This part starts from the new situation that human beings are confronting presently, and while considering the various chances to bring about transformation via technological development and linguistic assimilation, it also introduces a future-oriented imagination. Artists included in this part are all interdisciplinary-trained, and through the combination of technology and humanity, the interweaving of reason and sensibility, they picture the future mode of work. SHEN Cai’s work documents how online meetings became a new normal way of social work, breaking the lines of space and territory that used to confine communication; Alice WANG’s work juxtaposes ancient technology with frontier science, exploring how technological change across time and space can become a driving force for human progress; Naromi Meijia WANG offers an artistic language that works on visual perception via digital technology, creating a space-time experience that transcends ordinary via flashing and refraction of light-shadow and abstract elements. Serena LEE’s “Second Tongues” assumes a new language in which people can communicate without barriers in the future, and by learning this language, people will live in a linguistically interoperable society, hence enlightening a future of harmony and mutual understanding.

 
The work of the artists in this part is based first and foremost on rigorous and scientific calculations, but is also embedded in imagination and poetry.
 

Alice WANG
[CANADA / U.S.A / CHINA]

Keywords: Embody, Materiality, Metaphysics, Cosmic, Science

Alice WANG, born in Xi’an city, Shaanxi province, China, currently lives and works in Los Angeles, US and Shanghai, China. She received her B.A. in science from University of Toronto in 2005 and B.F.A. from California Institute of the Arts in 2010. She received her M.F.A. from New York University in 2012. She was the recipient of several major grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and Foundation for Contemporary Arts. She is an assistant professor of arts at New York University Shanghai, and co-organizes “The Magic Hour”, an outdoor exhibition platform in the Mojave Desert in California. She also founded the independent publishing platform, “Nonsensical”. She is an interdisciplinary artist, who combines scientific, technological, mythical, and spiritual perspectives to see how matter can be understood to embody existential qualities.I have been working with the mantra that the Earth is plummeting towards the Sun while just missing it. Through research and visits to geological and ancient sites as well as technological facilities — the Denali National Park in Alaska, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the San Andreas Fault, the Arctic, Mount Kinabalu, SpaceX, Biosphere2, the Very Large Array, the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, and the Mayan Pyramids, I investigate the uncanny dimensions of the natural world. Using sensitive plants, moss, fossils, meteorites, metals, water vapor, heat, wind, beeswax, and other metamorphic substances, my work explores the material consciousness of sculptural forms.
 

Yiy ZHANG
[GERMANY / CHINA]

Keywords: Explore, Construct, Reduce, Rebuild

Yiy ZHANG, born in 1990 in Yulin, Shaanxi Province, now lives and works in Berlin, Germany. She received her B.A. from Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2013. She studied in Munich Acade.my of Fine Arts from 2015 to 2016. She received her M.A. from Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts. She studied in Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 2020. She attended residency programs in Poland, China, Australia and several other countries. She won the 1st place of Hogan Lovells Art Prize in 2019. She is a performance artist. Her work are both multi-culture and multi-media, attempting to explore and reflect on the common fate of mankind as a “a humankind observer”.

“Lebenslinien” is a long-term project that I started in 2014 and continue to this day. Its line is derived from the so-called life lines in our palms, and uses water, fire, dust, light, touch and other ways to change the space and trace meaning. In 2015, I painted the entire glass room to black and made this line a light traversing the glass, and named it “The Light of Life”. In 2018, I drew a lifeline on the ground with water that would disappear in forty minutes and named it “Eintagsfliegen”. In 2019, I used tape to pick up dust on the floor from the bottom of the audiences’ shoes. After a year, this line disappeared day after day because of the grind. I named it “Sisyphus”. “Lebenslinien-Feuerwerk” shown on this exhibition is a program I did in 2018, in which the performers would pass the flame in their palms until it is extinguished.
 

SHEN Cai
[CHINA / U.S.A]

Keywords: Human-Machine Symbiosis, Data Writing, Virtual Mirroring, New Human Species, No Different

SHEN Cai, born in Zhenjiang City, Jiangsu Province, China, currently lives and works in Beijing and New York, US. She received her B.A. from Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2019 and her M.A. from Parsons School of Design, US. She is a Cyborg artist of multi-discipline. She edits “code” of world through images, paintings and installations. Currently, she is more concerned with creation of both human and mechanic for she is drawn by the complexity and undefined element within it.

