The Paper's reporter Huang Song
Huge, alien inflatable devices, multi-screen images flickering in the dark... When I first walked into the "Unknown Game" exhibition of The Duolun Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai, I was a little overwhelmed. What are these works trying to tell, and what is the exhibition trying to say? However, with the progressive appearance of the exhibition works, it seems to see the many sentient beings who are addicted to consumerism, and the "Dinghai Bridge Special Project" brings the audience from metaphor to reality, the Dinghai Bridge area located in Yangpu, Shanghai will face the old changes, and the "Dinghai Bridge Mutual Aid Society" with utopian colors will also leave, unlike many video works full of electronic and modern feelings, the Dinghai Bridge special project "Words "Sea" Game" seems rough but full of humanity.
At the exhibition site, Wang Tuo's "Poisoning", single-frequency 4K image, 2017, group portraits of the Dutch Golden Age and contemporary images talk to each other.
What is the relationship between "game" and "art"?
The British philosopher Schiller first put forward the idea that art originated from "games" in the "Beauty Education Book". Before him, Kant considered art to be a "free game." "Game Theory" highlights the non-utilitarian nature of art.
Quatmoc Medina (lead curator of the 2018 Shanghai Biennale) believes that playing games means "dislocation in time and space", and that the thrill of pleasure is achieved between constant restarts and repeated jumps. Such pleasure often does not pay attention to logic and efficiency.
The discussion of the theme of "game" in Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art dates back to the spring of 2019's "Pretend Game", when the curatorial concept said that "pretend game" presents both the attitude of the artist and the artist's constant testing and challenging the rules under the cover of "game", and then reconstructing new values and systems. At that time, the participating artists included Ji Wenyu × Zhu Weibing, Li Zhenhua, Ao Guoxing, etc., most of whom were born in the 1970s or before, although the concept was contemporary, but some of the works on the shelf could be seen. Two years later, in the same field, the same group of curators (Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Zeng Yulan, Gu Jiajun) brought "Unknown Game", but the artists were younger (both 80s and 90s), most of them had study abroad backgrounds, and their works were mostly video installations, with the logo of the digital age.
At the exhibition site, Hu Wei's "Father: Don't go to the boss tomorrow, first think about what he really wants." 》，2018
Virtual carnival in the age of consumption
Walking into the dark exhibition space, the flickering screen will attract people to go, this is Li Tingwei's work "Moby Dick, Lifebuoy", "Moby Dick, Waves", the title of the work comes from Herman Melville's novel "Moby Dick", the characters in the novel, from beginning to end to catch the beluga whale "Moby Dick", in the eyes of the crew of the ship, the beluga whale has become an unconquerable mysterious force, but also become the object of human profit and desire. Li Tingwei's images are also set against the backdrop of the sea and the cruise ship, and people get on the cruise ship and enter a world of pure pleasure and consumption, making people forget what night and night.
At the exhibition site, Li Tingwei's work "Moby Dick" series
In the video, the artist captures the scene of visitors surfing in the water sports program equipped on the boat, but they are in the middle of the sea. The sea is not alarming, but the people on the boat are pursuing the thrill of artificial waves. The consumption behavior of people on cruise ships and blind leisure at sea form a historical dialogue with the era of whaling.
At the exhibition site, "Moby Dick, Waves", visitors surf in the water sports project equipped with the boat.
The work was created in 2018, when cruise ships were one of the most popular ways to vacation; but in 2021, cruise ships as a space for consumption and leisure at sea once became the death of the virus. The metaphors and reflections in the work become a scene in the real world, and there is a crisis buried in the collective security of pretending to be happy.
On the second floor of the exhibition, Hu Wei's "Father: Don't go to the boss tomorrow, first think about what he really wants." " and Wang Tuo's "Poisoning" also focus on people who are wrapped up in consumerism and desire in the form of images.
Hu Wei's work is a three-screen video installation in which the artist discusses the intertwined relationships of work, economy, and ethics in the transition from "post-Ford" to "post-work" production model through interviews and follow-up photographs of different workers. Standing in the middle of the three screens, I see that the people in the film are also ordinary individuals who run in the city every day in pursuit of worldly success, but they are fragile, gloomy and unstable.
Hu Wei "Father" don't go to the boss tomorrow, first think about what he wants. "25 minutes and 22 seconds, three-screen synchronous high-definition image, acrylic lighting installation, 2018 (image still frame)
Among the individuals photographed by the artist, there is a girl who "refuses to run", who cannot get up on her own, and rejects the practical society with a "lying flat" posture. But in the tide of society, she reconciled with herself, turned her bed into a working space, and completed "self-exploitation" in the so-called "neoliberalism".
At the exhibition site, Wang Tuo's video "Poisoning"
Wang Tuo's image "Poisoning" selected 12 advertising actors, each of whom appeared as the middle-class figures in the advertising film, and simulated the group portrait of vanity fair magazine cover photo. But as the camera progresses, the characters face the camera one by one to tell short and intimate monologues, revealing their anxiety or distress, and then discovering that they are mostly engaged in occupations such as hotel waiters in their lives.
In the video, the actor's monologue alternates with the Dutch Golden Age group portrait painting, and the artist uses the group portrait aesthetic as a clue to show the connection between the present and the "anxiety" in history.
At the exhibition site, Chen Chenchen's "The Grace of Not Killing 2.0"
The exhibition works also include Chen Chenchen's "The Grace of Not Killing 2.0", as a performance artist, because a variety show broke the circle, in addition to the consideration of the work itself, will Chen Chenchen's participation bring more attention to the exhibition? Is this in itself the curator's "pretend game" strategy, suggesting the alienation of art in the age of entertainment?
