GROUP EXHIBITION

Since its establishment in 2017 by Hyundai Motor Company and Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing, the Hyundai Blue Prize Art+Tech has been a prominent platform for recognizing and supporting emerging Chinese curators. By proposing annual themes, it fosters innovative and critical exploration of the major contemporary issues. The theme of the Hyundai Blue Prize Art+Tech 2022 is “Disruptive Futures” to ignite collective discussion on how to build a more diverse and sustainable future for humanity in the age of disruptive technology and drastic changes.

Time After Time: The Polychronicity in Blockchain engages with the theme through a critical and philosophical examination of the notion of time in the digital world. The artworks featured in this exhibition explore continued cyber time and discrete block time from the intersection of computer science, distributed technology, social relationship structures, and literature, exploring how the probabilistic nature of block time offers new opportunities for us to reconsider the possibilities of time and how discrete blocks of time create a myriad of pathways towards innumerable futures.

Time After Time: The Polychronicity in Blockchain focuses on the temporal, social, and political order, the construction of consensus mechanisms, the circulation of energy and emotion, and the temporal slippages in technology time in search of the forks of time and the poetry of technology by constructing three parallel networks of time: Chimera Time, Energy Time, and Spime. Chimera Time (Algorithm-Time) explores the probabilistic nature of time through blockchain technology. Energy Time (Ecology-Time) critically discusses the conflicts and interdependencies between technological development and ecological balance. Spime (Social Connection-Time) merges time and space into one, inspecting the path of political, emotional, and community connections as well as the interpenetration of the digital and physical worlds.

The curatorial practice of BI Xin is centered on the intersection of art, distributed technology, and contemporary socio- and sub-cultures. BI Xin intends to reconsider the ethical relationship between technological development and ecological balance, as well as the infrastructure and sustainable technologies in the Web 3.0 era, through writing, experimentation, and prototype development.