Title: Observer Mechanics: Interfacing Truth
Call Type: Fellowship (US$10,000)

Application Deadline: All applications must be submitted electronically by 23:59 (Beijing Time), Sunday, March 17^th , 2019 via http://fellowship.chronusartcenter.org
Notification of Selection: Applicants will be informed about their application status by mid April 2019.
Fellowship Starts: May 2019 (start dates negotiable with reason).

< OVERVIEW >

This year Chronus Art Center (CAC) opens its Lab for the new 3-month Research and Creation Fellowship. This program is designed to host one international artist and researcher of extraordinary talents in the area of new media art in order to conduct research and creation at Chronus Art Center (CAC), Shanghai. The 2019 Spring Research and Creation Fellowship aims to foster global exchange while advancing the discourse and practice of new media art, and contribute to CAC’s research and educational mission as well as the institution’s future collection.

On the age of artificial intelligence (AI), the more complex mental layers rendered over the raw perception of the world are no longer exclusive human abilities. As AI emerges with its learning procedures it evermore displays human-like characteristics of a sort of cognition such as: the interpretation of reality, natural language processing, understanding of the visual landscape, among others.

Our common understanding of technological developments is that it mirrors natural evolution and therefore AI is the pinnacle of human creativity. Nonetheless, on their current capacity these AIs present all sort of errors and limitations. On one hand, we can easily argue that these are the result of an early state of development or limited hardware, but another possibility could be that these constraints are just a simple reflection of our own limited understanding of reality. In other words, we create and train these autonomous and intelligent systems to see and understand the world as we humans do and reject all of their glitches as mere technical malfunctioning, while another possibility could be that the errors themselves are part of the human-like acquired features of these machines, hence rendering existence in more dubious ways. This presents a fundamental problem if we consider the role these systems currently play in our lives, financial system, health industry, war, online-dating, social networking and autonomous vehicles among many other functions and applications.

Observer Mechanics: Interfacing Truth is a research and creation opportunity for artists working in and thinking of various fields of artificial intelligence such as: machine vision, natural language processing, cognitive computing, swarm intelligence, robotics, and any other forms of intelligent technological systems.

< ELIGIBILITY >

• This fellowship is open to international artists and researchers of all nationalities.
• Applicants should be able to use English as working language.
• Applicants must not be currently enrolled in degree-granting academic programs, with the exception of PHD candidates who are aiming to develop technical work within the scope of the fellowship.
• Applicants are expected to show demonstrable success in previous development of related projects at this scale.
• Individuals and collectives are eligible to apply. In either case, please detail in your application how technical and creative responsibilities will be met.
• Only proposals within the conceptual framework offered by MEDIATED REALITY: REVISED and which make strict use of the optical motion tracking system (described on the overview section of this document) will be considered for eligibility.

The selected Fellow will be expected to work at CAC’s laboratory with the research and creation team on a range of activities including active contribution to the larger CAC community, collaborative partnership with other fellows, leading research initiatives, educational programs and public engagement, and developing current or future research areas for the organization. Projects, including prototypes, documentation, and work-in-progress, will be presented to the public at Chronus Art Center.

ABOUT <CAC_LAB>

<CAC_LAB> is a space dedicated to the inquiry of present-day matters regarding art, design, science, technology and their impact on global contemporary culture and society. Through artistic practice, technological tools and research methodology, we enable creative processes that result in works of art of high production and academic value. <CAC_LAB> is a space of flux which encourages artistic practice as a generator of new knowledge, a territory where art and science converge into a contemporary and experimental field of academic research; free from mainstream cultural thought, technological stress and economical diversions.

More info at: http://lab.chronusartcenter.org
CAC: http://www.chronusartcenter.org/en/
Previous fellows: http://lab.chronusartcenter.org/fellowship/?lang=en

< FELLOWSHIP SUPPORT >

This Fellowship is a chance for international artists and researchers to engage and learn from the art, technological and entrepreneurial communities of Shanghai. The selected Fellow will be offered a total amount of USD$10,000 for a 3 month deep-immersion period; including artist fees, living expenses, and materials. In addition, our lab facilities and tools are available for the fellow’s needs. These include but are not limited to: OPTITRACK motion capture system, Laser-cutter, 3D printer, band-saw, sander-belt, press drills, all sorts of hand tools, a variety of electronic components, Arduino, RaspberryPis, 2 Oculus Rift headset, Surface Mount Infrared soldering station, soldering irons and other prototyping tools.

For international Fellows, CAC is happy to provide necessary paperwork and advice to help expedite the process of securing his/her visa, travel and accommodation in Shanghai. All the expenses will be covered within the amount of the fellowship.

During the 3-month program, CAC will work closely with the selected Fellow to see his/her project realized and offer program support in developing work for performances, events, seminars, exhibitions, or other public and educational programming during the term of the Fellowship. CAC will also facilitate joint presentations alongside community partners, host conversations with the artists and display works in progress; revealing the creative process as it happens.

< APPLICATION GUIDELINE >

Please fill out the online application form and submit it with the necessary attachments via http://fellowship.chronusartcenter.org. No email submissions will be taken into account.

< EVALUATION CRITERIA >

Applications will be reviewed and the final decision, including interviews, will be made by CAC’s International Advisory Board comprised of leading scholars, artists and museum professionals. Acceptance is based on quality and visionary potential, and most importantly, the potential of the project proposal to contribute to CAC_LAB’s broader research scope.

