totalab is pleased to present \u201cGoing Viral: Zombies, Pluribiosis, and Love of the Living Dead,\u201d a special project launched in conjunction with 2022 Shanghai Art Week. The exhibition showcases recent works from Tarak, Tianzhuo Chen, Owen Fu, He Xiangyu, Hu Weiyi, Yong Xiang Li, Liu Ren, Sydney Shen, Sin Wai Kin\/fka Victoria Sin, Wang Jiajia, and Yu Ji, which were acquired over the past three years of covid by the soil collection.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoing Viral,\u201d the exhibition title, is often a metaphor for something gaining significant online traction within a short period \u2013 like the rapid spread of a virus. Networked and geometrised, viruses now signify scientific data and models and multimedia, interdisciplinary, and transnational means of communication. Bruno Latour suggested that the emergence of human-to-human viruses proves our mistake in externalising and objectifying the natural world.1<\/sup> When a new virus arrives, we either become the virus itself or mimic its growth pattern, living with ourselves to continue colonising and looting in the virtual world. 1 When a new virus arrives, we either become the virus itself or mimic its growth pattern, living with ourselves to continue colonising and looting in the virtual world.<\/p>\n Of course, we have to stay optimistic. In \u201cWelcome to the Virosphere,\u201d Eben Kirksey\u2019s editorial in the recent e-flux Journal October issue, she writes, \u201csymbiotic relationships are often unwanted or unescapable.\u2026learning how to think like symbiotic viruses might offer ways out of contemporary planetary predicaments.\u201d2<\/sup> If \u201cGoing Viral\u201d is destined for our society, we should re-calibrate and re-structure the priorities of our viral response. With the selection of works included in our collaboration, totalab and the soil collection provide feedback to the imperative game of life; we investigate how \u201cour viruses make us form a rhizome with other creatures\u201d3<\/sup> and alter or reform the lifestyles we designate for ourselves.<\/p>\n Following the vein of thought, it is time that we refer to ourselves as \u201czombies.\u201d In Eastern folklore, zombies, or ji\u0101ngsh\u012b<\/em>, are dead bodies resurrected by celestial mystique; they become masters of martial arts and will never decompose. In the West, they are mutated humans who have fallen victim to viruses, parasites, or chemical hazards; they are also referred to as the \u201cundead.\u201d The lore shares a paradoxical unity that speaks to a trained separation between mind and body under different systems of viral response. In the sculpture Soul<\/em> (2021), Liu Ren juxtaposes egg shells with a skull, symbols of death and life, respectively; the repeated carving of the word \u201csoul\u201d sealed in the resin cast implies the empowered spatiality of writing. Yong Xiang Li plays an Asian vampire who forms a symbiotic relationship with his lovers through his \u201clove juice\u201d in the single-channel video I\u2019m not in love (how to feed on humans)<\/em> (2020).<\/p>\n We have already entered a new era of pluribiosis, and it\u2019s become evident that humans and viruses share a mutually parasitic relationship. Yu Ji\u2019s Flesh in Stones \u2013 Ghost No.10<\/em> (2020) consists of several head-and-armless human figures suspended \u2013 hugging and dancing \u2013 along a twisted rebar. With its formal fluidity, her work signifies the heterogeneity of life instead of its autonomy. The cycle of life is determined by the particular ways in which biological forms and activities come together. On the other hand, Sin Was Kin\u2019s video It\u2019s Always You<\/em> (2021) questions the binarism brought about by recent technological advances with cross-dressing characters.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, we are so used to calling ourselves \u201cthe living dead.\u201d We have chosen to define the epidemic era in which others are still living as the \u201cpost-epidemic era.\u201d Similar anachrony can be found in He Xiangyu\u2019s attempt to expose the sins of Babylon in his work on paper Palate 20\u20131\u201335<\/em> (2020). If COVID has rekindled Historicism, are we in the midst of another cycle or near the tail of it? Are we, as commentators, independent of the cycle? The \u201czombie\u201d in Tianzhuo Chen\u2019s oil painting L\u2019amour<\/em> (2020) causes death and destruction to his world for the sake of love \u2013 aren\u2019t we the zombie?<\/p>\n Notes:<\/p>\n 1. Bruno Latour, After Lockdown: A Metamorphosis<\/em>, trans. Julie Rose (Polity, 2021).<\/p>\n 2. Eben Kirksey, \u201cEditorial: Welcome to the Virosphere,\u201d Viral Theory<\/em>, e-flux Journal<\/em> #130 (October 2022): www.e-flux.com\/journal\/130\/491400\/editorial-welcome-to-the-virosphere\/<\/p>\n 3. Gilles Deleuze and F\u00e9lix Guattari, On the Line<\/em>, trans. John Johnston (Semiotext(e), 1983), 21.<\/p>\n About:<\/p>\n totalab is a Shanghai-based curatorial practice and interdisciplinary research office initiated by curator Evonne Jiawei Yuan with artist Julian Junyuan Feng co-establishing its presence in the former French Concession as an independent space in 2022 and 2023. totalab is dedicated to exploring digital society and its future, coordinating events through various media including art production, architectural performance, video experiments, and bodily imagination, thus deeply intervening in the reconstruction of the information world. totalab organizes exhibitions, seminars, and related publication projects at irregular intervals to play a useful, complementary role in the local cultural scene. Wang Jiayi, Director of the creative agency 16b9, also provides visual communication for totalab as its strategic ally.<\/p>\n The Soil Collection is initiated by Beijing-based young collectors Vince Guo and Aria Yang. They both earned overseas qualifications in art management and working experience at local contemporary museums. By a transient and nomadic staging of exhibition work while developing commissions with emerging artists, the two founders seek to establish a collection which is discussable and frequently in flux.<\/p>\n Venue: totalab, Unit 302, Building No.5, 8 Hengshan Road, Xuhui, Shanghai<\/p>\n Dates: 2022.11.12\u20132023.1.8<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":368,"template":"","curatorial_category":[6,4,5],"class_list":["post-346","curatorial","type-curatorial","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","curatorial_category-totalab","curatorial_category-inter-institutional","curatorial_category-communal"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/evonnejiaweiyuan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/curatorial\/346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/evonnejiaweiyuan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/curatorial"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/evonnejiaweiyuan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/curatorial"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/evonnejiaweiyuan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/evonnejiaweiyuan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"curatorial_category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/evonnejiaweiyuan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/curatorial_category?post=346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}