MOVED, MUTATED AND DISTURBED IDENTITIES (group)

OVERVIEW

EXHIBITION SYNOPSIS

Process:

The first part of this residency workshop took already place in Luxembourg at Casino Luxembourg – Forum of contemporary art from 5 to 19 July 2009. Nine Asian and nine European artists, selected through an open call by an international jury comprising a panel of workshop leaders and organisers, met in Luxembourg for a two-week residency programme. The residency programme focused on workshops, lectures, discussions, as well as on individual production of works. At the end of the two weeks, the artists presented their work-in-progress in an exhibition at Casino Luxembourg – Forum of contemporary art (19 July – 6 September 2009). After the residency programme in Luxembourg, ten artists were selected to continue the international post-master programme in Shanghai. This selection was based on the artists’ involvement within the group, the development of a new project and the quality of it.

The second part consists in the residency workshop taking place in Shanghai (26 August – 9 September 2010)

The Shanghai residency will start with a one-day colloquium (Friday 27 August 2010). The ten selected artists and the facilitators will meet for public lectures, presentations and discussions organised by the Shanghai-based curatorial coordinator (Biljana Ciric) and workshop leader (Hu Jieming). After intense theoretical/philosophical input and exchange during the colloquium, the ten participants will work on their final work (in close relation to the topic Moved, Mutated and Disturbed Identities) that will eventually be presented in an exhibition hosted by art centre Ddmwarehouse in Shanghai. The final work – which in fact is a work in progress worked on since the beginning of the 7th Asia-Europe Art Camp – Art Workshop for Visual Arts 2009/2010, will thus be finalised and shown at ddmwarehouse as well as presented at the Luxembourg pavilion at the Expo2010. A publication and/or a DVD documenting the entire programme with the lecturers will be produced in Shanghai.

Theme:

Moved, Mutated and Disturbed Identities has been set as topic to challenge European and Asian artists to realities and identities in both China and Luxembourg.

Movement, in the context of identity, suggests geographic displacements of a voluntary, involuntary or even forced kind. But it can also evoke distance, itinerary, gaps, and instances of the inexpressible that our own self has to confront in the face of cultures or moral codes distinct from our own. The thematic association of identity and mutation gives rise to a series of hybrid concepts. It enables the building of new identities, helped along by technological means of communication that render the threshold between inner and outer world, between subject and object, between representation and reality, transparent. Disturbance evokes an interruption in the linear development of identities. It carries along inevitable social and political changes—the consequences of which can be multiple, positive and/or negative—in the process of identity-shaping. It can also, in a figurative or psychological sense, bear witness to so-called disorders. In all these cases, probability is high that disturbed identities give way to new, sometimes knotty, relationships with the Other.

In general, the representation of identities is complex. Only parts are visible, because presentable. Reading between the lines, looking behind the façade is made difficult. Whereas represented, thus simplified, identities create fronts and barriers, disturbed ones may open up spaces for negotiation, change, infiltration, segmentation, transformation, alienation, discovery, re-appropriation, …

Movement, mutation, disturbance of identities can happen at micro and macro scales. Individuals, groups, communities, citizens, cities, states etc can be the subjects or objects concerned by these acts and affected to become constructed identities, changing identities, fake identities, multiple identities, lost identities, split identities, refuted identities, hidden identities, repressed identities etc.

The artists are invited to respond to the theme through local contexts, states and situations.

The symposium will include artists’ interventions on issue of identity, lecture series and performative lectures series (to be confirmed). The list of the participants will be announced soon as well as a detailed schedule.

The symposium will be held in English and Chinese with simultaneous translation.

About the organisers:

The Asia-Europe Foundation has been organising art camps to explore and tackle issues concerning contemporary art and new media arts in Asia and Europe since 2003. Young artists from the two regions are brought together in this platform for dialogue, peer-to-peer exchange and collaboration to produce new work. The Camp focuses on the creative process rather than on the artistic product as it is designed to boost the participants’ learning experience and opportunities for their professional development.

Built on similar principles, the Art Workshop was initiated in 1998 by the Luxembourg-born artist Bert Theis (in close collaboration with Paul di Felice) during his art project for Manifesta 2 – European Biennial for Contemporary Art. Every summer since then, Casino Luxembourg – Forum for contemporary art has been organising European art workshops, in partnership with the University of Luxembourg, where young artists from Europe conduct creative and intellectual exchanges. The aim is to challenge them in contemporary art-making through a European platform for research, analysis and the study of contemporary art methods and materials. It allows young artists to present their work and discuss it with contemporary art professionals as well as with other young artists from different cultural backgrounds. At the end of the workshop, the productions are presented in an exhibition at Casino Luxembourg – Forum d'art contemporain.

ddmwarehouse is one of the only not-for-profit art spaces in Shanghai. Founded by artists and designers seeking an alternative from the commercial flavour of Shanghai’s art scene, this dynamic space has supported an international roster of alternative, visual and performing arts since 2000. In its nine year existence the space has dazzled Shanghai audiences with an eclectic program of everything from vanguard installations to dance and music performances to video and other more traditional forms of art. Not only proving itself to support artists, the space also regularly collaborates with independent curators. One of ddmwarehouse’s recent achievements was its participation in the special project section of the 52nd Venice Biennial with the independently curated exhibition Migration Addicts. Originally based in a cavernous warehouse space north of the Bund on Dong Da Ming Road (hence the name ddmwarehouse) the company has recently relocated to Huaihai West Road’s Sculpture Center complex. Surrounded by other galleries and creative industries their self-designed, self-constructed and self-managed building not only houses an impressive exhibition hall but also an artist studio, a café and a spacious window venue. The twenty-four meter long window hosts exhibitions specifically tailored to fit this public venue in an ongoing series known as Art Breathes while the new space’s computer outfitted café serves as a resting place for visitors, a library archiving the Chinese contemporary art, as well as the headquarters of the organization’s ambitious online project, ARTLINKART. This website is an extensive, and constantly growing, database that allows users to cross reference artistic activity throughout China and the world. In their new digs at the Sculpture Center, DDM has already upped the creative ante for their neighbours.

Residency: 26 August – 9 September 2010 @ddmwarehouse

Symposium: 27 August, 2010, 10:30 – 20:00 @Minsheng Art Museum

Workshop leaders: Sylvie Blocher, Paul de Felice, Hu Jieming