Applicants are also expected to show demonstrable success in previous development of related work at this scale. Successful applicants will outline clear goals, milestones and time-lines.

Please send further inquiries to fellowship@chronusartcenter.org

Somehow eliciting dark humour and empathy against what I imagine to be a surreal ritual from a JG Ballard novel or a Kubrickian film scene where the elite enjoy an evening with gold umbilical cords attached to Tate Modern baptised with delicious champagne while a gigantic tortured puppet dances in chains, perpetually a falling angel and cursed Phoenix. Under the stress of an endless performance it climatically snapped! Uncertain at first whether this was part of the work and almost wishing it was a choreographed cathartic relief it really was broken in half, a profound sign to retire as the Tate security ushered me away from the carnage….and Pinocchio.

Jordon Wolfson (b.1980) lives and works in Los Angeles and New York. ”Colored Sculpture” is showing at Tate Modern, London until August 26, 2018

https://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern/display/tanks/jordan-wolfson

Gordon Cheung is an artist based in London. He is currently showing in ’Doubting Thomas’ at Duddell’s London, Curated by Ying Kwok, until 24 Sept 2018. Gordon will have a solo show at Galerie Huit, Hong Kong in November.

“As a sunbeam slants to Dome of the Rock reflecting the ancient holy city of Jerusalem, worshipers of different color and creed assemble under the dome, each with their own personal journey and stories. Each and all, young or old, worshippers contemplate and filter the elements through their own individual experiences and collective memories and construct yet another new and unique experience and realities.” In an environment of reality and fiction, the artist questions how uniqueness of individual’s experience and cultural legacies in current globalization affects how the individual confronts the issue of spirituality and uniqueness of identity.

This is the first of CLAY PLAY series by Rén Space which will showcase works created by Chinese contemporary artists in different phase of careers with distinct backgrounds and styles without previous experience in sculptures. The models exhibited are first contoured and expressed by artist’s hands using the simplest of tools and common clay. The models are then digitally processed with the artist’s collaboration with world leading studios specializing in material and techniques best able to support and express the artist’s visions.

Accompanying the clay models are the artist’s specified instructions for future production with which the collectors will have opportunities to secure the works and thereby inviting the collectors to assume a role of enablers. This early engagement and commitment by the collectors enable artists to engage in projects otherwise not viable, while the collectors are given a unique opportunity to engage art, artist, and art making process as patrons and enablers of the artists and their works. Completed final works will be presented at a late 2018 exhibition.

It is only now that the new and fundamental shifts in art making process enabled by breakthroughs in digital and robotic technologies upends how art is created in this modern era. It fundamentally transforms the role and definition of artist and how he or she creates art and value of work during the process. The archetype of an artist in the last century that depicts solitary artist laboring alone in his or her studio is updated and expanded to a new and classical view of an artist as the conceptual and intellectual master akin to a modern symphony conductor or Jeff Koons, Michelangelo, or Rubens managing and combining different talents of their respective studios and resources. Through the Clay Play series, Rén Space is excited to empower and support artists with their artistic endeavours through new experimentation and exploration.

Rén Space is proud to represent Chen Yujun on this Solo exhibition and this series of works. We would also like to recognize Tang Contemporary Art in Beijing and Bank Studio in Shanghai for their supports.

Opening: June 24th, 2018
Exhibition: June 25th to July 31st, 2018

Rén Space is proud to announce the opening of Reflection From the Golden Dome, by Chen Yujun on June 24th, 2018. The newly conceptualized body of work by Chen Yujun is inspired by spiritual figures and materialization from divinity. Through a year long process, the artist has created simple clay models in primitive forms that contemplate on different elements from the mythologies that reflect individual experiences and collective memories of history and culture. Through photographs, videos and installation of scenes with multiple perspectives, the artist purposefully provokes ambivalence towards the physical venue with conceptual and imaginary scenario by bringing familiar stories to unexpected contexts.

“As a sunbeam slants to Dome of the Rock reflecting the ancient holy city of Jerusalem, worshipers of different color and creed assemble under the dome, each with their own personal journey and stories. Each and all, young or old, worshippers contemplate and filter the elements through their own individual experiences and collective memories and construct yet another new and unique experience and realities.” In an environment of reality and fiction, the artist questions how uniqueness of individual’s experience and cultural legacies in current globalization affects how the individual confronts the issue of spirituality and uniqueness of identity.

This is the first of CLAY PLAY series by Rén Space which will showcase works created by Chinese contemporary artists in different phase of careers with distinct backgrounds and styles without previous experience in sculptures. The models exhibited are first contoured and expressed by artist’s hands using the simplest of tools and common clay. The models are then digitally processed with the artist’s collaboration with world leading studios specializing in material and techniques best able to support and express the artist’s visions.

Accompanying the clay models are the artist’s specified instructions for future production with which the collectors will have opportunities to secure the works and thereby inviting the collectors to assume a role of enablers. This early engagement and commitment by the collectors enable artists to engage in projects otherwise not viable, while the collectors are given a unique opportunity to engage art, artist, and art making process as patrons and enablers of the artists and their works. Completed final works will be presented at a late 2018 exhibition.

It is only now that the new and fundamental shifts in art making process enabled by breakthroughs in digital and robotic technologies upends how art is created in this modern era. It fundamentally transforms the role and definition of artist and how he or she creates art and value of work during the process. The archetype of an artist in the last century that depicts solitary artist laboring alone in his or her studio is updated and expanded to a new and classical view of an artist as the conceptual and intellectual master akin to a modern symphony conductor or Jeff Koons, Michelangelo, or Rubens managing and combining different talents of their respective studios and resources. Through the Clay Play series, Rén Space is excited to empower and support artists with their artistic endeavours through new experimentation and exploration.

