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Hello, I’m hang li 李航, a researcher and curatorial practitioner based in London and Beijing. My pronoun is she/they/it.
My research interests include science and technology studies, posthumanist studies, anticolonial studies, queer and feminist studies, epistemic (in)justice, collective working, curatorial theory and practice, and autotheory.
I’m currently doing a practice-led PhD at the Royal College of Art.
(website last updated: March 2022)
Research Project, Asymmetry Curatorial Writing Fellowship
Remote Affinity: Working together from a distance
Remote Affinity is an online research project exploring how forms of community support and care can be integrated with cooperative, translocal approaches in art and technology. Curated by Hang Li as the inaugural Asymmetry Curatorial Writing Fellow between April - October 2021, the project involves a series of online conversations, interviews, closed-door workshops, and assembly forums. Working with community organisers, researchers, activists, artists, curators, designers, and technologists from a distance, the project experiments with making meaning and resistant knowledge production situated in plural temporalities, geopolitical situations, and epistemologies. It reimagines online curating as a space to foster knowledge exchange, collective deliberation, and affinity across screens and localities.
The materials generated during the fellowship will be shared at chisenhale.org.uk.
Here is a selection of quotes from recent online events and a list of references that have inspired the project.
An archival website and a publication will be produced at the end of the project.
Designer Sixin Chen, designer Sixin Chen, front-end developer and creative technologist Wenqi Li are supporting the project’s design and website development. Designer Can Yang offered support to the visual research.
diagrams and collage credit: Hang Li
The collage on the left is made by Can Yang and some image credits in this collage are:
Fig.1 Seepage. Credit: Billy McCarley, https://bit.ly/3il1Lr4
Fig.2 Kidney, Interstitium. From NTP Nonneoplastic Lesion Atlas, https://bit.ly/3jeu0qv
Fig.3 Interstitium. Credit: Eric V. Grave/Getty
Fig.4 Water seepage. Credit: Everdry, https://bit.ly/3xe9ETr
Remote Affinity Events
Local/Translocal: The Reproduction of Technological Promise
A panel discussion exploring the ways in which technological optimism, power and sovereignty are reproduced on transnational scales, initiated by Chisenhale’s Asymmetry Curatorial Writing Fellow, Hang Li. Hang was be joined by communication and media researcher Jing Zeng, sociology and public policy researcher Canhui Liu, writer and curator Su Wei, and curator and academic Joni Zhu.
The discussion explored the construction and exchange of technology between China and other countries. The panellists examined technology as social and cultural phenomena that embody ideas of labour organisation, ideologies and the imaginations of power, contributing to the maintenance and transformation of nationalism, financialisation, and governance.
After the panel discussion ‘Local/Translocal: The Reproduction of Technological Promise’
Following the panel discussion ‘Local/Translocal: The Reproduction of Technological Promise’, which was open to the public, a group of researchers, artists, and curators with different knowledge backgrounds contributed to a closed-door roundtable event. Sharing research interests in technology, labour, governance, social movements, diaspora studies, colonialism, and modernism, the participants and panellists were invited to extend the topics raised in the panel discussion and explore the crossroads and shared struggles among some currently distanced disciplines and discourses.
The roundtable participants were Shuyi Cao, Iris Long, Lawrence Lek, Canhui Liu, Xiaoyi Nie, Yue Ren, Xin Shen, Su Wei, Jing Zeng, Yukun Zeng, Harriet Min Zhang, Zoe Zhao (Xi An), and Joni Zhu. The discussion was moderated by Chisenhale’s Asymmetry Curatorial Writing Fellow, Hang Li. Some of the discussion will be reflected in Hang Li’s writing at the end of the Curatorial Writing Fellowship.
A panel discussion exploring the ways in which technological optimism, power and sovereignty are reproduced on transnational scales, initiated by Chisenhale’s Asymmetry Curatorial Writing Fellow, Hang Li. Hang was be joined by communication and media researcher Jing Zeng, sociology and public policy researcher Canhui Liu, writer and curator Su Wei, and curator and academic Joni Zhu.
The discussion explored the construction and exchange of technology between China and other countries. The panellists examined technology as social and cultural phenomena that embody ideas of labour organisation, ideologies and the imaginations of power, contributing to the maintenance and transformation of nationalism, financialisation, and governance.
After the panel discussion ‘Local/Translocal: The Reproduction of Technological Promise’
Following the panel discussion ‘Local/Translocal: The Reproduction of Technological Promise’, which was open to the public, a group of researchers, artists, and curators with different knowledge backgrounds contributed to a closed-door roundtable event. Sharing research interests in technology, labour, governance, social movements, diaspora studies, colonialism, and modernism, the participants and panellists were invited to extend the topics raised in the panel discussion and explore the crossroads and shared struggles among some currently distanced disciplines and discourses.
The roundtable participants were Shuyi Cao, Iris Long, Lawrence Lek, Canhui Liu, Xiaoyi Nie, Yue Ren, Xin Shen, Su Wei, Jing Zeng, Yukun Zeng, Harriet Min Zhang, Zoe Zhao (Xi An), and Joni Zhu. The discussion was moderated by Chisenhale’s Asymmetry Curatorial Writing Fellow, Hang Li. Some of the discussion will be reflected in Hang Li’s writing at the end of the Curatorial Writing Fellowship.
