Reading Text: Excerpt from Lauren Elkin's Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art

To allow the audience to extend this wondrous fragrance experience beyond the exhibition, MACA, in collaboration with 432 PERFUME, will host a perfumery workshop, guiding participants on a unique journey of scent exploration.

When history has lost its ground, how might it return to body and space?

How do we connect as "bare life" in a shared existence?

Have we, with each venture outward, subtly altered the way we return?

How can an artist intervene in social reality as an individual, and how can artistic practice emerge through collective collaboration?

He illuminates the fissures within the dominant historiographical frameworks of China’s major rivers and seas. Through these overlooked spaces, he returns to and reconstructs “Jiangnan” by following the lifeways of those dwelling along inland waters.

"Totem Thinkers" are not limited to humans, but emphasize an "inclusive mindset," encompassing both human and non-human beings in the realm of care and artistic expression.

What is music's role in connecting the terrestrial to the solar at different moments of our path around the Sun?

Tactility is the repulsion between electrons.

The complex entanglement of commerce, science, and power structures in the nonhuman world and the Anglo-Indian colonial system.

In the world of games, are players truly free, or are they unknowingly controlled?

Pass down folk traditions, make shadow puppet lanterns for the Mid-Autumn Festival

In this context, sericulture transcends its traditional result-driven nature. It now embodies the cultivation of harmonious relationships between humans and nature, as well as among people themselves.

There is no narrative plot that needs to move forward in Urgency Addiction, only an exploration of how productivity disrupts the body, others, and the surrounding space.

In this installment of the “Vortex” project, we are delighted to welcome Li Chunchang, the renowned Chinese translator of J. M. Coetzee's literary works, and esteemed scholars Zhang Nian, Zhao Qianfan, and Lu Xinghua to share their perspectives on the fascinating world of Coetzee’s novels.

The conversation will be a curated content of spoken words entailing the rationale behind Feng’s previous works in response to the current ecological environment, accompanied with fragments of sound pieces, texts and images.

"LIVE, WORK, POSE！" is the second installment of the long-term project "MACA IS BURNING" dance workshops organized by MACA.

MACA invites Feza Kayungu Ramazani and Prodige Tumba Makonga from Waza to share their practices, thoughts, and feelings with us in Beijing. At the same time, their practices also respond to an urgent global question: how do we live together? The event will also screen a documentary film titled Walemba: The Story of the Lwanzo Lwa Mikuba, which was presented by Waza at Documenta fifteen.

In the park, it is a leisurely stroll for Xu Zhe, a moment of introspection into recent artistic endeavors.

Against the backdrop of the Anthropocene era, the last paddy on Earth collapses upon the sprawling ruin arching over the sea at the mouth of the Yangtze River. The Paddy in Paddyfilm unfolds in the residency project at the MadeIn Art Museum on Chongming Island, narrating a human-centric Anthropocene story with an accelerating plot.

In the book "What Painting Is?” James Elkins departs from the traditional approach in art history, which studies painting through form and meaning. His focus shifts to the microscopic material components and generative processes of painting, likening painting to the ancient and mysterious practice of alchemy. 

This talk will discuss video game interactivity and its politics from the perspective of the interface, analyzing why the interface is the key to the change from game to video game, and revealing how the interface both exposes the interactivity of the game as a heterochronic interaction between the game and the player in two worlds, and transforms the autotelic space of the game into the semi-autotelic space of the video game.

We feel deeply honored to have presented this all-encompassing party as the finale of the Shanghai art season, offering friends both within and outside the art industry a short yet refreshing break for their minds and bodies from their daily routines.

"I am a man: little do I  last and the night is enormous.  But I look up: the stars write. Unknowing I understand:  I too am written, and at this very moment  someone spells me out."

The game engine weaves together many fragments of the reality: life in an earthquake-resistant shelter after the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, memories during the “qigong fever” social phenomenon, myths of earth arteries, stories and narratives of deities and monsters, nightmares plagued by physical pains and wounds, and the haunting of patriarchy within a 20th-century family.

While immersing ourselves in it, we must maintain a clear mind and perceive the profound impact of new consumerism on our inner selves in the era of virtual reality, and that's what we'll really get out of this bazaar.

Yao Qingmei tries to create a text with varied forms of thickness. This will be a more open and relaxing experiment on reading.

There should be a place for "education" in the whole puzzle of the "vanguard".

As the exhibition "Multispecies Clouds" concluded its public display in the gallery space, we are embarking on an extended journey about multispecies under the framework of "Meshwork × Bare Screen".

