Hyundai Blue Prize2022

Theme

Disruptive Futures

The Hyundai Blue Prize Art +Tech 2022 will engage the theme of "Disruptive Futures". The prize will continue to engage sustainability and diversity in order to foster a global discussion concerning our shared future. Through art practice we intend to create a collective discussion on the forms of planetary scale action and types of technology that need to be created in order to insure a more equitable, healthy, and resilient future.

The Hyundai Blue Prize Art +Tech 2022 is seeking curators and humanists to reflect upon the urgency of the present and to rethink the role of disruptive technologies in order to envision our possible futures.

Winner

Xin BI

Xin BI

Time After Time: The Polychronicity in Blockchain

BI Xin's curatorial plan, Time After Time, The Polychronicity in Blockchain, reconsiders the forks of time and the poetry of technology, through three parallel networks of time – Chimera, Energy, and Spime. Chimera Time (Algorithm – Time) explores the probabilistic nature of time in the context of technology itself. Energy Time (Ecology – Time) sorts out the circular chain of temporality capital-consensus mechanism-computing power-natural resources-technology-time. Spime (Social Connection – Time) merges time and space into one, exploring the trajectory of political, emotional, and community connection in the hybrid of space and time, and the connections and interventions between the virtual and real worlds. The internal logic of technology itself may be singular, but the artistic, creative, imaginative, and emotional elements make this logic complex and fascinating. Perhaps the artistic disruption of technology is the force required to escape linear time.

Diane Xing

Diane Xing

Balcony for the brave-Nutrition, materials, and future ecology

The balcony is a living space that we are familiar with in our daily life. It is a place for residents to breathe fresh air, dry clothes and display potted plants, and a space close to nature. Everyone is carrying out the greatest creativity in this small space.

The balcony is not only the connection between the individual and the society, but also the synthesis of human and nature, it links to both urban life and nature, and it is a space of individuality accompanied by sociality. The exhibition takes an imaginary "Future Balcony" as a blueprint, conceives a "balcony landscape" that people autonomously built with future technologies - a landscape of post - human life. It is like a research lab, where artists become "nutrition converters" , "material makers" , "garden planters" and "stargazers" . They are rooted in the live life, use technology and nature to build the future ecology.

This exhibition does not want to talk about science, technology and the future stereotypically, but wants to use a way which familiar to the audience, in a more life – oriented way, to invoke the sensory experience and cognition of the audience, and quickly enter the narrative of the exhibition, and then entering into the discussion of future life and the relationship between human and nature, and deepening people`s imagination of the future, maybe this is the effective way to "disruptive futures".

