The Principle of Hope Closing Keynote Speech: Our Tomorrow

The exhibition The Principle of Hope at Beijing Inside Out Art Museum will be closed this Sunday, February 27, 2022. Since its opening on October 16, 2021, we have held seven online and offline lectures and talks, which focused on the practices of the participating artists and the exhibition’s themes, and attempted to extend the discussion of the current social situation and possible future to different geographical and cultural contexts. Since the exhibition will be closed soon, the Museum is honored to invite the renowned science fiction writer Han Song to deliver the closing keynote speech for The Principle of Hope under the title Our Tomorrow. Han Song’s works are gloomy and treacherous, full of apocalyptic metaphors, and are unique specimens of the “politics of imagination” in contemporary Chinese society. In this speech, Han Song will lead us to identify the future among ghosts. The keynote speech will be moderated by Carol Yinghua Lu, the curator-in-chief of the exhibition and the director of the Beijing Inside Out Art Museum.

The Principle of Hope Closing Keynote Speech: Our Tomorrow

Time: 

2022.2.26 14:30-16:00

Speaker:

Han Song (Science Fiction Writer)

Moderater:

Carol Yinghua Lu (Director of Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum)

More and more unbelievable things happen in current reality. “Science fiction” has become the hallmark of our time, and to envision the future is the only way to handle the present. So, what does science fiction concern on as a literary category? And how does it treat the role of technology play in human life? In this talk, science fiction writer Han Song will respond to these questions and share the opportunities and challenges of development in China in the fields of artificial intelligence, autonomous driving, healthcare, and metaverse from a science fiction perspective. Science fiction essentially cares about the incomprehensibility and unpredictability of the world, and in the unpredictable times, perhaps it is most important to remain humble.

Speaker

Han Song, science fiction writer, director of the Science Fiction Professional Committee of the Chinese Science Fiction Writers Association, chairman of the World Chinese Science Fiction Association, winner of the Chinese Science Fiction Galaxy Award and the Global Chinese Science Fiction Nebula Award. His representative works include Subway, Hospital, Red Ocean, Mars Shines on America, Cosmic Tombstone, Regenerative Brick, etc.

Moderator

Carol Yinghua Lu is an art historian and curator. She is director of Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum. She received her PhD in Art History from the University of Melbourne in 2020. From 2012 to 2015, she was the artistic director and chief curator of OCAT Shenzhen. She was the co-artistic director of the 2012 Gwangju Biennale and co-curator of the 7th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale in 2012. She was the first visiting fellow in the Asia-Pacific Fellowship program at the Tate Research Centre in 2013 and was one of the first four ARIAH (Association of Research Institute in Art History) East Asia Fellows in 2017. Since 2013, Carol Yinghua Lu has been in collaboration with artist Liu Ding in the research on the legacy of socialist realism in the practices and discourses of contemporary art in China, entitled “From the Issue of Art to the Issue of Position: Echoes of Socialist Realism.”

Carol Yinghua Lu has served as a jury member for several important awards in the global art world, including the Golden Lion at the 2012 Venice Biennale, the Future Generation Art Award at the Pinchuk Art Center in Kiev in 2012, the Philippine National Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, the Hugo Boss Asian Emerging Artist Award and Rolex Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative in 2019, the Discovery Award at the 2020 Jimei-Arles International Photo Art Season and the Hyundai Blue Prize Youth Curatorial Award in 2021. She has been on the jury for the Tokyo Contemporary Art Award since 2019.