Time: 2015.12.06,14:00 - 15:45
Speaker: SHEN Xin
Language: Chinese
Venue: Chronus Art Center
Address:Building 18, No 50 Moganshan Road, Shanghai
Chronus Art Center is pleased to present a talk brought by SHEN Xin, recipient of CAC Fellowship for Chinese Artist 2015, titled Against Guest/Host Dispositions. SHEN will talk about her work produced during her residency at CCVA Birmingham School of Arts with the support of CAC Fellowship for Chinese Artist, and she will then launch into hosting screenings and discussions about seven selected works by peer arists.
About Against Guest/Host Dispositions
The navigation of the socio-political timely tilts itself over various dispositions of the protagonist who, when being a guest to a nation state and its economic system, is also a host towards refreshing and creative analysis, conceptualisation, revelation and concealment. A guest is never really a guest but manifest themselves as host through aesthetics’ disguises of ethics, gender stereotypes, sensitivities, political (in)correctness and unwanted desires. Power is not the only thing that shifts between the roles of the protagonists, who enter into the scene with heavy categorisations only to realise what is breakable is at the same time highly inevitable.
How could we possibly navigate these waters of structural vulnerabilities that are fluid? One parasite to another, forcing each other into power and distributing responsibilities through pulling closer the works that have been made, are ways towards the end of perceptual guests/hosts, and the welcoming of materialisation of these fluid dispositions, for the exchangeability at a rate that is not ignorant to emotional tides and mistakes.
Against Guest/Host Dispositions are initiations made by hosting parties in specific contexts, to introduce works by peer artists through display, introduction and conversation. In the 1/N of this initiation, SHEN is invited by CAC to give a talk about her work made during her residency at CCVA Birmingham School of Arts with the support of CAC Fellowship for Chinese Artist, and she will then launch into hosting screenings, displyings and discussions about the selected works mostly by her peers including Lucy Beech, Jenna Bliss, Patrick Goddard, Marianna Simnett, May Heek, MU Xue, and a work made by an anonymous agent in the name of Liu Na’ou. The event will be conducted in Chinese, all films are in English, and will be translated and subtitled by Shen Xin.
For Discussion
Artists & Artworks
SCREENING
Lucy Beech – Results that Move You 10:22
Jenna Bliss – Coming into Detox 13:57
Patrick Goddard – Free Radicals 05:55
Marianna Simnett – Blood 26:15
ON DISPLAY
May Heek – Disambiguation
Xue Mu – Autonomous structure, #1. The Cross
SPECIAL
Liu Na’ou – Live Presentation
About the Artists
SHEN Xin lives and works in London. Foregrounded by moving image work, Shen’s practice concerns the social position of the artist, and engages recently with re/instrumentalising technique, judgment, power and morality. Recent and upcoming shows include OCAT (Shanghai), Global Committee (New York), CAC (Shanghai), W139 (Amsterdam), Kirishima Open Air Museum (Kagoshima), IMT Gallery (London), The National Art Centre (Tokyo), ICA (London), World Museum (Liverpool) and Chisenhale Gallery (London) among other places. Shen was selected for the touring exhibitions of Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2014 upon graduating from Slade School of Fine Art (2014). She is the recipient of CAC (Chronus Art Centre in Shanghai) Fellowship for Chinese Artist at CCVA Birmingham School of Art (2015).
Lucy BEECH (born 1985) lives and works in London. Her video and performance works explore ideas around emotional capitalism; certain economies that place a premium on interpersonal interaction, flexibility and adaptability with specific focus on female group dynamics, social choreography and disrupted narrative structures. Recent and forthcoming presentations of her work include: Site, Gallery, Sheffield, Frieze Live, Frieze, (both in collaboration with Edward Thomasson) London; James Fuentes, New York; Lisson Gallery, London, Tetley, Leeds and the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston (all 2015). Her work has been included in group exhibitions and screenings at Tate Britain, London, the ICA, London; Chisenhale Gallery, London; GAK, Bremen and V22, London (2013-14). Beech is part of the screening program ‘Selected V’ presented by Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network and Videoclub, touring throughout 2015 to venues including the CCA, Glasgow; CIRCA, Newcastle; Fabrica, Brighton; Whitechapel Gallery, London; and Nottingham Contemporary.
Jenna BLISS (born 1984 Yonkers, NY) is an artist and filmmaker based in New York. ‘Coming Into Detox’ is the first in a series concerned with how “being-on-drugs” affects and informs social relations and radical political movements. This video gives a small dose of history from 1970 in the South Bronx preempting the establishment of Lincoln Detox. Recent projects include: Into This Recovery Center, co-commissioned by South London Gallery and PSY and shown at Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis Minnesota, at South London Gallery, and for the visual art festival Acting Out at Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, UK. Other projects include Farm-To-Table, Farm Tour and Holiday Café, New York. She holds a MA from Slade School of Fine Art (2013).
