After hosting the Italian multimedia group Studio Azzurro’s acclaimed interactive installation project at the Shanghai World Expo 2010 Italian Pavilion and just before parting for the winter break, offiCina Beijing is proud to host “Stranger”, a solo show of artist Fei Jun curated by Feng Boyi in its 798 Factory art project space.
Following his American experience at the Department of Art and Design of the Alfred University in New York, where in 2005 he earned a MFA degree in Electronic Integrated Art, Fei Jun moved back to Beijing to become an associate professor at the Central Academy of Fine Art. Often employing the newest technologies, this promising young artist and designer focuses his attention on the interaction between virtual and physical space.
The directors of offiCina Beijing have invited one of the most open-minded, serious and independent curators in China, Feng Boyi, to curate this exhibition.
WE ARE ALL STRANGERS
by Feng Boyi
The concept of “stranger” is a modern one, one which become increasingly more relevant as relationships, often complex and chaotic, are carried out through intermediary elements of virtual entities over the web.
Before the development of modern culture, people had face-to-face contact, and relations were based on the linear connections of geographical nearness (real, simple and pure). In today’s cities, citizens don’t have a chance to know each other personally. Those who live in public spaces are characterized by perennial anonymity; the majority of people we come in contact with on an average day are, to us, only strangers. One key feature of modern daily life is thus the coexistence of strangers. This aspect of urbanization is not necessarily a sign of the tension between urban developing and rural civilization. On the contrary, the emergence of different subcultures stimulated by the growth of urban population reveals its heterogenic aspects and new ways of inter-relation that exist in the city.
As an observer of urban culture, Fei Jun, will challenge people’s knowledge, thought and judgment through the auxiliary of new media technologies. Collecting, gathering and handling this kind of information he attempts to reduce social differences and stabilize social connections, in an environment where cultural exchange allows for idealized social coexistence.
Imagine a world where each person and each group are connected and related to every other person and group.
When entering the space conceived by Fei Jun, the viewer will at first perceive strangers all around him. But once he becomes used to it, he will feel inclined to build relationships with all other observers. The audience will soon realize how relationships are not determined by geographical proximity, nor they are deterred by purely mental barriers and impediments, but are instead born out of random events and of the mobility of people。This is exactly what happens in modern cities where personal freedom and independence are somehow characterizing qualities.
The main feature of modern agglomerations is the coexistence of heterogenic social groups that have not met before. This allows between individuals to develop different grades of interaction. These interactions are in themselves a new, vibrant means of communication.
Thus, this is the kind of exhibition where “heterogenic graft” and “multiple spaces” will coincide.
Fei Jun’s Artist Statement
I am particularly interested in the intersection of virtual space and physical space. My recent research focus on creating locative social media for public engagement and empowering interactive systems for sustainability in the context of unbalanced labor value, the value of virtual labor and the exploration of new forms of value transformation.
