Volume I: (Y)our Movement
Time: 4-6pm (Hong Kong Time GMT+8)
Venue: Blindspot Gallery
Screening / Discussion (online/offline simultaneously)
4-5pm: Screening（subtitles：Chinese/English）
5-6pm: Discussion (Chinese)
Online | Zoom Meeting ID: 940 5973 4282, Passcode: 409969
Offline | Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong
Participants:
Hao Jingban, artist, living and working in Beijing and Berlin
Jiang Meng, researcher of media and visual studies, PhD student in NYU
Su Wei, curator and writer based in Beijing
Moderators: Mimi Chun, Nick Yu
We seem to be standing at the center of a historical storm. The distinction between the in and out of an incident became invalid after the outbreak of the pandemic, and this feeling has become stronger since January 2020. There is no way out of the situation, and we do not have a choice to detach or disassociate. In the face of all movements, events and disasters that have happened in 2020, what is “me” and what is the distance between “me” and it? The project “The Fault Zone” came into being from this basic question. This project attempts to propose the necessity of repeated self-identification in a reality full of contradictions and disasters in 2020: my emotions, my position, my demand for truth, my thoughts about the knowledge behind the truth, and the consideration of the mechanical production of emotions.
Volume I of “The Fault Zone” comes from a prolonged conversation among the three initiators since the second half of 2020. Simultaneously in New York, Berlin and Beijing, we all began to think about the relationship between the Black Lives Matter movement and ourselves. We collected and debated various information and judgments about this movement, watched each other, dissected our reactions triggered in our own situation, and shared our physical and emotional experiences. In this process of daily communication, we gradually shifted our focus on the sense of belonging and detachment between self and activist movement. As a result, we created together these three videos, presenting three distinct attitudes towards activism: Jiang Meng witnessed and participated in the Black Lives Matter movement as an Asian, differentiating and analyzing the common circumstances between two racial groups; Hao Jingban, who had only arrived in Berlin in January this year, began her observation inward and of her surroundings during the pandemic, attempting to consider the obstacles to empathize with and between people from different levels of activist involvement; Su Wei employs a semi-fictional story about traveling between borders to focus on the finiteness and instability of people under the societal systematic conflicts. The three of us are not only thinking about the social construct, but also the state of perception. People can shout and rewrite history in rage, but how could we identify the psychology, unconsciousness and emotion of this historical subject? Can they always justify themselves? This question will be the premise for us to start this dialogue.
This project will be daily and continuous work. By inviting people not limited to the arts to participate, “The Fault Zone” will present the senses and physicality of participating in certain events, revolution or movement, executed through low-cost and flexible methods, such as Vlog, online discussion, writing or online exhibition. Obtaining an unambiguous subject from a turbulent world and state of living cannot start or stop with self-defensive aesthetics and humanitarian concern. Facing the formation of new order and disorder, there is no shortcut but to struggle personally and internally. We hope to rebuild our own life and creation in the uncertain state of knowledge and emotion, explain our own world, and make our own fantasy.