Exhibition | Fractured Continuum
断裂的连续体FRACTURED CONTINUUM
2025.3.9—2025.4.9
Art Director: Yuer
Curator: Cheng Xi
Artists:
Sara Christova, Ning An, Li Yanzeng, Xu Han, Yang Yu
Opening: March 9, 2025, 3:00 PM
Organizer: Elsewhere Culture
Supported by:
Sound Art Museum
Dulwich College Beijing
Venue: Sound Art Museum, Fenxiang Bar, 3rd Floor, Tongzhou District, Beijing
Foreword
Fractured Continuum
In an era marked by technological acceleration, ecological crises, and cultural conflicts, we are living within a "fractured continuum."
Time is no longer a linear flow but has been digitized, fragmented, and even virtualized. Memory is no longer a stable narrative of individuals or collectives but has been recoded by algorithms, media, and power. Time in contemporary society manifests in multiple dimensions. On one hand, technological advancements allow us to record, store, and reproduce time at unprecedented speeds; on the other hand, this technological intervention has fragmented time, stripping it of its historical continuity and depth.
The body is no longer a natural product but a battleground for technology and biopolitics. Geological time collides with human time, revealing the profound impact of human activity on the Earth. Perception is reshaped by technology, and culture continuously fractures and reorganizes under the tension between globalization and locality. The body, as a vessel of perception, is both a product of culture and a witness to geological time.
Technological development has not only altered how we interact with the world but also reshaped our perceptual structures. Virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology are blurring the boundaries between the natural and the artificial, the real and the virtual. In the context of contemporary art, technology is no longer merely a tool or medium but has become a new geological layer, documenting the transformations of the human body and memory.
In the tide of globalization, culture both reorganizes through fractures and fractures through continuity. The tension between the local and the global, the ancient and the contemporary, constitutes the fundamental characteristics of contemporary culture. Artists juxtapose symbols and images from different cultures, creating a visual "cultural archaeology." These works not only reveal the fractures and fusions of culture in the process of globalization but also hint at new cultural possibilities: finding continuity within fractures and creating commonality within difference.
"Fractured Continuum" is not only a description of contemporary society but also a philosophical reflection. Fracture and continuity are not opposites but interdependent processes of co-evolution. Through the works of five artists, we are invited to re-examine the complex relationships between time, memory, the body, geology, technology, and culture, and to contemplate how to find continuity within fractures and meaning within uncertainty. The exhibition invites the audience to explore the continuities hidden within fractures and the fractures latent within continuities, offering a new way of understanding and responding to the complexities of reality.
Cheng Xi
February 14, 2025
Art Director: Yuer
Poet, Curator, Interdisciplinary Artist
Yuer engages with contemporary art and writing through multiple artistic experiences. Drawing inspiration from the body language of dance, she extends her practice into visual art spaces and translates her visual experiences into textual expressions. Through cross-disciplinary and fluid approaches, she explores the boundaries and diversity of artistic creation, achieving a unique mode of personal expression.
She is also a poet and poetry event curator, having participated in the "Beijing Poetry Festival" for nine consecutive years and winning the "7th Beijing Poetry Festival Golden Sunflower Award." In 2021, she was elected as the Chair of the Beijing Poetry Festival Council. In 2019, she participated in the Havana International Poetry Festival, with her works translated into English and Spanish. She has also participated in events such as the "Tianwen Poetry Festival," "Qinghai Lake International Poetry Festival," and "Chengdu International Poetry Week." She has published individual poetry collections such as Twilight Spring and Autumn Colors and Under the Light, as well as the collaborative poetry collection Weijing and the Reverse Side. In 2024, she founded the UK-based "Ruth International Art Festival."
Curator: Cheng Xi
Curator,Researcher, Writer, and Social Theater Practitioner
Cheng Xi primarily engages in curating, archival research, poetry writing, documentary filmmaking, experimental performance, and social theater.
His research focuses on social field observations and avant-garde consciousness within historical contexts, aiming to construct a dialogue between historical avant-garde and contemporary cutting-edge practices. He adopts an interdisciplinary research approach, often collaborating deeply with scholars, creators, and grassroots workers from various fields. His long-term research projects, based on oral history and philological methods, excavate and organize the folk memories, poetry communities, avant-garde art practices, and personal histories of China in the 1960s and 1970s, placing these historical materials within the contemporary global context for critical examination and practical transformation.
In recent years, his research has expanded to include youth cultural autonomy, community organization, art ecology, and cutting-edge practices within cross-cultural contexts. He actively organizes and participates in ongoing, emergent, and naturally evolving practical activities. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, he initiated experimental projects such as Tianyan, Wuhé Theater, and Personal Histories. These projects, through diverse "wild" practices such as poetry, body, video, sound experiments, theater practices, and social interventions, aim to break down boundaries of geography, culture, concepts, and media, connecting cutting-edge practitioners from different regions and countries to explore the expanded possibilities of art as a medium of expression today.