Jury Review

  • ZHANG Ga
    Xin BI<Time After Time: The Polychronicity in Blockchain>
    The project is critical and lucid in situating the NFT / Blockchain in an alternative outlook of temporality, alluding to a future that is provocative as well as disruptively constructive. The work selection and display are strong and poetic. A timely message to address the pressing issues with regards to the environmental, economical and cultural implications brought about by the euphoria around Blockchain technology.
  • Christiane Paul
    Xin BI<Time After Time: The Polychronicity in Blockchain>
    An excellent, very well articulated proposal for examining concepts of time in relationship to the blockchain. Given the recent impact of and gold rush surrounding NFTs, an exhibition that more critically and philosophically examines the blockchain is much needed. The selection of works is strong and well researched, and the installation plan overall is successful in translating the concepts. The exhibition perfectly captures elements of disruption, creativity and sustainability, and the public programs are well though out.
  • Ferree Joel
    Xin BI<Time After Time: The Polychronicity in Blockchain>
    Candidate is adept as discussing her exhibition concept and is well attuned to the current trends of digital art with particular respect to Web3. She is comfortable in discussing her themes and ideas. Good questions and selection of artists. Very intelligent and clear direction. Time serves as an effective vehicle for examining our increasingly networked existence. The selection of works is apt. I look forward to seeing this curator's future work.
  • ZHANG Ga
    Diane Xing<Balcony for the brave-Nutrition, materials, and future ecology>
    A beautifully conceived project that roots its inspiration in the intimacy of everyday life to imagine the immenseness of the ecological, the technological and the social. The hands – on approach and affordance lend the exhibition not only symbolic potential for change, but also makes promise as an embodied practice readily feasible and applicable. The balcony is not just a metaphor but site of action and change. Poetic and powerful yet humble and pragmatic. 
  • CAO Fei
    Diane Xing<Balcony for the brave-Nutrition, materials, and future ecology>
    I think Diane Xing's proposal among others is the only one that really gives a sense of warmth and gives us connection. Because it comes to the connection with the local and the community and the connections to people who would actually use these (when talking about art+tech). So I think in her workshop and in the investigation, she's trying to seek the connection with the locals and even their predecessors. For example, like in Beijing. How they can use the so called legal land and how they try to survive in the so called legal land and also in times of crisis how to survive and also, using the balcony as a great transition or public room to seek an answer.
  • FEI Jun
    Diane Xing<Balcony for the brave-Nutrition, materials, and future ecology>
    Diane XING's curatorial scheme takes the balcony as the object of field investigation, is full of warmth and poetry, with strong local relevance and public participation. Through the public collection of balcony plan and rich public education activities, it can effectively gather more diversified public expression, form a broader knowledge production to expand the exhibition, and bring an open growth to the exhibition. The use of ecological materials and recyclable items in the exhibition design also strengthens the concept of sustainability in the exhibition theme.
  • 《Melting Myth》，2022 GONG Yining, SUN Aijia
    《Melting Myth》，2022
    GONG Yining, SUN Aijia     Balcony of the brave
    April 27, 2022 - August 28, 2022
  • 《Fur_tilize》，2020 Dasha Tsapenko
    《Fur_tilize》，2020
    Dasha Tsapenko     Balcony of the brave
    April 27, 2022 - August 28, 2022
  • Dotcom Séance (cashwars.com and financialprinter.com) 2022 Simon Denny in collaboration with Guile Twardowski and Cosmographia
    Dotcom Séance (cashwars.com and financialprinter.com) 2022
    Simon Denny in collaboration with Guile Twardowski and Cosmographia     Time After Time
    November 17, 2022 - March 31, 2023
  • LoveCounter 2022 SHI Ruini
    LoveCounter 2022
    SHI Ruini     Time After Time
    November 17, 2022 - March 31, 2023
  • Trickle Down - A New Vertical Sovereignty 2020 Helen Knowles
    Trickle Down - A New Vertical Sovereignty 2020
    Helen Knowles     Time After Time
    November 17, 2022 - March 31, 2023

Finalists

  • BI Xin

  • Chen Yu&Yiwen Tseng

  • Hong Yun

  • MIAO Zijin&Dai Xiyun

  • Shuman Wang

  • Diane Xing

Junior Juries

  • Nikita Yingqian Cai

  • Xiaodu Liu

  • Tian Liu

  • Carol Yinghua Lu

  • Vivian Xu

  • Mia Yu

  • Haitao Zhang

  • ZHANG Lie

Senior Juries

  • Fei Cao

  • FEI Jun

  • Ga Zhang

  • Christiane Paul

  • Joel Ferre

  • Ghislaine Boddington

Symposium

The Symposium is part of the Hyundai Blue Prize Art+Tech program,
where art+tech experts from overseas and award shortlist communicate on various topics regarding art, tech and curating.

Session 1 Discussion about online curations

Michael Connor

Session 1

Discussion about online curations

Michael Connor is Artistic Director of Rhizome, where he oversaw the Net Art Anthology initiative, a web-based exhibition, gallery exhibition, and book that retold the history of online art through 100 artworks from the 1980s to the present. He has curated exhibitions and projects in venues around the world, including the Museum of Moving Image, New York, ACMI, Melbourne, FACT, Liverpool, and BFI Southbank, London. In 2021, he was a co-curator of the exhibition "World on a Wire" at Hyundai Motorstudio venues in Beijing, Moscow, and Seoul, and online at worldonawire.net.
In this illustrated talk, Connor will discuss approaches to curating online exhibitions before and after the recent boom of remote work and culture. He will argue that online exhibitions are not just a means of promoting or sharing work that would otherwise be seen in a physical gallery, but a diverse set of cultural practices that are both connected to and distinct from traditional exhibition.

