2024.03.24 Sunday 20:00
Location
200 Yongfu Road (inside YongFoo Élite), Shanghai, China
Speaker: Xu Zhe
In the park, it is a leisurely stroll for Xu Zhe, a moment of introspection into recent artistic endeavors. "Introspection" here implies questioning, doubting a gradually failing method. For instance, using "memory" as a creative drive is undoubtedly lazy, as the concept of "memory" carries too much ambiguity. Yet, doggedly pursuing absolute truths seems to lack perception of reality and imagination of the unknown. It calls for observation, being an observer. It demands sound; human voices and electronic sounds serve as continuous sensory energy.
In this lecture performance, two speakers will join Xu Zhe, integrating fragmented narratives with synthesizer performances.
Born in Shanghai, he graduated from the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Aix-en-Provence, France in 2006. Xu zhe was involved in the founding of the artist group "ZuZhi". He received the Asian Cultural Council Visual Arts Fellowship in 2016, and is currently teaching at the Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts. Xu zhe works in a variety of media, including video, photography, and installation. His rescent work focuses on the individual’s existential circumstances in contemporary life, responding to the era we inhabit by uncovering and exploring the hidden resilience, ambiguity, and restlessness found within personal experiences beyond historical narratives.
VORTEX, launched by the MACA in Shanghai in 2022, is an art and cultural salon in the form of lecture performances occurring once or twice every month. The programme calls for non-institutionalised artistic and academic production in which contemporary art practitioners and scholars get to explore cross-disciplinarily the issues of the macro or micro, the global or local, the collective or individual. VORTEX, hence, is where you spin in the whirlpool of spontaneous whims and intuitive approaches represented by individual research and enquiries. Being present here at VORTEX, you are experiencing versatile forms of lecture performances that experiment with new mechanisms and methodologies.
