Beyond the Globe | 8th Triennial of Contemporary Art – U3

Curator: Boris Groys

Opening: 3 June 2016 at 8 p.m., Moderna Galerija
Venues: Moderna galerija (MG+), Museum of Contemporary Art (+MSUM) Ground Floor, Reactor Center Podgorica(Podgorica pri Ljubljani)

The exhibition presents many possibilities for the artistic exploration of the topic at hand: the connection between artistic and scientific imagination, the cosmos as analysis of sci-fi culture, perspectives of corporeal immortality and critique of contemporary technology. Slovenia’s art and artistic culture has always been particularly open to the universalist perspective. Already the architecture of Jože Plečnik signalled a desire to find a point of contact not only with world history but also with the mystical and mythical components of cosmic life – and at the same time to do so in an absolutely modern way. One cannot overlook the attachment of many Slovene artists, including many younger artists, to the utopian vision of Malevich and, in general, the early Russian avant-garde. This vision still informs many Slovene art practices – especially when it is referenced in a critical, ironic, or absurdist way.

The 8th edition of U3 brings an important change: it takes the exhibition outside the national framework. The new concept of U3 focuses on a dialogue between Slovene space and other contexts that are relevant for it. In this it follow the good practice of certain established “peripheral” biennials that focus on their specific time and place and function as a platform for produced meanings and contents with long-term, positive effects on their spaces.

For more details and images:
https://www.facebook.com/Hanart.TZ.Gallery/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1082604535133096

“Yaji Garden: Art Under the Sky”: a project in 4 parts. 
Curators: CHANG Tsong-Zung, GAO Shiming

A．“Mountain and Water”
video (12 minutes)
Artist (Garden Design): YE Fang
Video: YANG Kai, GUO Yilin,  Photography: Camille CHEN 陳雪,  Sound: ZENG Yongqiang 曾永強

The Yaji Garden is both a garden for art gathering and domestic pleasure; its aesthetics is based on the same principle as the art of “mountain and water” painting (landscape). Artist YE Fang is a landscape painter affiliated with the Suzhou Painting Academy, and a specialist in classical gardens.

B．“Story of the Stone: Chiseling At Emptiness”
5 paper scrolls and one papier mâché sculpture, displayed as a constellation.
5 paper scrolls (Right to Left): CAO Xiaoyang, LEUNG Kui-ting, LIN Haizhong, WANG Dongling, CHIU Kwong-chiu
Papier mâché sculpture: XU Longsen

“Story of the Stone: Chiseling At Emptiness“
Concept by CHIU Kwong Chiu

Emptiness is not Void; it is the realm of potentiality. The Stone, or a drawing of the stone, emerges from emptiness to bring to life an ‘aesthetic realm’ by becoming part of a cosmos. A stone can merge with other stones to form a majestic mountain, or remain anonymous in the wilderness. Legend has it that the universe was formed when the goddess Nu Wo mended Heaven with a five-colour stone.

Paper comes from wood, a growing material that complements and ‘adds’ to the potentiality of Emptiness. The Stone represents the condensation of matter; its presence ‘reduces’ the potentiality of Emptiness. The calligraphic line draws the Stone as well as the Word; the line untangled undoes both the Stone and the calligraphic Word. In this constellation, scrolls, stones and ‘word-knots’ come together in various states of potentiality.

C．”Illuminated Presence”
An installation consisting of one painting, 3 photographs and 2 vitrines.
Artist (photography and installation): YEH Wei-li
Artist (painting): YEH Shi-Chiang (1926-2012)

YEH Shi-Chiang  “Guilin Mountainscape”
2008    Ink on Paper    136 x 420 cm

‘Interaction’ with a deceased master through restoring his derelict studio and engaging his art and relics. The interpretative process transforms the old master into a contemporary presence.

YEH Wei-li believes the practice of photography should be an active engagement with its subject matter. For this project he has renovated the old master’s derelict studio in order to bring it back to life for a series of photographs. He also selects and archives objects from the painter’s “relics” to give him a new “museum” presence.

