GWANGJU.- Manifesto of Spring, co-produced by National Asian Culture Center (ACC), M+ Hong Kong, and ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, marks the 10th anniversary of ACC. Revisiting its founding commitment to democracy and peace in Asia, the special exhibition confronts entrenched power structures to envision better future democracies. Through artistic exploration it detects unseen and helpful strategies that counter today’s most pressing global challenges, including the economic and colonial systems, and the climate crisis.
Climate disaster, war, fascism, poverty, and discrimination signal that the world is on the brink, but responsibility for this is not shared equally. While the Global North has produced the majority of carbon emissions since the mid-19th century, the concept of the “Anthropocene” which describes humanity’s dominant influence on the environment, masks this imbalance. Instead, environmental scholar Jason W. Moore identifies our era as the “Capitalocene”—where capitalism and colonialism created an extractive system that continues to devastate ecosystems as well as Indigenous life. The consequences are the humanitarian and social crisis we face today, all the while capital nonchalantly turns the climate crisis into yet another market.
Manifesto of Spring, however, does not dwell on the world’s demise. It presents artists, scientists, and theorists who offer new systems of thought, and signposts for new directions, that could help us to adapt and thrive beyond the ravages of modernity. The exhibition includes sixteen new commissions that venture thought experiments, focusing on the holistic entanglement of living things and sociotechnical environments we inhabit together. This is a declaration made through many different, noisy voices. It invites all to collectively weave the web of life further, and to transform the ruins to become the soil for new relations, reclaiming the spring that has never been truly lost.
Throughout the exhibition period, this trajectory unfolds further through various public programs. In October, White Cube, a video work by CATPC and Renzo Martens, will be screened, expanding the story of the Balot sculpture into a broader inquiry into the hidden entanglements between the Western art system and global capital. In November, ikkibawiKrrr will present Matbaegi (Tasting), a workshop where participants learn traditional village music and dance, filling the exhibition space with joyful rhythms. In December, the final chapter of Choi Chansook’s The Tumble trilogy will take place through an audio-visual performance led by two woman drummers. In January, researchers and artists Seo Dongjin and Ho Rui An will hold a dialogue that explores intersecting histories within the waves of globalization in modern and contemporary Asia.
Artists: Territorial Agency, Anne Duk Hee Jordan, Dongjin Seo, Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (CATPC), Ho Rui An, YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES, Kelvin Kyung Kun Park, Chansook Choi, Fernando Palma Rodríguez, Zheng Bo, ikkibawiKrrr, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Soun-Gui Kim, Connie Zheng, James Bridle, 1995Hz
Curated by: Kim Jiha (Senior Curator , ACC), Lim Liwon (Curator, ACC), Jeon Minsu (Assistant Curator, ACC), Silke Schmickl (Senior Curator CHANEL, Head of Moving Image, M+), Kelly Li (Assistant Curator, Moving Image, M+), Alistair Hudson (Scientific Artistic Chairman, ZKM), Clara Runge (Curator, ZKM)
