CAFA Art Museum (CAFAM) will hold the large-scale media art exhibition "Topologies of the Real" from February 20 to March 29, together with ZKM's tour exhibition "Art in Motion: Masterpieces with and through Media", and initiated the first "CAFAM Techne Triennial". The "Topologies of the Real" exhibition will be composed of three parts: "Reality Interrupted", "Datumsoria: The Return of the Real" and "Multiverse: Ecology without Nature", to examine the trace of the concept of truth being repetitively challenged and altered by artistic imaginations under clear acceleration of the time-space technical construction since the mid 20th century, as well as the political, econimic and cultural dilemma and potential that lie in the flattening and synchronic digital contemporary age. The ZKM's "Art in Motion" will form the media historical basis of the "Reality Interrupted" part.
Zhang Zikang, director of CAFAM, gave his speech.
According to Zhang Zikang, director of CAFAM, the exhibition will take up the museum's 5000-square-meter space, and will be the largest-scale academic exhibition that the musem curated independently. Director Zhang briefly introduced the significance of the CAFAM Techne Triennial: First, technology is a core driving force of social development after the human society entered modern era. We are living in a time that the development of technology, art and culture cross. This has led to a subersive change in concept, format and theoretical explanation of art, and made the question of how to develop a new path at the juxtaposition of art and technology an important issue of our time. Second, as one of the world's top art academy, CAFA has been dedicated to teaching and research of avant-garde art. The exhibition is the first attempt of CAFAM to curate an art and technology exhibition series. The exhibition will include internationally important media artworks in recent years, and put media art in a wider historical context. Third, the exhibition will include over 130 works of 130 artists and artist groups, ranging from early experimentists to predecessors of modern art, to icons of contemporary art and emerging works from late 19th century to the present. Through these works topologies of the "real" will unfold, in response to the urgency of "existence" in the digital present. We believe CAFAM Techne Triennial will bring the public deep understanding and new inspiration in terms of media art.
Professor Zhang Ga
Professor Zhang Ga, chief curator of the exhbition, consultant curator of CAFAM, director of CAFA's Center for Art and Technology gave an introduction of the exhibition at the press conference, and explained the three parts of the exhibition vividly and detailedly. According to him, "topologies of the real" is a response to the philosophical question of "existence". The construction of technological time and space has given new meaning to "existence". Under this condition, the exhibition unfolds thinking and explanation on the concept of "real". As media art exhibitions are in their beginning stage, CAFAM as an academic institution, notonly explores the possiblities of media expression, but also put it under historical context, to think about a series of social and cultural significance media technologies have brought, as well as the trace of development of media technlogy itself, so that we could deepen our understanding of the foundation on which today's media art is based.
01 Reality Interrupted & Art in Motion
"Reality Interrupted" and "Art in Motion: Masterpieces with and through Media" emphasized that media art is an art form based on and inseparable from technology and machines. Through taking motion as the basic character of machinery, this part of exhibition draws the outline of art history related to photography equipment. Motion picture in cinematography and cybernetic feedback systems further enriched the history, and indicated the various interactions that exist everywhere today. The satellite communication techology and the early implementation of distributed network (although being the by-product of the Cold War) implied the rise of information society in the mid 20th century, further enhancing the velocity of movement, compressing the time and space into a pure technological structure. Time no longer existed, and neither did distance, which brought about the millenial crisis of digital capital. The crisis further revealed in the images of the disastrous fall of the Twin Towers, disturbing and interrupting our cognition of the reality. This part of the exhibition includes the media-based art history in the past century, and its continuous influence.
Reunion, 1968, Marcel Duchamp _ John Cage, Cage Foundation
This is the 1968 art performance of Marcel Duchamp and John Cage. Duchamp, as an internationally prestigious chess player, was invited by Cage to play a special "digital chess game". The chessboard is an invention of Cage's, with electronic control and cooperation of the on-side digital music players. Thus, the chess game became a digital music concert. The work can be seen as an early trial of testing the concept of interaction with technological media. The exhibition will recreate this milestone performance for Chinese audience.
Crossroads, 1976, Bruce Conner, Crossroads （SFMoMA / MoMA)
Another important work, Crossroads, is a short film directed by American artist Bruce Conner in 1976 to recreate the underwater nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean around 1945. Hundreds of cameras that spread across different perspectives recorded the unprecidented landscape. This is the first time that the artist's work is shown in China.
Dan Graham, Present Continuous Past, installation, 1974 (Centre Pompidou)
The exhibition also borrows Dan Graham's classic work. It is a work the artist created using closed circut television in the 1970s. One can watch while at the sametime monitoring themselves with playback.
Wolfgang Staehle Untitled, 2001
The work was created by Wolfgang Staehle in 2001. Right when the 9/11 Attacks happened, the two live broadcasting works of the artist's were broadcasting the Brooklyn Bridge, and recorded the historical incident by chance. The catastrophic image of the "sudden fall of the Twin Towers" interrupted our cognition of the reality. The "Reality Interrupted" part of the exhibition also ends here.