Saturday 18 September 2021, 1 - 4.30pm
Canhui Liu is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at the University of Cambridge. With the interdisciplinary training in Sociology and Public Policy, his research seeks to make a contribution to understanding the social roots and mechanisms of contemporary technicism in policymaking.
Su Wei is an art writer and curator based in Beijing. His recent work focuses on re-depicting and deepening the history of Chinese contemporary art, exploring the roots of its legitimacy and rupture. In 2014, he was awarded first place at the first International Awards for Art Criticism. He was the Senior Curator of Inside-Out Museum Beijing between 2017 and 2021.
Dr. Jing Zeng is a senior research and teaching associate at the Department of Communication and Media Research, University of Zurich, Switzerland. She is co-leading two international projects that research online conspiracies and AI imaginaries funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
Joni Zhu is a curator and academic whose work explores visual cultures considering socio-techno-economic development, minoritarian politics, and machinic conditions. She has held a postdoctoral position researching arts in digital and networked surveillance in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Screen capture of roundtable discussion following 'Local/Translocal: The Reproduction of Technological Promise'
panel discussion
Curating Online: Sustaining Technological Optimism or Approximating Alternatives?
Convened by Chisenhale’s Asymmetry Curatorial Writing Fellow, Hang Li, artists Raqs Media Collective, curator and educator Shama Khanna, and scholar, performer, and curator Donatella Della Ratta discuss the possibilities of online space to re-imagine group deliberation and notions of community. The discussion calls into question technological optimism and solutionism permitting online curating by reclaiming the politicality of working in tandem with technologies.
Curating Online: Sustaining Technological Optimism or Approximating Alternatives?
Convened by Chisenhale’s Asymmetry Curatorial Writing Fellow, Hang Li, artists Raqs Media Collective, curator and educator Shama Khanna, and scholar, performer, and curator Donatella Della Ratta discuss the possibilities of online space to re-imagine group deliberation and notions of community. The discussion calls into question technological optimism and solutionism permitting online curating by reclaiming the politicality of working in tandem with technologies.
Saturday 21 August, 3 - 4.30pm (online)
Raqs Media Collective was formed in 1992 in Delhi, India by Monica Narula, Jeebesh Bagchi and Shuddhabrata Sengupta.
Shama Khanna is a curator, writer and educator from London. They are the founder of Flatness (http://flatness.eu), a long-running 'decentred' platform for artists’ moving image and network culture.
Donatella Della Ratta is the author of Shooting a Revolution: Visual Media and Warfare in Syria (Pluto Press, 2018) and Associate Professor of Communications and Media Studies at John Cabot University, Rome.
Screen capture of panel discussion following 'Curating Online: Sustaining Technological Optimism or Approximating Alternatives?'
青策计划2O2Online
他山之石，新代理人
「他山之石，新代理人」围绕以驻地、委任、专项支持、商业合作等方式参与到此类跨学科工作的11位艺术家，及其在该合作中实现的作品展开，以数据分析、文献展示和线上动态调查报告的形式，结合网页开发与跨平台数据库管理，考据这一生产关系转变的种种细节与链条。我们试图将调查样本范围覆盖作品以外的生产资料，并尝试分析这一生产关系的转变。最后，项目回应互联网的生命周期和链接、存储与分布属性，试图建立一种长期的线上观察机制，以如影随形的方式追踪跨学科艺术生态的动向，并扮演资料库、展示平台、研究资源和思考库的角色。
「他山之石」线上驻地项目一共邀请了17组艺术家团体。驻地以实验跨学科创作实践为目的，但并不主张艺术家需要在驻地期间完成具体创作：最终的产出可以是阶段性的研究，也可以是在驻地期间发展出来的新想法，或是发生在驻地社群期间的交流和讨论。我们也试图利用互联网无地理限制，扩散性和自组织的优势，将知识性信息（讲座，技术演示等）最大化地共享，并集中线上机构的组织和工作能力，去帮助完成具体的创作想法。
「他山之石」线上驻地讲座以月为单位，一共三期（四月、五月、六月），后续内容请关注“他山之石新代理人”微信公众号。在驻地期间，我们邀请活跃在艺术、科学与技术领域的策展人、研究者、制作人和艺术家，从「跨学科工作机制」、「工具箱」和「领域交流与合作」等角度，结合他们自身的从业经验，为驻地艺术家和感兴趣的从业者进行分享，这些讲座也会动态地成为「他山之石」项目研究的一部分。
「他山之石，新代理人」是上海当代艺术博物馆PSA青策计划2O2Online的获选项目。「他山之石，新代理人」驻地项目中，瑞士讲者及导师的部分由瑞士文化基金会上海办公室支持。
programme overview
Blue Cables in Venetian Watercourse
The project “Blue Cables in Venetian Watercourse” features artwork produced within the contexts of residency, commission, open-call, and collaborations between artists, tech companies and scientific research institutions.
