Assured Stability in Shanghai

Vision Forum is proud to present a new collaboration between Sweden, Norway and China that forms a part of the project Inside Out.

When Li Xiaofei talks to industrial workers. They often express that there is an “assured stability." They mean that there is stable employment, medical care, pension - everything is secured. Their point of view might seem superficial at first glance, but behind this expression of a human desire we find a deeply rooted anxiety about how to survive.

"Assured Stability"— the clear and yet somewhat mundane words possess a sense of universality. We all understand and share the dream of tomorrow remaining bright and trouble free. Still, there is another side to the words that suggest that each individual only becomes a part of an economical system, a cog in a wheel of a seemingly meaningless giant machine of society. And that image can slowly eat its way into our consciousness like a virus. Maybe we find ourselves in a situation where everything has improved on the surface and yet our lives have become empty and meaningless?

Happy New Year!

2014

Thank you for this year! It has been a wonderful and exciting year where we have made a lot of progress together. Thank you artists, supporters, friends and foes for making
 it such an inspiring time together. We look forward to seeing you more in the new year.

Here are some of the highlights in the first few months of the year:

* January 18, OuUnPo meeting in Karlsruhe in collaboration with med GAM/ZKM with
with artists, curators and researchers from Sweden, Lebanon, England, Holland, Turkey and Germany.

* February 12 -13, Vision Forum participates international symposium about the future of exhibition-making in Dijon and Besançon in France.

* March 9-10, release event for the ”Think Again” publication in Stockholm and
Norrköping in collaboration with FCAC, Shanghai.

* March 11-12, Vision Forum Spring Meeting in Norrköping and Linköping in collaboration with Linköpings universitet, Östsam and Flygvapenmuseet in Linköping.

... and of course tons of other exciting events!

Li Xiaofei - artist talk at IASPIS, Stockholm

Li Xiaofei is currently an Iaspis programme grant-holder. He is a Chinese visual artist who lives and works in Shanghai. He graduated from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. Li is the Founder and Director of the Creek Art Center, Fei Contemporary Art Center (FCAC) Shanghai, and the Zendai Contemporary Art Exhibition Hall.
Li has been focusing on the Assembly Line project since 2010. He has visited hundreds of factories in the delta of the Yangtze River. He has filmed interviews and engaged in dialogues with people working at these sites for production. The videos deliberately mix artistic and documentary language. Images of the individual and the machines are constantly being cut up, restructured, transformed and rebuilt into an evocative reality. This body of work explores a number of interlocking themes including the relationship between labor and management, between man and machine, between the factory and the individual and the relationship between the individual and society.

Li's work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions internationally, including: Pavillion 0, Palazzo Donà, Venezia, Italy (2013); Portraits, Galerie C, Neuchatel, Switzerlan (2013); Descriptive Acts, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, USA (2012); Melancholy in Progress, 2012 Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition, Hong-Gah Museum, Taipei, Taiwan (2012); Reliquie als Fetisch in Kirche, Kunst & Konsum, Trier Contemporary Art Center, Trier, Germany (2012); JETLAG, Multimedia Contemporary Art in China, Kunsthalle Faust, Hanover, Germany (2012); Trans Media Fashion and Art Exhibition, Shanghai Sculpture Space, Shanghai, China (2012); Assembly Line, Li Xiaofei Solo Exhibition, Mandarins Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium; Ictus Gallery, San Francisco, USA; OV Gallery, Shanghai, China; Pretty Land Gallery, Krefeld, Germany (2012); Taiwanese Contemporary Art (TCA Project), ISCP, New York, USA (2011) among others. Li has been the recipient of grants and awards from multiple organizations, including Asia New Zealand Foundation Wellington Grants, New Zealand (2013), Iaspis International Residency Grant, Stockholm, Sweden (2013), the Sovereign Foundation Fellowship of Asian Cultural Council (Rockefeller Foundation), New York, USA (2011).

 Tuesday 21 May, 18.00
The Project Room, Iaspis, Konstnärsnämnden, Maria skolgata 83, Stockholm

Jim Speers at Fei Art Center, Shanghai

Long Days — Jim Speer

Opening: October 20 2012, 6pm

To observe things is to recognize the passing of time. Jim Speers uses video to explore economic activities in urban landscapes, attending to the particularity of events and objects.
He films landscapes being altered by social developments, making the viewer an observer to the commonplace scenes gliding into history. The sequences he creates are ordinary today but will need explanation in the future. The videos on display present a mixture of objects, stories and historical facts. Everything is connected: flags and taxi trips are interwoven with people’s memories and plants growing.

More info here.