His major curatorial and practical projects include: The 1970s—Poetry, Art, Salons, and Sent-Down Youth Memories (2015, Beijing); The End of March, or the Wasteland of April—Genzi and the Genealogy of Contemporary Chinese Poetry (2016, Beijing); Chinese Avant-Garde Art Communities of the 1960s and 1970s—Underground Currents of Pioneer Poetry (2016, Beijing); The 1970s—Tragic Passion, Poetry, and Painting (2016, Beijing); Tianyan (2020, Beijing); Game Theater | Personal Histories—"The Story of Mulan": Narratives of Grassroots Migrant Women (2022, Beijing); Wuhé Theater: Sleeping Together or Not (2023, Beijing); Beijing Poetry Festival | Wuhé Theater: Multitudes (2023, Beijing); Ruth International Art Festival (2024, UK); and Shanhai Chronicles: Chasing Waves 1 (2024, Hainan).
Participating Artists and Past Works:
Sara Christova
Working across painting, installation, performance and audiovisual media, Sara Christova (b.1994, Sofia, Bulgaria) explores phenomenology, transdimensionality and the art of navigating with no horizon.
Embracing alternative modes of perception and notions of distortion, decay and resonance, Christova’s work merges philosophy, physics and digital culture in a critique of the entropic nature of a global, networked civilisation. Her approach to contemporary life, spirituality and the sciences as entwined ontological narratives, allows her to investigate the liquid, fluctuating nature of these frameworks through intersections ubiquitous to our present moment in time.
Christova's cross-disciplinary works have been exhibited across the UK, Europe and East Asia—notably at Tate Modern Lates (CAP x Montez Press: Sonic Disruption, 2024), National Museum Cardiff (Museum Lates: Space, 2019), and the Bulgarian National Palace of Culture (Millennial: Bulgarian Illustration, 2017). In 2016 she completed a BA (Hons) Illustration at Cardiff School of Art and Design, and in 2023 she was awarded a distinction for her Graduate Diploma in Fine Art at the Royal College of Art in London, where she went on to complete an MA in Contemporary Art Practice in 2024. Her graduate project LOCUS SOLUS was later awarded first place in the Sculpture/Installation category of ARTS THREAD's Global Creative Graduate Showcase 2024.
Selected Exhibitions:
2024:
FURIES COLLECTIVE: One Extended Meditation, Copeland Gallery, London, UK
Gathering Mythologies: Waymakers without Memory, Netil House, London, UK
Reverberations, All Is Joy Studios, London, UK
Honeyed Violence, FILET, London, UK
Uneasy in the Frame, Safehouse I, London, UK
RCA2024, Royal College of Art, London
TATE MODERN LATES, Tate Modern, London
DUMP get-together!, 32 Hermes Street, London
CAP DADA Ball, Royal College of Art, London
OUT OF REACH: The Enigma of Consciousness, Art in the Docks, London
Beyond, and Within the Void, Fitzrovia Gallery, London
NEXA, Indra Studios, London
CAP CINEMA, Genesis Cinema, London
AH~AH?, Pending Space, Royal College of Art, London
Everything Must Go!, Cookhouse Gallery, London,
2023:
CAPBARET, Gorvy Theatre, Royal College of Art, London
Prophecy of Future Extinctions, Pending Space, Royal College of Art, London
Mirror Mirror on the Wall, IKLECTIK, London
QUINTESENTI, W1Curates Studios, London
2021:
Simulacrum, Gin House, Sofia, BG
Bits of Personality Still Alive, Derrida Centre, Sofia, BG
Spring Awakening, London Paint Club, Online Viewing Room
2019:
Under The Counter Culture, The Vicarage, Cardiff, UK (also in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan)
Museum Lates: SPACE, National Museum Cardiff, Cardiff, UK
Stillness in Motion, Blue Honey Night Café, Cardiff, UK
2018:
Rogue Venus, West Wharf Gallery, Cardiff, UK
Open Thread, Jacob’s Market, Cardiff, UK
2017:
Millennial: Bulgarian Illustration, National Palace of Culture, Sofia, BG
Ning An
Ning An is an interdisciplinary artist specializing in installations, moving images, and sculptures that blend humor and the uncanny. He holds an MA in Contemporary Art Practice from the Royal College of Art and a BA in Digital Media Art from Beijing Normal University.
Ning An explores the connections between individuals, society, and art, focusing on relationships and emotional bonds. He uses himself as a reference point and bridge to delve into the sadness and anxiety within each person. His works have been exhibited at the Royal College of Art, Tate Modern, and other venues.