Rén Space is proud to represent Chen Yujun on this Solo exhibition and this series of works. We would also like to recognize Tang Contemporary Art in Beijing and Bank Studio in Shanghai for their supports.

Chen Yujun, born in 1976, Putian, Fujian Province, graduated from Department of Mixed Media of China Academy of Fine Arts in 1999, and taught mixed media and oil painting in Chinese Academy of Fine Arts from 1999 to 2004. He now lives and works in Shanghai. His works are exhibited widely and collected by Brooklyn Museum (New York), White Rabbit Contemporary Chinese Art Collection (White Rabbit Gallery, Sydney), M+ Museum of Art (Hong Kong), DSL Collection (France), Yuz Museum (Shanghai), Long Museum (Shanghai), He Xiangning Art Museum (Shenzhen), and Arario Museum (Seoul).

Mak Ying Tung 2′s work contemplates the properties of everyday objects and materials. Interested in finding something rare in the minutiae of life, she reconstructs objects and situations to create an aesthetic experience that is bound by the dualism of humor and intense inquisitiveness. In this exhibition, she discusses the power of machines in our daily lives, from past to present, as well as the transmutation of our perception of these machines. With her humorous visual language, Mak does not merely prompt audiences to laugh, but also to question the forces that lie underneath the surface of their surroundings.

Transforming an entire room of the gallery, Relic is a series of five lenticulars portraying now outdated electronic devices as if they were religious relics. In the 3D wall hangings, the significance of gadgets like Tamagotchi and Nokia’s 3310 cell phone are exaggerated through their juxtaposition with traditional Catholic motifs like angels, candles, and doves. These gadgets once played an important role in our lives and somehow changed our way of living unconsciously, especially for the millennial generation. For instance, playing with Tamagotchis, which was a handheld digital pet that needed to be regularly fed and cleaned, may have been the first instance where a habit of constantly checking electronic devices was cultivated.

Physicality I and Physicality II can be understood as a linear continuation of Relic, featuringhousehold electrical appliances of the present era. Through challenging these devices in unconventional and comical ways, Mak Ying Tung 2 hopes to illustrate our never-ending desires for machines to accomplish increasingly complicated tasks. In Physicality I, a stack of cheese is placed on a heating mattress that warps the shape of the cheese throughout the show. In Physicality II, two Dyson fans, one using a heating mode and the other using a cooling mode, work together to shift the color of thermal paper that is responsive to fluctuations in temperature.

The absurdity of the tasks assigned to machines evolves in Mr. Fool Wants to Move the Mountains, which involves several robotic vacuum cleaners. In this large-scale installation, the robots are challenged to remove “mountains” of golden sand. Similar to the traditional Chinese folktale, these robots will succeed eventually. The ultimate completion of the task suggests that humans undoubtedly will create something more capable than themselves.

Such desire for machines and our inseparable relationship with gadgets are represented in the last installation of the show, Running On Taobao. This work is created from images the artist found on the well-known e-commerce platform Taobao, which show people running on larger-than-life treadmills. These images depict the machines as the protagonists while the humans are degraded to appendages. The connotation the artist reads into these images is a reversal in the relationship of consumers and the consumed, revealing a craving that humans not only want to be taken over by machines, but also to become one with them.

Title: i-Learn: The algorithmic delusion
Call Type: Fellowship (US$10,000)
Application Deadline: All applications must be submitted electronically by 23:59 (Beijing Time), Monday, April 30^th , 2018 via http://fellowship.chronusartcenter.org
Notification of Selection: Applicants will be informed about their application status by the end of May 2018.
Fellowship Starts: Summer 2018 (start dates negotiable with reason).
< OVERVIEW >

This year Chronus Art Center (CAC) opens its Lab for the 3-month research and creation fellowship. This program is designed to host one international artist and researcher of extraordinary talents in the area of new media art in order to conduct research and creation at Chronus Art Center (CAC), Shanghai. The 2018 Research and Creation Fellowship aims to foster global exchange while advancing the discourse and practice of new media art, and contribute to CAC’s research and educational mission as well as the institution’s future collection.

< i-Learn: The algorithmic delusion >

In the age of artificial intelligence (AI), the more complex mental layers rendered over the raw perception of the world are no longer exclusive human abilities. As AI emerges with its learning procedures it evermore displays human-like characteristics of a sort of cognition such as: the interpretation of reality, natural language processing, understanding of the visual landscape, among others.

Our common understanding of technological developments is that it mirrors natural evolution and therefore AI is the pinnacle of human creativity. Nonetheless, on their current capacity these AIs present all sort of errors and limitations. On one hand, we can easily argue that these are the result of an early state of development or limited hardware, but another possibility could be that these constraints are just a simple reflection of our own limited understanding of reality. In other words, we create and train these autonomous and intelligent systems to see and understand the world as we humans do and reject all of their glitches as mere technical malfunctioning, while another possibility could be that the errors themselves are part of the human-like acquired features of these machines, hence rendering existence in more dubious ways. This presents a fundamental problem if we consider the role these systems currently play in our lives, financial system, health industry, war, online-dating, social networking and autonomous vehicles among many other functions and applications.

i-Learn: The algorithmic delusion is a research and creation opportunity for artists working in and thinking of various fields of artificial intelligence such as: machine vision, natural language processing, cognitive computing, swarm intelligence, robotics, and any other forms of intelligent technological systems.

