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Straight from the Digital Underground: it's Billionhappy !!
NCO 093
2023-08-28
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by
0xb999ae0193F993630E93a9d3E30c933C9bdB6398

N: Hey Yi Han, a.k.a Billionhappy, how are you doing? Where are you based right now?

Y: Hi! I was recently in London working on my own album.

N: I’ve known of you for many years because of my proximity to the Chinese underground. It always felt like this scene was the future of creativity on so many levels, and you played a big part in what made this scene so unique. I love hwo your style is some kind of crazy blend of cosplay, futuristic streetwear style, post-drainer & post-tiktok…and more! Could you walk us through how you developed your sense of fashion?

Y: I think for me, these elements have influenced me at different ages.

Sometimes I think about how to combine these elements I like, but more often I just want to look cool, or when designing a graphic that I think is cool, my thoughts appear in the process.

N: Congratulations on the release of your latest single “Gui Huo” also. Can you tell us about how you got to create this song?

Y: The reason for creating the song "Gui Huo" is that one day my friend sent me a beat, and the feeling of this beat reminded me of the dance music I heard when I was young. At that time I was hanging out with many young gangsters and they all loved to listen to this kind of dance music.

At that time, many young gangsters I knew would modify motorcycles too, and this modified motorcycle is called "Gui Huo" where we're from.

This "Gui Huo" motorcycle used to be very popular in China, similar to the bosozoku culture in Japan, and their youthful and rebellious image at that time impressed me deeply, so I made this song.

N: Do you have a dream collaboration in mind?

Y: Jay Chou, a Chinese legend!

N: I think it’s the first time I see you incorporate dancing in your work, I can see this going viral, it’s so so good! It reminds me a lot about the European 2010 electro-dancing subcultures such as Tecktonik in France for instance, but obviously, it’s still so you though. How did that dance come about?

Y: This dance is called "She Hui Yao” in China. It is a dance invented by the Chinese subcultural group “Jing Shen Xiao Huo”. This dance was once very popular in China. A lot of young people learned this kind of dance online, and many of these teenagers are also young people riding “Gui Huo”. They have their own unique way of dressing, hairstyles, and tattoos. But because many of these “She Hui Yao” dancers have gang backgrounds, which has a bad influence on society.

The country's restrictions on this culture have led to the gradual decline of this culture in China.

Since then, China's “She Hui Yao” has been more expressed in the form of funny videos, and it is more appropriate to say that it is among the subtle changes in mentality, the attitude towards “She Hui Yao” is mostly an attitude of watching jokes.

As for me, I hope to try to present the dance of “She Hui Yao” in other ways.

I think the culture of "Jing Shen Xiao Huo" is cool, so I made some attempts, hoping that this dance can be like the European electric dance subculture, and let these dances appear in clubs, but I don't think it's easy.

N: Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions with us today! To finish off the interview, I would like to hear from you on the topic of technology. One thing about you is that you’re like the true artist of the present, someone interdisciplinary and very technology fluent. What is your relationship with technology? How do you see it impacting our lives in the future & what role does it play in your practice?

Y: I think that technology is my helper and a tool to inspire me. 

When a new technology appears, it will give me a new way of thinking and allow me to use more methods to show what I want.  

I think as technology develops technology will completely change the way we live and sometimes it's hard to tell whether we are leading the technology or the technology is leading us.

All images courtesy of Billionhappy

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