Curated by Zhang Ga, Peter Weibel, and Siegfried Zielinski with Judith Bihr and Daria Mille.
Featuring more than 130 artists and collectives throughout the museum’s enormous space, the inaugural CAFAM Techne Triennial is only the latest of curator and academic Zhang Ga’s ambitious efforts to weave China into the history of media art. This exhibition’s first half will bring together modernist icons such as John Cage and Marcel Duchamp with idiosyncratic contemporaries like Hito Steyerl, Alex Da Corte, and Jayson Musson. It will also include an impressive lineup of Chinese artists, from the pioneering Zhang Peili and Wang Gongxin to the emerging Shen Xin. For the second half, CAFAM will team up with ZKM | Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany, to present a capsule history of media art through its “masterpieces,” marking the mainland debut of many important works. Together, these exhibitions should offer a comprehensive survey of global media art from the phantasmagoria of the nineteenth century to the speculative futures of today.
