The Racing Will Continue, The Dancing Will Stay

The Racing Will Continue, 

The Dancing Will Stay 

 Duration 

2019.6.22-8.18

 Participating Artists and Collectives 

Chen Wei, Chen Zhou, Musquiqui Chihying and Chen Liang-Hsuan, Isaac Chong Wai, Jasper Fung, Gao Lei, Guo Hongwei, Hao Jingban, South Ho Siu Nam, Ko Sin Tung, Kwan Sheung Chi, Li Ran, Li Xiaobin, Liu Chuang, Jen Liu,  Xiaoshi Vivian Vivian Qin, Tang Chao, Wang Bo, Wang Yin, Xin Yunpeng, Yao Qingmei, Samson Young, Yu Cheng-Ta 

 Curated by 

Leo Li Chen

 Venue 

19F, Main Exhibition Hall, Guangdong Times Museum

Times Rose Garden III, Huangbianbei Road, Baiyun Avenue, Guangzhou, China

 Hours 

Tuesday - Sunday, 10am - 6pm (closed on Mondays except for holidays)  

 Admission 

Adult ￥30, Discounted ￥15. Free to Museum members and the staff and property owners of Times China. 

Organized by: Guangdong Times Museum 

Special Thanks: Times China 

How might we live between constant planning and frustration, against the currents of the unknown and volatile times? How can we move forward amidst profuse confusion and predicament? These are the core questions that The Racing Will Continue, The Dancing Will Stay seeks to explore. The exhibition title comes from a saying popularized in Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese civil society since the mid-1980s. The phrase suggests the speaker's expectations for a better future and the collective imagination of effective social systems. Over the past four decades, the Reform and Opening up of China and the handover of Hong Kong have instituted a common political vision, yet the individuals who find themselves suspended in real-life uncertainties. Showcasing the work of twenty-four artists and collectives, this exhibition considers the body and performativity as a method of responding to the absence and presence of the subject. 

Li? Xiaobin, photography 

Spring of 1980, Beijing? Yuanmingyuan? Park. Literary youths from the Star Art Exhibition, "April Photography Society", and "Today" often gathered in? Yuanmingyuan? Park on Sundays. 

courtesy? of? the artist? 

Samson Young 

Muted Situation?#2: Muted Lion Dance, 2014? 

instruction score,? single channel? video? 

courtesy? of? the artist 

The exhibition begins by interrogate historical narratives that reduce China in the late 1970s to a period of continued collectivism. As a matter of fact, collective and individual will were no longer in binary opposition during this time; tangible, quotidian forms of individuality had already emerged within communal living. Working in dance, athletic, performance, and theatre, artists in the exhibition represent the discipline of bodies and bodily expressions by political will, gesturing at the symbiotic relationship between the individual and the community. Another important orientation lies in the discussion of practical limitations of identity politics through body and performativity. It highlights the complexities occurring in the overlap between collective consciousness and individual will, questioning how such complexities have come to permeate everyday life of the people in contemporary China, and how performativity and its significance in the real world are constantly redefined. 

The exhibition pays particular attention to the Pearl River Delta region-situated at the forefront of China’s Reform and Opening up - as well as the special administrative region of Hong Kong. Regional specificities and localized experimentations introduce a concrete historical dimension to the conversation at large. Endowed with a common, new name - the “Greater Bay Area”, these regions are invested with disparate hopes whilst sharing the same uncertainties. The Racing Will Continue, The Dancing Will Stay points to the contradictions that arise from the process of constructing political visions. Impervious to individual will and far from self-consistent, these visions are the reflection of an imagined, or rather absent, subjectivity. 

Chen Wei? 

An? Advertisement ?About the Future, 2019? 

installation?(wallpaper, plasterboard, aluminum, iron, LED display, controller, power supply)? 

courtesy? of ?the artist?

Wang Yin 

Bouyei Dance 1, 2013? 

oil on canvas, 100?×?210?cm? 

courtesy of Wang Yin Studio and New? Century Art? Foundation 

 Programming Schedule 

Sat. 22 June - Performance: 

Aware of Vacuity, Isaac Chong Wai  

Sat. 6 July - Screening: 

Life Imitation, Chen Zhou 

Sat. 20 July - Screening: 

Life Imitation, Chen Zhou  

Sat. 20 July - Panel Discussion with 

Curator Leo Li Chen and Artists Chen Zhou, Musquiqui Chihying and Chen Liang-Hsuan 

Sun. 21 July - Lecture Performance: 

Gesture, Musquiqui Chihying and Chen Liang-Hsuan 

Sat.10 August - Performance: 

The Red Detachment of Women, Jen Liu  

Sat.17 August - Live Electronic Improvisation: 

Transient Spikes, Jasper Fung  

*Programming schedule and details are subject to change. 

 About the Curator 

Leo Li Chen is a Beijing-based curator and researcher, and Director of Research at Magician Space, Beijing. His main research interests include spatial and aesthetic politics, geopolitics, performance, and moving images. His recent curatorial projects include Today Could Have Been a Happy Day at Taikang Space, Beijing (2018), After Party: Collective Dance and Individual Gymnastics at Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong (2017), That Has Been and Maybe Again at Para Site, Hong Kong (2016), and Adrift at OCAT, Shenzhen (2016). In 2016 he was one of the researcher-in-residence at Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong, and he will be a researcher of International Research Fellowship Program at MMCA Korea in 2019 and the curator-in-residence in New York in 2020, supported by Asian Cultural Council's grant in 2019.  

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