The online residency program invites 17 groups of artists. Instead of being “production-driven,” it is “process-driven.” Research materials, new concepts, exchanges, and discussions that occur during the residency period are all considered “output” of this program. It is an experimentation of how online resources and community work can help artists realize their ideas.
During the residency period, we have invited curators, researchers, producers and artists who are active in the field of art, science and technology, to share their experiences on mechanisms, toolkits and interdisciplinary exchanges and communication. The lectures are open to both the residents and practitioners in the field and will become a dynamic part of the long-term research of the “Blue Cables” project.
“Blue Cables in Venetian Watercourse” is one of the ECP 2O2Online Selected projects of Power Station of Art, Shanghai (PSA). Among the series, the sessions by Swiss speakers and tutors are supported by Pro Helvetia Shanghai, Swiss Arts Council.
青策计划2O2Online · “他山之石，新代理人“驻地WIP Show
在（再）制
关于“跨学科、跨领域”所代表之工作状态的讨论已经存在一段时间，田野调查、科技与社会（STS）研究、开源编码工具、电影工业生产乃至产品设计思维，都或多或少地进入了艺术家的视野，随之而来的挑战也蔓延到了具体的工作范畴中。
“他山之石”线上驻地回应2020年青策项目“线上”的课题，一共邀请了17组艺术家团体。线上驻地项目关注多元背景的行业实践者在疫情前后开启的、以跨学科交流为重要组织、沟通与合作方式的探索，同时试图建立一种以研究而非产出导向的、以线上社群为基础的驻地模式。在驻地项目中，“跨学科、跨领域”也一直作为创作、讨论与研究的重心。
在交流创作方式、分享作品流通环节、思考策展人角色的同时，我们也试图在“他山”驻地这个线上社群中共同探讨以下问题：来自其他学科领域的知识与经验是否足以构成原生创造力，还是仅仅沦为填补信息差的投机取巧？在当下一些被认同的合作模式中，我们如何再影响创作过程中的交流、交换和生产？当“跨学科、跨领域”面临被消费的危险，甚至被想象为当代艺术发展所必需的创作方法时，诸如此类的形式与内容是否在有效地推动艺术生态？
关于“艺术与科技工作机制”的探讨，素来有框架化的倾向，某种程度上这也是六七十年代系统研究和以计算机产业为核心的运算逻辑的遗产，涉及到科技的艺术创作和策展时常停滞在智性快感，以及对科技的浪漫推演中，对真实生活中的遭遇作壁上观，这也使得对系统和生态的讨论流于抽象模型层面上的想象。
同时，在边界之间游走的艺术家和实践者所感受到的阈限和风险，将不断地与创作的活力和热情交错。“跨学科、跨领域”研究的自我生长也源自这些意念上的切磋，源自养分的不断再造，源自学科和领域间本就有的张力和冲击。
“他山之石，新代理人”在线下展览“在（再）制”中，以WIP show的形式作为中心载体，将驻地居民在两个月内的研究和创作汇成一个整体板块，展出待完成的、类似“草案”的在制品。同时，出于被成果、时效等KPI崇拜所笼罩的创作节奏的谨慎态度，WIP show的模式不仅是对“慢策展/slow curating”的回应，也代表艺术创作如何在线上和线下环境中呈现可延伸、可衍生的自我生态。
“在（再）制”也指向当下时代变迁与迭代中领域之间在互动时的再制造。在“跨学科、跨领域”知识与经验被轻易命名、简化、忽略，或被过分宣传、张扬、品牌化时，艺术家和实践者也在前线扮演着“再制”者的角色，共同建构和切磋着对领域内外的基底、设施、语境、劳务和生态的讨论
Blue Cables in Venetian Watercourse
online residency programme and WIP showBlue Cables in Venetian Watercourse, one of two selected projects for the Power Station of Art Shanghai’s ECP (Emerging Curators Project) 2O2Online, presented a week of showcases from 26th of June to 3rd of July in the forms of online webinars, one-day WIP exhibition, off-site reading room events and podcast shows. As the residency project has been contesting the persistent yet unspoken issues among the cliched inter-/cross-/trans-disciplinary discourses and practices, the series of showcases also became the embodiments of the broken bonds among knowledge vessels which require more attention.
The art world has familiarised itself with inter-/cross-/trans-disciplinary practices. While various other (and Other-ed) disciplines - for examples, Science and Technology Studies (STS), engineering, programming, design thinking, film making, or even traces of anthropological research methodology - take part in knowledge production of art and cultural values, we are met by artists’ strong appetite for inter-/cross-/trans-disciplinary collaborations, and, hence, new challenges in their workflows and within the overall art ecology.
As Blue Cables in Venetian Watercourse wished to respond to the challenges, especially at this unprecedented time when online presence has become substantial, 17 groups of our practitioners-in-residency have come together to articulate their versions of inter-/cross-/trans-disciplinary exchanges. Working betwixt and between various bodies of knowledge, they have fostered a sense of urgency in exploring ways of collaboration during the pandemic, establishing new forms of communication, and redefining the infrastructure of a so-called inter-/cross-/trans-disciplinary art ecology. The residency itself has also been foregrounding these creative practices in the lexicon of research-based and community-centred productions that defy the greed for superficial outcomes.
