Curated by alumni Ji Shi and Lixing (Ivy) Feng and M.Arch student You Wu, #HASHTAG exhibition was selected as one of three winning proposals for the PSA 2017 Emerging Curators Project.
November 25, 2017 – March 9, 2018
Power Station of Art, Shanghai
http://www.h-a-s-h-t-a-g.com
Artists: Baoyang Chen, Weiyi Li, Shiyuan Liu, Weiwei Zhang, Wan Li, Zigeng Wang, Yifei Wu, Xiaonan Wang, Caison Wang, Feifei Feng, Chengliang Cai, Ronghua Lei
Inspired by the extensively used symbol “#” in social media, #HASHTAG marks a physical location for digital social space and transforms the exhibition into a real-time updating cloud storage. By inviting artists, curators, and visitors to join a “live chat,” #HASHTAG tries to reconfigure the roles each party plays in an exhibition.
#hashtag takes place in two parallel dimensions – “#online” and “#on-site”. “#online” transforms the exhibition into real-time updating cloud storage – both artists and visitors contribute to its archive by sending hashtags to specific artworks. “#on-site”, on the other hand, becomes a physical address linking to the cloud, and a tangible screen displaying all social interactions.
In the context of the digital turn, #hashtag tries to record the shift in which artists abandoned grandiose intentions for a more nuanced range of concerns. Familiar daily objects – faith, fortune, street, cityscape, Apple store, unmanned grocery, etc. – are de-familiarized through digital observation, articulation and re-creation, therefore reinterpreted to a new status of unfamiliarity. As a response to the emerging phenomena, #hashtag crowds these provocative artworks into one space, where the reactions and feedbacks from all participants are synchronously inspired, captured, and archived.
Thus, no more galleries, only lives; no more sections, only archipelagos; no more installation, only interface; no more canvas, only resolution; no more sequence, only URL; no more catalogue, only data structure; no more labels, only QR codes; no more descriptive texts, only definitive constructs; no more visitors, only players; no more observation, only intervention; no more guestbook, only bullet screen; no more anticipation, only statistics; no more comments, only hashtags. No more speculation on the digital, only digital documentation; no more virtual reality, only real virtuality.
Power Station of Art is the hub of contemporary art in Shanghai. It is the home to major architecture exhibitions and events in China, including the Shanghai Biennale. In 2017, PSA has held renowned exhibitions of architects Shigeru ban, Toyo Ito, Yona Friedman, Balkrishna Doshi, and SuperStudio.
Related Link: PSA (Power Station of Art in Shanghai)
