Teardown Manuals
Phase 1: Field Trip + Collecting
Date: 26 June, 19:00-20:00 – Online Gathering
Date: 27-28 June, 10:00-16:00 – Field Trip, East Beijing Road, Shanghai (subject to weather conditions)
Phase 2: TEARDOWN MANUALS Workshop
Date: 4 July, 13:30-17:00 Goethe open Space, Room 101, Cross Tower, 318 Fuzhou Road, Shanghai
Co-host: Goethe-Institute Shanghai
Language：Chinese
Teardown Manuals invites participants to collect, recycle, and exchange electronics, tools, gadgets, and components from the hardware shops along East Beijing Road in Shanghai, a longstanding hardware district shaped by decades of trade, repair, and everyday making.
As these objects circulate and are reassembled into new forms, stories, memories, and skills emerge alongside them. Across two sessions, participants will collect, document, exchange, and reassemble both tangible and intangible materials to create a series of alternative Teardown Manuals.
Part technological investigation, part collective storytelling exercise, the workshops explores how everyday technologies connect objects, labour, infrastructure, and community, and how hands-on engagement with familiar technologies can open up new modes of making, observing, and perceiving.
This event is part of Goethe Open Space 2026, organised by Goethe-Institute Shanghai. @goetheinstitut and is curated by EXHIBITECHS @bzg.exhibitechs.
About EXHIBITECHS
“EXHIBITECHS” is an interdisciplinary knowledge project that uses technology as a starting point to connect practitioners from different fields in order to explore hidden connections between materials, processes and people, to blur the boundaries between material and immaterial production and to develop new ideas about today’s working world.
About Goethe Open Space 2026
Goethe Open Space is a project of the Cultural and Educational Department of the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany in Shanghai. With this project, the department aims to open its space to all social groups, offering them a place for encounters and a platform for the free exchange and discussion of social and cultural issues, thereby promoting dialogue and understanding. All activities within the framework of the Goethe Open Space are planned and carried out independently by the applicants and organizers of the project, with support from the Cultural and Educational Department.
Review of the events
Phase 1: Review of the Field Trip here (Chinese only)
Phase 2: Teardown day (coming soon)
Qin Chuan
Qin Chuan is an art critic with a Master’s degree in Art, Creativity, and Educational Philosophy from the University of Cambridge. A former museum staff member, he is a researcher within the “Long March” project. His research focuses on contemporary art schools, examining the material logistics of exhibition production and collaborative models in artistic creation. He is currently pursuing a PhD at the Institute for Contemporary Art and Social Thought at the China Academy of Art.
Shao Mohan
Shao Mohan is a curator and art technician. He explores the intertextuality between art, technology, industry, and locality, and works in curating, production, and textual design. His projects have been presented in art institutions such as the National Art Museum of China, the Guangdong Times Museum, the Xuzhou Museum, the Camden Art Centre, Gasworks, and the Saatchi Gallery, as well as in various public spaces. He is the initiator of the knowledge project “EXHIBITECHS.”