02 Datumsoria: The Return of the Real
The term "Datumsoria" is combined of "datum" and "sensoria", meaning a new cognitive space in the information era. It speaks of the logic of new "reality", the binary virtual force composed of the genericity of 0 and 1. Shapes and forms emerge from the generic plane of immanence before they get solidified. The real is no longer a pursuit of recreation, or a transcendance of the real, but the virtual under decoration. The real thus becomes generative generalization. As the second part of the exhibition, "Datumsoria" witnesses the powerful existence of the universal Internet that has completely changed the rules of the game between work and life, politics and economy. Amid the fluctuation of electronic impulse is the trace of cognition and inspiration for emotions, and from here there emerges an entity of another level, which could explore the new ethics of another dimension. This part of exhibition indicates that real politics no longer only exist in "physical bodies and social places as the major form of pain", which is also the entity of contemporary experience and subject of artistic exploration. It also implies the true owner of the new reality, composed of the materiality of bits and bytes and numerical algorithms.
Elephant Cart, Nam June Paik, 1999 - 2001, Nam June Paik Art Center
Artist Nam June Paik's large-scale work will also be in the exhibition. Paik reviewed his life in a romantic way, integrating all the digital footage in a carriage, with an elephant leading the carrriage and all the modern technologies.
Lawrence Malstaf, Polygon, 2016
It is a kinetic sculpture that continuously changes its shape, representing the exhibition's theme, "topologies", in a direct way. The work will be showcased on the first floor of CAFAM.
03 Multiverse: Ecology without Nature
The third part of the exhibition borrows its name from Timothy Morton's book Ecology without Nature. However, it diverges from the author's cultural criticism of nature, instead putting forward the reality of a multiverse with a variety of dimensions and materials, based on speculations and not unfathomable, like the string theory appeals. In the multiple ecologies and realms, the essence of nature, just like how the quantom reality overturns the perceptible nature, the peculiar fluctuations in time and space once again subvert the limitation of human wisdom, while paradoxes become the new favorite of discourses. In these parallel time-spaces, between universal visions, the laughters and cries of human, the roars or chirps of the machinery, the myths and trammels of the civilization, the self-acclaimed diligence of AI and aliens are creating their own real world, and operating the residencies they live in and make triumphant returns.
Thomas Feuerstein, Pancreas, installation, 2013
Austrian artist Thomas Feuerstein's sculpture PANCREAS transformed Hegel's The Phenomenology of Spirit into the sugar that nourishes human brain cells (glucose). Papers are cut and soaked in water, before being compressed into artificial intestines (fermentation cylinder). The bacteria then catabolize the cellulose into glucose, filter and purify it, and provide it to the growing cells in the glass jar (brains in the barrel).
Philippe Parreno, With a Rhythmic Instinction to be Able to Travel Beyond Existing Forces of Life, 2014
The exhibition will also show important work of Phillppe Parreno that interprets "the game of life" with motion pictures constructed by algorithms.
Alex da Corte, Easternsport _ installation, 2018
Emerging star artist Alex do Corte will also show his work at the exhibition. He is good at interpreting American pop culture in a witty manner, and constructing an illusory and magical world.
In the end, professor Zhang Ga emphasized that many exhibited works are milestone media art works with huge historical significance. The exhibition includes over 130 artworks that range from late 19th century to the contemporary time. Over 70 works from ZKM are curated by both sides of curators. The exhibition is of a mammoth scale, and reflects rich historical research, which could help the audience gain an overview of the development of media art. The exhibition is an important attempt that both includes recent media artwork and puts media art in a wider historical context in mainland China. Many works are shown in mainland Chinese art museum for the first time.
One of the curators of "Art in Motion", ZKM's CEO Peter Weibel wasn't able to come to the press conference, so instead he gave a video speech. He believed that this exhibition re-defines media art, and will benefit the public and students' exploration of media art. According to Weibel, there are multiple ways to watch art in motion, and the most important difference lies in their storage methods. Information can be stored chemically, in magnetic material and digital information. The last method is called virtual information storage. It thus leads to three concepts in relevance to media art: the virtuality of information storage, the changeability of information content and the survivability of information behaviors. The three concepts will be fully displayed in this exhibition.
To summarize, the 19th century is about machine movement and dynamic media, while the 20th century is about image machines and motion pictures. In the 21st century, we are turning to media that imitates life behaviors. Such media is called "bio media". In this exhibition, the development course of media art in the past century will be accurately presented through significant artworks. According to Weibel, this exhibition will be a good chance for the Chinese audience to learn about the reality of media. It is also the first exhibition in history that precisely presents the difference between photography, computer media, painting and sculpture.
Gao Gao, director assistant of CAFAM and host of the press conference
The exhibition's chief curator is Prof. Zhang Ga, consultant curator of CAFAM and director of CAFA Center for Art and Technology. He is also the co-curator of ZKM's "Art in Motion" Chinese tour exhibition together with Peter Weibel and Siegfried Zielinski. Judith Bihr and Daria Mille also co-curate the "Art in Motion" exhibition.
The exhibition will open on February 20, 2020.