The residency as an online community encouraged exchanges of ideas, specifically on topics such as modes of production, circulation of values, and the roles of the curatorial, to respond to these questions:
+ How should we perceive knowledge and experience from other (and Other-ed) disciplines?
+ Can they become part of the domain knowledge instead of mere means of closing information gaps?
+Among the conventionally recognised modes of collaboration, how do we redefine the processes of communication, exchanges, and (re-)production?
+ When we arrive at inter-/cross-/trans-disciplinary exchanges, how have we witnessed the over-consumption of these cliched concepts?
+ How do we escape from the presumptions of identities of inter-/cross-/trans-disciplinary production?
+ How do we de-aestheticise them, unlearn the unnecessary“rules”, and call upon the names of the pertinent in our art ecology?
As an extension of Blue Cables in Venetian Watercourse’s residency program, the offline show borrowed the idea of WIP (Work-In-Progress) to exhibit a draft-like assemblage of our residents’ progress. In response to the call for “slow-curating”, the WIP show did not wish to follow the steps of KPI-oriented knowledge production or the fetish for developmental outcomes. It signifies a constant “to-be-finished” state of being for these artworks, as well as the malleable, elastic, organic growth of a collective environment.
WIP has also been redefined as Work-In-reProgramming at our residency to give voice to the practitioners. To penetrate deep into the conversations of inter-/cross-/trans-disciplinary practices is to problematise the easily named, reduced, compromised, ignored, promoted, exaggerated and branded images. As practitioners became reprogrammers for these practices, they were also investigating the infrastructures, constructions, capabilities, languages, contexts and labours of the ecology. Our WIP (Work-In-Progress and Work-In-reProgramming) show and our residency called upon all practitioners to foreground in the same solidarity for a heterogeneous reality of collaborations.
April - July 2021
线上展览艺术家：
刘艾真,陈抱阳,汪洋&漆贞贞,林沛滢,刘昕, 陈逸云,徐维静, 纪柏豪, 王智铨
线上驻地居民:
ajla yi, 毕昕，陈沾衣，陈俪莎，蒋天览，龙盼，全宇飞，空地实验室，刘帅，Ines Cui，钟乐鸣，刘超/浦睿洁/冀以清，Shuyi Cao/Remina Greenfield/Mengxi He，张念绮/施韫泽，xindi，维度研究所 Dimension Institute（于博柔/周天歌/王泽宇/闵嘉剑），钟慧侦/廖婧琳/叶衡
视觉设计：陈思昕
技术支持：李文奇, 陈最
这里是项目网站
这里是策展团队制作的关于他山项目与部分驻地居民的podcast：
“虚构！重新想象身份的可能性”是他山电台的一个系列对话节目。虚构可以是一种童话想象，也可以是一种口号和坚定的态度。在“虚构！”的三期的对话中，李航将与和xindi与ajla yi聊聊ta们世界里的身份与行动力。
策展团队对谈｜安全感
策展团队对谈｜可持续
奇雲 （龙星如）
策展與魔法 （张敏 Harriet Min Zhang）
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exhibition artists:
Jen Liu, Chen Baoyang, Yang Wang & Zhenzhen Qi, Pei-Ying Lin, Liu Xin, Yiyun Chan, Vivian Xu, Maya Man, Chi Pohao, Kenny Wong
residents:
ajla yi, Xin Bi, Zhanyi Chen, Lisha Chen, Tianlan Jiang, Pan Long, Yufei Quan, Shuai Liu, Ines Cui, Leming Zhong, Chao Liu/Ruijie Pu/Yiqing Ji, Shuyi Cao/Remina Greenfield/Mengxi He, Nianqi Zhang/Yunze Shi, xindi, Dimension Institute, Huizhen Zhong/Jinglin Liao/Heng Ye
curators: Iris Long
Yue Ren, Hang Li, Harriet Min Zhang, Yuting He
Visual Design: Chen Sixin
Tech: Li Wenqi, Chenzui
link to the project website
link to the podcasts (in Chinese) produced by the curatorial team about the programme
during the online residency programme, I organised two workshops:
workshop 1:
Departuring from Collaboration:How do science and technology impact multidisciplinary art collaborations?
May and June, 2021
workshop 2:
When we Talk about Fees, What are We Talking About? Behind an Online Art Programme: Labour, value and working ethics of art-making, curating, and instituting
June, 2021
more information about the workshops will available soon
特别感谢：aaajiao, Monica Bello, Simon Denny, Diakron, 杜月, 郭城, Nicolas Henchoz, Sabine Himmelsbach, Victoria Ivanova, Bora Kim, Tara Lasrado, 刘昕, Luc Meier, Maya Minder,Max Rheiner (Birdly), Christian Simm, 王辛, 严飞, 由宓, 于渺
Special Thanks to：aaajiao, Monica Bello, Simon Denny, Diakron, Yue Du, Cheng Guo, Nicolas Henchoz, Sabine Himmelsbach, Victoria Ivanova, Bora Kim, Tara Lasrado, Xin Liu, Luc Meier, Maya Minder, Xiaoyi Nie, Max Rheiner (Birdly), Christian Simm, Xin Wang, Fei Yan, Mi You, Miao Yu
online five-day workshop
Questioning Online Curating
Presenting projects online becomes a necessary option for artists and creative practitioners during the pandemic. But it is perhaps time to ask, how do we work collectively in art production in tandem with digital technologies? Does online curating help in the remote co-working processes?
