The World of the Hard and the Soft
2015
Single channel video (color, sound)
15min
How to define a human body in the context of global capitalist production? And how to understand its multiple meanings across various social relations and classes?
The World of the Hard and the Soft talks about how artificial technologies have been projected onto human living and working conditions. This work was initially inspired by the artist’s living conditions in a typical modernised living area in Amsterdam, a socalled “utopian society”. The artist combines human bodies with machinery, seeking the transformations in and similarities between the rhythm of human bodies and the energy consumption of machines themselves. Subsequently, the artist continues to explore issues such as new forms of humans being controlled, hidden labour relationships, and the materiality of the digital that emerges in contemporary technologies and production processes. There seems to be a “telepathy” experience between humans and the machinery; in the end one can realise that this experience is actually grounded in a new materialist way of rethinking and critically speculating on the technologies that we encounter now and in the future.
Hu Wei currently works and lives in Beijing. He graduated from CAFA, 2012, and obtained an MA at the Dutch Art Institute in 2016. His practice takes in various media, such as video, installation, performance, and writing, to establish an artistic relationship between reality (non‐artistic gesture) and “art tales”. Combining the observation of individuality and social realism, his recent work explores the mediation or irreconcilable phenomenological gap, between technology and the human condition, in which emerging political, economic, ethical issues are embedded. Recent exhibitions include: Towards the Emergence of Resistance，Taikang Space; Collective Disorder / After Speaking Greylight Projects; Shanghai Projects-Qidian, Himalayas Museum; Songs For A Deaf Ox, NL; Break The Floor, Rabbithole, NY; Beginnings of Conversations, Tehran. He has also been an artist‐in‐residence in Portugal, the Netherlands and Mexico.
《硬世界，软世界》
2015
单频录像(彩色、有声)
15分钟
我们如何在当下全球化资本主义的语境下界定身体?并且如何理解身体在社会关系中的多重含义? 这件作品探讨了被投射在人造科技的身体状态。艺术家首先取材于典型的现代化的城市社区环境和人在其中的生存状态,并将人的身体能动性和其周围生活中的工作的机械装置相结合,对比它们之间相互转换的能量消耗和节奏变化。随之,艺术家继续讨论了在科技和生产中产生的新型的对“人”的 控制、隐藏的劳动关系、人造的生活状态、数码的物质性等问题。作品在人与机器之间建立起了一种类似于“心灵感应”的心理经验,并试图将此经验逐步根植于一种以唯物主义为基础的对未来科技的思考当中。
胡伟1989年生，工作生活于北京。2012年毕业于中央美术学院绘画专业并获学士学位,2016年毕业于Dutch Art Institute (DAI)获硕士学位。胡伟的创作涉及了多种媒介,包括录像、装置、表演以及写作。他的作品试图在外在 现实(非艺术化的表示)与“艺术叙述”之间建立起联系。结合对个体特征以及社会现实的观察,他最近关注技术 与人状态的调解或不可调和的现象以及新出现的政治、经济、道德关系问题。曾参加过的展览有:抵抗的涌现,泰康空间; Collective Disorder / After Speaking, Greylight计划;上海种子-奇点.喜马拉雅美术馆; Songs For A Deaf Ox,荷兰；Break The Floor，Rabbithole纽约；Beginnings of Conversations，德黑兰。他也曾在葡萄牙、荷兰、 墨西哥参与过驻留项目。