAS ZAPPERS

Gas Zappers is a short animation about climate change. The main character, a polar bear, abruptly finds itself in a position to save its home through dextrous manoeuvres in an Al-e Gore-ical world. The idiom of the video game is exploited to challenge and illuminate the simplistic notion of quick fixes to environmental issues. As the bear progresses with celebrity companions through different scenarios such as a flooded Venice, confrontations with bulldozers, and killer oil derricks, it narrowly succeeds each time thanks to its renewable energy defences. A narrative unfolds that, like the artists' previous works, waggishly interrogates the spectacular mode of ecological policy.

RESIDENTIAL ERECTION

Residential Erection is devoted to the 2008 US Presidential Election and its unprecedented place at the intersection of politics, popular culture and media manipulation. Today's headlines are tomorrow's history, with the video animation retelling and contextualizing the election. Casting the candidates into various identities, including Borat Obama and John McCain the Donkey-cheerleader, the precisely researched video hits hard at the hypocrisy of recent political rhetoric and the troubled State of the Union. As hilarious as it is scary, it merges internet-scavenged imagery and original animation to create factual or semi-fictional relationships between familiar political figures, corporations, and mass media iconography.

www.tinkin.com

screenshot credits

Gas Zappers, 2007 
Music by Noah Vawter 
HD video, running time 5 minutes
Courtesy of Postmasters Gallery, New York

Residential Erection, 2008, 
HD video, running time 5 minutes
Courtesy of Postmasters Gallery, New York