The Tale of Errantry to the End of the Night
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The Tale of Errantry to the End of the Night .
Curator, Producer : Chiarina Chen
Artists: Alchemyverse (Bicheng Liang and Yixuan Shao)
Amir Shpilman
Lu Zhang
Shuyi Cao
Yasue Maetake
Mimi Bai
Kyoung eun Kang
Han Qin
Helia Chitsazan
Jiao Yang Li
Chang An
Nikhil Shah
Note from Curator
I initiated this project as a means to address a shared diasporic predicament, hoping to unravel ways of transformation and healing. The diasporic predicament entails not only being marginalized and invisible but also being reduced. As the demand for 'diversity' grows within cultural institutions, we feel a tendency to elevate, almost exclusively, the 'out-in-the-face' stereotypical representations of certain groups of people. The problem does not lie in what's selected, but the fact that they became the only narrative and form, which are far from encapsulating the complexity and vitality of diasporic experiences.
We Are More Than Just That.
After COVID, I started to feel a deep sense of resonance with artists I've known for years, and I found that each diasporic path has become vastly multiple, traversing not only geographical boundaries but also digital, ecological, and nonhuman avenues. My goal for realizing this project is to trigger ongoing dialogues and exhibitions that delve into contemporary diasporic experiences, displacement and anxiety, and the cartography of overlooked relationships. On top of that, the aim is to explore the multi-subjectivities from which they evolve and the embodied ways to heal.
Inspired by Édouard Glissant's idea of errantry, The Tale of Errantry suggests a departure from fixed notions of belonging and instead embraces wanderings and changes. In Glissant's sense, the root is not important. Movement is. And identity is not entirely within the root but also in relation. This notion not only resonates with recent decades' diasporic discourses but also forges a deeper alliance with today's posthuman condition. As the paradigm shifts from one to multi, from Bio to Zoe, from human-centered to nonhuman entanglements, from dualistic transcendence to radical immanence, geographical and physical boundaries are no longer adequate to address where we belong or what we are becoming. Our diasporic experiences lie in multiplicity and complex crossroads linked by a series of dashes -- the eco-psycho-socio-techno-landscapes. The Tale of Errantry is, therefore, an act of traversing these entangled spaces grounded in difference and relation.
To the End of the Night suggests a departure from the 'light' of enlightenment and Western-centric dualistic thinking. We want to foreground the affects of materiality, the hidden tales and relations, and to activate the audience's bodily experiences. In contrast to bright and 'day-time' exhibition experiences, this project is a night-time stroll, a black-box dreamscape, as well as an intimate ghost town, paved by traces of past lives and materials in decay.
The exhibition presents 15 works, including new commissions, two site- specific sound installations, and three interactive performances.
We buit everything from scratch, and each stage lighting has been carefully hand-tuned to best shine the relations of artworks.
I have created a special therapeutic 'night-stroll' one-on-one session for visitors to schedule to get the fullest experience. When visitors arrive, I briefly chat with them without framing any concepts. I then bring them to the first piece based on our initial contact and short conversation, and then let them make their own routes to see the rest of the show. I follow each person's trajectory and tell them the narratives they made afterwards. Many have opened up to me and shared their own experiences of diaspora and how they relate to the work. Almost every person who walks into the room has their own threads of reading and feeling. No one has the same experience as another, but their paths further weave narrations as extensions of the show.
