ART CITIES:Hong Kong- Creative Operational Solutions, Part I

Container Artist Residency 01, is unique artist-in-residence program by Container Artist Residency and ZIM Integrated Shipping Services, that takes place onboard commercial cargo ships. As the inaugural edition of this program, the residency inviteδ visual artists from around the world to produce artworks while voyaging into the heart of international commerce. Τhe project culminates in a set of international exhibitions (Part II)

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Container Artist Residency Archive

Container Artist Residency 01 hosted 7 selected artists with a fully-funded trip onboard a cargo vessel on a route of their choice. Each artist received studio space for working and accommodation in the ship’s cabins for up to three weeks, in addition to an honorarium, return travel allowance, and production budget. The artists explored their practice within this environment. The exhibition “Creative Operational Solutions” at Para Site in Hong Kong, emerged from these travels. The exhibition features works by: Mari Bastashevski, Tyler Coburn, Revital Cohen & Tuur Van Balen, Erin Diebboll, Ferenc Gróf, Christopher Page, and Samson Young, who present works in response to their voyages onboard ZIM Integrated Shipping Services vessels. Their works explore technology’s effects on geopolitics, the linguistics and semiotics of maritime shipping, the role of the artist as laborer, individual and collective memory, collaborations with industrial entities, and surveillance, among other themes. Erin Diebboll’s serial drawings on paper imagine the contents of shipping containers within a highly-articulated, minimal language of representation. Christopher Page’s project, in which trompe-l’oeil panels form the faces of a shipping crate, pushes the limits of visuality in its tightly-organized structure. Tyler Coburn’s works draw poetic connections between resonant frequency, global finance, and logistics through a series of off-site performances and an ingot made of bullet lead on display in the exhibition. Ferenc Gróf hijacks the semiotics of global maritime shipping, creating a graphic intervention that exposes the systems and nomenclature underlying the industry. Mari Bastashevski introduces a mirrored box that recorded its onboard surroundings during the artist’s residency and that continues its recording within the exhibition space, while Samson Young’s soundscape drawings capture his journey on a container ship by way of graphic scores that playfully represent language, aural stimuli, and time. In addition to these works, several artist groups take on the history and politics of trade in different ways. Embedding themselves within the global supply chain of the abalone shell, Zheng Mahler, a collective based in Hong Kong, explore the history and politics of the porcelain trade through a collection of small-scale objects. Revital Cohen & Tuur Van Balen employ the industrial process of electroplating in the production of a “seascape” onto stainless steel panels using metals excavated from the Democratic Republic of Congo to be used in electronics manufacturing in China. These are accompanied by a film collage drawing fragmented connections through material, place, and time from both sides of the Indian Οcean. Taking the viewer on an epic voyage through spaces both real and imagined, Guo Xi & Zhang Jianling present a series of collage works around cyber-futurity. Finally a two-channel video installation with ephemeral objects by James T. Hong is performing the history of maritime commerce in Hong Kong with a focus on the opium trade.

Info: Curators: Prem Krishnamurthy and Cosmin Costinas, Para Site, 677 King’s Road, 22/F, Wing Wah Industrial Building, Hong Kong, Duration: 10/12/16-26/2/17, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 12:00-19:00, www.para-site.art