< ELIGIBILITY >

• This fellowship is open to international artists and researchers of all nationalities.
• Applicants should be able to use English as working language.
• Applicants must not be currently enrolled in degree-granting academic programs, with the exception of PHD candidates who are aiming to develop technical work within the scope of the fellowship.
• Applicants are expected to show demonstrable success in previous development of related projects at this scale.
• Individuals and collectives are eligible to apply. In either case, please detail in your application how technical and creative responsibilities will be met.

The selected Fellow will be expected to work at CAC’s laboratory with the research and creation team on a range of activities including active contribution to the larger CAC community, collaborative partnership with other fellows, leading research initiatives, educational programs and public engagement, and developing current or future research areas for the organization. Projects, including prototypes, documentation, and work-in-progress, will be presented to the public at Chronus Art Center.

ABOUT <CAC_LAB>

<CAC_LAB> is a space dedicated to the inquiry of present-day matters regarding art, design, science, technology and their impact on global contemporary culture and society. Through artistic practice, technological tools and research methodology, we enable creative processes that result in works of art of high production and academic value. <CAC_LAB> is a space of flux which encourages artistic practice as a generator of new knowledge, a territory where art and science converge into a contemporary and experimental field of academic research; free from mainstream cultural thought, technological stress and economical diversions.

More info at:

http://lab.chronusartcenter.org

CAC:

http://www.chronusartcenter.org/en/

Previous fellows:

http://lab.chronusartcenter.org/fellowship/?lang=en

< FELLOWSHIP SUPPORT >

This Fellowship is a chance for international artists and researchers to engage and learn from the art, technological and entrepreneurial communities of Shanghai. The selected Fellow will be offered a total amount of USD$10,000 for a 3 month deep-immersion period; including artist fees, living expenses, and materials. In addition, our lab facilities and tools are available for the fellow’s needs. These include but are not limited to: OPTITRACK motion capture system, Laser-cutter, 3D printer, band-saw, sander-belt, press drills, all sorts of hand tools, a variety of electronic components, Arduino, raspberryPis, an oculus rift DK2 headset, Surface Mount Infrared soldering station, soldering irons and other prototyping tools.

For international Fellows, CAC is happy to provide necessary paperwork and advice to help expedite the process of securing his/her visa, travel and accommodation in Shanghai. All the expenses will be covered within the amount of the fellowship.

During the 3-month program, CAC will work closely with the selected Fellow to see his/her project realized and offer program support in developing work for performances, events, seminars, exhibitions, or other public and educational programming during the term of the Fellowship. CAC will also facilitate joint presentations alongside community partners, host conversations with the artists and display works in progress; revealing the creative process as it happens.

< APPLICATION GUIDELINE >

Please fill out the online application form and submit it with the necessary attachments via http://fellowship.chronusartcenter.org. No email submissions will be taken into account.

< EVALUATION CRITERIA >

Applications will be reviewed and the final decision, including interviews, will be made by CAC’s International Advisory Board comprised of leading scholars, artists and museum professionals. Acceptance is based on quality and visionary potential, and most importantly, the potential of the project proposal to contribute to CAC_LAB’s broader research scope.

Applicants are also expected to show demonstrable success in previous development of related work at this scale. Successful applicants will outline clear goals, milestones and time-lines.

Please send further inquires to

fellowship@chronusartcenter.org

HOW Art Museum (No 1, Lane 2277, Zuchongzhi Road, Shanghai, China), Jan 20–May 13, 2018

What makes exhibitions relevant?!—There can be many reasons of course, but most important is that the exhibition strikes a chord with the audience. Like a musician playing an instrument, an exhibition can excite an audience transforming them into an orchestra of participants. That was the nature of Fluxus. Two of the art movement’s most important advocates can now be experienced—“seen” would not be the appropriate term—at the How Art Museum in Shanghai.

There are some remarkable circumstances which surround this exhibition. Firstly, originally scheduled to be the inaugural exhibition for the museum last April, the show had to be postponed, because of the Chinese government’s stance on Korea due to the THAAD missile defense shield. Of course, we don’t need to mention that Paik was a nationalized US-Citizen, who had received his education and started his career in West Germany. Now that the artworks by Nam June Paik are sanctioned again, secondly the work of Joseph Beuys in all its super-charged social engagement begins to dazzle anew in the light of the current development of China’s “New Era”, shedding light on a historical period in the (West) Germany of the 1970s and 80s. Thirdly and also very remarkably, all the works on display by Joseph Beuys are part of the private collection of Zheng Hao, the museum’s founder, who acquired the 400+ strong collection from the German collector Michael Berger (who so happens to be the father of a prominent curator based in Hong Kong), making it the biggest and most profound collection of Joseph Beuys in Asia.

The exhibition with the poetic and prophetic title: “Lettres du Voyant: Joseph Beuys and Nam June Paik” has been curated in three parts by Gregor Jansen, from Düsseldorf (Joseph Beuys’s city) and Kim Nam Soo. The first part on the museum’s ground floor features some of the most beautiful video sculptures in Paik’s oeuvre including a few that are direct results of Paik’s long-term collaboration with Charlotte Moorman in New York, some of them direct homages to John Cage and also Joseph Beuys.

Paik, who was the youngest of five children from a family in the steel and textile businesses, had gone to Germany in 1956 to continue his studies in musicology and composition. From 1958 to 1963, he was working in the “Studio for Electronic Music” at WDR (West German Radio) with the famous German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, eventually developing the concept of “action music” (which involved the eventual destruction of musical instruments as part of the performance).