Session 2 Sharing the exhibition Experimenta Life Forms and the existing pratical challenges

Jonathan Parsons

Session 2

Sharing the exhibition Experimenta Life Forms and the existing pratical challenges

Jonathan Parsons is artistic Director.In this seminar, Jonathan Parsons shared national itinerant exhibition "experimental life forms" , which will be held in Hobart, Australia in February 2021, and will visit nine galleries in the next three years. Taking this exhibition as an example, I will explore the practical challenges of cooperative curation methods, entrustment process, visiting an exhibition for three years, its impact on the art selection process and commissioning process, and the way we integrate the exhibition into the local community of each gallery we visit through art and related public projects.

Session 3 Sharing the experience of exhibition Hashtag 2021

Sooyon Lee

Session 3

Sharing the experience of exhibition Hashtag 2021

Sooyon Lee is the curator of MMCA. In this seminar, sooyon Lee shared Hashtag 2021, introducing selected two teams working ideas about the web, how far the utopian prospects on humanity such as ethics, desires are transformed, derailed over the development of the technology, focusing on selected examples of Web accessibility re-disclaimer, Internet subcultures. With the artistic practices, the curatorial concept on the show will cover the historicity of the relationship between technological tools and human, addressing Heidegger and Donna Haraway as a window to frame the scenery.

Session 4 Sharing the exhibition Common front, Affectively(2018) and the online exhibition neighbors(2021)

Seong Eun Kim

Session 4

Sharing the exhibition Common front, Affectively(2018) and the online exhibition neighbors(2021)

Seong Eun Kim is Director of Nam June Paik Art Center. And also an anthropologist whose research interest lies in the agency of media art for the bodily experiences in museums and the modality of combining the curatorial and the commons. Ashe worked at nam june paik art center (2011-14) . And at leeum, Samsung museum of art (2014-19) .
In this seminar, Seong Eun Kim shared a couple of my projects in terms of how the relationship between the body and media can be revisited and reconfigured in curatorial undertakings. First, the exhibition common front, Affectively (2018) was based on the theoretical notion of "affect" and one of the featured works in it was Bojan Djordjev' s the discreet charm of Marxism, a dinner & discussion performance. Secondly, the online project kind neighbors (2021) was co-organized by ARKO Art Center. Art Sonje Center and Nam June Paik Art Center, and for this experimentation with a form of institutional collaboration in the era of the pandemic, NJP Art center commissioned the artist collective Bad New Days to produce a chat show, "A cultural History of Distortion. " Alongside these, I would like to share with you my experience of learning in relation to museological practies.

Review

  • Xin BI

    I' ve benefited a lot from Hyundai Blue Prize Art+Tech 2022. Rich and productive online curatorial forums and visits to relevant art institutions were arranged during the contest, creating many valuable opportunities for communication and learning. Thanks to the Junior Juries and Senior Jurie, many experienced seniors and friends provided suggestions on my project planning. All this is a very valuable experience.

  • Chen Yu & Yiwen Tseng

    Qualifying ourselves among the top six is a great experience for Chinese Emerging Curators. Our thanks go to the sponsor for their invitation and organization. The Hyundai Blue Prize Art+Tech 2022 offered us a rare opportunity for profound learning and communication, and for inspiration-sparking interaction with active curators. We are deeply grateful to Mr. Zhang Haitao for his kind nomination and other judgers for their votes. Thanks to their work, we are more confident to complete the next preparation for the "topic".

