Alain Capullo, Hello, 1969
From global networks to symbiosis
Focus on the exhibition Worlds of Networks (on view until April 25) at the Center Pompidou in Paris Regarding the status of the concept of "network" in contemporary society - has everything today become a network? Is the Internet promoting an ideal "decentralized" Internet world, or is it leading to more serious resource imbalances and information monitoring? What enlightenment can the ecological network of nature bring to the diverse symbiosis of humans and non-humans? The exhibition presents multiple reflections on these issues through nearly 100 works by nearly 60 artists, architects and designers from the 1940s to the present. The narrative of the
exhibition begins with artists’ conception of the “global network” from the late 1940s to the 1960s. At that time, the " World War II " ended, and the disintegrated world picture called for mankind to establish new connections and exchanges. The birth of cybernetics (cybernetics) provided a theoretical basis for the realization of an interconnected system. The exhibition presents the 28-year utopian city plan "New Babylon" by Constant, a member of the European Cobra Group (CoBrA), which began in 1956 and pioneered a growing, labyrinthine decentralized city. structures that could eventually form a network system covering the entire Earth. Also on display is the 1969 work "Hello" by Allan Kaprow, the pioneer of American Happening art, which used the advanced closed-circuit television system at the time to record four participants in different locations. Real-time connection, asking them to say "Hello, I see you" when they see themselves or others on TV, can be described as a pioneering work that transfers art from real situations to cyberspace.
Constant, "Spatiovore", 1959
The birth of the Internet in the 1980s made the ideal of global connection a reality. However, along with freedom and openness came people's deep dependence on online life. and information technology’s sweeping surveillance of the public and private spheres. Mika Tajima's recent work "Human Synth (Paris)" [Human Synth (Paris), 2021] uses high-tech to collect big data of Parisian posts Twitter, analyze the emotions in the language and generate real-time changing colors and flow rates The digital smoke cloud is a monitoring of the contemporary collective emotional state, and also contains the confusion and weirdness of ancient divination rituals. Simon Denny's "Crypto Futures Game of Life Board Overprint Collage: Twists Turns, 2018" uses a sculptural collage to present the inner workings and mechanisms of the blockchain. Social impact, and explore why this technology, which once carried people's utopian ideals of security, openness, speed, decentralization, and alternative models when it was born in 2008, has become a technology full of exploitation, fraud, and illegal transactions today. A "cult"-like existence.
Mika Tajima, "The Synthesis of Man (Paris)", 2021
Ecologic Logic Studio, "Physarum polycephalum Biocomputer - "Physarum Utopia" Project", 2018
exhibition will also reflect on the Internet Expand to natural ecosystems that are broader than human settlements, and try to imagine a kind of "all living and non-living things" in the complex network of multi-species symbiosis, as the contemporary philosopher Timothy Morton said Internet status". Among them, the spider web series created by Tomás Saraceno in 2017 is a powerful manifestation of cross-species collaboration: the artist made a pair of orange cloud spiders spin a web for two weeks, and then made a web spider in the web. This network is connected for seven days, forming a complex and exquisite decentralized network paradigm. The London architectural group "ecoLogic Studio" is dedicated to studying the learning and communication capabilities of Physarum polycephalum . In the creation commissioned for this exhibition, they simulated this single-cell organism through the neural network algorithm. Perception, try to think about the urban structure of Paris from a non-human perspective, and explore the possibility of a symbiotic network in the "post-Anthropocene".
"The World of the Internet" exhibition view
"Putting humanity back in its proper place"
The exhibition "Reclaim the Earth" (on view until September 4) at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (Palais de Tokyo) was presented during our discussions with Establish new connections between the environment to deal with the current crises that humans are facing. In the eyes of the scientific committee composed of curators and researchers in anthropology, ecology and ecofeminism (ecofeminism), humans are not residents on the earth, but an integral part of the earth; land is not just A natural zone or agricultural resource, but a network of relationships between minerals, plants, animals and humans. By presenting the creations of 14 artists from different cultural backgrounds, the exhibition examines issues such as the body and land, species extinction, indigenous knowledge inheritance, social justice, and group healing from the perspective of relevance, and strives to bid farewell to the dichotomy of nature/culture. , "Putting Humanity Back in Its Proper Place"
Karabin Film Group, "Family and Zombies", 2021
Aboriginal people, who only account for about 5% of the world's population, live in areas that constitute 80% of the world's diverse species. Residents' perceptions of nature receive special attention in the exhibition. The work "The Family and the Zombie" (2021) by the Karrabing Film Collective, a group of more than 30 Aboriginal filmmakers in northern Australia, shows a group of people playing in a green space that is increasingly swallowed up by industrial debris. of Aboriginal children, the plot of the parody zombie movie is a metaphor for the haunting of colonial history and the overreach of consumerism. Megan Cope, an Aboriginal artist from Moreton Island in Queensland, used abandoned mining and industrial equipment and local natural materials to create five large musical instrument sculptures, whose sounds simulate the endangered Australian bird Long-tailed Stone Plover. The artist regards it as the wail of the endangered earth, hence the title "Untitled (Death Song)" [Untitled (Death Song), 2020].
