Ecological Integration

Beijing Media Art Biennale (BMAB) at CAFA Art Museum, Beijing, China
Curator: JIN Jun
Artists: Jonathan Monaghan, Ben Cullen Williams, Marc Lee, Ryoichi Kurokawa, Felicity Hammond, June Balthazard & Pierre Pauze, ULF Langheinrich, Liu Shiyuan, Shen Chaofang, Zhang Wenchao, Xu Yibo, Min Jiajian & Yu Borou, Qiu Yu, Zhang Yuyang, Liu Jiayu, Xie Yufan, NetDragon Websoft Inc.
https://www.cafamuseum.org/

CAFA Art Museum, Beijing

UNBOUND
New Wing Opening Exhibition of WU JU Contemporary Art Center

Curator Men Chieh-tsung is invited to curate this opening exhibition. Around the BANI era full of uncertainty and challenges that we are experiencing, she explores how our lives are reoriented and the issues of life unbounding from its boundaries. She invites 8 artists (groups) friends, including Feng Hao, Hu Weiyi, Jian Guorong, Liquid Dependencies Theory, Marc Lee, Shi Jinling, Ying Xinxun, Zeng Pu, to present artworks that interact with the locality context of Guiyang, including participatory bio-art, audiovisual art installation, embodied research-based art, real-time interactive installation, photography, painting, and socially engaged art.
The timing for the exhibition began when the new wing was prepared in the spring, when the sun's direct point is between the Tropic of Cancer and the equator. The changes in temperature and the biological world also affect people's mind, giving a strong sense of the subject moving in the coordinate system, as philosopher Simmel said, the position of people in the world is always between two boundaries, are we higher or lower? Wiser or more foolish? Broader or more limited? Better or worse? It is this boundary that makes life understandable and meaningful. Wandering between richness and certainty, after experiencing the pandemic and consumption downgrade, everyone is in urgent need to reorient after uncertainty, we start to "work is not as good as incense(go to the temple to pray)", on social media crazy capybara, emotional stability and relaxation is what we want, we are burnout of the merit society, just want to say no more rat race, another way to live out of ourselves, then in the pre-order meaning system gradually ineffective, how should we define the meaning of our lives? What other ways of playing are more sustainable? Will the world be better? What else is worth our care?
Guiyang got its name because the city was located on the sunny side of Gui Mountain. A wealthy river flows in front of the city. Since the Ming Dynasty, it has been a city of immigrants. Up to now, 18 ethnic groups have coexisted for generations. The diversity and richness of culture is astonishing. Their views on nature and life include the idea of cross-species symbiosis, which is enlightening for the metropolitan residents in a highly homogenized, anthropocentric culture. Longchang in southwest Guiyang is also the birthplace of Wang Yangming's Philosophy of the Mind, advocating that people do not "first knowledge, then action", but “the unity of knowledge and action”. Just like the poet Eliot looking for space-time coordinates in times of world turmoil, it inspires the courage of life:
“And what you thought you came for/ Is only a shell, a husk of meaning/ From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled/ If at all. Either you had no purpose/ Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured/ And is altered in fulfilment. There are other places Which also are the world’s end, ……/But this is the nearest, in place and time,/Now and in England.” (T.S. Eliot’s “Little Gidding" in "Four Quartets", written in 1942)
This exhibition brings us together from all over the world and says: Now, in Guiyang

Exhibited Artwork

Used to Be My Home Too

Real-time cartography

This experiment shows photos of animals, fungi and plants that are uploaded right now by unknown users to iNaturalist.org via mobile phone. On Google Earth, these are mapped at the exact location where they were photographed. In addition, taxonomically similar species that occurred in the same country and became extinct within the last 30 years are automatically added in real time via RedList.org. Used more …

Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich

G.MAP, Gwangju

CAFA Art Museum, Beijing