The workshop invites ten participants from different backgrounds to formulate a collective during the five days. As a small group, we will work together closely to question the value and code of conduct of online curating.
The workshop will consider the ethical and political implications of online curating in line with some contested narratives, such as:
During this workshop, participants will each develop a speculative plan for presenting an art project online. Participants will be invited to present the plan in internal roundtable crits, and an online event opened to the RCA community. The workshop will be of interest to those who hope to develop critical approaches to navigating, participating or organising online art projects. It also welcomes those who hope to share their experience of preparing for the WIP show and other online art projects.
here is a list of suggested materials, which include:
Questioning Online Curating
Presenting projects online becomes a necessary option for artists and creative practitioners during the pandemic. But it is perhaps time to ask, how do we work collectively in art production in tandem with digital technologies? Does online curating help in the remote co-working processes?
The workshop invites ten participants from different backgrounds to formulate a collective during the five days. As a small group, we will work together closely to question the value and code of conduct of online curating.
The workshop will consider the ethical and political implications of online curating in line with some contested narratives, such as:
+ Inclusivity and accessibility advanced by art institutions;
+ Problem-solving in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) industries;
+ Market-oriented strategy making in design thinking.We will also unpack together the praxis of online curating by discussing its often-neglected constituents such as remote communication, software-based co-production, crowdsourcing, and some infrastructural specificities, including broadband and browsers and social media.
During this workshop, participants will each develop a speculative plan for presenting an art project online. Participants will be invited to present the plan in internal roundtable crits, and an online event opened to the RCA community. The workshop will be of interest to those who hope to develop critical approaches to navigating, participating or organising online art projects. It also welcomes those who hope to share their experience of preparing for the WIP show and other online art projects.
here is a list of suggested materials, which include:
+ Texts on technology & social justice
+ Texts on online curating
+ Texts on ‘new’ media art, art & tech, and the capital-intensive art and curating
+ Some online art projects for looking together during the workshop
22nd - 26th February 2021
AcrossRCA workshop
** here is a brief of the speculative project plans produced by the group members during the workshop which includes:
+ Woven Island
+ A Digital Utopia for the Institution
+ Curating Sound: Export Radio
Presenters:
Harriet Zhang, WooJin Joo, Yuchen Li, Fergus Wiltshire, Shontelle Xintong Cai and Carmo Pinheirodemelo
_the speculative project presentation is opened to the RCA community. RCA students and staffs can find the event link on Panopto by searching “Across RCA Event: Questioning Online Curating Workshop Presentation“
a mapping of some projects mentioned in the workshop
online art project
no-longer-being-able-to-be-able
no-longer-being-able-to-be-able began from an urge to think about a shared unease in an over-saturated contemporary life. The limitless productivity and growth encouraged by neoliberal ideology have redefined people as labourers who have to continue to able to work and consume in order to be able to be.
The title of the project refers to Byung-Chul Han’s The Burnout Society (2010), which interrogates contemporary life’s immanent excessive positivity and information. In such a society, everybody becomes an entrepreneur fully responsible for the outcomes of their ‘individual’ lives. In order to be responsible in this sense, people are so busy proving they are able to work, compete, consume and survive. It becomes hard to hold on and ask why we should be able to be able, and for the sake of whom. The predominating fantasies of unlimited growth have rendered feelings of tiredness, anxiety and disorientation daunting and negative. They become symptoms of being fragile, defective and incompetent. These ‘negativities’ have promoted the contemporary myths of health, care, safety and protection. The pandemic, once seen as a chance to suspend and contest these myths, is instead fuel for the continuation of ‘the normal' in both the art field and wider society.
In response to the neoliberal norm of being-able-to-be-able, no-longer-being-able-to-be-able explores the unease in excessive everyday life from the perspective of labourer, consumer, woman, Queer individual, ethnic minority, teenager, internet user, art worker and an exhausted ‘regular person’. By unpacking the culture of abundance and expansion, this project questions the meaning of be and being able that are underpinned by particular ideologies, powerholders and histories. The works presented in the project aim to explore the possible ways of recognition, articulation and interrogation amid overloaded, oversaturated, and overdrawn beings.