On June 5, 1965 Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal, Germany hosted the last big FLUXUS event in Germany that brought together the movement’s most significant artists for a 24-hour performance where Nam June Paik famously declared: “All our lives TV has been attacking us, now we are striking back.” All night he was performing music by John Cage, Morton Feldman, La Monte Young and Beethoven and in the morning he deployed his life-size female-featured robot “K-456” to Wuppertal’s Moltkestrasse for his first “Robot Opera”. The automaton could move, speak, shake its head and even “defecate” by spilling beans onto the streets. “K-456” in many ways was the precursor to a lot of Paik’s later video sculptures.

Joseph Beuys was also performing that night. Sitting on a small wooden box, he had his “staple” of performing objects with him that he interacted with continuously for the entire duration of the 24 hours: a record player, tape recorder, loudspeaker, an alarm clock, a zinc box, a fat cone, some felt, and two stopwatches. Eventually, he was reaching for an object of his own invention, a “mutual spade” (Gemeinschaftsspaten)—a spade furnished with two handles, which could be used by two people simultaneously … In the audience most likely was Michael Berger, who like Paik at the time, lived in Wuppertal; they were friends with each other—Fluxus was very much about community.

The second part of the exhibition focuses on the two artists’ life-long collaboration after they first met in 1962 in Cologne. At the center of this section is both artists’ joint concert at the Seibu Museum in Tokyo in 1984. For both artists, it was sort of a culmination point of their 20-year-long collaboration. What drove them together was definitely spiritual. Paik was a Buddhist and Beuys a self-made syncretic, whose artistic powers always flowed from deep missionary aspirations on behalf of a “religion” (just to use a larger term for any kind of belief system) of his own making. Particularly Beuys’ concept of “Eurasia”—a combination of Europe and Asia—had been essential for the long-term engagement of these artists with one another. As part of his spiritual, social, political and artistic thinking the fusion or reconciliation of Europe and Asia fulfilled a deep existential need of Beuys; to heal and lead not only himself, but all of humankind. Already in 1963, he formed a political party under the name EURASIA — years before he would get involved in the newly-founded Green Party in Germany where he became their candidate for the European Parliament.

The third part of the exhibition allows a very detailed view into all of Beuys’ activities and thought. The collection of the How Art Museum is focused on multiples: objects, leaflets, documents, statements, manifestos, photographs and remains from performances—in other words, the collection is focused on the public Beuys. He was so prolific an artist, that besides the constant stream of activities that are on display at the How Museum, he was also an accomplished sculptor and an observant draftsman. One could argue that within himself he harbored at least three different artist personae.

Sculpture, of course, was one of his key interests and one of his accomplishments was to redefine the term. “Social Sculpture” — the German term Beuys used, was “Soziale Plastik”, adding a sense of plasticity and hence a focus on the transformational aspect of sculpture to the term — was geared towards applying artistic knowledge and strategies towards reshaping society by means of artistic intervention into everyday life, which was a revolutionary idea by 1960s and 70s standards. Closely linked to another important term that Beuys coined “Erweiterer Kunstbegriff” or “Expanded Conception of Art”; it was the time when artists took to the streets to challenge the people’s aesthetic, social and political preconceptions. One famous example “7000 Eichen—Stadtverwaldung statt Stadtverwaltung” was Beuys contribution to documenta 7 in 1982. He dumped 7,000 basalt stones in front of the Fridericianum, with the pledge to plant 7,000 trees in the upcoming years, each accompanied by one of those stones; it was the time when Germany, like China today, was heavily polluted by its own industries. As a result, the German forests were dying, causing a high level of anxiety which eventually led to the formation of the Green Party. These efforts that have paid off and provided Germany with the political dividend of being one of the most ecologically sensitive nations in the world today.

Beuys was interested in dividends and more importantly in “Kapital” — “capital”, economic cycles, advocating some sort of, as he called it, “spiritual capital” which needs to be exhausted. To that end he worked himself to exhaustion, transforming “spiritual capital” into art and by his own definition into “social sculpture”. He did that in an exemplary way, putting himself into a position, one which he expected everybody else to assume. “Jeder Mensch ein Künstler” — “every (wo-)man (is) an artist” (for lack of a more appropriate translation) — entrusting everybody and their creative energies. The rallying cry of the day was to release the people’s energies from the orthodoxy and oppression still very much felt in Germany in the aftermath of the fascist past.

The presentation of Beuys’ works is elegantly divided up into different sections introducing the viewer to the different aspects of Beuys’ philosophy with ample examples. Anybody who wishes to study this historical period of Germany through art and politics will find rich examples with just enough guidance to be able to enter some of the most arcane discussions of that time. There is much to be learned from this flashback and plenty of inspiration for an art engaged with creating a more social society.

Participation, as mentioned before, was the call of the hour—a spirit that is not only present in the collection, but also the presentation. There are some objects in the show that are—what would we call it—dithering, loitering. There is a broom leaning against one wall. Brooms are prevalent throughout Beuys’ oeuvre, as a “symbol”, or more precisely symbolic and functional tool to metaphorically clean, or cleanse, a particular social, political, artistic context in a concrete location. Obviously that could be a subject for a longer essay in itself. But to cut it short: the broom in question is comprised of a broomstick, which has been furnished with medallions, that traditionally were collected by recreational hikers in the German-speaking countries, to be put on their walking sticks as proof of their sojourns. However, additionally, the broom had been enhanced at one time with a leather strap for easy hiking: just throw the broom over your shoulders and go! However, the actual broom bristles seemed to be of much more recent provenance, raising doubt about the originality of the piece. The broom does not feel “Beuys”.

