WEB EXCLUSIVE A mannequin, already victim to an axe attack and subjected to a simulated sex scene, bursts into flames. A man in a business suit throws another one, wrapped in some sort of diaper-harness, to the ground. Behind a table, a band plays a cacophonous rush of semi-rhythmic noise, the keyboardist slamming his instrument…

Dutch artist Guido van der Werve’s 2012 film Nummer Veertien, home, a requiem in three parts, weaves together autobiography, history, music, and endurance sports. The tripartite framework simultaneously echoes the journeys of three “characters”—Frédéric Chopin, Alexander the Great, and van der Werve himself—and the structure of the triathlon. The decidedly cerebral but concise film (less…

WEB EXCLUSIVE Denmark’s DJ HVAD pulls a nearly universal reaction out of people experiencing his work for the first time: “What…?” On the streets of his hometown, Albertslund; in the more cosmopolitan dance clubs and noise dens of nearby Copenhagen; in Punjab, his father’s ancestral home; and, most recently, in Beijing’s underground live music dives:…

COLONIAL HONG KONG spread along the steep shores of Hong Kong Island. Land was so sparse that the British Navy’s headquarters were originally housed ad hoc aboard a ship, the HMS Tamar, which docked a…

ILLUSTRATION / Wang Buke Some time ago, French philosopher (and venerable Maoist) Alain Badiou traveled to China to speak to a Chinese philosopher. Though his or her name appears to have been lost in …

Translated / Xiaowei Wang UNLIKE THE WRITTEN word, where the battlefield lies between ink and paper, artists’ books serve as a delayed convergence of work and viewer. These works of art do not sit inside the white cube waiting for visitors, but instead seek their audiences in a wide marketplace. Yan Cong’s Collage, which was…

AFTER A FEW YEARS of discursive waffling about cosmopolitanism and international visual culture, Chinese contemporary art—as a distinct object of research and scholarship—is back with a vengeance. This spring (or, perhaps more appropriately, semester) sees the arrival of two ambitious new historical narratives of the genre, both of which will find their primary homes in…

TEXT / Zian Chen “I have seen numerous paintings; they depict things from the beginning of the universe and foretell events to come.” Cao Zhi, Odes , A.D. 227 DESPITE HIS UNTIMELY death, the German ar…

TEXT / Huang Shan and Huang He HB STATION Contemporary Art Research Center stands for the preservation and support of experimentation in art. It is a loose yet cohesive institution, but it does not of…

TEXT / Sasha Zhao CURATED BY DONG Bingfeng with Amy Cheng among others, “Visions & Beyond,” the 2nd Shenzhen Independent Animation Biennale, opened on December 6, 2014, with parallel events occur…

TEXT / Ophelia S. Chan As much as the internet is a utilitarian space for social movements, it is also a cultural space for personal and collective expressions of social issues. BORN IN THE 1980s—Chin…

INTERVIEW/ LEAP PHOTO/ Tara Sosrowardoyo In a surprise move after almost a year of speculation, Art Basel promoted its new Director Asia from within—Adeline Ooi was formerly a VIP relations liaison for the fair in southeast Asia. Known as the not-so-bad-after-all kind of art adviser (the kind who spends as much time with artists as…

In Return from Sichuan, there is a relationship to religion. I create a scene that is open to misreading. Contemporary painting has extended its boundaries of interpretation. Like many things associat…

TODAY, IT IS challenging to keep artistic practice and politics apart. With the shift from structuralism to biopolitics, philosophers and scholars have become obsessed with the subject. Jacques Ranciè…

TO GET TO Guccivuitton, an artist-run commercial gallery whose programming blends contemporary art and south Florida vernacular, you head north-northeast about 16 kilometers from the Miami of the imagination to Little Haiti. Here are churches, roti shops, and botánicas selling everything an immigrant might need—from SIM cards to sacrificial chickens. That is, if you can…

WEB EXCLUSIVE HONG KONG-BASED architect and collector William Lim intends for his recent book, The No Colors, to function as “a book about Hong Kong contemporary art using my own collection as the backdrop.” From this ambitious statement, one might expect an art historical tome—a volume grounded in text with accompanying images. Instead, The No…

WHEN I ARRIVED in Hong Kong in 2011 I promptly settled into a flat at the meeting of Rutter Street and Pound Lane in Sheung Wan. Para Site was just down the hill, about 45 seconds by foot. It had been there already for 17 years. Coincidentally, we are both leaving at the same time:…

LIN KE’S STUDIO is his 2008 MacBook Pro, preloaded with the Mac OS X 10.6.8 operating system and standard software including the Safari web browser, Preview image viewer, and QuickTime 7.0 Pro for vid…

FONGFO IS A periodical published on the 21st of each month, saddle-stiched in B4 size. Though not unlike the magazine Stories, it is typically only around 12 pages long. Created by a group of artists, Fongfo is not quite an art publication, nor is it a media platform in the shape of a magazine. The…

Zoomin’ Night’s name betrays its roots in a specific culture of post-2000s Beijing rock music. “Zooming” has nothing to do with it: the English name of the weekly experimental music performance series…