Cacotopia x Future Host | Artist Project: Scripture

2021.05.18 Tuesday

Location

Online

Artists: Future Host (Tingying Ma and Kang Kang)

To whom does the earth belong? What does planetary flourishing look like to precolonial eyes? 

In the midst of a global pandemic, the epistemic entrapment and sensory deprivation by quarantine governance leave few alternatives. With xenophobia and ethno-nationalist separation on the rise, extractivism and developmentalism continuing to fuel the global climate breakdown, we find ourselves unable to articulate a future beyond popular cliches, or to imagine life free from the immediate and slow violence of capitalist subjugation, environmental destruction, and heteronormative becoming. We believe that returning to the primordial text of Shanhaijing (Book of mountains and seas) from this state is returning to the possibility of a future-enabling speculation. We look to mythology as a space that mediates anti-colonial, anti-categorical, non-linear thinking, a kind of resilience that’s been seeded in the origin.

The stories, creatures, and environments in Shanhaijing (Book of Mountains and Seas) gesture toward a cosmology that is correlational. Cross-pollinated species, transmutable beings, androgynous beasts and humans thrive in the infinite space between heaven and earth, where matter and phenomena are in a constant flow of exchange. This kind of imaginative correlation dilutes the contemporary desire for categorization, destabilizes hierarchical orderings. With roots in Taoist philosophy, Shanhaijing centers the body as an expression of the shape and logic of the cosmos, a way of living and knowing through embodiment. This radical epistemology enables us to think on a terrestrial scale, to form a deep and intimate solidarity with ourselves and our surroundings.

The development of this project has been supported by Shandaken Project: Governors Island and LMCC Arts Center, New York. 

 

About the Artists

Future Host (Tingying Ma and Kang Kang) is an artist duo who consider the world as emotive and sentient that can only be processed through epistemic inquiries. 

Future Host’s work has been presented at the Museum of Chinese in America, New York; International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP), New York; Ullens Center of Contemporary Art (UCCA), Beijing; Ming Contemporary Art Museum (MCAM), Shanghai. A finalist for the 2018 Huayu Art Award, their practice has been supported by Shandaken Projects: Governors Island and LMCC: Arts Center. Their writing has been published or is forthcoming by Wendy’s Subway, New York, T Magazine China, LEAP. Their publication The Insatiable can be found at Printed Matter, New York. 

Credits

Fiction writing by Future Host (Tingying Ma and Kang Kang)
Fiction Chinese Translation: He Pan 
Podcast Produced by Tingying Ma 
Podcast Theme Music Composition by Thoom aka Zeynab Marwan (@thoom_report)
Podcast Assistant: Lauren Wolchik 
Podcast Technical Consultant: Zhen Qin
Cover image by Sam Lubicz (@slubicz)
Graphic Design: Matt Tecson (@one________________winged)

The Macalline Center of Art (MACA) is a non-profit art institution located in the 798 Art District of Beijing and officially inaugurated its space on January 15, 2022. Occupying a two-story building with a total area of 900 square meters, MACA unites artists, curators, and other art and cultural practitioners from around the world. Through its diverse, ongoing, and collaborative approaches, the Center establishes a new site on the contemporary art scene. Guided by the “work of artists” and backed by interdisciplinary research, the Center aims to bring together a community passionate about art and devoted to the “contemporary” moment so as to respond proactively to our rapidly evolving times.