There are two more incidents in the exhibition where similar concerns could be raised (I will leave it to the audience to figure it out) — but then again why bother? Fluxus was all about sharing and participating. Some additions might have been made by the previous owner, some by whoever installed the show . . . Though the methodology might not be in line with conventional theories of conservation, it is certainly in line with the spirit of Fluxus! That, we cannot begrudge them.

Refresh, Sacrifice, New Hygiene, Infection, Clean, Robot, Air, Housekeeping, www.ayibang.com, Cigarette, Dyson, Modern People

“Refresh, Sacrifice, New Hygiene, Infection, Clean, Robot, Air, Housekeeping, www.ayibang.com, Cigarette, Dyson, Modern People” is an exhibition by the Taiwanese artist Chou Yu-Cheng, to be presented in November at Edouard Malingue Gallery, Shanghai. The name of the project came about from the juxtaposition of several keywords, referencing Jean Baudrillard’s interest in modern objects—especially new objects—in The System of Objects, while at the same time tending towards the poetic.

With its multiple shifts and evolutions, modernization has impacted our cognitive faculties. From within such multifaceted and wide-ranging phenomena, “hygiene” becomes key, here referring to the Taiwanese slang phrase, “without knowledge and without hygiene” (referring to someone dumb, dirty, and with no standards). Relative to knowledge, hygiene is relatively abstract and yet seems to possess a yardstick by which to gauge modernization—and from there on works out new codes and protocols for objects and events. Though these can all be encapsulated by the analyses of capitalism, this project does not expound on the history and economics of modern hygiene epistemologically but rather borrows from “hygiene” to elaborate on and shape artistic expression: melding forms of tradition and of the contemporary, and even endeavoring to develop its aesthetics through more hybrid and plural forms.

Different from a usual purifier, the Dyson Pure range of purifying fans powerfully projects and circulates airflow, simultaneously capturing gases and 99.95% of particles as small as PM0.1. Air becomes an apparent, but invisible, crucial presence in the exhibition since the artist believes he can produce better air through “machinery” and attempts to generate new ideas through readymades, at the same time making the image of the readymade conspicuous. Take the example of the gallery in the present day: a modern image and modus operandi provides the space in which to display artworks, while the adjustments and conditioning of air, cold and warm, clearly constitute an indispensable element of modernity. The ways in which the gallery has evolved in terms of its equipment or infrastructure have become a subject matter outside that of the artistic, all the while echoing and reflecting the broader surrounding phenomena of modernization.

Chou Yu-Cheng is adept at the dual manipulation of aesthetics and the social. He focuses on the workflows undergirding visual production, paying attention to the ways whereby alternative modes of operation and reflection are generated within a pre-existing system of things. He creates corresponding alternative benefits in “atypical cooperation” while highlighting the problems with a given reality. His modes of creation range widely over all kinds of mediums but mainly center around “mix and match”—through his role as a “go-between” and through individuals, enterprises, and institutional structures he views as “subjects”. By manipulating “workflow”—such as diversions, transferrals, or disparities in time or place—the projected outcomes are generated, forming a reciprocal dialectic between origins and results.

“Refresh, Sacrifice, New Hygiene, Infection, Clean, Robot, Air, Housekeeping, www.ayibang.com, Cigarette, Dyson, Modern People” has paintings, sculptures, and performances at its core. The use of brands, machinery (robot), and app operating systems (among others) shakes up formal boundaries while at the same time extends continuously from the tenor of the artist’s past oeuvre—such as the use of readymades and brands, paintings, on-site labor, among others, or the two-stage working model for the exhibition (where the first stage is the regular exhibition period, with the second stage lasting two weeks, in an empty gallery space, leaving behind only the cleaning equipment and the display of the cleaning service app).

The project series initiated in 2015, “Chemical Gilding, Keep Calm, Galvanise, Pray, Gradient, Ashes, Manifestation, Unequal, Dissatisfaction, Capitalise, Incense Burner, Survival, Agitation, Hit, Day Light.”, initiated for Chou Yu-Cheng a creative vocabulary at odds with his past oeuvre. With a more plural, complex form of output, a linear linguistic logic is disposed of; by maintaining a few threads from his past works, this endeavors to refurbish the artist’s individual intelligence in the plastic arts.

Chou Yu-Cheng is a highly acclaimed artist who lives and works in Taipei. Recent solo shows include Taipei Fine Art Museum, Taipei; Kaohsiung Fine Art Museum, Kaohsiung; Kuandu Museum, Taipei; Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Colorado. Group exhibitions include Asian Art Biennial, Taiwan; Queens Museum, NY; Taipei Biennial, Taipei; Mücsarnok Museum, Budapest; China National Convention Center, Beiljing; Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei. Chou held a residency at the Chinese Centre For Contemporary Art (CFCCA), Manchester in 2013 and received the Taipei Art Award, Taiwan in 2012 as well as the Taishin Annual Visual Art Award, Taiwan in 2011. Chou’s work is held in multiple museum collections including the Hong-Gah Museum, Taiwan and CFCCA, UK.

The title of this exhibition, Do Androids Dream of Electric Cows, sprang from a dream I dreamt a year ago. After googling around, I found out it is very similar to the plot of the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the basis of the film Blade Runner. The virtual environment of VR in the work comes from my vision of the details the novel didn’t care to elaborate.

