黑料不打烊

The landscape of humanity created by the Covid-19 pandemic was strange and unfamiliar. In the face of the unprecedented crisis, we felt completely vulnerable, and our dazzling achievements throughout civilization seemed all the more pointless. Underdeveloped countries, marginalised communities, and those with low incomes were all doubtless at greater risk of infection and of dying without protection, blatantly revealing deep-seated global inequalities and biopolitical violence. Meanwhile, physical distancing and quarantine measures imposed during the pandemic, along with the fear of contagion, promoted a profound reflection on the interconnectedness of life. Permeable and porous, our bodies are linked through the air that we breathe in and out. That is, our lives are bound up with others, and directly affect and are affected by the climate and non-human elements of the world. According to Judith Butler, the pandemic upend[ed] our usual sense of the bounded self, casting us as relational and interactive. In an era where even “intimacy” has become commodified amidst the relentlessness of neoliberal competition and prevailing social apathy, the emergence of the deadly virus, ironically, serves as a stark reminder of the connection between living creatures, between humans and the Earth, which we had previously failed to acknowledge. A New Sense of a Shared World brings together works that allow us to newly sense the interconnected and interdependent nature of life in a post-pandemic world, examining the value and meaning of “we” from multiple perspectives. Building on this ‘new sense of commonality’ that we share, it envisions a world where we flourish together, and explores aesthetic strategies to expand “we” beyond differences and limitations. Hopefully, the exhibition will be a meaningful bid to understand ourselves as interdependent entities and stimulate us to act collectively based on our sense of the tragedy (of the pandemic).