25 x 25 – Close Encounter

Meet the 25 x 25 artists

25 x 25 Credits Curator: CHEUNG Fai Assistant Curator: Shiya LU Designer: ZHENG Shao Photographer: QI Hong Special support: ShanghaiPride Film Festival, Beijing Queer Film Festival, Youth Doc by The Companion (Beijing) Culture Media Co.,Ltd

Artist

Page

Selana Lu - Theatre performance. Installation

3

Dot Ge - Sound performance. Installation

4

He Cheng Yun - Live art. Documentation

5-6

Mc David - Music performance.Poems.Video

7

Chang Jian (A Lan) - Drawing. Interaction.

8

Xu Li zhi - Poems

9

+box - Installation.Live art.

10

HuangTang art group - Photography.Film.

11-12

CxS - Installation.

13

ShangaiPride Film Festival - LGBT Film Showcase

14

90x90 Connect! - Interactions with 90 Post-90s in China

15

Accidental Chinese tourist @ Helsinki - Photography and video.

18

Selena LU

Theatre performance. Installation Selena is born in Shanghai in 1993. She got a Bachelor degree in politics, psychology and sociology at University of Cambridge and is currently a MA/MFA candidate in theatre directing. She is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher, working across contemporary art, performance, writing and theory. Her special interest is environmental and community theatre, interactive and visual installations, and women’s issues.

Period Pain Monologues Narratives of Chinese females about a private experience of the body, and the mind.

A survey in Beijing with data collection and personal interviews, with text, drawings, photograph, sound and video recording as documentation, to be presented in 25x25 with Selena’s solo performance and interactive installations.

Dot GE Sound performance. Installation Dot is born in Zaoyang, Hubei in 1993.

He has a degree in video, animations & multimedia from Hubei Institute of Fine Arts. He is now a musician by profession, and an artist by commitment. His artistic focus is on sound art, especially curious about the correlations among space, sound and body, and enjoys working with artists from digital art, animation, independent music and live art.

Time Gleaner Static electricity inside the body collides with various electricity currents in the outside world, electric charges are transferred and create primitive sound signals.

What messages can we get from it? Audience’s bodily signals will be sampled during the live sound performance, and the sounds from the body can be heard, like a mirror.

Cymatic Mirror A liquid mirror, a glass mirror, sets of loudspeakers, a light‌an installation to make sounds visible and image audible.

Explore the physics and physicality of sound and its interplay with images, including that of the audience, in an interactive dark room.

HE Cheng Yun

Live art. Documentation Cheng Yun is born in Xianning, Hubei in 1993. Graduated from Hubei Academy of Fine Arts, studying animation, sculpture and image media. His works cover live arts, video, painting and physical performance, in which he explores the possibilities of different media of expression. His inspirations come from people and affairs around him, focusing on the interaction of social dynamics and personal emotions . He wants to create works that motivate people to reflect on themselves and the society.

I Will Love You Forever A bed A naked woman spreading her legs A pair of high-heel shoes I take off my clothes I remember I raped a woman in my dream I need help‌ from you

I’m HE Cheng Yun and I want a girlfriend Documentation of a young artist trying to find a girlfriend in a most public way, through social media, onsite performance, self-portrait, media publicity etc, and how he met with the candidates.

In text and images. And he will be there too.

Poetic World He called the contact numbers on street ads (prostitute, training, complaint, recruitment, fake certificate, real estate, supermarket etc), and read a poem to the person at the other end of the phone. Can one live in a vulgar world yet finding something poetic, just for a brief moment?

Your Wuhan My Helsinki A Chinese man A Finnish woman He gives her everything She gives her everything Everything He becomes her She becomes him

MC David Music performance. Poems. Video David is born in Beijing in 1990. He is a rapper who has won numerous championships in freestyle battles. He is kungfu teacher, a poet, a filmmaker, a history critic, a cultural radical... In a word, he is a madman.

MC David’s Show MC David is the Drama King.

He will show off his rap, read his poems, teach kungfu (authentic!), and he is never shame to use his props (historical evidence includes weapons, handcuffs, wigs, fake snow, French fries etc). Yes, it’s the real FREEstyle MADshow.

MC David’s MV MC David’s MV are apocalyptic dramas of his inner journey of cruelty: You look like a flower, in fact is a seed Killing Marilyn Monroe‘s waist is a little thick Regard return as death Death of solo dance The most rock jeans in the whole world Come on, show me your trick

ZHANG Jian (A Lan) Drawings. Interaction A Lan is born in Suqian, Jiangsu in 1991.

She worked in the funeral industry. One day, she picked up a brush and started drawing. Without any training or experience, she drew 200 works in 118 days, and became instant celebrity in China’s social media.

But her aspiration is to make achievement in positive psychology.