Androids pose an ontological question concerning the real and the virtual : can androids perceive the world as humans do? Like other sci-fi questions, it is about not so much imaging the future as revealing the present life. The novel takes us to a cold and gloomy Los Angeles of thick apocalyptic air that has some striking similarities to today’s world: serious environmental pollution pushes humans to the brink of extinction, and the survivors tries to perfect their robot pals (electric sheep) to infinitely diminish the gap between various functions of the androids and those of humans. Thus arises the problem of equality between the androids and the humans. In fact such a question have occurred to us in the human history, only the foreign side being substituted from androids to aliens, the colonized people, household AI, etc. The theoretical basis of such questions is: no matter how low the value of a being is, it has its unquestionable right of deciding for itself. Nevertheless, the virtual-worlds versions of ourselves in this digital era are starkly different from androids, because those versions are our identities in the virtual worlds, inseparably connected to ourselves. They are part of the reality, as well as an extension of the reality.

This exhibition tries to explore the delicate umbilical cord connecting art and technology, and the ontology of VR. It displaces the labyrinth constructed from one-sided mirror and the VR spaces, and audience will walk inside the physical space of the labyrinth, wearing VR glasses. The setup of the VR space is not fixed, which is different from the physical labyrinth. The physical labyrinth imposes restrictions on the moving of visitors, so that the rift between the virtual space and the real space be enlarged and studied. And the visitors who wears VR glasses and fumbles their ways in the maze, together with the maze itself, constitute a view. The metaphors of class and power hidden in the digital VR technology are revealed through watching and being watched.

The puzzling yet electrifying experience in my VR maze, abstracted imagery produced by my algorithm in De Shan Shui, they all constitute to my fascination with establishing and breaking rules and standards. They welcome me to an abstracted baseball field. I team up with players on the other bases. My work is the trace of sound of batting, and the frictions and dusts from oversliding. I behold a sense of the Impossibility of Improvisation, which is variation arises from standardizations. Here, I expect the astonishing of unanticipated.

About the Artist
Chen Baoyang was born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province in 1989. He graduated from Columbia University with a master’s degree in 2016. His solo exhibitions include Do Androids Dream of Electric Cows (Gallery Yang, Beijing, China, 2017), The Framework (Cloud Gallery, New York, U.S.A, 2016). He has participated in group exhibitions at a number of institutions and galleries, including the BRIC (New York, U.S.A), The Dedalus Foundation (New York, U.S.A), OpenHand OpenSpace (London, England), Liu Haisu Art Museum (Shanghai, China), Los Angles Center for Digital Art (Los Angles, U.S.A), Wuhan Art Museum (Wuhan, China), National Art Museum of China (Beijing, China), Museum of China Academy of Art (Hangzhou, China), Agora Gallery (New York, U.S.A), Gallerie Huit (Arles, France), Chambers Fine Art (Chelsea, New York, U.S.A), and Wook Choi Gallery (New York, U.S.A).

Insects are a reference of network culture, from talk of hive minds and distributed networks to algorithms that function like ant colonies.

They are everywhere and they can be perceived as quite the alien intelligence; six-legged, with their numerous eyes, capacities of motion and sensation so different from our own. No wonder science fiction has been inspired by insects. But also other fields, like robotics as well as network design. Insects are more than creepy-crawly bugs; they are also a central reference point of so much of network culture, from talk of hive minds and distributed networks to algorithms that function like ant colonies; some refer to our cognitive capitalist practices as “pollen society”.

It is in this context that I talk of insect media — the entanglement of notions borrowed from biology with high tech technology; understanding media culture through such seemingly simple examples of life which however outperform humans in so many ways. The idea of insect media is then a theoretical as well as a cultural historical exercise to understand the long exchange between discourses of technology and discourses of biology.

Science fiction is a good example. If you want to be futuristic, you do not anymore fantasize in terms of humans and animals,or  androids and humanoids; instead preferably insects and other non-human animals. This is the lesson one gets even from a glimpse of past years of science-fiction discourse, such as Ian McDonald’s The Dervish House. The nanotechnological future Istanbul is pitched as the 21^st century version of the Silk Road node, defined by its booming nanotech cluster of businesses and tech companies. The Cronenbergian 1980s fantasies of human-insect–hybrid (as in the Fly) are superseded by the fiction version of spider robotics and insectoid-drones part of security and surveillance regimes in Istanbul plagued by various suicide sects.

“What is Insect Media?”cover (courtesy of the Jussi Parikka)
《什么是昆虫媒体？》封面（图片由Jussi Parikka提供）

First edition of Gläserne Bienen (1957).

It’s not that swarms themselves are new. Their history goes back to early twentieth century research into “superorganisms” and the collective mind that for instance ant nests seemed to exhibit. This is the pre-digital version we are being offered now of the internet society: a world of connectivity and emergent intelligence. Indeed, a whole longer history of cultural techniques of swarming is to be considered in relation to the actual technological development in smart robotics. Fiction of Ernst Jünger is again emblematic of a certain epistemological framing of media “development”, as already in his Gläserne Bienen, The Glass Bees (1957) he pitched a future of nanorobotics. In Jünger’s vision, this was tied to a becoming-obsolescent of the actual animal worlds, which corresponds to the analyses of such writers as Akira Mizuta Lippit concerning the dual bind of modern urban technological landscapes and animals: disappearance of rodents and other non-humans is paralleled by the animalisation of media, which seems to be clear from even a cursory representational analysis of early media, so fascinated by agility of animal bodies as well as animation worlds of rodents and animal farms.