Megan Koppe, Untitled (Death Song), 2020
Asinaga, Stone Works (Ahurili), 2018
Some artists seek to bridge nature by revisiting the lost heritage of their ancestors /Cultural rupture dichotomy. Canadian Inuit artist Asinnajaq has long been committed to breaking the narrow view of traditional art that expresses the Arctic Circle as a barren and cold barren land. The performance video "Stone Works (Ahurili)" was exhibited. [Rock Piece (Ahuriri), 2018] goes deep into the history, rituals and symbolic systems of Inuit art, and explores issues such as the relationship between the body and the land and the cycle of life and death. Iranian Canadian-born artist Abbas Akhavan’s ongoing sculpture series “Study for a Monument” since 2013 focuses on the war-torn indigenous people along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Plants are enlarged and sculpted from metal materials that were once used to cast weapons, tools and monuments. The works are displayed in the exhibition hall and satirize the upright monuments.
Thu-Van Thu-Van, "From Green to Orange - Invasive Alien Species", 2022
Amakaba x Olaniyi Design Studio, "Nono: Temple of Soil", 2022
Vietnamese-French artist Thu-Van Tran’s photography series “From Green to Orange” (2022) is about how the loss of species caused by colonialism reverberated in the Western world: plants from the original tropics were transplanted by colonizers to Western greenhouses as a Exotic decorative plants have inadvertently invaded the local natural ecology with an "anti-colonial" momentum, causing soil changes and the extinction of native plants. The building "Nono: Soil Temple" (Nono: Soil Temple), a collaboration between the mind-body healing institution Amakaba and the Olaniyi Studio, is located in the Amazon rainforest in French Guiana. Participants are invited to return to the sacred womb of Mother Earth, where through a series of chants, dances and prayers, the connection between human consciousness and natural ecology is awakened, and the power of soil to heal, transform, nourish and release is awakened.
River system, inhuman voice
The 23rd Sydney Biennale (on view until June 13) takes the Latin root of "river" "rīvus" as its title, and explores the complex ecosystem of rivers all over the world. Starting from the exhibition, the creations of participating artists, architects, designers, scientists and indigenous communities are spread across multiple exhibition venues, intertwined into a dynamic network like a water system. "rīvus" is also the root of "rivalry". The exhibition pays special attention to the intertwined fate of humans and non-humans, and aims to connect the indigenous knowledge that regards non-humans as ancestral spirits with the contemporary understanding of animals, plants and animals. Natural resource empowerment.
Majetica Potage’s commissioned work is on view at the 23rd Sydney Biennale.
Giving the world’s rivers the status of exhibitors is a first for this Biennale. Through scattered images, it invites those who protect rivers. Aboriginal elders or environmentalists speak out on behalf of rivers, following the recent trend in many countries to grant legal personality to rivers, telling the story of each river and fighting for its right not to be polluted. Slovenian Slovenian artist Marjetica Potrc collaborated with Australian Verazulli Aboriginal Ray Woods to create paintings, videos and installations that originated from a European river and an Australian river. "conversation". The exhibition also includes the works of many indigenous individuals and communities along the river, whose collaborative methods, craftsmanship, ritual beliefs, cosmology and past and present records of the struggle for autonomy can all bring us enlightenment across borders.
Bernie Kraus and the Alliance of Visual Artists, "Animal Symphony", 2016
also has many works that try to connect the perceptions of humans, animals and plants. The Great Animal Orchestra, a collaboration between American soundscape ecology pioneer Bernie Krause and the London collective United Visual Artists, is based on the study of 15,000 animal species over the past 50 years. Field recording of sound creates an immersive audio-visual space. The audience can also watch the German-Dutch artist Diana Scherer use the root system of plants (what neurobiologists call the "brain of plants") in the experimental field-like "Entanglement" (2021). Cultivate various network forms. The "Pteridophilia" (2016-) series by Zheng Bo, an artist living in Hong Kong, China, envisions the intimacy and pleasure that breaks the boundaries of gender and species, opening up a new realm of "eco-queer".
Diana Scherer's "Entanglement" (2021) is on view at the 23rd Sydney Biennale
Zheng Bo's "Fern Love" (2016-ongoing) is on view at the 23rd Sydney Biennale
In addition, The exhibition's special publication "A Glossary of Water" includes many entries related to rivers and water bodies, from different angles to nature, sustainability, biodiversity, pollution and extinction, and indigenous knowledge. and other issues are linked together. The special project "Space In Between" invites exhibitors and relevant researchers to plan multiple walking routes for the audience. They can travel through various natural and urban landscapes while visiting different exhibition venues, arousing the intellectual and physical balance of the audience. A dual level of experience.
