Our 6th open call in honor and memory of China Residencies' co-founder Crystal Ruth Bell received nearly 500 project proposals around the theme Light and Sight 亮光与眼光 from individuals and collectives from all over the world. The 6th Crystal Ruth Bell Residency is awarded to 周一辰 Yichen Zhou:
日谈#8 Daily Talk #8, Digital C-Print，2018
周一辰，出生于内蒙古，其作品主要通过行为艺术，影像，和装置艺术探讨在多重文化碰撞下信息化，像素化的社会环境中人们的生活状态。
Born in Inner Mongolia, Zhouyi’s work mainly explores the living conditions of people in the informational and pixelated social environment under the collision of multiple cultures through performance art, video, and installation art.
"生活在图像爆炸的时代里，读图成为获取信息的重要方式，我们真的会自主性的读图吗？我们读取的信息是被已经被设定的吗？驻留项目“读图指南” 是结合图片，视频，白炽灯管，霓虹灯，及其他综合材质的影像装置，通过装置的辅助，人为的将照片中的信息加以“强化”甚至是“篡改”，装置将二维的图像延伸至三维空间中，营造出一个个被设定的语境，作为艺术家所编写的指南“引导”观众读取图片信息。在每天浏览大量图片的日常中，我们学会更聪明的读图亦或是变成偏信各样碎片信息的愚人？
Living in the era of image explosion, image reading has become an important way to obtain information. But can we read images autonomously? Is the information we read everyday already pre-determined by someone else? In my project "A Guidebook of Image Reading”, I will use photographs, videos, incandescent tubes, neon lights and other material to highlight and even manipulate the information of the images intentionally. Using multi-medium to create a context that can “guide” the audiences read images. Do we learn to read images more intelligently, or become fools who believe in those fragments of information?"
We thank our jury members from the Red Gate, Three Shadows, and China Residencies teams, alongside guest jurors Zara Arshad, Cao Mengwen, Berenice Angremy and Victoria Jonathan for selecting this year's resident and these outstanding finalists:
Jessica Mehta wearing beaded jewelry by Antelope Women's Designs.
Jessica Mehta is an artist working at the intersection of mixed- and digital media, particularly blending archival photos with poetry and virtual reality.
Photo by @brianvu
Mimi Zhu believes in the healing power of writing as a bridge to their self and their ancestral connections. They believe that nobody should be intimidated by the practice of writing, because it doesn't have to be "good" by academic standards, it just has to be true.
Untitled from Cauliflory series, 2019, Digital photograph.
"I would further my work exploring the two key concepts of the hyperreal - simulacrum and simulation, and how these manifest at themed leisure spaces and amusement parks. What do the life cycles of these sites, their animation and in-animation, reveal about shifting paradigms of desire, leisure, internationalisation and consumption?"
A model poses for a photo shoot along Venice's Grand Canal, near the Rialto Bridge. The photo set re-enacts a stereotypical 'Italian scene', including a waterside pizza picnic, an Italian water bottle and a designer handbag.
"Mass tourism has become one of the signature features of our era. As a documentary photographer, with my current work I'd like to investigate how mass tourism is shaping the receiving destinations, but also how the existing digital imagery is feeding the travellers' collective fascination about key tourist places, and influencing their travel decisions."
Micaela Durand and Daniel Chew
Micaela Durand and Daniel Chew make films that evoke how the internet makes us feel, depicting the tensions and implications that arise when we connect online.
Denise Gieseke Penizzotto (DCGBP)
Family Plots Malaysia
Creative non-fiction writer, photographer, illustrator and traveler Denise Penizzotto explores the effects that environment, cultural shifts and changing traditions have on the lives of the “common man.”
Eclipse The Silky Ovary (35mm photograph, colored pencil) risograph print by John Zhao.
John Zhao is a self-taught filmmaker and visual artist born in China to Korean diaspora, raised internationally, and based in New York City. His work explores outsider characters, synesthesia, bootleg consumerism, bardo states, and the painful crossings of Asian-American migrants who failed to negotiate the gulf between their transoceanic lives.
Reversed-bleached material #1
"I am interested in how light shapes our thought and perception. Reversed-Bleached project is an act of resistance to the flood of media and advertising, which forces us to watch and hear in our mundane."
《Roommate》documentary
以纪录片的形式诘问观众对真相的探求和窥探隐私的欲望之间的界限，也从最基本的意义上揭露留学生的真实生存处境。
In the form of a documentary, the audience is asked about the boundaries between the search for truth and the desire to pry into privacy. It also reveals the real life situation of international students in the most basic sense.
"Through found business letters written presumably by the Chinese diaspora from New York to a traditional Chinese medical hall in Hong Kong from the 60s, my proposal for this residency, explores how cultural traits, familiarity, and trust, play an important role in health and healing."
put_together.gifS series 2017
Di-Andre Caprice Davis (born and based in Kingston, Jamaica) is a self-directed experimental artist exploring new media technologies.
The making of the work titled "the other body". Plaster and latex, 13 feet long, 2019. Photo credits: Ahsan Akhtar.
"As an artist coming from an economically and politically volatile country, Pakistan, I propose to make a work demystifying the myths of otherness also exploring their connections while constructing a bond between two individual lands, through the capturing of visual encounters. "
"I am always confused by the intimate relationships with other people – when you are in love, do you really fall for the other person? Or just need a projection for your love? Or, maybe you just enjoy the chemistry your brain produced."
Video still from Rotation Method, Experimental 3D animation, 4K dual-channel video (synchronized), 11 minutes 3 seconds, 2018
"My practice produces an absurd and poetic entanglement of reality and fantasy. Traveling and seeking-home as an immigrant remain at the center of his storytelling. This project 3D animated short film is a body of work investigates a “failure” of finding “truth” during an abiding journey and migration. "
"在我的作品中，荒诞、诗意、对于文本的引用、以及对现实的重新想象相互交织。长久的旅行和如何在不稳定的境遇中构建家园构成了我的故事的中心。我计划在第六届Crystal Ruth Bell Residency完成一部新的三维动画短片。这部作品将会探讨我在长久的迁徙中，试图捕捉到某种真相却又不断遭遇失利的这一过程。"
Volumetric image of displaced children, Mar Elias, Lebanon 2018, Jack Wolf.
As technologies transform our realities, we should explore new ways to discuss and visualise their affects – the good and the bad.
"Working across different media, my artistic practice revolves around cultural and contextual transfers and translocations and experimentally uses import/export strategies. In connection, I would aim to research and redeploy contemporary trade patterns between Iran and China during the residency."
Tricia Flanagan & Andrej Kocan
Tricia Flanagan and Andrej Kocan, Geographies of Making – Tracing the Material Gestures of Craft, Work in progress: testing the robotic colour sensing cameras to track hand gestures of Sui minority horse hair embroiderers.
Dr. Patricia Flanagan is an Australian Visual Artist and Designer. Andrej Kocan is a Slovenian Ethnomusicologist and Sound Designer. "On fieldtrips, we will record digital data tracing hand gestures collected from Chinese ethnic minority craftspeople such as the Guiyang horse tail embroiderers and translate the data into light patterns, combining them with soundscapes, therefore capturing the embodied knowledge and transforming the didactic potential into interactive media artwork of rhythms, narratives, songs etc. while also exploring haptic interfaces of the future."