Shanghai
China
Rockbund Art Museum (RAM) is delighted to be partner cell upon invitation by Biljana Ciric in As you go… roads under your feet, towards the new future, a research project the independent curator has conceived and initiated to unfold over a period of three years. As you go… centers around the unheard voices on margins, and raising awareness to the shared problems underlying different contexts, ranging from China to Balkan, from Ethiopia to Central Asia. Through building a collective knowledge platform organized around the principals of organic cells of the research—the collaborations with span from individuals and small-scale organizations to state-run and private museums—which together form a close-knit atmosphere to engage in an entirely novel form of collaboration. The participating cells include What Could/Should Curating Do? (Belgrade), Moderna Galerija (Ljubljana), Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai), Guangdong Times Museum (Guangzhou), ArtCom (Astana), Robel Temesgen and Sinkneh Eshetu (Addis Ababa), and The Public Library (Bor).
In June 2020, the RAM team launched the research project CURTAIN. Going beyond the limited time frame of a single project or geography, the initiative looks to unfold through an interconnected series of commissions and collaborations in order to expand the connection between the museum with artists, scholars, critics and practitioners from diverse multicultural and interdisciplinary backgrounds. Through the development of CURTAIN, the museum has become increasingly in contact and intertwined with the project As you go... roads under your feet, towards the new future. Through taking part in the research and providing support, we attempt to create an alternative method for institutions to cooperate with other partners to challenge the traditional hierarchies of artistic production, whilst also encouraging a creative dynamic to unfold that circumnavigates the conventional barriers of cultural production and interdisciplinary research.
New commissions will play a central part in the development of the project and will serve as a method of support for a growing list of collaborators gathered under this long-term project. With the purpose of enabling vital practices to continue playing a crucial role in the ecosystem of culture and contemporary art, the commissions will allow for new ideas and directions to come into fruition, as well as the reproduction of contributions through various media, enabling discussions and interactions among different practitioners. Through As you go... roads under your feet, towards the new future, RAM has forged closer relationships with partners cells but also with a number of project participants representing various fields: Jasphy Zheng (artist, China), Robel Temesgen (artist, Ethiopia), Berhanu (anthropologist, China), Astrobus-Ethiopia (science-art-technology-innovation project, Ethiopia), and Marija Glavaš (culturology researcher, Slovenia).
Through immersive installations, unannounced performances, sculptural objects and artist’s books, Jasphy Zheng, an interdisciplinary artist who lives between Brooklyn, US, and China, constructs and realizes scenarios of public intervention that aim to raise awareness of our social and cultural environment in and out of the context of contemporary art. Stories from the Room (2020) is her ongoing project that calls for personal writings from around the world, in order to build an archive for the presently difficult time that we share. Submitted writings will be saved in the archive as physical copies, and each contributor will be given a dedicated folder for recurring contributions. The archives will be on display at Rockbund Art Museum starting from November 2020. For more writing submission information, please visit the RAM official website.
Special thanks to the Longlati Foundation for the support of Stories from the Room (2020) and to Foundation for Arts Initiatives, Austrian Cultural Forum, Curatorial Practice (Monash University Art, Design and Architecture) and Australian Government Research Training Program for supporting As you go.. roads under your feet, towards the new future.