People in My Life A Lan said she is not talented and is not interested at the art of drawing. It’s just a way for her to document her life. She draws only people she knows, her friends, neighbors, colleagues and companions (that includes animals too). And she always writes something to accompany the drawings.

So, it’s not an art exhibition as such, but A Lan showing you the people (and animals) in her life. Plus she will serve you with her real talent, traditional Chinese ear-picking.

XU Li Zhi Poems

Li Zhi is born in Jieyang, Guangdong in 1990.

In 2010, Xu Lizhi left his rural hometown to work at Foxconn in Shenzhen, an electronics manufacturing factory with 220,000 workers on the assembly line. He wrote a total of 195 poems when he was not working.

He committed suicide at the age of 24, on his birthday, in 1 October 2014. That was the National Day. His friends published his book of poetry afterwards.

A Worker’s Poems On My Deathbed I want to take another look at the ocean, behold the vastness of tears from half a lifetime I want to climb another mountain, try to call back the lost soul I want to touch the sky, feel that blueness so light But I can’t do any of this, so I’m leaving this world Everyone who’s heard of me Shouldn’t be surprised at my leaving Even less should you sigh or grieve I was fine when I came, and fine, when I left

+box Installation. Live art +box was founded in the summer of 2013 in Beijing, China. It’s a video project about young people’s life experience. The team, most of them post-90s, interviewed more than 1,000 young people in 10 Chinese cities, and asked them to ask questions to the World.

1000 questions. One question, one change.

Expression / Monologue Expression: 1000 questions asked by 1000 Chinese young people Do you have answers?

Monologue: Sit down, and ask your questions

Ignored Box on the head.

Questions in your face.

It’s a busy noisy fussy world.

People come and people go.

Questions stay.

HuangTang Art Group Photography. Film Founded by 5 young artists born around the year 1990 and based in Qingdao, Shandong province. The team explores new creative forms, including event, performance, video, photography and installation etc. Their creative works reflect their emotions and expressions of their current living environment, as well as observe and record how people’s mentality and world view vary due to age and

HuangTang Films Day To Day: A close observation of the worker’s life in a scissors shop: living, eating and sleeping . Everyone is consuming life.

Independent Life Way: 8 episodes of stop-motion short films showing the manufacturing process of daily necessities, an introspection of contemporary lifestyle.

PhD and Beggar: A PhD student became a waste picker, and worked at a construction site. He ignored the traffic lights and all other rules. He lived with the beggars‌

HuangTang in Images Exhibition of images documenting the group’s 5 works, including conceptual art and live art performances: Bachelor / Scavengers Businessman / Beggars ChengGuan/Public servants Corpse Red Cloth

CxS Installation SunYin Xiaowen was born in Jinan, Shandong in 1990. He got a Bachelor degree in Fine art painting at Wimbledon College of Art and is currently a MFA student in Slade School of Fine Art. Chang Yuhan was born in Taiyuan, Shanxi in 1990. He is currently studying fine art in Slade School of Fine Art, London.

Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?

It might not be absolutely appropriate but the work could be seen as a realistic version of Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?, echoing with the declarative icon on the upcoming era of advertising image and pop culture, which was made by Richard Hamilton, the pioneering pop artist 59 years ago. The work also exemplified Susan Sontag’s prediction at the same year in her famous critique One culture and the new sensibility that the multimedia aroused new sensibility will replace partially the traditional text media.

ShanghaiPRIDE Film Festival LGBT Film Showcase ShanghaiPRIDE Film Festival takes place for the first time in Shanghai, China in June 2015. It is a new platform for innovative queer cinema in China. It is part of ShanghaiPRIDE, an annual event since 2009, run entirely by volunteers, aiming at raising the awareness and visibility of the LGBT community in China and thereby increase acceptance and tolerance in contemporary China.

LGBT Films A mini-festival of queer filmmakers making films on LGBT, their experience and insights of the world. The first and bold exposure of images of queer China in Northern Europe!

The program includes award winners of the short film competition of ShPFF, and selected new works from the independent (underground) scene.

90x90 connect!

Interactions with 90 Post-90s in China During the 25 hours at Cable Factory, any member of the audience can contact any of the 90 young people, all Post-90s, in China, in real time, with sight and sound! The youngsters are recruited publicly using social media. They are from places across China, from all walks of life, but with the same urge to CONNECT. Make your first friend in China!

Accidental Chinese Tourists @ Helsinki Photography & Video Some of the young Post-90s Chinese artists in the 25x25 program who come to Helsinki for the first time will be wandering in Helsinki for 25 hours, and with their mobile phones/cameras take images of people and things that interest them in a city totally foreign to them. Are they artists? Maybe. Are they tourists? Definitely. Are they young with fresh eyes? Yes!