“No Different” is some of my reflections on being drawn to the disaster that came unexpectedly. Due to the COVID-19, almost all schools around the world have started online classes and meetings. Is the “he or she” I see the real “he or she”? I can’t help thinking about this after consistent eye contact and vocal communication with others via the screen of computers and phones. Obviously, through the online connection, we are sharing a period of time, so “he / she” is a living person in the real world. However, the image of “he / she” decoded through programming is just a binary code that exists in the virtual world. Therefore, in my creation, I put my perspective in the middle ground between “real life” and “virtual world”.
 

Naormi Meijia WANG
[U.S.A / CHINA]

Keywords: Emotional, Strength, Mind And Body, Self-Assessment, Calm

Naormi Meijia WANG, born in Yantai city, Shandong province, China, currently lives and works in Chicago, US. She received her B.A. from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London, and her M.A. from School of Visual Arts, New York. She won the Selected Showcase in Storefront, New York and Fans Brief Nomination Award of Channel V, London. She is a visual artist and designer. She reflects on body, consciousness, subconsciousness and the accidents and uncertainty within experimental video.Through my experimental film work, I hope to make people try to create the most intimate feeling in a vast space. The digital world could help us enhance communication, hence making it possible for individuals from different places and different cultures to integrate in a much easier way. The perspective shift of behaviors and actions in this film work is mind-shocking, and I attempt to reconfigure the bizarre facets to look beyond the phenomena to understand this absurd and crazy world.
 

Susan Pui San LOK
[U.K]

Keywords: Installation, Moving Image, Audiovisual, Multimedia, Multivocal, Immersive, Participatory

Susan Pui San LOK, born in England, currently lives and works in London, UK. She received her B.A. from University of Leeds in 1994 and her M.A. in Feminism and Visual Arts in 1996. She received her PhD in Fine Art from University of East London in 2004. She is now a professor of Contemporary Art and Director in Decolonising Arts Institute in University of the Arts London. She was awarded Arts Council England Grants for the Arts and Arts and Humanities Research Council Grant Awards. Her recent writings are included in Decolonising Art History. She is an artist and a writer. Her art practice ranges from moving images, installations, sound to performance and text.

“Lightness” focuses on the pole vault as a metaphor for the human desire to defy gravity, reach up, and take flight. In competition, athletes must set the bar ever higher, for pole vaulters, literally so. “Lightness” follows the double-Olympian British pole-vaulter Kate Dennison over an 18-month period, as well as young pole-vault hopefuls in the early stages of their careers. The work explores the rhythms and psychology of this complex event, its cycles of training and competition, and the recycling of past and present to imagine the future. Moving across 3 video screens, “Lightness” follows the nuances and repetitions of the athletes’ preparations and motivations.
 

Serena LEE
[CANADA / AUSTRIA]

Keywords: Polyphonic, Embodied, Dialogue, Speculative, Imaginative, Fluid

Serena LEE, born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, currently lives and works in Vienna, Austria and Toronto, Canada. She received her M.A. from Piet Zwart Institute Rotterdam, the Netherlands. She is now a PhD candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Austria. She founded Read-in, a collective reading organization in 2010, and co-founded Shattered Moon Alliance, a research program on sci-fi narrative in 2016. She approaches art as philosophical inquiry practiced through aesthetics. She is interested in how the crisis of self and yearning for collectivity is perceived and experienced differently based on cultural context. 

“Second Tongues” started as a science fiction story: the idea that, in the future, we would all learn a second language, random.ly assigned to each and every person in the world. Instead of writing the story by myself, I invited others to join me in imagining and speculating what this future might be like through a series of conversations and workshops. This project is inspired by the musical structure of polyphony — harmony through the simultaneous layering of many different voices — and I draw upon my experience of playing Baroque piano music as a layered process of listening, reading, and interpreting to explore the complexities of belonging through language.