Rock Host, Infrustructuring the Void
2024.12.06-2025.02.16
Group exhibition
Exhibition curator: he zike、iris long
Beiqiu Museum of Contemporary Art is pleased to announce Rock Host, Infrustructuring the Void, the second installment in its annual exhibition series, “Art and Geography”. This initiative commissions curators to explore the intersection of art and geography through yearly exhibitions. This year, we have invited the curatorial duo, Iris Long and Zike He, to present an exhibition featuring seminal and recent works by 20 international and domestic artists who investigate realms of infrastructure, science fiction, and geology/environment-related topics. The exhibition also includes new works by artists who participated in the research project Under the Cloud organized by Long and He, showcasing the locality of scientific and technological infrastructure as well as its impact on the environment and our future as a quiet technology.
The exhibition is developed from Under the Cloud project and its discussion on the notions of geological time, mountain types, topography, and infrastructure. It weaves a thread connecting three spatio-temporal dimensions: the air-raid bunkers in Beiqiu, Nanjing; the data centers in Guizhou; and the factories constructed in caves during Guizhou’s Three Front Movement. Expanding these narratives to a global scale, the works in the exhibition examine the mutual nesting between infrastructure and the geological environment around the world. British-Polish geologist Jan Zalasiewicz visualizes temporal and material transformation from microscopic to macroscopic scales through geological metaphors: he sees the Earth as a “Stratigraphy” machine, which operates at an extremely slow speed—so much so that it forms a geography along the vertical axis. Rock Host, Infrustructuring the Void captures this slow, vertical transformation through a variety of works, from profiling rocks, bunkers, and waterbodies to delineating clouds and vegetations that appear more fictional than real.
In addition to introducing the scales of time and materials, this exhibition also questions the prevailing perception of scientific and technological infrastructures as isolated, externalized, and ultimately lifeless technological objects. Instead, it proposes their new image as a dynamic “technology-nature” continuum. Fossils, for instance, by solidifying time and reshaping their surrounding scenes, can generate unexpected humor: the porcelain tiles used in the bathroom sinks at Guiyang Longdong bao International Airport have been identified as early-Silurian Paraconchidium shiqianensis from 439 million years ago. Similarly, today’s technological constructs, such as data centers, deep-earth laboratories, and other structures hidden and embedded in the depths of natural and manmade caves may undergo unforeseen scenic transformations in the distant future. Imagining these changes allows us to build a parallel future of technology, rendering the temporality of infrastructure a captivating subject. The exhibition reimagines the gallery space within the Beiqiu Museum of Contemporary Art as a giant machine dwelling within rocks. Utilizing an array of recyclable materials commonly found in infrastructure, the exhibition site is transformed into a “void infrastructure” of time. Simultaneously under construction and obsolete, this “void infrastructure” rests quietly between the layers of rock strata.
The exhibition will occupy both the main exhibition hall and the tunnel annex of the Beiqiu Museum of Contemporary Art. It will officially open to the public on December 7, 2024, and run through February 16, 2025. This exhibition is partially supported by Pro Helvetia Shanghai, the Swiss Arts Council.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:
Badel/Sarbach, Cao Fei, Chen Xiaoyi, Dennis De Bel, Duruo Wang & Zhang Wenxin, Filips Staņislavskis, Luo Shuang, Marina Otero Verzier, Monica Ursina Jaeger, Qian Dajing, Salvatore Vitale, Lithic Alliance, Tega Brain, Timur Si Qin, Himali Singh Soin,The Nomadic Department of the Interior (NDOI), Zhou Tao
ZIKE HE
Curator
HE Zike (b.1990, Guiyang, China) is an artist who works with mediums including video, writing, performance, prints, and computer program. By incorporating personal memories into her research and fieldwork, HE Zike’s practice illuminates the interplay between time, mundane lives and the technological environment. She weaves the disorder beneath the surface of contemporary life through a narrative approach.
She was a finalist for the 5th VH Award of Hyundai Motor Group, and was selected in the residency program of Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Arts Council in 2023. From 2021, She has co-initiated the interdisciplinary project “Under the Cloud” which visits and studies the technological infrastructure in Southwest China. Her works have been exhibited in Cosmos Cinema, the 14th Shanghai Biennale (2023), Dream Screen at Leeum Museum of Art (Seoul, 2024) and Beijing Biennale (2022) among others.
IRIS LONG
Curator
HE Zike (b.1990, Guiyang, China) is an artist who works with mediums including video, writing, performance, prints, and computer program. By incorporating personal memories into her research and fieldwork, HE Zike’s practice illuminates the interplay between time, mundane lives and the technological environment. She weaves the disorder beneath the surface of contemporary life through a narrative approach.
She was a finalist for the 5th VH Award of Hyundai Motor Group, and was selected in the residency program of Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Arts Council in 2023. From 2021, She has co-initiated the interdisciplinary project “Under the Cloud” which visits and studies the technological infrastructure in Southwest China. Her works have been exhibited in Cosmos Cinema, the 14th Shanghai Biennale (2023), Dream Screen at Leeum Museum of Art (Seoul, 2024) and Beijing Biennale (2022) among others.