In the Park

2024.03.24 Sunday 20:00

Location

YongFoo Élite,200 Yongfu Road, Shanghai

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.

 

About the Speaker: Xu Zhe

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.

 

About the Vortex

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.

MACA Art Center is a non-profit contemporary art institution housed in a standalone building of minimalistic industrial style and futuristic design in Beijing's 798 Art District, a major hub for arts and culture in the city. Through forward-looking and experimental content, MACA aims to enable communication traversing disciplinary boundaries while forging international dialogues grounded in the specificities of a Chinese perspective. Our programmatic scope, which spans exhibitions, research initiatives, pan-performance practices, and alternative communal engagement, signals a commitment to exploring ideas outside established epistemic frameworks. MACA seeks to position itself as a new institutional mode, proposing an alternative coordinate within the topology of Chinese contemporary art. Through art, we address our radically transforming times.