Reset Time: Art, Technology & the Future of Contemporary
International Art Forum,Shanghai

Part of the first edition of the Centre Georges Pompidou’s major exhibition program “Cosmopolis”, the “Time · Aesthetics · New Practice” International Art Forum will be held in Shanghai on November 7-8, 2017. “Cosmopolis” opened on October 18, 2017, in Paris. A new exhibition platform for the integrated arts, the show takes the Centre Pompidou as its main site while also expanding to regions outside of France through exhibitions, performances, forums, and dialogues, among other events. The show aims to bring together new forms of artistic practice focused on research and the sharing of knowledge. It is dedicated to the broader cultural topics—social, urban, and political—that these new ideas and practices raise.

In a response to an extension of the themes of “Cosmopolis”, the Mao Ji-Hong Arts Foundation and Centre Georges Pompidou, in cooperation with the School of Philosophy of Fudan University and the Ming Contemporary Art Museum, will jointly curate and organize the “Time · Aesthetics · New Practice” International Art Forum. With the central theme “Reset Time”, the event brings together renowned philosophers and curators from Europe who specialize in issues of time and technology in contemporary philosophy, aesthetics and artistic practice for two days of scholarly lectures and roundtable discussions, together with influential Chinese scholars, researchers and artists in related fields. They will participate in a number of academic lectures and roundtable discussions centered on the theme of “Art, Technology & the Future of Contemporary”, all open to the public.

In accordance with its mission to support and promote pioneering artistic practices, the production of knowledge, and active engagement in trans-regional dialogues and interdisciplinary research, the International Art Forum is the first major program of a three-year strategic partnership between the Mao Ji-Hong Arts Foundation and the Centre Pompidou. Together with the the School of Philosophy of Fudan University, one of the nation’s top institutes of higher education, and the Ming Contemporary Art Museum in Shanghai, a consistent advocate for cross-media creative practices, the forum will raise topics at the vanguard of philosophy, new aesthetic practices, and other relevant social and cultural issues, sharing them with audiences from different professional backgrounds and interests.

The central theme of the inaugural forum is “Reset Time”. The theme is primarily rooted in the swift advancement of science and technology in recent years, and the ways in which this has ushered in new notions of time and cognition that are profoundly influencing contemporary society. In thought, technology, daily life, and many different aspects of our society, this influence has demanded a reconsideration of, and research into, the experience of time. These changes are not merely on the individual or micro level; they also include dramatic mutations and multivalent potentials on the macro levels of the social, political and cultural. In the fields of contemporary philosophy, art, and culture, discussions of technological evolution, realism, object-oriented ontology and accelerationism as well as the Anthropocene and the post-internet society are forming tighter and more profound networks of knowledge. At the same time, the new temporal conditions, caused by polymorphic rifts of technological revolution and globalization, are producing more and more thinking on how global politics, economics, and temporal modes are changing the Western hegemony, sparking calls for more pluralistic dialogues and interactions.

To this end, the “Times · Aesthetics · New Practice” International Art Forum will bring together the diverse perspectives of philosophers, curators, scholars, and artists to confront the profound ways this new temporal understanding influences and inspires contemporary aesthetic research, artistic practice and socio-cultural systems. The first day of the forum (November 7) will be held at the School of Philosophy of Fudan University, split into two groups of scholarly addresses and seminars, “General Remarks on Modernity and Time” and “Time and the Contemporary Condition”. Participating scholars include Professor Christophe Genin of the Pantheon-Sorbonne University, Department of Visual Art and Science of Art; Distinguished Professor Shen Yubing of Fudan University; Distinguished Professor Sun Zhouxing of Tongji University; Austrian philosopher and curator Armen Avanessian; Yuk Hui, Lecturer of Institute of Philosophy at Leuphana University Lüneburg; and Professor Jiang Yuhui of East China Normal University, Philosophy Department. The two discussions are moderated by French curator and Head of the Talks Program at the Centre Pompidou Jean-Max Colard and Mao Ji-Hong Arts Foundation Director of Research He Jing, respectively. The second day of the forum (November 8) will be held at the Ming Contemporary Art Museum, with two roundtable discussions composed of artists, philosophers, scholars and curators. Discussion participants include artists Cao Fei, Qiu Zhijie and Wang Jianwei, Fudan University Distinguished Professor Shen Yubing, Lecturer of Institute of Philosophy at Leuphana University Lüneburg Yuk Hui and curators Kathryn Weir and Armen Avanessian. The forum also invites Berlin-based illustrator and graphic designer Andreas Töpfer and Shanghai-based sound artist Yin Yi to stage artistic interventions in the two-day forum.