At the beginning of the last century, the radical, historic avant-garde movement gave its resolute disapproval of the long conventions and history of art, to open a brand-new art era. However, the originality of avant-garde later found itself facing constant query since the sixties, and more so upon the arrival of the globalization and the contemporary. Almost all the avant-garde actions had to retire from the stage of history. They were replaced by the anti-avant-garde and anti-visionary discourses such as the ‘replication’, ‘appropriation’, or ‘post-production’. From then on, we had lost our faiths in the avant-garde, the originality of it, and even originality per se.
A hundred years later comes the AI (such as the ChatGPT). Its rising and threat to the world and current conventions of art, once again, pushed us against a critical point of history. At least for the experiences and methods of artmaking we are used to, the AI’s coming is doubtlessly fatal. Not to mention whether it may or may not replace the artists, or all original/creative matters. Thus, for artists and the art business, it somehow becomes one of the roads toward self “salvation” to bring back the Avant-garde from death and reclaim the meaningfulness of Originality. We are not expecting to start a grand movement in art. We expect to at least comply with the crisis, and attempt a sheer cleanse and overhaul in ourselves, which still are difficult progress to make at this moment.
This exhibition resembles a questionnaire. The good news is that we find the 36 artists and groups rather optimistic and positive instead of anxious or pessimistic about AI’s rising. They even think of it as an unprecedented opportunity. The title of this exhibition, “Up in the Air” therefore contains two layers of meanings: first we still acknowledge that originality is a myth, up in the clouds. Secondly, despite so we still believe in the possibility and irreplaceable necessity of the original. And forasmuch, it should not be only in the air, but done – all it needs is an opportunity in history just like the one a century ago, or the one in front of us today.
Text/Lu Mingjun