Christoph Draeger and Ursula Biemann at Shanghai Biennale

Zurich-based multimedia artists Christoph Draeger and Ursula Biemann will each bring a distinctive project to the 12^th Shanghai Biennale. Being the first international contemporary art biennale in mainland China, this event has grown to become a significant platform for global contemporary art and discourse.

The two artists’ works echo the theme of “Proregress – Art in an Age of Historical Ambivalence”, a concept stemmed from the mystic dance steps of Daoist ritual. The constant combination of gain and loss, openness and fear, acceleration and reaction, which defines our era of “proregression”, also exists as a sensibility characterized by profound ambivalence. In this context, contemporary culture appears as a complex site of reflection defined by excess and powerlessness, transgression and repression, social activism and many brands of nihilism. “Proregress” provides a framework to explore the role of contemporary art as a means by which the struggles and anxieties of many different latitudes are reflected and turned into subjective experience, training the contemporary subject in the ambivalence the allows us to tolerate the contradictory forces of contemporary life.

Christoph Draeger will present “Auroville” (in collaboration with Heidrun Holzfeind), an immersive installation comprised of videos, photos, sculptures, archive materials and living plants, based on his investigations of an ambitious intentional community founded in the 1960s in India. The project looks at how the utopian ideals of common ownership, of life-long learning and research are lived today.

Ursula Biemann will display “Forest Law”, a two-channel video projection accompanied with an installation of maps, documents, and publication. This project draws on the research carried out in the Ecuadorian rainforest, underpinned by a series of landmark legal cases that bring the forest and its indigenous leaders, lawyers, and scientists to court.