Rirao

The World

The central premise of my world is that instead of moving milimetres at a time, land masses are able to move a few metres in a year. This explains why Los Angeles was able to detach itself from US and Rio De Janeiro was able to detach itself from Brazil, and for them to float together to form Rilao.

In this world, all islands are in constant danger of floating into and joining other landmasses. Larger islands are prone to losing parts of themselves to the Drift. Thus, the countries in this world experience geopolitics in constant motion.

Nicholas Bourriaud: "To be radicant: it means setting one’s roots in motion, staging them in heterogeneous contexts and formats, denying them any value as origins, translating ideas, transcoding images, transplanting behaviors, exchanging rather than imposing."

"The immigrant, the exile, the tourist, and the urban wanderer are the dominant figures of contemporary culture."

The Island

日绕 RIRAO “the sun revolves around it” The City-Island of Rilao The Orientalised Americas Chinatown of Tomorrowland

Originally from the idiom: 绕梁三日 RAO LIANG SAN RI Meaning: “to reverberate around the rafters for three days” (Which means to have a resounding singing voice that echoes)

I imagine Rirao as a new transnational space dominated by the Asian “Other”!

Rirao at the Venice Biennale 20XX

The Venice Biennale is a monumental, sprawling all-year affair in which countries display their art, presumably to one another, in various pavilions and venues in and around the city of Venice. Every two years, it becomes a global meeting point, a prestigious and international stage for cultural exchanges and discourse, but also a place of contradictions, in which artists might be seen more as representatives of their country, effectively tasked with producing and showing work for displays of some form of national identity, even though national borders are very tired and outdated boundaries for one’s imagination, and artists may also be migratory, of mixed heritage, or may not even necessarily be rooted or resident in their countries of origin.

Looming over this, is also the larger question of who, or which national agencies gets to decide which artist and which artworks have the ultimate ability to represent each nation. Whilst it is certainly not a straightforward issue, the selection process at work at the Venice Biennale also has the ability to produce some interesting artistic results, for this system does allow for each country (or region, or group of people) to approach it from very different ways, allowing for the possibility for alternative narratives, and even minority and counterhegemonic voices to be heard on an international stage. On the other hand, one could perhaps read a decision not to participate as selective mutism, or perhaps as a kind of statement on its own. However, these are only speculative readings.

My project is concerned with curating/designing Rilao's submission for the Venice Biennale.