In early spring, we are invited by the Shan Shui Conservation Center to a one-day biodiversity survey in the western suburbs of Beijing.

As humanity advances towards modernity, toxin-generating algae from ancient times impel us to merge with artificial intelligence or bestow affection upon the intellects we have created.

The history of colonization and the history of nature are closely intertwined, and tigers and deer record the continuous transformation between architecture, landforms, and culture.

This book club will gather about 20 viewers to introduce and share three articles about the wonderful relationship between plants and humans, exploring their multiple levels and possibilities in global regions and different cosmologies.

Through the eyes of nature-watching enthusiasts, we can see that the city of Beijing may be more deeply entwined with the non-human other than we thought.

In conjunction with the exhibition Multispecies Clouds at MACA, the special public program Meshwork is honored to invite Bo Yang, PhD candidate in anthropology from the Human Ecology Research Group at University College London, to present a theoretical discussion on ontology, multispecies ethnography and botanical study in anthropology in the context of his fieldwork on Cordyceps Sinensis in Kham area of Tibet.

As the first session of the special public program “Meshwork” accompanying the exhibition “Multispecies Clouds“ at MACA, we are honored to have Dr. Wang Xiyan, anthropologist, tell us a legend about Burmese pythons in the Kinmen region, and explore the field practice of the "multi-species ethnography" method.

The word "zang (脏)" in Mandarin means dirty, but its pronunciation is exactly the same as the word that means "true (真)" in Wenzhou dialect.

The highly controversial Documenta 15 has come to its closure, however, the debate around it is still very much heated. We have seen severe disagreement and imbalance at this specific site that represents the global contemporary art scene. How are they relevant to us? We could still ask, how are we (artists, institutions, curators, collectors…) related to the discourses around “locality”, “global south”, “context”, and “Lumbung” – the concept proposed by Ruangrupa in Documenta 15. How do we comprehend these disputes and arguments? How do we rethink of “locality”? In this seminar, we would like to reflect on these questions as well as to solidify our positions.

The field of contemporary art has been flooded with terminology related to "locality," around which emerged numerous exhibitions and discussion. People are even under the illusion that by tilting artistic direction towards local contexts, it is possible to break free from homogeneity and develop different approaches, explore new contexts, and change trends… This is, of course, an illusion. In my limited personal experience, I have found that professionals in the field of contemporary art are probably the least "patient" group of people. No matter how complex the context is, you’d better explain yourself in two minutes. The more "professional" people are, the less time they have for others, and they would jump to conclusions within a few sentences. It's not a matter of individual differences, it's a common denominator. I want to discuss issues related to the topic of "locality" in a divergent way by sharing these three stories, which are not strictly interconnected. For instance, can we extract a new way of perceiving time and space from "locality"? Can "locality" only be included as a specificity in a more general context? …

In the final session of "Subjective Narratology", Li Binyuan will recollect the legacy of his work and talk about the scars left on himself during his creation, and draw a picture of Xiaoxiang that is constantly polished, chiseled and reshaped by the artist's body - without geographical displacement and alienation, this hidden personal landscape is deeply connected to the land and the life it provides.

In the third issue of the series “Subjective Narratology“, Xing Danwen will use her personal understanding of ”pain“ as a creative clue to explore the periodicity of ”pain“ – it is perpetuated in the life course of an individual, as well as in social changes. Through the growth and artistic exploration of this female artist and a generation, we will meet bizarre living forms that live in a broken scene caused by overexploitation, and your pain is mine too.

As the second event of the series “Subjective Narratology", artist He An will review his travels to Shanxi, Italy and other places in the past fifteen years, and examine the formation of the places’ unconscious, and reflect on the loss of genius loci.

“Journey to the Organs” is a guided meditation series that opens up our consciousness to the internal organs. Based on the body, we will think about the relationship between human beings and reality, nature, and the universe. In this meditation, Fang Lu and the audience will enter the location of the soul (Po Hu) - the lungs.

Shen Xin’s new text “1, 2, 3, 4” further explores the relationship between language and text, simultaneously describing faults in geographic structures and individual histories.Based on Shen Xin’s text, MACA will host a performance reading.

For countries outside of Europe and North America, is the idea of environmental protection imported or does it have indigenous origins? Two views have emerged among historians.

The Cloister Project is MACA Center’s special project space in Shanghai. Located on the second floor of the Cloister Apartments at No. 62 Fuxing West Road, Shanghai, the Cloister Project is a non-profit space for exhibitions, public education, and cultural exchange.