“出神入化”——A Conversation on Consciousness
Guests: Alice Wang, Feng Chen
Moderator: Bruce Bo Ding
Time: 2016.11.06 15:30-17:00
Language: Chinese + English
Organiser: Chronus Art Center
Address：BLDG 18, No.50 Moganshan Road, Shanghai
Supporter: Capsule Shanghai
Is it possible for technology to embody a sense of ‘spirit’ or ‘consciousness’? Rather than continuing the “user-tool” relationship, could we develop a more sentient approach towards communication and interaction with technology? Both Alice Wang and Feng Chen subtly work within a technological context, but neither of them simply assume the position of the user. Instead, they each attempt to form an intimate relationship and operate as an interlocutor/collaborator with technology through their creations. Their work thus often demonstrate a special sense of time, as well as manifest the semblance of “conscious matter” or enact “the materialization of consciousness.” This program is going to be a performative conversation in which ‘consciousness’ becomes a crucial clue, leading us to experience the transitions across various practices and objects.
<About the Speakers>
Alice Wang makes sculptures, drawings, videos, prints, and experimental films. Wang received her BS in Computer Science and International Relations from the University of Toronto, BFA from the California Institute of the Arts, and MFA from New York University. She was a fellow of the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, a Villa Aurora fellow in Berlin, and the recipient of the Project Grant to Visual Artists from the Canada Council for the Arts in 2016. Wang has exhibited at Human Resources (Los Angeles), 18th Street Arts Center (Santa Monica), Immanence (Paris), the Armory Center for the Arts (Pasadena), 80WSE (New York), the Art Gallery of Mississauga (Canada), and the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, among others. Her forthcoming solo shows will be presented at LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions) and ltd los angeles. Wang is based in Los Angeles, and teaches at the University of California, Riverside.
Feng Chen was born in 1986 in Wuhan, China. Graduated from the Department of New Media Art of the China Academy of Art in 2009, he joined a two-year program at the Rijksakademie in the Netherlands as artist-in-residence from 2014 to 2015. He now works and lives in Amsterdam and Hangzhou. Feng’s works have been exhibited internationally and are included in a number of institutional collections, including the White Rabbit Contemporary Art Collection in Australia, the China Art Museum and the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten.
Bruce Bo Ding received his MSc from the University of Edinburgh and is now an artist, convener and translator. Involved with various artistic and social practices, he often switched among different roles to work in different contexts and territories in order to disrupt unnecessary barriers. For the past few years, Ding has been researching and practising “Art as Connection”, and he is now working on a project about technology, senses and body.
