Rockbund Art Museum 上海外滩美术馆

A project by Cassandra Press and X Zhu-Nowell

Messy Things: A Think Bank at RAM is a year-long research initiative that unfolds through online talks, a digital archive, research trips, a summer conference in Shanghai, and sculptural and performative interventions in the fall. Conceived in parallel with Barbara Chase-Riboud returns to China, the project interrogates Black Marxist traditions and Afro-Asian solidarity, centering on radical thinkers, such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, who visited Maoist China in search of alternative political and aesthetic futures. Extending these inquiries, Messy Things examines themes of land and dispossession, diasporic aesthetics, sonic resistance, and the spectral presence of history.

Foregrounding Afro-Asian connections, the project examines the dissemination, dispersion, and entangled diasporic networks formed through interdependent economic, imperial, and capitalist systems. These histories are shaped by social silences – the merchant, the comfort woman, the enslaved, the indentured, the intellectual – and their precarious examination risks destabilizing the presumed integrations that uphold global constructs of race, commerce, and spiritualism.

Through a multifaceted approach, Messy Things creates a transparent and metaphorical framework for artists, writers, and researchers to engage in Afro-Asian histories through sound, video, photography, theater, and performative practices. Informed by archival and contemporary scholarship, the project draws from critical theorists such as Tao Leigh Goffe (Dark Laboratory), Joan Kee (Afro-Asian Geometries, 2024), and Denise Ferreira da Silva (The Unpayable Debt, 2022).

卡珊德拉出版社和朱筱蕤共同策划项目

年度研究计划“杂乱之物：RAM思想库”将组织线上讲座、建立数字档案、策划研究旅行、在上海主办夏季会议，并在秋季呈现雕塑和行为介入项目。作为与展览“芭芭拉·蔡斯-吕布重访中国”平行构思的项目，“杂乱之物”考察黑色马克思主义传统和亚非团结，聚焦W·E·B·杜波依斯和芬米拉约·兰塞姆-库蒂等激进思想家，他们都曾为寻求替代性的政治与美学未来而造访中国。本项目拓展这一视野，审视土地、离散美学、声音抵抗以及历史的幽灵等主题。

“杂乱之物”展望亚非联结，探讨通过互相关联的经济、帝国和资本系统形成的传播、分散和缠结的离散网络。这些历史由社会的沉默者塑造：商人、慰安妇、被奴役者、派遣劳工和知识分子。关于他们的研究可能会动摇那些支撑全球种族、商业和灵性主义建构的所谓“融合”。

“杂乱之物”以多元的方法论为艺术家、作家和研究者提供透明的隐喻框架，通过声音、影像、摄影、戏剧和行为艺术实践与亚非历史对话。借鉴经典文献与当代学术研究，本项目受到陶·利·戈夫（《黑暗实验室》）、琼·基（《亚非几何》，2024）和丹尼斯·费雷拉·达·席尔瓦（《无法偿还的债务》，2022）等批判理论家的启发。