D．”Eaves Dropping on A Tree Spirit”
Scroll in Moon Palace paper (20-meter roll)
Artist: Ali VAN

As a transplanted tree moves into the garden, spirits and living presences in a garden are invited to leave their shadows and memories in this work.

Artist Statement:
Les Titres De Vie

On Something like this
something about the shards we cast
away with memories
a primitive eulogy, a collection of epitaphs
something about the “life span of things”
the wit of all things recorded and kept
to live out their functional lives –

you start at the backdoor, guided by the beat of 8 sun men folk rusty clarity canvasing shoes to mount on hip back weight of your bark, your rope entangle, your archi-agri-cultural song. there is no water yet but soil and debris of new made man trees, pillars in tang, lacquer ready. you sense the south, the yin around you, yang sequestered to family air room, heirlooms upstairs. there is a man to the west resting, his force to guard change, practice, precise manifestation. the east marks market, meditation, sceptique neighbours watching you walk. your refuge in dim light, north where blossoms slip like silk to write eyes on pine. body silent, stirring, -speaking in-betweens. beyond the maingate we let your bike break root of rubber tree.

The Body of Confucius: Installation #2 Re-making the Confucian Rites – Capping Ceremony

Video in 3-screen projection, 15 minutes

Authors: Chang Tsong-Zung, Jeffrey Shaw
Academic Host: Peng Lin, Tsinghua University Research Center of Chinese Rites
Video production: CityU School of Creative Media, Paul Nichola
Project initiators and producers Re-making of the Confucian Rites: Jia Li Hall, Tsinghua University Research Center of Chinese Rites

The traditional cosmology and system of knowledge known as li, usually translated as Confucian Rites, bore the brunt of critical attacks by modern reformers at the beginning of the 20^th century. To the modern Chinese, li is now one of the most remote and unintelligible aspects of China’s cultural past. And yet li has always lied at the heart of China’s civilisational order: In pre-modern days, relations at all levels of society were informed by an intuitive understanding of li: whether it be court officials or village neighbours, literate or illiterate. As a cosmology, li has fostered the social and personal cultivation that allow the Chinese person to navigate the world. Any discussion of the ‘Chinese spirit’ would be incomplete if it fails to include the system of li.

Li research provides a conceptual framework for unwrapping concepts surrounding that area of experience and knowledge that in modern times has mainly been framed in Western terms of ‘art’ (yi shu) and ‘aesthetics’ (shen mei). As a system of awareness and ‘practice’, li offers a barometer for gauging the rapid changes that are taking place in Chinese people’s sensibilities in the course of modernisation, especially in terms of their physical body and their ‘livingness’. The tradition of li also highlights the potential of art as a harmonising force in attuning new sensibilities to society – a significant mission of art in view of the fluidity of social relations in contemporary times.

Confucian (li) is a civilizational framework that covers the realms of aesthetics, ethics and ideology. It is also a technique of the body, a skill that can be learnt and inscribed. ‘Re-making’ Confucian li is relevant today as an important alternative system of knowledge, and a shining historical example of ‘aesthetics as politics’ (not politicized aesthetics). Research projects we are undertaking address the following related issues:

1. The ‘archaeology of the modern’. Becoming ‘modern’ implies a radically revised regime of the body, and within this regime is embedded the ideology of the Chinese ‘modern’. A crucial question about Chinese modernity is: How was the ‘Chinese modern body’ constructed? What process did it take?

2. How does social order manifest itself physically in the social body? Asking the question in reverse: How does a Self come into its own through claiming a social-body as its own? What technique/skill must the Self acquire to negotiate with society, and maintain an appropriate distance from the State at the same time?

3. Within a State system, how might a social-body such as li be deployed for some form of tribal self-determination? (i.e. as a means for resistance and creativity?) How might a technique based on the Self become a national/international language of the social-body?