  • Hong Yun

    I especially cherish this opportunity. Unlike other contestants, I am not a professional art curator. This year, my study in the Academy of Arts and Design, Tsinghua University, has made my identity more complicated. Oddly enough, I always feel like I am moving in a same direction, but now I am a teacher, a student, and a curator. Out of concern for myself, I want to take this opportunity to make a stage summary of myself, a holistic summary of my previous practice in different aspects. I feel it both an extremely happy and luxurious thing if I can, during this time, write and express freely while receiving tangible support. Support means opportunities, thinking and growth, all valuable and rare.

  • Miao Zijin & Dai Xiyun

    At a time when international travel is restricted, both the online curatorial forums and visits to relevant art institutions organized by the Hyundai Blue Prize Art+Tech 2022 are timely. For example, the performability of digital art and online curation shared by Rhizome's inspector-general Michael Connor, and the curatorial project based on emotions and neighbors shared by Seong Eun Kim, inspector-general of Nam June Paik Art Center, have aroused interest in us. While helping us build professional networks, institutional exchanges in Shanghai are more concerned about seeing us develop a friendship with fellow contestants or peer curators on the bus.

  • Shuman Wang

    The trip to South Korea was canceled due to the epidemic. But Hyundai Blue Prize Art+Tech 2022 still hosted three-day forum and visits to relevant art institutions in Beijing and Shanghai. After leaving university, I rarely attend any off-site collective learning activities. So, the event reminded me of my study days in Sydney when I was frequently invited to visit local art institutions. The fun of such visits partly lies in watching, partly in communication. Having the opportunity to timely feed back and share what you have viewed is, in my eyes, a good training of critical thinking. While I am wary of provisional conclusions, I believe that transient perceptions always trigger a spark of inspiration, which may prove quite useful someday in the future.

  • Diane Xing

    My strongest feeling during the Hyundai Blue Prize Art+Tech 2022 is gratitude. I am grateful to tutors for their recognition so that I can have the precious learning opportunity. Thanks for the wonderful sharing from Hyundai Motorstudio and the in-depth communication among Shanghai art museums. The trip is over and the harvest is full. Especially, I have made acquaintance of many lovely curators, with whom I interacted deeply for inspiration. Together, we can deliver more exhibitions of greater fun in the future. Let us work hand in hand towards a "disruptive future" !

Time After Time 2022.11.17 - 2023.03.31

E-Brochure Download
  • The Polychronicity in Blockchain
  • The Polychronicity in Blockchain
  • The Polychronicity in Blockchain

The Polychronicity in Blockchain

Over the past two years, our subjective experience with time has drastically changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, becoming an elastic existence throughout which its insufficiency has been paused, folded, extended, and regressed. In many cases, these situations have had a negative impact, however, in other ways, they have constituted positive implications. They have not only reminded us that humans are not the only agents of history, but have also given us a sense of topology in time. The global precision of time, as driven by computers and networks, accurately standardises the rhythms of modern life, with power being cashed out in temporal standardisation. In an era of "no future", how can we understand the latency, differ- ences, and repetition of time? How can we re-consider time beyond metrics and computation? How can we perceive the traces left behind by technology in the spacing of time? Starting with block time, this exhibition attempts to search for a new timeframe based on the reference of blockchain, a data space impregnated with a topological arrow of time. Using three parallel networks of time -- Chimera (#prore- gression #myth #dream), Energy (#incentives #sustainability #power), and Spime (#order #circulation #consensus), this exhibition delves into the temporal, social, and political order, the construction of consensus mechanisms, the circulation of energy and emotion, and the temporal slippages in technology time, in search of the forks of time and the poetry of technology. Chimera Time (Algorithm-Time) explores the probabilistic nature of time in the context of technology itself. The present in the blockchain is chimeric, however, since there is no central authority in the network, it is possible to find a valid block from different peers simultaneously. The two different blocks will very likely differ in their content and contain two different histories, though both are equally valid. This is when probabilistic choices occur; the future does not exist, but is rather grown into the block universe, between the past and present. Energy Time (Ecology-Time) sorts out the circular chain of temporality-capital-consensus mechanism-computing power-natural resources-technology-time. It also explores how we can dialectically observe the tension and link between technological development and ecological sustainability. Spime (Social Connection-Time) merges time and space into one, exploring the trajectory of political, emotional, and community connections in the hybrid of space and time, and the connections and interventions between the virtual and real worlds. The projects featured in this exhibition explore the continued cyber time and discrete block time from the intersection of computer science, distributed technology, social relationship structures, and literature. The probabilistic nature of block time creates a new dimension for how we can ponder the possibilities of time. Discrete blocks of time give birth to perpetual forks toward innumerable futures, thought on the other hand, such distributed structures do not automatically create an equal distribution of wealth and power. The realisation of transparency and equality that blockchain technology advocates, as well as the vision of a posthuman economic prototype it proposes, still depend on complex participation, experimentation, and collaboration. At the same time, we still need to consider the question of sustainability, since if we cannot balance technological developments and ecological consumption, there is the concern that we will eventually run out of time. The internal logic of technology itself may be singular, but artistic, creative, imaginative, and emotional elements make this logic complex and fascinating. Perhaps the artistic disruption of technolo- gy is the force required to escape linear time.

