Opening weekend program

Power Station of Art and the Curatorial Team of the 14th Shanghai Biennale invite you to attend the opening weekend’s series of public programs.

Featuring Andrius Arutiunian, Hallie Ayres, Jeebesh Bagchi (Raqs Media Collective), Itziar Barrio, Lukas Brasiskis, Dorit Chrysler, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Ben Eastham, Christina Kiaer, Yujia Liu, Xin Liu, Deimantas Narkevičius, Carsten Nicolai, Ken Niibori, Jonas Staal, Kidlat Tahimik, Thotti, Anton Vidokle, Alice Wang, Zairong Xiang, Fudong Yang, Xiaohu Zhou.

For admission tickets to Cosmos Cinema and to register for the public programs, please visit powerstationofart.com.

Thursday, November 9, 4–6pm, 3F Theater
Destination Cosmos: Imagination of Outer Space in Early Cinema
with films by Ferdinand Zecca, R. W. Paul, Segundo de Chomón, Enrico Novelli, and more.

This program of early cinema short films explores humanity’s fascination with space travel and the mysteries of the cosmos. It offers a range of films, from whimsical fantasies to ambitious dramas, showcasing the exploration of the cinématographe and its special effects in the early days of cinema. These films provide a glimpse into the time when the concept of space travel was in its infancy and largely based on imagination and playful speculation.

Introduced by Anton Vidokle, Zairong Xiang, Hallie Ayres, Lukas Brasiskis, and Ben Eastham.

This special program kicks off the Biennale’s weekly program series in the Theater, generously sponsored by Aesop, .ART Registry, and Duke Kunshan University. More details about this series are forthcoming.

Friday, November 10, 2–6pm, 3F Theater
Discursive program
Cosmos Cinema invites audiences on a journey through a constellation of artworks, films, texts, sound recordings, and performances, informed by the history of artistic reflection on the cosmos, its transnational and trans-historic connections, and its manifold cultural manifestations. As an umbrella term, the title Cosmos Cinema signifies an ensemble of projects—philosophical, historical, and artistic—aiming to connect life on this planet with our larger context within outer space. 

The cosmic aspect of cinema is its ontological condition: flickers of light in a dark space that carry information and narratives about the past, present, and future. At the same time, the cinematic aspect of the cosmos is our paradoxical and impossible relationship to time and space: as much as the cosmos directs one’s mind towards wonder and mysticism, it also hones in on science and technology. The artists participating in Cosmos Cinema expand on these conjectures, allowing for a layering of perspectives and an inflection of theoretical lenses. 

We have many urgent questions: How can our understanding of time and space be expanded? How can our life-span be extended? What are the horizons of organic and inorganic life? How to control time? How to understand the unity of all that exists? How does our post-secular society challenge contemporary science, and vice versa? What kind of sociality will a future in the cosmos bring? How can life on Earth and beyond be elaborated? What could extraterrestrial art and literature be? How to live without killing any form of life? What about Chaos? 

We welcome you to join this conversation with the artists, curators, and contributors of Cosmos Cinema to discuss How to cosmos Cinema? And How to cinema Cosmos?

Panel I: How to Cinema Cosmos? / Panel II: How to Cosmos Cinema?
Panel discussions with Andrius Arutiunian, Itziar Barrio, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Yujia Liu, Xin Liu, Deimantas Narkevičius, Jeebesh Bagchi (Raqs Media Collective), Jonas Staal, Kidlat Tahimik, Thotti, Alice Wang, and Xiaohu Zhou.

Introduced and moderated by Anton Vidokle, Zairong Xiang, Hallie Ayres, Lukas Brasiskis, and Ben Eastham.

Talk: Christina Kiaer, “Anna Andreeva: A ‘Cosmic-minded Comrade’ in the Red Rose Collective”
How did Soviet artist Anna Andreeva’s cosmic fabric designs from the 1960s, with their wildly experimental lunar, cometary and planetary shapes, emerge from the deprivations of the Cold-War planned economy? Western commentators have characterized Andreeva’s abstract, geometric patterns as signs of her exceptional ability to circumvent the constraints of the Soviet art system, presumed always to prohibit abstraction and individual expression. This talk suggests the opposite: that it was precisely the collective Soviet art system that allowed Andreeva to emerge as a leader among her comrades at the Red Rose silk factory, and a unique artistic voice.

Saturday, November 11, 8–9pm, 3F Theater
Victory over Death!
A short experimental opera featuring Carsten Nicolai aka Alva Noto, Dorit Chrysler, Ken Niibori, Yang Fudong, and Anton Vidokle.

“The questions of immortalism and interplanetarianism must not be viewed independently or linked automatically. They both result from and complete one another, constituting a single organic whole united under a single term—biocosmism.”
—Alexander Svyatogor

14th Shanghai Biennale: Cosmos Cinema is pleased to present Victory over Death!, an experimental opera inspired by the ideas of Biocosmism Immortalism. Carsten Nicolai aka Alva Noto (sampled ANS synthesizer) and Dorit Chrysler (theremin, Sprechgesang) will perform this work along with a digital translation of its sound into visual patterns by Ken Niibori. Yang Fudong will read passages from Alexander Svyatogor’s Manifesto of Biocosmism, 1922. 

In the era of the October Revolution, new discoveries encouraged artists as well as scientists to produce groundbreaking works. Two of today’s most compelling composers and musicians, Carsten Nicolai and Dorit Chrysler, will use various instruments, sampled sounds, and images to create a performance relating to this history of invention.

Nicolai’s composition operates with sampled sounds generated by the legendary ANS synthesizer, a photo-electronic musical instrument developed by the Soviet engineer Evgeny Murzin and named after avant-garde composer Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin (A. N. S.). The technological basis of Murzin’s invention was a method of graphical sound recording used in cinematography (developed in the Soviet Union concurrently with similar US technologies) that made it possible both to generate an image of a sound wave, as well as to synthesize a sound from an artificially-drawn sound spectrogram. The sound produced by the ANS will be familiar to Tarkovsky fans: composer Edward Artemiev created the iconic music in Solaris using this synthesizer.

The theremin, one of the first electronic instruments, was created by Soviet scientist Léon Theremin and patented in 1928. For Victory over Death, Chrysler will be playing two customized theremins, one based on the Moog theremin and modified by Moog’s head engineer for her specific need, and one left-handed Hobbs theremin, with hand-wound coils in the spirit of Léon Theremin’s original Xd. The theremin is comprised of a loop antenna on its left that controls the volume while an upright antenna controls the pitch. Electric signals from the theremin are in turn amplified by a loudspeaker. Taking on the history of the “Gesamtkunstwerk,” the opera also includes melodeclamation (Gesang für Sprechstimme / Sprechgesang). In addition to playing the theremin, Dorit Chrysler will sing parts of Svyatogor’s Manifesto of Biocosmism.

Cosmos Cinema: The 14th Shanghai Biennale is curated by Anton Vidokle, Zairong Xiang, Hallie Ayres, Lukas Brasiskis, and Ben Eastham. The exhibition is architecturally designed by COLLECTIVE and art directed by Mengyi Qian & NONPLACE Studio.

For press enquiries, please contact: Kitty Malton: kitty [​at​] sam-talbot.com; Zhang Xiaojing and Liu Yijia at Shanghai Biennale: media [​at​] powerstationofart.com, zhangxiaojing [​at​] powerstationofart.com, liuyijia [​at​] powerstationofart.com