Patrick GODDARD (b.1984/UK) is an artist working in East London. Completing an MFA at Goldsmiths University in 2011, he is currently studying for a doctorate at Ruskin College, Oxford University, in Fine Art practice. Creating video, publication, performance and installation; his politically loaded and narrative based works undermine themselves with a self-defeating black comedy. Inverting the position of the aloof cultural critical, Patrick’s work attempts to flip criticism back on the artist’s own ideology, presumptions and pretentions as it wrestles with the complexities of political commitment. Recent solo shows include: ‘Gone To Croatan’ (Outpost Gallery, Norwich, May 2015), ‘Revolver II’ (Matt’s Gallery, London, November-December 2014). Recent group shows include, ‘Fig2 with the White Review’ (ICA, London, April 2015), ‘Objective Considerations of Contemporary Phenomena’ (M.O.T. International Projects, London, December-February 2015); ‘IV Moscow International Biennale of Young Art’ (Moscow Museum of Modern Art, June-August 2014). Recent performances have taken place at Matt’s Gallery, June 2014; Wysing Arts Centre, June 2014; French Riviera January 2015; Grand Union, March 2015. His debut graphic novel, Operation Paperclip, was launched at Matt’s Gallery in June 2014 and he completed a residency at Wysing Art Centre over the summer of 2014.
Marianna SIMNETT completed her BA at Nottingham Trent University in 2007 and her MA at the Slade School of Art in 2013. Simnett works with video, performance and drawing. Her recent body of work explores themes of sexuality, innocence, corruption and martyrdom. Her videos involve collaborative processes with non-actors playing the part of themselves in heightened, suspended realities. In 2013 she won the Adrian Carruthers Award and William Coldstream Prize, and in 2015 she was a recipient of the Jerwood/FVU Award. Recent exhibitions include a solo show at Comar, Isle of Mull and Park Nights at the Serpentine Pavilion.
May HEEK (born 1984, NL) lives and works in London. Her video and photography based installations explore the luminous qualities of screens and how we look at image sources. Both the gesture of movement and still images are exploring: surface qualities, sensory experiences, materiality and indirect ways of perceiving images through reflectiveness. The work provides possibilities to reconnect to the interior space of perception and how we deal with specific absence of existing knowledge. May Heek completed her MFA Fine Art Media at Slade School of Fine Art, London (2015). She participated in the one-year residency program Photo Global at SVA in New York (2008). Exhibitions and projects include: Imagine (London), Aspen (London), Gemeente Museum (The Hague), ING, Site (Stockholm), Unfair NDSM (Amsterdam), Museum voor Moderne Kunst (Arnhem), Colour and Transition Samples AFK (Amsterdam). Awards include: Amsterdam Fund, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, the Hendrik Muller Fonds and the Fundatie van Renswoude.
MU Xue (b. 1979 Nanjing, CN) is a visual artist based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She received BFA from Gerrit Rietveld Academie, MFA from DAI (Dutch Art Institute), and art in residency at de Rijksakademie voor Beeldende Kunsten in 2011 and 2012. Like many people, Xue Mu experiences the ideological confusion and identity struggle in the present time of globalization. She questions and reflects on the inevitable loss of current belief systems, and concentrates on doubt, curiosity and awareness regarding new value orientations and future potential. Mu has been commissioned for art projects in public space, such as A Floating Highway for IAMAI in 2009, Mr. Ray for the Breukelen railway station in 2010, Strange Light for Houten Castellum in 2012 and Panorama for Proviciehuis Friesland in Leeuwarden in 2012. The most recent practice of Xue Mu incorporates: large drawing series, installation environments, photographs and performances. Her works have been presented both in the Netherlands, and in Asia.
LIU Na’ou (born 1905 in Taiwan; died 1940 in Shanghai) was a Shanghai-based cultural translator, writer and filmmaker. Being assassinated by the Kuomintang secret agent, his exploration on time travel in the form of writing and image making has been temporarily halts for many years. He is the Chinese author of The Man with Movie Camera (1933) and has written anthologized short fictions in Neo-Sensualism approach, among them “Two who weren’t in Tune with Time” (1930).
About “CAC Fellowship for Chinese Artist”
The “CAC Fellowship for Chinese Artist” has been established by Chronus Art Center in conjunction with the School of Art, Birmingham Institute of Art and Design (BIAD), Birmingham City University. The Fellowship offers an exciting opportunity for an artist at the commencement of or at a critical point in their professional career, to further develop his or her practice particularly in relation to Chinese art and culture. The Fellowship is based in the School of Art with a duration of 6 calendar months commencing in April 2015. The successful applicant is expected to become a full and active member of the Centre for Chinese Visual Arts (CCVA) and research community within the School.
About Chronus Art Center (CAC)
Chronus Art Center (CAC), established in 2013, is China’s first nonprofit art organization dedicated to the presentation, research / creation and scholarship of media art. CAC with its exhibitions, residency-oriented fellowships, lectures and workshop programs and through its archiving and publishing initiatives creates a multifaceted and vibrant platform for the discourse, production and dissemination of media art in a global context. CAC is positioned to advance artistic innovation and cultural awareness by critically engaging with media technologies that are transforming and reshaping contemporary experiences.
About Centre for Chinese Visual Arts (CCVA)
Centre for Chinese Visual Arts (CCVA) is hosted by the Faculty of Arts, Design and Media at Birmingham City University, UK. It aims to foster new understandings and perspectives of Chinese contemporary arts, design, media and culture through transdisciplinary creative practices and theoretical studies. With extensive regional and international partnerships, CCVA brings together artists, designers, curators and researchers who are working with, or are interested in, contemporary contexts of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan to share expertise, understand, critique, innovate and create. Using its unique position in the UK, CCVA continues its on-going transcultural dialogue by questioning existing histories of Chinese contemporary arts, design media and culture whilst fostering new ways of thinking and modes of knowledge in relation to today’s global-Chinese situation.
