“You have to be aware that everything's constantly shifting beneath you, and if it doesn't shift, you need to tip it. You need to pull the rug out yourself from under your feet.”
— Shubigi Rao
"Who is Shubigi: The Edified Wrath With Ecological Groundedness" is the final public programme of Shubigi Rao's exhibition These Petrified Paths. The artist and her collaborators in the theoretical field reviewed her practice and the solo exhibition at the Rockbund Art Museum. They discussed topics including the notion of a witness, the violence of moving images, narrative strategies, the loss of knowledge, and the building of an archive. The talk features Shubigi Rao, writer and curator Katherine Adams, artist, writer, and curator Alfonse Chiu, as well as X Zhu-Nowell, RAM Art Director and curator of this exhibition.
Katherine Adams dissected Rao's practice through three frameworks: "the blot", "the mark", and "the machine", exploring the relationships between Rao's different bodies of work. Through a poetic investigation, Alfonse Chiu explored Rao's moving images and their multiple narrative modes that transcend language. She approached this exploration from the perspectives of "the lands", "the inarticulable", and "the chorus", spanning across time, space, and communities.
X Zhu-Nowell and Shubigi Rao joined the two speakers with a panel discussion and explored Rao's fluid subjectivity across changing identities, with questions concerning authorship, and the subversion of "research-based art." Rao reflected on how she maintains creative freedom, ethics, and groundedness in her practice while constantly uprooting herself.
Speaker's introduction:
Katherine Adams is a writer and curator based in New York. She is currently the Assistant Curator at the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where she works on commissions across time-based visual arts and performance, curates public programs, and produces discursive projects that engage critical perspectives on contemporary art and its technological conditions. Her essays, scholarly articles, and art criticism have been published in e-flux Journal, Afterimage: Journal of Media Arts & Cultural Criticism, e-flux Criticism, Journal of Curatorial Studies, FLAT Journal (UCLA), and BOMB Magazine, among others. She was the First Prize recipient of the 2022 International Awards for Art Criticism. Other past curated exhibitions and programs include projects at the Hessel Museum of Art in New York, KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, and Miriam Gallery in New York.
Alfonse Chiu is an artist, writer, and curator based between Taipei, New Haven, and Singapore. Their practice investigates imaginaries of capital and ideologies as shaped by media infrastructures and networked economies so as to contemplate possible futures for bodies, societies, and the environment. Their current research revolves around a critical reading of the tropical belt as geo-economic imaginary and (neo)colonial hinterland through a situated analysis of plantation capital and infrastructure in Southeast Asia. They are the founder of the Centre for Urban Mythologies, a critical research and artistic platform exploring the tropes and narratives of the urban condition to propose larger situated critiques of capitalism and Anthropocene positioned from the Global South. They are also the programme director of SeaShorts, a pan-Southeast Asian platform for short-form moving images, and were previously the fall 2021 e-flux journal fellow. They are presently a master’s candidate at the Yale School of Architecture.
“你必须意识到，你脚下的一切都在不断地变化，如果它没有变化，你就必须自己把脚下的地毯抽掉。”
——舒比吉·拉奥
“舒比吉是谁：教化的愤怒与生态的扎根性”是“舒比吉·拉奥：这些石化的小径”艺术家个展的最后一期公共活动。艺术家与她在理论领域的合作者共同回顾过去的艺术实践以及在上海外滩美术馆的展览，讨论艺术家作为见证者、动态影像的暴力、叙事策略、知识的丧失和档案建设等话题。对谈嘉宾包括舒比吉·拉奥，作家和策展人Katherine Adams，艺术家、作家和策展人Alfonse Chiu以及外滩美术馆的艺术总监、本次展览的策展人朱筱蕤。
Katherine Adams以墨渍（the blot）、标记（the mark）和机器（the machine）三条线索解剖舒比吉的艺术实践，探讨艺术家作品之间的关系。Alfonse Chiu则以诗意的调查，从土地（lands）、“不可言说”（inarticulable）和合声（chorus）的角度出发，探索舒比吉的动态影像以及其跨越时空与社群、超越语言的多重叙事方式。
朱筱蕤和舒比吉·拉奥与两位演讲嘉宾一起探讨拉奥在变换的艺术实践身份间流动的主体性、作者权的问题以及对“基于研究的艺术”（research-based art）的颠覆。拉奥也反思自己如何在实践过程中保持创作的自由、道德和扎根状态又不断将自己连根拔起。
讲者介绍：
Katherine Adams是一位驻纽约的作家和策展人。她目前担任伦斯勒理工学院柯蒂斯·R·普里姆实验媒体与表演艺术中心（Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center）的助理策展人，致力于基于时间的视觉艺术和表演的委托项目，策划公共活动，并制作涉及当代艺术及其技术状况的批判性视角的讨论项目。她的散文、学术文章和艺术评论发表在《e-flux》、《Afterimage：媒体艺术与文化评论杂志》(Afterimage: Journal of Media Arts & Cultural Criticism)、《e-flux 评论》(e-flux Criticism)、《策划研究杂志》(Journal of Curatorial Studies)、《FLAT杂志》 (FLAT Journal（UCLA））和《BOMB 杂志》等刊物上。她曾获得2022年国际艺术评论奖一等奖。她曾策划的展览和项目还包括在纽约赫塞尔艺术博物馆、柏林当代艺术研究所和纽约米里亚姆画廊的项目。
Alfonse Chiu 是一位驻台北、纽黑文和新加坡的艺术家、作家和策展人，目前于耶鲁大学建筑学院攻读硕士学位。Chiu的实践探讨由媒体基础设施和网络经济塑造的资本和意识形态的想象，以思考身体、社会和环境的可能未来，目前的研究则围绕着通过对东南亚种植园资本和基础设施的情景分析，对作为地缘经济想象和（新）殖民腹地的热带地区进行批判性解读。Chiu是都市神话研究中心 (Centre for Urban Mythologies) 的创始人，该中心是一个批判性研究和艺术平台，旨在探索都市状况的主题和叙事，从而对来自全球南方的资本主义和人类世定位提出更广泛的情景批判。Chiu还是泛东南亚短片移动影像平台 SeaShorts 的项目总监，并曾任 2021 年《e-flux》杂志秋季期刊研究员。