Playing at home/Playing away: The Maze of Reality
Vitamin Creative Space’s project
For 50th Venice Biennale
“Playing at home/Playing away:the maze of reality” is a concept from sports (especially football) with which everyone is familiar, it means different probabilities of winning, different stakes for gambling, and can even influence a team’s (or a countrsy’s) image and fate. It represents psychological ideas such as odds and “the dark horse.” People hope to enter into the miracle of the game, although miracles do not happen everyday.
“Playing at home/Playing away: the maze of reality” is an exhibition that begins by borrowing on circumstance. It originates with the Venice Biennale–Vitamin Creative Space is invited to “Canton Express” in “Z.O.U-Zone of Urgency” curated by HouHanru.In the process of its realization we come to think about this great international exhibition and its relation to local reality, about how these generate a real, visceral connection. A series of dynamic comparisons and appropriations spring forth from here. “Playing at home/Playing away: the maze of reality” will be constructed in actual space, and will change our preexisting understanding of space, giving a new vitality to contemporary art.
Furthermore, “Playing at home/Playing away,” through cooperation with local real estate companies, will explore the active correlation between art space and commercial space. “Playing at home/Playing away” is also China’s first art exhibition to be broadcast live and internationally, and will thus give the media and the cultural world unprecedented topics for debate.
Concrete plan for the realization of “Playing at home/Playing away”: establish two exhibition spaces, one in Venice and one in the “East Coast” residential complex in Shenzhen. Participating artists will design and realize a work according to the space in which they are to exhibit. Exhibition spaces in both Venice and Shenzhen will be equipped with computers, and through internet broadcasting, both parties will transmit information and images from their respective exhibition spaces. During the exhibition, viewers at the exhibition in Venice will be able to see the exhibition site in Shenzhen (one camera will be placed in the actual exhibition hall, the other fixed on the construction site outside it), and enter into debate accordingly; similarly, viewers in Shenzhen will be able to see not only the exhibition site in Venice, but can participate in some of the interactive works on display there. In this way, Venice and Shenzhen will see themselves as “home” and “away” fields, together completing a trans-locality art activity.
Actually, sociologically speaking, Shenzhen transcended its status as a simple locality long ago, a new city that has become a specimen of Chinese society. In the Chinese site for “Playing at home/Playing away,” 10 artists from Guangdong will use the space of a Chinese “villa” to create a work that integrates video, installation, sculpture, photography, and space itself into a delicious, multi-media art space that interacts with the viewers. The complete idea is for the participating artists to recreate certain specific spaces common to contemporary life in southern China, thus turning the entire exhibition space into a temporary city, thus creating a mobile and constantly urbanizing metropolis. To Chinese and global viewers alike, this will be an art space full of imagination, exhibiting the connection between art and the turbulent, amorphous urban environment.
The exhibition plan for “Playing at home/Playing away: the maze of reality” fully reflects the dynamic relationships among global cities today. It coincides with the openness and mobility characteristic of contemporary art in Guangdong. In this sort of interaction, people can see a more expansive space that is the (re-)creation of artists, and that reveals the face of an era in the midst of rapid change.
HuFang + ZhangWei
Artists in Shenzhen Venue:
Chen Shaoxiong / Liang Juhui / XuTan/Jin Jiangbo / Yang Jichang / Zheng Guogu / Sha Yeya / Sun Qinlin / Chen Zaiyan / Jiang Zhi / Chu Yun / Wang Lei
Technical Support:
Jin Jiangbo Sigma Production
Curator:
ZhangWei + HuFang
Work List
Chen Shaoxiong: Anti-terror Variety
Liang Juhui: City
XuTan，Jin Jiangbo: Can you see?
Vitamin Creative Space: Playing at home/Playing away
Zheng Guogu, Sha Yeya, Chen Zaiyan, Sun Qinglin：Subversive Sea
Zheng Guogu, Sha Yeya, Chen Zaiyan, Sun Qinglin：Waterfall
Zheng Guogu: Software and hardware of the place
Sha Yeya: Yangjing-Shenzhen
Jiang Zhi:Sacker
Chu Yun:1607
Yang JiCang: Reading Room
Wang Lei: Music Performance
Opening Information
Media Preview: 5:00pm,14 June 2003,Vitamin Creative Space,Guangzhou
Opening Party: 3:00 pm,29 June 2003
Opening times: 30June-30September 2003
10:00am-7:00pm , Monday to Sunday
Venue: Vanke “East Coast”,Shenzhen
Organization: Vitamin Creative Space
Sponsor: Shenzhen Vanke Real Estate Co.,LTD.
China Netcom Corporation Ltd.（Shenzhen）
50th Venice Biennale
Canton Express in Z.O.U
Big Tail Elephants: LinYilin ChenShaoxiong LiangJuhui Xu Tan
Vitamin Creative Space：ZhangWei Hu Fang
Yangjiang Group: ZhengGuogu ShaYeya FengQianyu
Borges Libreria and World Bookstore: ChenTong LuYi
Uteque: Ou Ning CaoFei
Other artists: YangJiechang YangYong JiangZhi LiuHeng DuanJianyu JinJiangbo .