Dinghai Bridge, a memory and farewell about the common life of the community
Unlike many electronic and modern video works, the special project of Dinghai Bridge in the exhibition, "Words "Sea Game", looks rough but full of human touch.
On the wall of the exhibition site, the hand-painted Dinghai Bridge
"Dinghai Bridge" is a bridge, built in 1927, connecting Fuxing Island and Dinghai Road, and is the first bridge on the Huangpu River in downtown Shanghai. "Dinghai Bridge" is also an area, located on the edge of the city, renting a population that is relatively at the bottom of the city, walking into this area like an urban village, a crowded living environment, and the existence of private construction on the original buildings in various eras, which makes people lament the difficulty and wisdom of the residents' lives here.
Dinghai Bridge Community. The Surging News reporter Huang Song pictured
For a long time in the past, the "Dinghai Bridge" was not known to people, and even if it was known, it was connected with the concept of "lower horn". But in recent years, the name "Dinghai Bridge" has been commonly used in urban cultural research and art exhibitions, and "Dinghai Bridge" has become a concept of sociological practice. Behind it is the Dinghaiqiao Mutual Aid Society, located at 252 Dinghai Harbor Road, which was established in the summer of 2015 as a fluid, spontaneous and loose community organization, as well as a co-governance community, while also exploring new artistic and sociological work paths on historical and practical issues.
The "Cihai Jungle" section of the Dinghai Bridge Special Project
Dinghai Bridge Special Project consists of "Cihai Jungle", "Life, on Dinghai Road" and "Duckweed Dinghai: What does a decentralized caring society look like?" The three-part component takes "jointly writing entries" as the entrance to action and connection, reviewing and salvaging the Dinghai Bridge for several years of practical experience. In the interpretation of the terms, we can see the clues of the community and the bridge, and also see the cascading collective exploration process.
Explore the connection to the local, learning from the neighborhood, the convergence and flow of social networks, and also about "mutual assistance", "self-education" and "co-creation".
Because in the local position, the "mutual aid society" and the community accompany each other, when the audience reads these "entries" and related texts, prints, images and other materials from the perspective of outsiders, they see that it is a head-up perspective with empathy, rather than an intruder posture.
The "Life, on Dinghai Road" section of the Dinghai Bridge Special Project
This kind of "heads-up" is more obvious in the "Life, On Dinghai Road" section, and the wall is printed and collaged on A3 paper in black and white according to the geographical house number, and the story of each store is recorded in handwritten text under the photo. Look closely at the text, there are some selling roast duck, yellow beef, egg steamed buns, snails, there are also clothing, tea, bedding, and even barbershops, dentist clinics... In the handwritten text, it can be seen that the operators are mostly "foreigners" from all over the world, who have lived on Dinghai Road for several years to decades, and their living conditions have also constructed a unique ecological model of Dinghai Road, and their experiences are also in line with the history of the city.
Part of the photographs and written records on the wall of "Life, on the Dinghai Road"
In the process of urban renewal, the area where the "Dinghaiqiao Mutual Aid Society" is located will face old changes, and the information presented in the exhibition is archival preservation of the appearance before the demolition. The participating projects will also become a kind of "farewell" of the "Dinghai Bridge Mutual Aid Society" and its partners to the Dinghai Bridge, which will soon become a historical memory. This is like a group of contemporary young intellectuals who have launched a serious "game" on the basis of social observation and reflection, but the game will eventually end, and it will certainly be unfolded again in another "Dinghai Bridge".
This is reminiscent of another recent exhibition project on Shunchang Road, which is also a record of the area that is about to disappear in the city, but the texture study of the area is superficial, which contrasts with the simple but "common life" attempt of "Dinghai Bridge".
For the passing of urban memory, the installation work "Dream of floating garden: The Ruins of Guangzhou Children's Park" in the exhibition gives an interpretation from another perspective. This is an art project that Xin Wei began in 2018, and the Guangzhou Children's Park was where he played as a child, but was demolished in 2001 due to the excavation of the Nanyue Royal Palace, and the artist attempted to build a ruins of childhood memories for this no longer existing park, as well as a narrative framework to discuss the various production methods of the current world as a boundless paradise.
At the exhibition site, Xin Wei's work "Dream of the Floating Garden: Ruins of Guangzhou Children's Park" (partial)
Each building has its own story, whether it is the Dinghai Bridge or the Children's Park, the wheels of the times are rolling, and the history and the present, the past and the eternal are also intertwined with the complex codes belonging to the city and the individual.
Interactive area of the exhibition
At the entrance to the exhibition, the audience is thrown a few questions - "What is the ideal community like" and "How to escape the dilemma of becoming a 'tool man'?" ”。 After watching the exhibition, are there any new answers to these questions?
The reality we live in, like fiction, consumer culture drives individuals forward, and the exhibition takes the confusion faced by contemporary people as a subject of study, and also gives hints in an artistic way, but the final result is that no one is a prophet. The artists' seemingly gamified explorations lead the viewer to the more experimental and possible unknown.
Note: The exhibition will be on display until October 17, "Duckweed Dinghai: What Does a Decentralized Caring Society Look Like?" "Theater games will be played on a biweekly basis during the exhibition period.
Editor-in-Charge: Li Mei
Proofreader: Yan Zhang