Venue
Address

T:
W:
Opening Hours
Director
Contact Person

>> See map

Goethe Open Space 2016 – Moving Institutions – Round4

Huang Songhao: Cultural Palace: Floating Theater

20160623205620

The “Cultural Palace: Floating Theater” is intended to achieve the handling of internal contradictions and co-construction of the self-organization in an institutional context, and unfold those sections in the form of media sharing. The project originates from the “artists forum” organized by the artist Huang Songhao last year based on in-depth observation on the civil self-organizing mechanisms and temple fairs in his hometown Zhengzhou. As a hometown “outsider”, the sections of the urban fabric have given him path considerations. However, this relates to the reflections on today’s art museum system. Its own symbolic identity of “democracy” and the original functional attributes of the space have been falsified, staging another “adult game”. Interestingly, like a standard contemporary art exhibition, “language experiments”, “relation aesthetics”, “action painting”, “pornography” and “politics” are still indispensable. The artist hopes to put the pending issues on the table for discussion. Today, on the one hand, the anodyne attitude of “interventionism” and the theoretical label updated by current events have become an “effective medicine” in art; on the other hand, with the slogan of “art for art” yet attached to exhibitions and art market, masses of “zombie formalism” have become good selling commodities. The former eventually becomes a safe “radicalism” by means of “social intervention”, falling into the trap of utilitarianism; while the latter forgets the ideals and aspirations of their “avant-garde” predecessors.

This time, the artist chose a more proactive approach to intervene the scene of the folk activities by the self-organization. Because once the literature of a social sample has been presented to the white box, artists are often made passive, become the symbol of reality and lose sensibility; on the other hand, in places where there is no “contemporary art”, they do not need art projects as capital to consolidate the control of consumerism over them. The artist created a game in this context, involving the audience in discussion and participation through the participatory game. He tried to convene and create an environment, providing a distribution center for the overflow of their lives. Therefore, the game will also be presented in the exhibition, open to audience participation, trying to produce different effects to the first and second scene at the same time.

  • 20160623205620

    20160623205620