Ebbs and Flows –
Situational Sociality and Conceptual Sociality
河东/河西——
情境的社会性/概念性的社会性

2024.6.22-6.23

ARTIST 艺术家
Xu Tan 徐坦

DRC No. 12 is pleased to announce a special project, Ebbs and Flows - Situational Sociality and Conceptual Sociality, by the artist Xu Tan on 22 and 23 June 2024. Developed for this specific site and occasion, the project is a work-in-progress sequel to Egrets, Please Stay, Let's Have a Heart-to-Heart Talk, which has been ongoing since 2020. For Ebbs and Flows, the artist juxtaposes his multi-panel videos Made at Home in China from the 1990s with those from Egrets, Please Stay, Let's Have a Heart-to-Heart Talk as a backdrop, setting up a stage for dialogues between the artist and the viewers.

Integrating social practice and research has always been central to Xu Tan's artistic creation. The Egret project features videos of Xu Tan conducting face-to-face interviews with fifteen people experiencing symptoms of depression, recorded between 2021 to 2022. The artist devised the project to embody certain properties of research, not as a scientific discipline or a therapeutic process, but rather as a bridge between the so-called normal and "symptomatic" people in our contemporary society, perhaps, vaguely hinting at a Foucaultian sense of politics of health, or biopolitics. Made at Home in China, shot in 1997, was Xu Tan's first video work, in which he used his video camera to record in "semi-interview style" the daily lives of a variety of people in his neighborhood. This work became the point of departure for his use of video as a medium for exploring social research for nearly three decades.

Xu Tan believes that understanding each concrete person in society is essential for constituting knowledge about society as a whole. The production of social knowledge underpins his conceptual practice. For example, while Made at Home in China (1997-98) documented people who struggled for physical liberation during the shifting era of economic reform in China, Egrets, Please Stay, Let's Have a Heart-to-Heart Talk (2020-2024) focuses on melancholy individuals of the present time. If the former used the camera to observe the historical situation of some reeling individuals, the latter engaged with each of them in deep interlocutions, which in turn triggered the artist's own deep and painful "intellectual spasms."

As a form of social inquiry, in Ebbs and Flows, Xu Tan will interact with visitors and guests in situ at DRC No. 12 on topics such as bodily liberation from general societal depression and individual mental suffering, prompting situations of inter-subjectivity and reciprocal intellectual impetus. As a title, Ebbs and Flows derives its concept from the Chinese idiom "30 years of the river’s east and west side," denoting the vicissitude of time and human history. It adds an element of pathos to the societal malaise of the last three decades from the tumultuous and perplexing years of the economic reform to the somber present. The subtitle Situational Sociality and Conceptual Sociality, or in other words, situationism and conceptualism with a social dimension, succinctly portrays Xu Tan’s long-standing socially engaged conceptual practice of the last thirty years.

Special thanks to TOP for their support of this project.

外交公寓12号空间荣幸地宣布，艺术家徐坦的特别项目《河东/河西——情境的社会性/概念性的社会性》将于6月22日-23日呈现。

该特别项目发展自艺术家尚在进行中的，以三段式结构展出于顶上空间（顶上•青田）的项目《白鹭、请留下，让我们谈谈心》（2020-2024）。徐坦此次因应外交公寓12号空间的邀请，为来访观众准备了一个开放和流动的会场——在两天的展期内，艺术家本人将在现场与观众就社会性议题的关注和实践展开持续对话。

徐坦认为对具体的人的理解是对社会和历史的一种重要理解。作为现场对话的背景，他选择并置呈现自己在90年代创作的《在中国的家里制造》多频录像与在“白鹭”项目中完成的多件视频。对照展出这两组跨度接近三十年的影像记录，艺术家不仅希望展示因为时间带来的不同现实和视角，也隐约提示我们福柯意义上的健康政治或生命政治在当代社会中的踪迹。

对徐坦而言，面对面地探讨诸如个人的身体解放、精神困顿和普遍的社会抑郁等话题，也是探讨如何在今天关照个人境遇与社会知识的生产过程。而重视社会意识的艺术实践也许可以帮助更多人看到少数个体的挣扎具有公共维度上的联结意义，从而促成主体间的反身和情境下的思辨。项目标题“河东/河西”意图捕捉过去三十年来经济改革内部的苦痛与今日地缘阴霾下的社会悲情；而副标题“情境的社会性/概念性的社会性”，既是艺术家在处置社会性议题时的两大意识方向，也可以被理解为具有社会维度的情境主义和观念主义，简洁地描述了徐坦过去三十年来长期从事的社会介入式观念艺术实践。

该项目得到了顶上空间的大力支持，特此致谢。