Arthub Asia at Tate Modern, No Soul for Sale

No Soul for Sale, Time: May 14th and 15th from 10:00 am to midnight, 2010
May 16th from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm, 2010

To celebrate Tate Modern’s 10th anniversary, the gallery will host No Soul For Sale–A Festival of Independents. For this free art festival, Tate Modern has invited Arthub Asia to be a part of these celebrations of creativity and independent contemporary art initiatives. Arthub Asia will present two new projects.

The first Arthub project will be the “Making of the New Silk Roads,” a film work by the Singaporean film-maker Ho Tzu Nyen. Arthub Asia directors Defne Ayas and Davide Quadrio invited Ho Tzu Nyen to react to and visualize the pioneering symposium The Making of the New Silk Roads, which took place in Bangkok in August, 2009.

More than thirty renowned scholars, artists and practitioners in visual arts, performance and other cultural fields from around the world, gathered in Bangkok to discuss and reflect on the dynamic, ongoing echoes of the ancient trading routes and their multiple dimensions in a four-day symposium titled, The Making Of the New Silk Roads from Thursday, August 27th, through Sunday, August 30th, 2009. Hosted and organized by ArtHub, the symposium aims to reassess the complex interconnections within Asia’s cultural and artistic spectrum at the beginning of the 21st century.

Being part of the ‘documentary’ team of the symposium turned out to be a fascinating experience, a kind of being inside and outside at the same time. Freed from the anxiety of participation, Ho Tzu Nyen was somewhat plugged into the skin of the event, without being pulled into its pool of words. Through the lens of the cameras, Ho could feel the intangible, but nevertheless concrete dimensions of every symposium–its atmosphere, its moments of heaviness and those of lightness. Ho thinks of this video as a documentation of the symposium from a physiological dimension. It is a narrative of faces, gestures and energies.

Special Screening will be held in the Tate Auditorium.
Time: 1:00 to 2:15 pm, May 16th, 2010
The film will also run in Arthub Asia’s dedicated space on May 14th, 2010.

Arthub will also present “Crazy English,” a performance by the Shanghai-based Chinese artist Zhou Xiaohu. The artist is concerned with Chinese social behaviors that mis-translate and misinterpret western marketing concepts and tools. In this performance, conceived especially for the Tate festival No Soul for Sale, Zhou Xiaohu has invited one of the teachers of Crazy English, a company specialized in teaching English language to large Chinese audiences, in football stadiums and other similar locations.

“Crazy English” is a performance itself and a technique that makes standard American English an invented interpretation of English. Zhou’s aim, through the simple action of bringing “Crazy English” to London, is to show how something familiar, the English language, can instantly be transformed into something alien and foreign (English for foreigners), thus raising questions of legitimacy and the distorted effects of cultural imperialism.

The performance will last for 30 minutes and take place in Arthub’s dedicated No-Space.
Time: May 15th at 4:00 pm, 2010
The video recording of this performance will be on display May 16th, 2010.

Zhou Xiaohu’s performance is made possible with the support of FarEastFarWest Ltd., Hong Kong.

Other Interventions by Arthub Asia:
“Arthub Asia Keywords” lecture by Dr. Francesca Tarocco, Head of Research and Special Projects at Arthub Asia and lecturer at the University of Manchester.
Time: 1:00 to 2:30 on May 16th, 2010
Location: Auditorium of the University of Manchester

No Soul for Sale–A Festival of Independents, Museums at Night at the Tate Modern 

The first edition of No Soul for Sale–A Festival of Independents was spearheaded by Cecilia Alemani, Maurizio Cattelan and Massimiliano Gioni, and took place in June 2009 at X initiative in the former Dia Center for the Arts in New York. The idea for the festival was devised to celebrate and foster a spirit of independence and diversity, by bringing together the most interesting not-for-profit art spaces from around the world. Following their first success Arthub Asia has been invited to again participate in the second edition of NSFS, which will take place from May 14th to the 16th, 2010 at the Tate Modern in London. Tate Modern first opened May 12th, 2000, and since then, over 45 million visitors have passed through the gallery’s doors.

Tate Modern is inviting over 70 of the world’s most innovative independent art spaces, not-for-profit organizations and artists’ collectives, from Shanghai to Rio de Janeiro, to take over the Turbine Hall. The festival will fill the iconic Turbine Hall space with an eclectic mix of cutting-edge arts events, performances, music and film. As part of the nationwide project Museums at Night the gallery will stay open until midnight on Friday the 14th and Saturday the 15th. Museums at Night is the annual after-hours celebration of UK culture, history and heritage that sees museums and galleries all over the UK staying open late and putting on special events to get people to do something different with their evenings, and enjoy their own history and heritage. Late night events with special guests will be announced soon.