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October 2020 - Janurary 2021
commissioned by Skelf
link to the project
listen to a podcast hosted by Mark Beldan about the project here
artists/artist groups:
Babeworld (Ashleigh Williams), Meech Boakye, Joshua Citarella, DANK Collective (Grant Bingham, Tori Carr, James D. Hopkins, Ian Williamson, and Zen Khalid), DIRD (Zijing Zhao and Rui Shi), Emma Finn, Anna Frijstein, Max Grau, Mina Heydari-Waite, Sae Yeoun Hwang, Judit Kis, Simona Me., Donatella Della Ratta, Frankie Roberts, Geraldine Snell
The project is curated by Hang Li with special thanks to Claire Undy for building up the website, Mark Beldan for hosting a podcast to introduce the project, and Lizzie Munn for promotion. The project won’t realise without the generous support from Nan Wang and Mengyuan Gu.
The project took inspiration from Byung-Chul Han, Olia Lialina, Joana Chicau, Aldo Clementi and Trisha Brown. Thanks for their rich practices in philosophy, net.art, website design, choreography and music.
screenshots of the website. please contact me before using any of the images
one-day online event
Sense-Making for Sharing Sensibilities
28th of July
RCA2020, Royal College of Art
A one-day event opening up discussions on the approaches to gaining shared recognition and to channelling social actions as critical forms of collective sense-making. The event is curated by Hang Li as part of an RCA 2020 SOAH Research Programme In the Realm of Re-Sensing organised by Dr Josephine Berry. The programme focused on the transformation of the senses and sense making in an increasingly online world. It understanded re-sensing not only as the digitally propelled thinning or withering of the senses, but also as their potential extension, intensification, recombination, splitting and remodelling induced by today’s cyborg assemblages. It asked more generally how we can connect sense-making with sensation to think about their mutual transformation in times of such abundant crisis.
Sense-Making for Sharing Sensibilities
28th of July
RCA2020, Royal College of Art
A one-day event opening up discussions on the approaches to gaining shared recognition and to channelling social actions as critical forms of collective sense-making. The event is curated by Hang Li as part of an RCA 2020 SOAH Research Programme In the Realm of Re-Sensing organised by Dr Josephine Berry. The programme focused on the transformation of the senses and sense making in an increasingly online world. It understanded re-sensing not only as the digitally propelled thinning or withering of the senses, but also as their potential extension, intensification, recombination, splitting and remodelling induced by today’s cyborg assemblages. It asked more generally how we can connect sense-making with sensation to think about their mutual transformation in times of such abundant crisis.
studio visit
Textual Bodies: Online Studio Visit with Adam Walker
Textual Bodies: Online Studio Visit with Adam Walker
Adam Walker showed in his online studio visit his current and recent performances, texts, moving-image and digital projects, as an ongoing critical exploration of the relationship between the human and abstracting, increasingly textual structures affecting contemporary life.
In our conversation, Adam discussed the urgent need for speculative profferings of other ways of being in addressing and contesting self-perpetuating structures of inequality. Our human messiness, irrationality, desire and relationality were considered in both vulnerability and also the potential for resistant agency.
28th July 2020
video recording available here.
Adam Walker's recent projects, performances and exhibitions have taken place at and with the Serpentine Gallery, NEoN Digital Arts Festival and Tyneside Cinema (UK), Izolyatsia and Yermilov Centre (Ukraine) and online at www.skelf.org.uk. He is soon to complete his PhD at the Royal College of Art.
image credit: Adam Walker
panel discussion
Sense-Making for Sharing Sensibilities: Art, Design and Social change
COVID-19 has hindered physical connection and blocked senses at large. Yet, there are a few organisations that have been working on making sense together during the pandemic by cultivating discussions in world-making with social justice, care and alternative economic and political infrastructures.
This panel discussion presented the organisational practices that are coming into being during the pandemic along with the on-going social, political and economic crises. It discussed the ways to configure and reconsider the role of art, design and organisation today confronting challenges and opportunities arising in and after the pandemic. The panel also covered how the internet is impacting the process of collective sense-making and social change.
Sense-Making for Sharing Sensibilities: Art, Design and Social change
COVID-19 has hindered physical connection and blocked senses at large. Yet, there are a few organisations that have been working on making sense together during the pandemic by cultivating discussions in world-making with social justice, care and alternative economic and political infrastructures.
This panel discussion presented the organisational practices that are coming into being during the pandemic along with the on-going social, political and economic crises. It discussed the ways to configure and reconsider the role of art, design and organisation today confronting challenges and opportunities arising in and after the pandemic. The panel also covered how the internet is impacting the process of collective sense-making and social change.
28th July 2020
speakers:
Jennifer Lyn Morone, Wesley Taylor and Marc Garrett
moderated by Hang Li
image credit: Hang Li
_performance_streaming_discussion
Researchers across all disciplines in the RCA were invited to reflect upon the changing conditions of our working environment affected by Covid-19 pandemic. It opened up a discussion about the implication of the pandemic to our work as well as the opportunities and challenges this might bring. The event included formal presentations, screenings, performances and Q&A.
New Directions? Art Practice and the Covid Pandemic
Researchers across all disciplines in the RCA were invited to reflect upon the changing conditions of our working environment affected by Covid-19 pandemic. It opened up a discussion about the implication of the pandemic to our work as well as the opportunities and challenges this might bring. The event included formal presentations, screenings, performances and Q&A.
