Three-Body Art Project · Prologue: First Contact
SUHE HAUS, Shanghai
2024.11.09-2025.02.08
The membrane between science fiction and reality is porous. As scholar Donna J Haraway said: “The boundary between science fiction and social reality is just a visual illusion”. The exhibition “Three-Body Contemporary Art Exhibition·Prologue: The First Sight of Civilization” is a “Three-Body Art Global Project” initiated by Three-Body Universe. It emphasizes the use of the original thinking perspective as a method of intervention and dialogue with reality, and attempts to integrate science, technology and art. It shows the possibility of integrating scientific research methods such as experiments and observations into scientific and technological art creation, thereby triggering the audience to form new thinking perspectives, exploration desires and curiosity. Taking the story of “Three-Body” as a starting point, openly explore the urgent and inspiring issues in the current technological development and scientific research – it can be regarded as the concern and guidance of this contemporary art exhibition for the world today.
Opening on November 8, 2024, “The First Encounter of Civilization”, one of the main exhibitions of the second Suhe Art Festival “Signals Are Flashing” co-organized by SUHE HAUS and the Chinese version of “T” under Xuxu Watson Media Group, is hosted by Three-Body Universe and presented in conjunction with SUHE HAUS. Curator Long Xingru divides it into three curatorial chapters and exhibition areas: “Nameless Star”, “Standing on the Surface” and “Contact Land”, which respectively point to extraterrestrial civilization, cosmic exploration and contact between civilizations. The overall partition structure, gravel ground and dark space design give 15 groups of artists from all over the world a wonderful experience of “like the earth but not”.
PART ONE. Re-stage the problem
After entering the exhibition area where you can freely walk through, you will see the new installation “What is the End of the Countdown” (2024) by digital artist Zhu Jianfei. This scene makes the audience, especially those who have read the original book or watched the film and television works of the same name, automatically slide into the “Three-Body” world. Not far away, Liu Chuang borrowed the concept of “smartons” in the video work “Lithium Mine Lake and Polyphonic Island II” (2023) to conceive an alien anthropologist’s journey to Earth. Based on the sound content in the Golden Record of Travelers, which can be called the “Earth Archive”, he wove a field narrative in the marginal areas of globalization, echoing the undercurrent between the current lithium economy and the silver economy hundreds of years ago.
Taking the launch of the first art satellite “SCA-1” of the “Art Starlink Project” led by artist Xu Bing as an opportunity, the digital image “Witness” (2024) was created and broadcast on the screen of the art satellite. Along with this work, there is also an amorphous alloy “water drop” model made by the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Yangtze River Delta Physics Research Center. Recalling the scientific community’s previous downgrading of Pluto and the discovery of the star “Methuselah” (HD140283) that is older than the age of the universe, the academic tremors have undoubtedly brought epic impact and inspiration to the creation. Re-looking at this “nameless star”, the intelligence or life form “other-than-us” may also be the cosmic coordinates of any intelligent life.
During her residency at CERN in 2023, Indian multimedia artist Rohini Devasher had a unique understanding of astronomical research communities, knowledge systems, history, and viewing theories that were full of information and ambition. With the observation and recording of more than 100 years of solar data in 11 solar cycles since 1904 at the Kodaikanal Solar Observatory (KSO) in southern India, Devasher combined the KSO archives with her own research data, videos, interviews, and images collected during past eclipse chases, as well as solar data already provided in the public domain by NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio and Solar Dynamics Observatory Science, to create the four-screen image “One Hundred Thousand Suns” (2023) that we can see today. Vision here evolves into a fusion of archives, language, sound, and overall illusion; we are finally fortunate enough to see the incredible body of the huge star, the sun, with our naked eyes.
The hot energy seems to be burning every little individual on the scene. The thoughts about the three bodies and broader issues gradually turn from light to dark as they move quietly in the darkness. Different from the grand reality, the beauty of shadows is another side of the exhibition “The First Encounter of Civilization”. Chen Zhe once said that the reason why she created the series of photographic light box works “Improving Illusions” (2020 to present) was because she returned to her original photographic medium and rediscovered the open secrets that always accompany life experience every time she focused on watching: “The moon reminds the sun, dreaming reminds wakefulness, the skin reminds the bones, the eggs remind the ancestors, the advancing reminds the unreached, and the center reminds the freest…” – just as the Ming Dynasty poet said, “Don’t blame the scholar for being imaginary, who doesn’t come from illusions.” In a corner of the blue universe, whether everything is empty or coming back, the beauty of chance comes into being, just like the existence of the universe itself.
After another turn in the exhibition hall, we came to Xu Bing’s “Book from the Sky: Don’t Answer” (1987-1991; 2024). The pure white wall was now dim, like the reflection of a past moment in “The Three-Body Problem”. Even if history no longer applies to the present, facing a series of Chinese character codes like warnings, a seemingly distant but closely related inward thinking suddenly came from far to near: Will carbon-based civilization continue? Will it wither and perish? What else can be done to restore order to meaning?
*More Q&A section with curator: Iris LONG, please check the link below for details.
*Originally published on Wallpaper Magazine (December Issue): forthcoming. ISSN: 1005-4669 | CN51-1737/G0
Yuting (Roxy) TANG 