Special publication of the 23rd Sydney Biennale "Water Dictionary"
Alternative reality, dream of connection
Thao Nguyen Phan's solo exhibition of the same name held at Tate St Ives, UK (On display until May 2) It focuses on the videos, paintings and sculptures created by this young Vietnamese artist in the past five years. Almost all of them revolve around the Mekong River that connects many countries and connects different cultural traditions, social forms, The river of ecological environment and historical memory unfolds. Pan Taoruan is good at delving into urgent issues such as history, society and ecology from the dimensions of literature, folk tales and myths. She believes that where there are gaps and gaps in official historical writing, fiction and oral narratives from different time and space can provide some kind of "alternative" “alternative truth” reconnects us.
Pan Tao Ruan, "Dreams of March and August" (2018-ongoing) on view at Tate St Ives Gallery
"Dreams of March and August" on silk watercolor series from 2018 to present "Dream of March and August", Phan Tao Nguyen fictionalized a pair of Vietnamese brothers and sisters. The younger sister died of the famine in French Indochina during the Japanese occupation in 1945 (peasants were forced to eradicate food crops and plant non-edible cash crops instead, resulting in nearly two million people died in the area of the Red River Delta) and turned into hungry ghosts. The two were separated by Yin and Yang but still looked for each other, and only met in a vague dream. The brothers and sisters are named after the two poorest months of the year in the Vietnamese lunar calendar. Their works are displayed in a set of two, juxtaposed but separated, implying the disruption and disorder of the relationship between nature and kinship caused by man-made reasons. The 2019 three-channel video "Mute Grain" continues to tell the story of the brothers and sisters, and integrates the records in "Starved" (Starved) by Vietnamese writer To Hoai and the collection of the National Museum of History of Vietnam. Oral history, magical elements in Vietnamese folklore, and the language style of Japanese writer Kawabata Yasunari's "Collection of Palm Novels" form a rich texture for personal narration of lost history, and also point to the food crisis in the current "anti-globalization" situation. A serious threat faced by mankind.
Phan Tao Nguyen, "Silent Grain", video still, 2019
The 2019 single-channel video "Becoming Alluvium" focuses on the damage caused by human transformation of nature to the ecology and civilization along the Mekong River. , the story begins with the death of a pair of brothers in a dam collapse accident in Laos in 2018. In the reincarnations of later generations, the fate of the two people is intertwined with the flow of the Mekong River, through Tagore's "The Gardener", Duras The vortex of words and images in "The Lover", Calvino's "Invisible City" and Khmer folk tales, daily experiences and mythical epics are densely woven into the images like water patterns, transcending the traumatic memories of individuals and groups, and integrating into the human experience. The exploration of ultimate issues such as the relationship with the universe and nature, division and convergence, destruction and rebirth.
Phan Tao Nguyen, "Becoming Alluvial", video still, 2019 - ongoing
The exhibition also includes "First Rain, Brise Soleil" (First Rain, Brise Soleil), a commissioned work that Phan Tao Nguyen has been creating since 2021. , this three-channel video starts from the memory of a construction worker who built cement sunshade structures in Vietnam and Cambodia. The solid and orderly modern sunshade structure contrasts with the unbridled first rain, which marks the beginning of the monsoon. The beginning of the harvest season in Southeast Asia can also cause flood disasters. The intensification of floods in recent years is partly due to climate change caused by cement production. The second half of the work is a retelling of a tragic story about the love between a Vietnamese man and a Cambodian woman. The loss of love and lingering separation and hatred in the story are just like the nature and human power, lost history and modernization in Phan Tao Nguyen's works. Disruptions and entanglements between processes. The artistic language infiltrated by literature and fiction is full and dreamy, allowing us to glimpse the hope of connection and indulge in the ethereal hope.
* The pictures in this article are thanks to the artist and the Museum of Art Moderne/Centre de Creation industrielle, Paris ? Allan Kaprow Estate ? Estate of Nam June Paik ? Adagp, Paris, 2022 ? Droits re?serve?s ? Service de la documentation du Mnam Center Pompidou – Mnam-Cci / Dist Rmn-Gp; ? Fondation Constant / Adagp, Paris, 2022; Kayne Griffin Corcoran; Taro Nasu; ? Rc16, Urban Morphogenesis Lab, BPro UD, The Bartlett UCL, 2018 ? Droits re?serve?s; Bertrands Prévost; Palais de Tokyo (Aurélien Mole); Milani Gallery (Saul Steed); Almine Rech; 23rd Biennale of Sydney; Galerie Nordenhake; ? Luc Boegly; Maling Gallery; Tate (Sam Day)
# About the author#
Shen Boliang
Shen Boliang, an independent curator and writer, currently lives in Shanghai. Master of Arts in Museum Studies from New York University, and has studied the Gwangju Biennale International Curator Course and the University of AmsterdamWesternOccultismcourse. Received the Robert Bosch Foundation's "Hua De Boundless Walker" writing grant.His curatorial work focuses on the relationship between exhibitions and literary spaces. His most recent creative curatorial project is "Cold Night" curated at the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in 2017.
(the article comes from TANC)