To follow the ideas by Lippit, the intertwining of animals and technology was an inherent part of the modernization and emergence of technical media at the end of the nineteenth century. The disappearance of animals from urban cultures of technical media was paralleled with the appearance of animals in various discourses from media (e.g. cinema) to modern subjectivity (e.g. psychoanalysis). As Lippit notes, from metonymies of nature animals became embedded in the new industrial environment, where the idioms and histories of numerous technological innovations from the steam engine to quantum mechanics bear the traces of an incorporated animality. James Watt and later Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Walt Disney, and Erwin Schrödinger, among other key figures in the industrial and aesthetic shifts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, found uses for animal spirits in developing their respective machines, creating in the process a series of fantastic hybrids.

There is a whole media zoology. This term is used in a parallel sense to that of a “zootechnical” approach to elaborate the wider entanglement of communication practices in relation to animal research – and in addition, as we will see below, to a wider media ecological stance. Media zoology refers to this cultural historical situation in which we design and understand high tech media culture through animal worlds.

But of course there is more to this grounding of media zoology than looking at media through its content and what is on the screen. Indeed, the worlds of such fiction as The Dervish House remind us that media as technologies – as abstract, yet embodied, as concrete, but massively distributed in wireless and network age – work much more efficiently when they are not modelled on the human form. This is why marine biologists turned US military and security advisors, talking about octopuses make international news. I am referring to the University of Arizona marine ecologist Rafe Sagarin advising on learning about decentralised organisational methods from the tentacle marine creatures. The handbook for such experimental ideas is of course the media philosopher Vilem Flusser‘s Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: A Treatise, with a Report by the Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste.

In terms of media theory, this relates bypassing of some of the traditions of theory of technology from Ernst Kapp to Marshall McLuhan. A lot of them have tried to suggest that we always design media as models of the human and as extensions of Man. Instead, as for instance Siegfried Zielinski has argued too media are much weirder in their relations to the world.

Hence, in this spirit of media archaeology and even media variantology, there is another tradition of media theory that we can excavate. This alternative takes aboard animals in various forms and starts the theoretisation of media from a different set of affordances. Indeed, when talking of media ecology, one should not forget the early writings of Harold Innis, which feature such literally ecological themes as rivers, fur and beavers as well as the more conceptual takes on “medium” that track its history in between biology and technical media. Reading through early ethological and biological literature from 19^th and early 20^th century, one discovers a range of attempts to pitch a cross-discplinary approach to for instance insect lives, which resembles almost an attempt to understand the tiny animals through “cultural” techniques: the life of insects is one of dance, acoustics, communication and housing, as for instance in J.H.Fabre’s Social Life in the Insect World. Such dilemmas of methodological and theoretical interest are expressed by William Morton Wheeler, a pioneer in the study of social life of animals and a writer on “emergence” way before it was captured as part of complexity theory. In early 20^th century, Wheeler lamented the restriction of the notion of the social and its scope: “Unfortunately, also, the science of comparative sociology has remained undeveloped. It has, in fact, fallen between two stools, because the sociologists have left the study of the animal and plant societies to the biologists and the latter have been much less interested in these societies as such than in the structure or individual activities of their members.” What if his willingness to expand social sciences to animal and plant lives could be taken as a further step to suggest the same with our media related investigations? If so many of the early research into animal psychology and formations of the social could be seen, anachronistically, as tongue in cheek mapping of cultural techniques of non-human life, perhaps we can more seriously suggest an extended mediatic approach to animals but also other elements of the non-human ecology – organic and non-organic?

Indeed, we need approaches such as “insect media” that rigourously track the cultural, historical and mediatic contexts in which technological media culture develops. This is even more urgent now, in the midst of the current ecocatastrophe: electronic waste is one of the growing problems, and all of our high tech electronic gadgets carry with them toxic material. Cloud computing demands huge amounts of energy. Media technologies are themselves embedded in ecological consequences, not just animal metaphors. Perhaps ecology and animals are better and more ethical ways to understand technical media culture?

Dr. Jussi Parikka is participating our seminar from far, as a ‘mediated mediatheorist’.

Dr Jussi Parikka is Professor at the Winchester School of Art (University of Southampton) and Docent at University of Turku. His various books have addressed a wide range of topics relevant to a critical understanding of network culture, aesthetics and media archaeology of contemporary technologies. The books include the media ecology-trilogy Digital Contagions (2007, 2nd. ed 2016), the award-winning Insect Media (2010) and most recently, A Geology of Media (2015), which addresses the environmental contexts of technical media culture.

In addition, Parikka has published such books as What is Media Archaeology (2012) and edited various books, recently Writing and Unwriting (Media) Art History (2015, with Joasia Krysa) on the Finnish media art pioneer Erkki Kurenniemi. He is also the co-editor of Across and Beyond: – A transmediale Reader on Post-digital Practices, Concepts, and Institutions (Sternberg Press, 2016, co-edited with Ryan Bishop, Kristoffer Gansing and Elvia Wilk).

http://jussiparikka.net

(Parikka’s text ‘Earth Forces’ will be published in Chinese later this fall in the OCAT Shenzhen’s publication on the exhibition ‘Digging a Hole in China’ (2016). His book ‘Anthrobscene’(2014) is under Creative Commons license – might someone be interested in  translating and publishing it.)