Balcony for the brave-Nutrition, materials, and future ecology 2022.04.27 - 2022.08.28

E-Brochure Download
  • Balcony for the brave-Nutrition, materials, and future ecology
  • Balcony for the brave-Nutrition, materials, and future ecology

Balcony for the brave-Nutrition, materials, and future ecology

What has always been vivid in my memory is the balcony of my grandma's house. It was stacked like a treasure chest with all kinds of things, abundant yet orderly: food, materials, tools, and green plants, were all presented here, and it was also the home space where my family and I could easily observe the sky.The balcony is a living space that we are most familiar with in our daily life, a place for residents to breathe fresh air, dry clothes, and place potted plants; it is bonded to both tre and nature, an individual space accombanied by sociality. This exhibition takes an imaginary "future balcony" as a blueprint. conceiving a "balcony landscape" -- a post-human living landscape, where people create independently through ruture technology. It is like a research laboratory for people: they convert nutrition,create living materials and build "ecology" here. A balcony is a place where technolody and nature unite to create, also a future life scenario constructed with local technology. Confronting a geologica epoch in which a new intelligence and ecology evolve together, James Lovelock, who proposed the Gaia Hypothesis, envisions that Cyborg and Gaia will jointly govern the earth for the first time. The "balcony" as a metaphor, symbolizes the ecology created by technology and nature, life and non-life, reflecting an epitome of human life in the future, which will be a huge system of nature and machine hybridization. Nowadays, we need to rethink the relationship between technology and ecology. The synthesis of technology and environment constitutes its own beginning and the corresponding autonomy; we could reconsider this beginning, or place it in a suitable cosmic reality. Donna J. Haraway proposed the notion of "Staying with the Trouble". And with "Chthulucene", the other concept, Haraway hopes to help us "learning to stay with the trouble of living and dying ni response-ability on a damaged earth"; to inspire us to abandon arrogance and passivity, to have a discus- sion rooted in reality, to explore a non-typical, unlike the past, top-down authoritative narrative. She expects the exploration could bring us the possibility of human transboundary survival and symbiotic harmony of all things. This requires today's artists and designers to be liket h e braves who are not afraid of difficulties and troubles. who rely on persona research and action to foresee the future crisis and challenges of human survival, to think about the possibility of technologies in a holistic and locally applicable way. They would also need to change their inherent ways of ThInkIng and strive to Ting those possible solutions so a sto provide new Trameworks for the symbiotic development of technology and ecology. Only through these new frameworks can we imagine the harmonious coexistence of "Cyborg and Gaia". Facing such a chaotic present and an uncertain future, we need a technology rooted in life and an experimental field to unite all forces, and to reconsider the present correlation between people and everything in this pragmatic action. Maybe the future ecology is not in the distant future, but at everyone's feet.