September 2008
Borderline Moving Images – Shanghai edition (unrealized project)
Special Edition within the framework of INTRUDE – Art & Life (Zendai Museum)
Shanghai & Beijing, CN

concept and curation ::  Beatrice LEANZA
visual design ::  LI Naihan

Borderline-Shanghai will be featured under the subjective spell of an anonymous yet controversial singularity: figure of dismay and contingency, timing itself between estrangement and familiarity, between the soliloquy and the public arringa, it survives complacently in the anti-systemic organism of the network, swerving from unexpected change, to shock and displacement, the Opportunist is an emotional personality that runs the flexible tides of communal life in the global spectacle of the post-fordist multitude. By appropriating this contentious tonality of contemporary life (an attributive image framed by philosopher Paolo VIRNO within the labor regime of new capitalism) and its transnational modalities of unmediated performance, Borderline orchestrates while investigating the topography of loosened hierarchies and modes of subjectivation, to interrogate the diffused reengagement of art in sociopolitical concerns against the locality of present Shanghai.

In the one dimensional time of the Opportunist work and leisure have no longer fixed separation, sociality has become a cognitive and behavioral technicality, information a form of art. Regardless of where and when you are, discarding the notion of mediation as a programmatic agenda for collective thinking, the Opportunist gathers the anomalies of disinformation, indifference and delusion to forge instead hospitality, awareness and solidarity. While believing in the power of self-expression, the Opportunist challenges its contemporary understanding as a form of strategic survival within the governance of the artistic spectacle and its power structures. By entering what Gerald RAUNIG has defined the “paradox of creativity as self-government”, this free-flow of subjective views will be drawn together in an ephemeral structure of open-signification to produce a collective engagement for thoughts and optimism. Sensitive to the fluid nature of the city, Borderline will intrude the specificity of its fast paced life by deploying art in a full-time assault into a continuous 100 hours programation among critique, provocation, poetry and entertainment.

The Opportunist is designed as an information network revolving around a broadcasting unit, it is an experiential tool for motivating an alternative experience of space by way of time. With a total of 100 hours of programmation (ie., 4 days + 4 hours) The Opportunist will take up different forms of public interventions in both physical sites, “on air” sessions and the web.