July 2020
Doctoral Training Event, RCA
Invited artists and speakers: Sook-Kyung Lee, Lawrence Lek, Ajamu X, Judah Attille and Caroline Kraabel
co-organised with Dr Catherine Ferguson and Nie Xiaoyi
image credit: Caroline kraabel
For The Time Being
_online and offline projects and writing commissionsA five-day experimental programme of photo-performance I co-curated with five postgraduate students. Combining Snapchat-based performances, gallery-based installations with writing commissions, the programme sought to explore institutions’ shifting responsibilities in the networked age.
Read more...
My review of For The Time Being titled ‘If There Still is a Point to Curating on Social Media, What Is It?’ is published in Video Vortex Reader III: Inside the YouTube Decade by the Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam. You can find more about the project, commissioned art practices and some archival materials there.
May 2019
The Photographers’ Gallery
commissioned artists:
Agil Abdullayev, Feng Mengbo, Max Grau and Tamara Kametani and artist collective Agorama
presenting the writings of Katharina Niemeyer, Prayas Abhinav, Katrina Sluis,
Antoine Catala, Zefi Kavvadia, Monica Okello
co-curate with Rachel Chiodo, Sitara Chowfla, Esther Moerdler, Carlos Pinto and Caroline Rosello
thanks to Katrina Sluis, Sam Mercer, Shama Kanna, Kelly Large and Victoria Walsh for offering generous help
photograph: Deepak Singh Kathait © For The Time Being
Restaging For the Time Being
The project restatged the documentation of a digital art programme For the Time Being (May 2019). For the Time Being was an experimental programme of photo-performance, conceived as a response to the everyday presence of social media. The project used Snapchat, an app devised to share intimate, disappearing images, as a central protagonist. In May, 2019, the project invited Agil Abdullayev, Feng Mengbo, Max Grau and Tamara Kametani and artist collective Agorama to reflect on the role of image sharing networks in their personal lives. In addition to the art programme, selected writers were invited to contribute texts that extend the themes of art production, memory and social media. The writings of Media theorist Katharina Niemeyer, curator Prayas Abhinav, digital curator and scholar Katrina Sluis, the winner of the teen-writing competition: Monica Okello and our artists can be accessed on www.forthetimebeing.co.uk.
In Video Vortex, the documentation, website and writings of For the Time Being were shown to host discussions around the approaches, value and problems of curation, documentation and re-staging in the networked culture.
September 2019
shown in Video Vortex XII at Spazju Kreattiv in Valletta, Malta
commissioned by the Institute of Network Cultures
exhibiton organised by Sabrina Calleja Jackson, Justin Galea and Adnan Hadzi
curator: Toni Sant
presenting the art documentation of Agil Abdullayev, Feng Mengbo, Max Grau and Tamara Kametani and artist collective Agorama
presenting the writings of Katharina Niemeyer, Prayas Abhinav, Katrina Sluis,
Antoine Catala, Zefi Kavvadia, Monica Okello
co-curate with
Caroline Rosello
thanks to Lorenzo Maria Centioni for offering help with installation
photograph: Caroline Rosello © Restaging For The Time Being
Emotional Practices
The online project presented the questions of
+ how emotions shape our work;
+ how we as artists position ourselves emotionally in our work;
+ how our emotional work transcends orthodox practices.
It is a test-case in what decolonial curatorial diversity and inclusivity can look like; the design pivots critically around ideas of otherness and otherwise. The purpose of the project was to draw on cutting edge decolonial thinking to privilege emotions as a critical lens of enquiry into subjectivity and our world views, experiences, feelings and lexicons.
Read more...
October - December 2019
OPEN research initiative
presenting works of
Lubna Gem Arielle, Annie Bellamy,
Elise D'Arbaumont,
Lubna Gem, Elvira Korman & Anne Goldenberg,
Linnea Kristensen & Jamie, Sofie Layton, Leren Li, Ian McArthur, Ryan McDonagh
ChenImani Robinson & Halima Haruna, Ceyda Oskay, Tatiana Pinto, Audrey Roger, Eda Sarman, Iria Suarez & Paula Turmina, Eriko Takeno, Menara Vieira
co-curate with Shehnaz Suterwalla, Sarah Cheang, Livia Rezende and Katie Irani
Desktop screenshot for 《痛感共振中》 (“The Resonating Suffering”) I wrote for LEAP art magazine.
Publications
_English
Li, H., 2020. If There Still is a Point to Curating on Social Media, What Is It?, in: Lovink, G., Treske, A., Wilson, J. (Eds.), Video Vortex Reader III: Inside the YouTube Decade, INC Reader. Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, pp. 245–357.
_Chinese
李航，2021，痛感共振中，艺术界 LEAP (电子出版，“动不动“系列)
(Li, H., 2021. The Resonating Suffering, LEAP (digital publishing))
李航，2020，戒断，应激，文化断层？从COVID-19期间的艺术机构网络实践谈起，美术馆 2
文章委任于中央美术学院美术馆 (CAFAM) 的“疫情后的美术馆“研讨写作计划，转发于凤凰艺术，收录于北京大学视觉与图像研究中心 ( Center for Visual Studies CVS)的2020现代艺术文选。
(Li, H., 2020. Cultural Stratum and Disjunction: A reflection on the art institutional practices online during COVID-19, Museums 2.
