The 3rd Shenzhen Independent Animation Biennale: Time Based, Non Places

How to create a space that belongs to the public? A space that truly belongs to the public, a present space that originates from history, a space that arises from the Chinese spirit.

The exhibition Time Based, Non Places alludes to spatial sensations continually inspired by the perspective in shanshui landscapes and by visual displacements through movement and strolling. From single dot to scattered perspective, from new media to screen partitions, from 16mm film and hand-drawn frames—these all reduce temporality in moving images into a fixed image and then from there developed new understandings of movement and temporality.

The Public Square (the parking space) is an abandoned industrial steel structure. Under these naked steel frames, individuals feel as though they were in an immense factory, leading one to think of the end of the industrial dream and to reflect on the rise of new technologies and new ways of life. These correspondences give this public space qualities of a public square from an earlier age; the space represent the changing times and offer up a rejuvenated living space through the projection of light and shadow.

The Time Square is a pavilion, terrace and tower that extends outwards, allowing visitors to rest. The site incorporates trees and street lamps, rolling lawns and fallen leaves, creating a garden for repose amid the structures—indeed the place for people to rest, play and take photos, whiling the weekend away.

These are all part of the understanding of space beyond the exhibition, to scatter art into the invisible. One’s perception and experience triggers a temporal and spatial experience and prefaces one’s visit to the exhibition.

The single-screen screening and GIF-ing project brings together programs by many curators—including Isaac Leung, Lorenzo Giusti, Zhenchen Liu, Liao Wenfeng, Xue Mu, Annette Schindler, Julia Van Mourik and Lu Chuan—and deal with the independent positions of the artists and the spatial relationship of internet media, reflecting, under the generative relations of the image, on the way animation explores reality across various fields.

Acting as a link between OCT-LOFT and Artron Arts Center, the 3rd Shenzhen Independent Animation Biennale is connected to the entire Pearl River Delta. The past two editions of this Biennale examined animation education in China, the introduction of filmic ideas into animation, as well as the expansion of new media and animation as along with new spatialities. Located within the Pearl River Delta, with connections to Hong Kong and Guangzhou, Shenzhen is developing a new cultural reality, creating new cultural landmarks in design, architecture and new media.