Duration:
14th November 2021 – 16th January 2022
Vernissage:
Saturday, 13th November 2021, 4 pm
Venue:
SGA Shanghai @ Three on the Bund, no.3 Zhong Shan Dong Yi Road, Shanghai 200002, China
Artists:
Ensemble, Cao Yu, Chen Ronghui, Chen Ruofan, Dürer, Gao Lei, Geng Yini, Gong Jian, He Yunchang, Hu Wei, Li Jingxiong, Li Nu, Liu Yefu, Liu Yu, Lu Boyu, Ma Wenting, Miao Miao, Ni Jun, Pu Yingwei, Song Yuanyuan, Tong Wenmin, Wang Jun, Wang Ziquan, Wu Di, Xiao Kegang, Xu Zhen, Yang Shen, Zhao Gang, Zhang Hui, Zhang Ruyi, Pocono Zhao Yu, Zhuang Hui
Curator:
Lu MIngjun
Shanghai Space & Gallery Association (SGA) is very pleased to announce our major exhibition—Tangle of Revolution and Political Soul, opening on 13th November 2021, 4 pm, at Three on the Bund, Shanghai. The exhibition features the works of over 30 artists and collective, ranging from painting, photography, video, performance to site-specific sculpture and installation.
Today, neither Heidegger's poetic theory of being, Foucault's biopolitical concept of the re-administration and regulation of life, nor Agamben's take on inner-self gamification could appeal to the new dominating rule of platform capitalism and its demise upon free will. Philosopher Byung-Chul Han, however, suggests an alternative approach—playing the idiot. He believes only through this change can the individual achieve a state of total 'de-subjectivization' and 'de-psychologisation' and get freedom under any mode of existence.
This solution can be an adaptive form of resistance or a method of negation. The idiot' in this case is simultaneously a product of neo-capitalism and the resistance against it. Still, it is precisely for this reason that his proposal would not only fail to restrain platform capitalism, but it would further its brutal expansion instead, since it predominantly empties human beings from their psyche, turning them into soulless shells, powerless against the coercive capitalist machine and the perpetuating regimes of neoliberalism. Just as Goethe warned us in Faust, those who abandon their soul will find themselves with nothing in the end. Indeed, now is not the time to give in like an idiot but to fight as a rebel.
Just as Engels referred to the figure of Christ as a revolutionary during the Roman Empire, Chinese intellectuals: Zhang Taiyan, Taixu, and Su Manshu held the same regard for Gautama Buddha a century ago. In his Welcoming Speech for Overseas Students in Tokyo, Zhang appealed to the teachings of Buddhism to propagate the 1911 Revolution. "Buddhism regards equality above all. Hence, anything that opposes equality must be expelled," he says. Similarly, for Kang Youwei, the utopia he envisioned in The Book of Great Unity lives not in an institution but in thought, in Buddhism rather than Confucianism. "Beyond the Great Unity, there will first come the study of the immortals and then that of Buddhism. Lesser wisdom will devote itself to the immortals, and the higher wisdom to Buddhism," he says. Rather than surrender to the circumstances or play the idiot, Buddhism teaches the individual to have energy and zeal to reclaim our exiled body and compromised soul.
Alluding to such feelings and thoughts, we have invited over 31 artists and collective to engage in an eccentric storm of ideological and spiritual collision under this theme. This exhibition is presented through five sections: The Book of Revelation: Descent into Darkness, Lightning and Serpent: Dialectics of Enlightenment, Robinson Crusoe’s Dream: The Engulfment of Fear, Psyche and Firearms: Divine Violence, and finally Dancing with the Devil: The Daemon of Mephistopheles. With nonlinear narratives, each section acts as an index that invites us into a new spiritual-political world that transcends our desires. When transparency has led to the exposure of all things, perhaps a rekindle with darkness—a temporary dwell into the obscure—will help us overcome our fears and regain our sovereignty. Here, Goethe's Mephistopheles is no longer the devil—he is the embodiment of willpower. He is the warrior.
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Click here to download our exhibition catalogue pdf.