Negative feedback often comes from those who do not belong to you. Just as vultures do not consider carrion as trash, garbage collectors do not see soda cans as trash, and artists do not view plastic as trash. What we have is a socially rigid definition that categorizes what is trash based on value and function. For a bag of trash, this is indeed an unfair tragedy. Perhaps some of it still feels valuable but is mistakenly deemed meaningless. This is much like us humans. While we enjoy the convenience of definitions, we also bear their consequences—placing ourselves in incorrect supply-demand relationships. When we define trash, we are also defining ourselves.
He has always been concerned with people's living environments—not the physical environment but the spiritual environment within society. He is interested in the stressors of urban life and the struggles people face, attempting to offer solutions. His inspiration comes from his real-life experiences, what he sees and hears, often starting with himself and his friends and family. He believes experience is paramount, as one cannot judge something without having lived through it. Through his art, he aims to explore these social definitions and relationships, challenge rigid boundaries, and invite viewers to re-examine their understanding of themselves.
2025“LOOKING GLASS SELF”Xian, China
2024“Friends Everywhere”, art marathon, Suzhou, China
2024 “guyu”, performance art festival, Xian, China
2024“21 g”,Four seasons collection, foshan, China
2024“Royal College of Art MA degree show”, royal college of art, London
2024“CAP Cinema”, Royal College of Art, London
2024 “CAP LIVE”, Royal College of Art, London
2024 “TATE MODERN LATES”, TATE modern, London
2024“AH? AH~”, Royal College of Art, London
2024“DADA BALL”,Royal College of Art. London
2024“EVERYTHING MUST GO”, the cookhouse gallery, London
2022 “Beijing Normal University BA degree show”, Beijing Normal University, China
Li Yanzeng
Sound artist, electronic musician, and producer.
Li Yanzeng's works span music, video, and installation. His creations adhere to minimalist aesthetics, emphasizing live improvisation and non-narrative expression.
His live performances primarily feature hardware, leaning towards experimental electronics, noise improvisation, and techno.
Selected Works:
2016: X-axis, environmental sound performance, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Beijing
2017: ENTER, multimedia work, Yilang International Art Space, Beijing
2018: 17+, sound performance, Magician Space, Beijing
2019: A-03, sound performance, In the Dark, Mobile Art Museum New Year Art Project
2019: Jungle, multimedia work, TEDx Shenzhen
2020: The Present Moment, multimedia art project, Nian Dai Art Museum, Wenzhou
2021: Serenade A04, multimedia work, Between Heterotopias, Guangming Culture and Art Center, Shenzhen
2023: Rebirth, sound design and live scoring, Puyuan Fashion Week Opening Show
2023: Composer for Only Red Dream, a large-scale immersive theater production directed by Wang Chaoge
2023: Formed the band New Password, signed to Modern Sky's Langxi label, released the vinyl and CD Hidden Images in July 2024.
Xu Han
Xu Han (Beijing, China) is a composer, musicologist, Scholar of sound studies, sound artist, and Improviser. He holds a PhD from Cornell University.
His works have been performed by renowned ensembles and artists, including the London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers, Wet Ink Ensemble, Israeli Chamber Project, Composers Conference Ensemble with conductor Vimbayi Kaziboni, Red Desert Ensemble, Yarn/Wire, Greg Stuart, KOE DUO, NOMON, Manchester Camerata, 19 SoundLab, Tacet(i) Ensemble, Cornell Festival Chamber Orchestra, and RNCM Symphony Orchestra.
He has received support from institutions such as Peking University's Boya Fund, Cornell University's Sage Fellowship, Otto R. Stahl Memorial Award, Darmstadt Summer Course, Fromm Foundation Composition Fellowship, London Symphony Orchestra Panufnik Composers Scheme, Cornell Council for the Arts, Royal Northern College of Music, and the British Composer Arnold Cooke Award.
Yang Yu
Yang Yu is currently pursuing a BA in Sculpture at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. His works span sculpture, sound installation, spatial installation, performance, and video. He focuses on the use of sound language, the relationship between sound generation methods and spatial installations, and employs extensive synthesis, sampling, and self-made sound devices to create soundscapes and spatial experiences.
Selected Works:
2024: Shanhai Chronicles: Chasing Waves 1
2024: Huajiadi Biennale
2024: Time Nutrients, Enactment
2024: Debate on Woodcarving
2024: Ground Festival
2023: Electronic Shaman, Tsinghua University Philosophy and Theater Festival
2023: 9th Beijing Poetry Festival
2023: John Cage Academic Lecture Concert, Central Conservatory of Music
2023: Opening performance for Exposed Books Valley, Beiqiu Contemporary Art Museum
