Duddell's Exhibition: The Day the Gods Stop Laughing
Curator: Yuan Fuca
2 August – 23 September 2018
Opening Reception: Thu 2 August, 6–8pm RSVP to programs@duddells.co
The day the gods stop laughing, a meaningful coincidence occurs. It comes from the unshakable worldview of the academic philosophers before the digital revolution: multiple worlds move in parallel to one another. The earth, this mortal life, and the microcosm are all contained within them, as in Gottfried Leibniz's theory of pre-established harmony.
‘The Day the Gods Stop Laughing’ is a long-term curatorial project consisting of a series of fabricated events realized through exhibitions, performances, publications, or even TV programs. The presentation of these events is based on in-depth research and investigation at particular sites within cities, informed by their hidden secrets, historical patterns, or contours of personal experience. Every event invites an individual or a group of artists to establish Carl Jung's concept of ‘synchronicity’, or ‘meaningful coincidence’, through the use of sounds, symbols, images, words, and objects.
The first episode takes place at Duddell’s Hong Kong and features Hong Kong artists Doreen Chan, Tap Chan, Silas Fong, and Guangzhou-born, Vienna-based artist Ye Hui, creating independent yet intertwined narratives and situations within the subliminal states of the site. Together, these four individual artist projects establish new links between symbols of matter and experience, developing new interactions between the environment, forms, themes, and man. If we take a design-heavy restaurant with a consumer aesthetic as a field of collective unconsciousness, it offers an opportunity to inspire the audience/guest to form a concrete and performative yet incomplete consciousness of the self. Just like the androids' system setup failure in Westworld, the protagonists on-site may experience a sort of magical realization.