To stage No Soul For Sale, Tate Modern is working in collaboration with artist Maurizio Cattelan and curators Cecilia Alemani and Massimiliano Gioni. The festival will bring together some of the most exciting and experimental new art from around the globe, displayed in an unconventional, do-it-yourself style. Ranging from monumental structures to witty interventions, epic performances to interactive installations, participants will exhibit alongside each other without partitions or walls, creating a pop-up village of global art for visitors to explore.

The organisations taking part will respond to the invitation with a range of unique projects, building on the participatory spirit of previous Turbine Hall commissions. White Columns (New York) will work with Sonic Youth-musician, Thurston Moore, to launch the new issue of his Ecstatic Peace Poetry Journal. The publication will publish poetry by individuals who intersect the worlds of poetry, music and art; the journal will be printed on paper designed to fly as a kite in the Turbine Hall.  Meanwhile, Barcelona-based duo Latitudes will collaborate with Spanish artist Martí Anson, who will set up a taxi firm and drive the pair from Barcelona to London and back, designing the vehicle, chauffeur’s uniform and route.

Elsewhere in the space, Kling & Bang gallery (Reykjavík) will dangle a large-scale column of cash register rolls from the 40-metre high ceiling of the Turbine Hall, creating an interior space filled with video projections. Hailing from New York, K48 Kontinuum will make their stamp on the Turbine Hall with a giant photo of a slice of pizza plastered to the floor. Arthub Asia (Shanghai/Bangkok/Beijing) will add to the playful, anarchic atmosphere of the festival with work from artist Zhou Xiaohu, who will translate the gallery’s signs into Chinese.  A number of UK-based organisations will take place including Museum of Everything (London), Auto Italia (London) and The Royal Standard (Liverpool).

The festival will bring together a number of cutting-edge contemporary film and video organisations including Light Industry (New York), Centre Cinématèque de Tanger (Tangier), and no.w.here (London), who will devise programs of screenings and collaborations with video artists. Organizers will also invite art-related publications such as e-flux (Berlin), who will set up a production space that allows visitors to act as publishers. All participants will host a live event of their choice on the dedicated performance space on the Turbine Hall bridge, ranging from talks and screenings to performances.

Independent arts organisations taking part in No Soul For Sale include:

Alternative Space LOOP (Seoul), Arrow Factory (Beijing), Arthub Asia (Shanghai/Bangkok/Beijing), Artis–Contemporary Israeli Art Fund (New York/Tel Aviv), Artspeak (Vancouver), Artists Space (New York), Auto Italia (London), Ballroom (Marfa), Black Dogs (Leeds), Barbur (Jerusalem), Capacete Entertainment (Rio de Janeiro), Casas Tres Patios (Medellín), Centre Cinématèque de Tanger (Tangier), Cinema Project (Portland), cneai= (Paris-Chatou), Collective Parasol (Kyoto), Dispatch (New York), e-flux (Berlin), Elodie Royer and Yoann Gourmel–220 jours (Paris), Embassy (Edinburgh), Exyzt and Coloco (Paris), Filipa Oliveira + Miguel Amado (Lisbon), FLUXspace (Philadelphia), FormContent (London), Galerie im Regierungsviertel/Forgotten Bar Project (Berlin), Green Papaya Art Projects (Manila), Hell Gallery (Melbourne), Hermes und der Pfau (Stuttgart), i-cabin (London), Intoart (London), K48 Kontinuum (New York), Kling & Bang (Reykjavík), L’appartement 22 (Rabat), Latitudes (Barcelona), Le Commissariat (Paris), Le Dictateur (Milan), Light Industry (New York), Lucie Fontaine (Milan), lugar a dudas (Cali), Machine Project (Los Angeles), Mousse (Milan), Museum of Everything (London), Next Visit (Berlin), New Jerseyy (Basel), Not An Alternative (New York), no.w.here (London), Oregon Painting Society (Portland), Or Gallery (Vancouver), P-10/Post Museum (Singapore), Para/Site Art Space (Hong Kong), Peep-Hole (Milan), PiST (Istanbul), PSL [Project Space Leeds] (Leeds), Rhizome (New York), Salamanca (Jerusalem), San Art (Ho Chi Minh City), Studio 1.1 (Liverpool), Suburban (Chicago), Swiss Institute (New York), The Mountain School of Arts (Los Angeles), The Royal Standard (Liverpool), Thisisnotashop (Dublin), Torpedo–supported by the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (Oslo), Tranzit (Prague), Viafarini DOCVA (Milan), Vox Populi (Philadelphia), Western Bridge (Seattle), Western Front Society (Vancouver), White Columns (New York), Y3K (Melbourne), 2nd Cannons Publications (Los Angeles) and 98 Weeks (Beirut).