Violent Dissection: Characters on the Verge of Madness

2024.09.29 Sunday 19:30

Location

GNS,6F K11, No.300 Huaihai Middle Road, Hongkou District, Shanghai

Speaker: Zhu Changquan

This talk revolves around certain "characters" that are on the brink of losing balance, with more branches forming as they face extreme environments. Imagine eating chicken wings while the chicken itself is next to you, leisurely pecking at worms in the soil. At this moment, you’re surprised to discover that all the wings on your plate are from the left side. This is because, in response to the immense food demand, scientists have used chicken stem cells to grow wings in a petri dish. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once suggested that in the future, humans might no longer need to raise an entire chicken just for chicken breasts or wings, avoiding the waste of resources on feathers, beaks, and other parts.

 

Today, this wild idea has become a reality. Supporting this fantasy is the dissection and reorganization of massive experimental data on chickens. In the world of data, one begets three, and three beget infinity. Chicken data can now be transplanted to produce beef, pork, and other meats to meet human needs, meaning that chickens and eggs might no longer have any real biological connection. Imagine that in the future, the only place you could see a complete chicken is in the metaverse. A child might point at a diamond-shaped creature on the ground, nodding its head and covered in feathers, and say, "Dad, look, it’s a chicken." I follow the direction of the finger and say, "Yes, that’s a chicken."

 

Observing many such "characters," including ourselves, we are all in this extreme environment, branching out wildly. It's a mutual interaction in both directions. Therefore, I aim to serve as an observer and attempt a "violent dissection" of one or several "characters," completing a dull yet inevitably doomed process.

 

About the Speaker: Zhu Changquan

Zhu Changquan

< B.1989 >

Zhu Changquan was born in Shandong in 1989. He graduated from the Experimental Image Studio, School of Inter-media Art, China Art Academy in 2014. He won the Special Award of the 5th Huayu Youth Award in 2017.

Zhu Changquanʼs creation came from the analysis of peopleʼs daily lives. He wants to analyze the influence of a variety of potential factors in daily behaviors to reveal the rules underneath. He believes that the effectiveness of image does not originate from its significance carried, but due to their potential strength, which can release the audiencesʼ own experience. Also, it can work more consciously in this big social machine. He thinks development of anything is not single linear, “All-factors Image Narratives” is the artistʼs understanding of image creation, which is to generate a new narrative form with images and everyday objects in the space through drama, animation, installations and painting.

 

About the Vortex

VORTEX, launched by the MACA in Shanghai in 2022, is an art and cultural salon in the form of lecture performances occurring once or twice every month. The programme calls for non-institutionalised artistic and academic production in which contemporary art practitioners and scholars get to explore cross-disciplinarily the issues of the macro or micro, the global or local, the collective or individual. VORTEX, hence, is where you spin in the whirlpool of spontaneous whims and intuitive approaches represented by individual research and enquiries. Being present here at VORTEX, you are experiencing versatile forms of lecture performances that experiment with new mechanisms and methodologies.

The Macalline Center of Art (MACA) is a non-profit art institution located in the 798 Art District of Beijing and officially inaugurated its space on January 15, 2022. Occupying a two-story building with a total area of 900 square meters, MACA unites artists, curators, and other art and cultural practitioners from around the world. Through its diverse, ongoing, and collaborative approaches, the Center establishes a new site on the contemporary art scene. Guided by the “work of artists” and backed by interdisciplinary research, the Center aims to bring together a community passionate about art and devoted to the “contemporary” moment so as to respond proactively to our rapidly evolving times.