Page 214 - Contemporary Art and Old Masters

#SHANGHAIBIENNALE #BODIESOFWATER

Keynote speech: WATERSHED, NETWORK AND
PEDIGREE OF DECENTRALIZED TECHNOLOGY
Keynote Speaker: WANG HONGZHE
Panelists: YOU MI, MARINA OTERO VERZIER, SHI
QING, REUNION NETWORK, SUN XIAO XING

This panel expands on the image of bodies of water
into social dimensions and focuses on processes
of automation and latency. The interplay between
embodied automata and automated, dematerialized
human labor in late capitalism, characterized by
its mobilization of everything solid into fluidity,
leads us to the notion of latency, clogging and
Pu Yingwei, Dam Theater, 2020-2021, installation, video, painting, 700 ×
slowness. Under the sway of this liquid modernity, 600 × 500 cm, installation view at the 13th Shanghai Biennale PHASE 03:
as Zygmund Bauman terms it, we witness ever more AN EXHIBITION, 2021. Courtesy Power Station of Art, photo by Chen Hao.
atomized individuals and quantifiable selves. To
counterbalance this and re-interweave social tissues,
ReUnion Network and Sun Xiaoxing will propose ways Keynote speech: THE RIVER ENDS AS THE OCEAN
of recasting social relations in a new light through Keynote Speaker: ASTRIDA NEIMANIS AND CLARE
their socially-engaged artistic practices. BRITTON
Panelists: FEI DAWEI, ZHANG NIAN, XIANG
Astrida Neimanis, Clare Britton, and Aunty Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor, A ZAIRONG
River Ends as the Ocean: walk the tide out, 2021, performance, durational
public walk, photographic documentation, concertina book, silver castings
of objects collected on walks along the Cooks River, Sydney, alongside The sea embraces all rivers, which seems to be the
objects collected on a walk along the Yangtze and Huangpu rivers, end, but in fact, it is more like another beginning.
installation view at the 13th Shanghai Biennale PHASE 03: AN EXHIBITION, This may be the manifestation of the chaos and abyss
2021. Courtesy Power Station of Art, photo by Chen Hao.
of the ancient creation epic “The Height of Heaven”.
Water produces all things, contains all things, provides
convenience for all things, but takes nothing. Water
is also rapidly changing at the same time, gathering
damp and strange things all in one. Water is still the
mother of heaven and earth, which is not single-
minded, unbiased, equal and unpredictable. This
lecture takes time back to the beginning of antiquity,
looking back at the original sacred water, responding
to the previous group of speakers’ speculations on the
end, looking back on the beginning, clouding time and
space, and going against the current.

214 WORLD of ART