The journal article was commissioned by CAFA Art Museum (Beijing). A short version of the essay was published online by CAFAM, forwarded by The Center for Visual Studies (CVS) at Peking University and Phoenix Art Network. It was archived by The Center for Visual Studies as part of the 2020 contemporary art anthology)
Writings
Li, H., 2020. Tensions and Transformations: Mapping the intersection between contemporary art and the network society. [first-year PhD literature review] School of Arts and Humanities, Royal College of Art.
Li, H., 2020. no-longer-being-able-to-be-able. [Online art project] no-longer-being-able-to-be-able, Skelf.
Li, H., 2019. Decoloniality is just too on point for online curation at this moment. [Online art project] Emotional Practices.
Li, H., 2019. ‘Interview with the big collector Feng Mengbo’, [Online art project] For the Time Being.
Li, H., 2019. Inter(face)action: Rethinking web-based curation as mediation. [Master thesis] MA Curating Contemporary Art, Royal College of Art. (Distinction)
Li, H., 2016. Folding and its continuity. [Master thesis] MArch Architectural Design, the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. (Distinction)
Speeches
_English
Skelf Podcast episode eight (2020) hosted by Mark Beldan.
‘Curating on the web: From net.art to the present’ (2020), Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University.
_Chinese
框架/智性/现场：“跨学科“工作生态思辨 （2021）， CAC新时线媒体艺术中心，讲者：龙星如，任越，李航，张敏，何雨婷
(Framework/intelligence/Live: Thinking through the ecology of “multi-disciplinary” practices (2021), CAC Chronus Art Center, Speakers: Iris Xingru Long, Yue Ren, Hang Li, Harriet Min Zhang, Yuting He.)
_previous design project
A Wrinkle in Space
Wrinkle in Space uses cellular division (CD) to develop architectural fabrics at variable resolutions of “wrinkling”. Original CD code is modified to fit generation of a series of tooling paths for 3D robotic extrusion. Such constraint resulted in lowering the number of dimensions to run cellular division in a planar setting, programming accelerations and decelerations of “wrinkling”. This feature inspired the name of the project, A Wrinkle in Space, for the spatial sensations it produces, with poly-dimensional wrinkling of its fabric, where smaller scale wrinkles are densifying the fabric and providing larger structural resilience, while more relaxed larger scale wrinkles are forming inhabitable textured voids of space.
The project is also referencing a science fantasy novel A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, since its generative core contains accelerations and decelerations of programmed computational time, causing above tectonic features. It resonates bending of the space-time continuum, and the concept of tesseract, or travelling through “wrinkled” time. Custom-written software for design search and implementation of cantilevering and other structural constraints was developed for this project. Proto-architectural geometries are tested at the furniture scale and fabricated by layer-by-layer robotic extrusions in various polymers.
A Wrinkle in Space
Wrinkle in Space uses cellular division (CD) to develop architectural fabrics at variable resolutions of “wrinkling”. Original CD code is modified to fit generation of a series of tooling paths for 3D robotic extrusion. Such constraint resulted in lowering the number of dimensions to run cellular division in a planar setting, programming accelerations and decelerations of “wrinkling”. This feature inspired the name of the project, A Wrinkle in Space, for the spatial sensations it produces, with poly-dimensional wrinkling of its fabric, where smaller scale wrinkles are densifying the fabric and providing larger structural resilience, while more relaxed larger scale wrinkles are forming inhabitable textured voids of space.
The project is also referencing a science fantasy novel A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, since its generative core contains accelerations and decelerations of programmed computational time, causing above tectonic features. It resonates bending of the space-time continuum, and the concept of tesseract, or travelling through “wrinkled” time. Custom-written software for design search and implementation of cantilevering and other structural constraints was developed for this project. Proto-architectural geometries are tested at the furniture scale and fabricated by layer-by-layer robotic extrusions in various polymers.
2016 - 2017
co-design with Chris Pang, Baolin Zhou and Siqi Chen
project tutor: Alisa Andrasek with Daghan Cam, Andy Lomas
The project was exhibited in Meta Utopia - Between Process and Poetry Exhibition, Zaha Hadid Design
Gallery, London
Further iterations of this type of reduced CD adapted to robotic extrusion are being developed for various design applications, including a series of clay printed furniture, and robotically 3D printed urban furniture amongst others.
here for project video
to be a committed, dedicated worm in soil
to be viscous
to touch with words, actions, and breath
to make sense, and fail in sense-making
to re-turn
to digest and fail to digest
to breakdown
to trans-, as transform, transact, transact, translate, and many more
to synth
to suspend
to pool
to narrate and to be challenged
to not assume, to be conscious of what I assume
to diffract
to be vulnerable before touching
to cultivate affinity
to suspend
to trans-
to breakdown
to re-turn
to start over
and over again
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︎︎︎ here are some links that I hope to help spreading