Group exhibition Everyday Performing originates from a simple question: how should we approach contemporary live/performance art, as visual art evolves? Or the various abstract terms born out of needs for in-depth discussions, such as performativity and liveness, which straddle increasingly open and interdisciplinary boundaries? Should we perceive it as a medium of art making, or a form of art? Should we consider live/performance art in terms of what it is not? Looking back, art historian RoseLee Goldberg traced live/performance art back to Futurism in the early 1990s Europe, and more closely to conceptual art and new media between 1968 and 2000. If we examine past works within the context she has framed, it could be said, in response to the aforementioned questions, that the works from the past to the present parallel in a universal, intrinsic force, which is a cultural strategy at the core to create a space that is otherwise excluded from the existing context, a means for an artist to transform a work into what is known as live/performance art. This exhibition invites the viewer to focus on this shared internal force, to use it as an entry point to engage with, participate in, and reflect upon the exhibition and works on view as a whole.   While “cultural strategy” sounds like a broad term, here it refers to a practical realm where change is enacted and ideals are shaped in a cultural system. An open, constantly morphing state, it allows narratives and contexts to mutate, altering the shared space and rules that constitute culture. Throughout the history of visual arts, cultural strategies associated with live/performance art are often defined by a sense of refusal or rebellion, mirroring a reality that extends beyond the confines of artistic mediums or subjects, to encompass the redefining of art, the interplay between art and life, the passive/active role of the viewer, even social, societal, economic, and political communication. A museum, as a public space and part of the cultural infrastructure, serves as a domain where these arts events (cultural activities) occur, connect, and dwell.   The Chiayi Art Museum, as a public space where Everyday Performing is on view, sits at the center of Chiayi City in Southern Taiwan. Adjacent buildings steeped in history in the neighborhood transition into the present and future. The museum’s mission statement declares that it aspires as a “living room within the city,” an idea Everyday Performing aims to galvanize into life. To reconfigure this public space into a performance that transforms into a cultural strategy, which morphs into a vehicle for the participating artists to respond to issues personal, artistic, social, and environmental.   This group exhibition conveys an array of voices, from the sovereign force of the work itself, the artist’s adaptation of external circumstances, to the subjective perception of the viewer. This formative process encapsulates the different stages of a work of art. In today’s world, where boundaries have been broken, live/performance art — no longer marginalized — basks in the limelight, its rebellious strategy to confront the system tackling the risk of being packaged into an intense, entertaining experience. This exhibition attempts to create a parallel space that maintains just enough distance to connect with the real world without being easily swept into the established system, while fostering a sense of open-ended uncertainty. Ultimately it embodies not only a performance that facilitates communication between the viewer, the museum, space and time, society, and nature, but effectively a cultural strategic approach to the real system.

Unordinary Pathway embodies a new-type exhibition that centers on “city” as its theme, and integrates the virtual and physical forms online and offline. In this exhibition, the negative affix “un-”in “unordinary” indicates “something more” and “to surpass,” which not only emphasizes on going beyond ideas related to the everyday life, but also highlights Chiayi as a city that has been undergoing rapid urban evolvement. At the same time, the ways of viewing and appreciating art in the post-pandemic era call attention to how application of media technology of virtual-physical integration engages in the alternative creation of existing environment, unveiling a city between virtuality and physicality. The curating also inquires into the permeation of digital technology in everyday physical space and the contemporary cultural landscape informed by coexisting heterogenous realms.Specifically, Unordinary Pathway adopts a spatial strategy built upon a route spanning both the outdoors to the museum interior as well as the physical and virtual space, which demonstrates the interrelations between the everyday life and art, while foregrounding the multilayered spatial perception and interactive experience that this strategy of virtual-physical integration has to offer for audiences/participants/interactors. Virtual Exhibition: Click Here.

Movements alter the perspective in which we see, and dialogues create a scale of understanding. Here is where we meet invites 20 artists to share the experiences they’ve had with being on the move. Whom did they meet while they were making art? Perhaps, a former self? A version of themselves from tomorrow? Or from a further distant future?