15 November - 5 December 2015
Performing Objects – End To End
Assembly Line Projects, Fei Contemporary Art Center (FCAC) & Jiading District, Shanghai, CN
Assembly Line Project
A mobile art platform which curates events and exhibitions across multiple venues focusing on themes of industrial production, urbanization, globalization and migration.
Exhibition at Jiading Venue
Opening: November 15, 2-4pm
Exhibition Dates: Novembe16, December 15, 1-5pm (Closed Sun and Mon)
To Arrange a visit to the exhibition site please call 132 6267 3118
Address: Bldg 4, No 1288 Boxue Lu, Jiading District, Shanghai
Exhibition at M50 Venue
Opening: November 15, 5-7pm
Exhibition Dates: November 16-December 5. 11am-6pm (Closed Mon)
Room 210, Bldg 3, No. 50 Moganshan Lu, Putuo, Shanghai
Participants
Chen Hangfeng (Chinese Artist)
Grass Stage: Wu Meng, Yu Kai, Wu Jiamin, Liu Nian, Bruce Bo Ding, Jia Ying (Chinese theatre collective)
Per Hüttner (Swedish Artist)
Li Xiaofei (Chinese Artist) + Liu Heping (Chinese Poet)
Liao Wenfeng (Chinese Artist)
Liu Guangyun (Chinese Artist)
Mao Chenyu (Chinese Film Director/Anthropologist)
Performing Objects: Céline Butaye, Alice De Mont, Kristof Van Gestel
and Bie Michels (Enough Room for Space / Belgium)
Egill Sæbjörnsson (Icelandic Artist)
Xiang Liqing (Chinese Artist)
Xiao Kaiyu (Chinese Poet)
Lise Yuen (Norwegian Artist）
Opening Day Transportation
Bus Departs: 1pm
Address: M50 main gate → No. 1288 Boxue Lu (travel time 30 minutes)
Bus Departs: 4pm
Boxue Lu No.1288, Jiading → M50 Main gate.
To reserve a spot on the bus please rsvp by responding to Assembly_Line@yahoo.com by October 30, 2015. Seats are limited.
Directions from Shanghai:
Take the Hujia Expressway and get off at Malu.
Turn right onto Bao’an Expressway
Turn left at Luzhong Lu
Turn right at Fengdeng Lu
Turn left on Boxue Lu.
Exhibition Organizer: Assembly Line Project Studio (ALPS)
Project Executive Director: Rebecca Catching
Designer: Guo Qingling
Hosts: Assembly Line Project Studio (ALPS), V-Art Center
Institutional Support: Department for Culture and Education German Consul General Shanghai, Norwegian Consulate General in Shanghai, Consulate General of the Kingdom of Sweden in Shanghai, Shanghai Systence Electronics, Fei Contemporary Art Center, Vision Forum, Helge Ax:son Johnsons stiftelse.
Special Thanks: Jacky Yue and Chao Jiaxing
Score for Assembly Line projects, M50, Shanghai, CN
In 2015 Li Xiaofei established the Assembly Line Project Studio (ALPS), with the aim of making it a creative platform, possessing a flexibility and a certain open-minded approach to engage in communication with people for different professions, to explore related connections between the Assembly Line and to further extend the Assembly Line Project. At the same time with each phase of discussion and research, we invite different artists and scholars to participate and cooperate with us in an ongoing series of curated thematic events.
In the past few years, Li Xiaofei’s Assembly Line Project has gathered source material from different factories and workshops; it has used materials produced by factories, and face-to-face interviews with workers. It has gathered footage of the factory floors, the production sites and has investigated the workers’ existence—their living conditions, their morals, ideologies and overall outlook on life. After completion, these art works were displayed in designated spaces, such as museums and galleries and other kinds of venues.
Yet there seems to be a great distance between the workers and the art works, or perhaps it’s more that these workers merely serve as the materials from which the artworks are made. This time with the “Assembly Line Project_2” ALPS will try to return these “materials” used by the artists back to the actual workshop and in the process it hopes to see the workers interact with the artworks. Perhaps they won’t, but nevertheless we hope to create the conditions necessary to facilitate a dialogue. Factory, workshop, workers, artists and viewers will, through this specially created environment, form a unique scenario. No matter what our profession, in this particular environment the value of our work and creativity will be evaluated anew.
End to End
Performing Objects consists of a group of artists that work together in a research project to explore objects and their possibilities to act as an interactive performer within the framework of Enough Room for Space. Their project researches different ways artists can anticipate this process during the conceptualization and the conception of their work.
For the project End To End the experimental group Performing Objects is inspired by Lean Management, a form of factory management developed by Toyota in Japan. They have been learning about Lean Management during a workshop in the Central Recycle Plant in Antwerp, BE. For the group this management method emphasizes the importance of the individual in the production line. Lean Management facilitates a possible interaction between man and thing - in contradiction to capitalistic production lines where only (the mass production of) the object counts. In Lean Management it is very important to organize evaluation moments with participation of the workers, clear visualization of problems that occur, relations between several segments of the production line en the people that work in it, etc.
For this exhibition some members of the group will make and perform an installation as an artistic interpretation of an assembly line where systems of interaction between man and things will be investigated. Objects will be transformed and manipulated during performative acts, outlined in a score that leave space to free interpretation, reflecting both on factory work and on the creative process of the artist. During the performance the group-members are constantly searching for a harmony between efficiency, planning, improvisation and reflection. Through the techniques of Lean Management, they try to give structure to their performance in which they have to collaborate and handle objects and vice versa. The group will perform during 3 days before the opening of the exhibition during the working days of the factory and finally during the opening itself. Traces of these actions will be present during the rest of the exhibition.
