The Revolution Will Not Be Air-conditioned
Two Channel Video | 27min | 2022
The title of this work was borrowed from social media comments in the midst of the 2019 Hong Kong anti-extradition protest, which originally references Black civil rights activist Gil Scott-Heron’s iconic 1971 poem “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”. The images of clashes between protestors and police in Hong Kong have constituted the most sensational memories of global turmoils in the last phase of pre-Covid age, which occurred, peculiarly, often against the backdrop of air-conditioned shopping malls.
Taking this phenomenon as its point of departure, the work traces the architectural evolution of these retail complexes. Drawing from a range of historical references—including the Crystal Palace, built for the 1851 Great Exhibition in London; 19th-century terrarium prototypes used in the British Empire’s botanical trade; and 20th-century corporate salesforce training videos—the work reflects on how the mall as a spatial form evolved from its colonial root of conquest, to a machine of consumerism and social control. Yet, The Revolution Will Not Be Air-Conditioned also pays close attention to how the intended outcomes of spatial design can be subverted, turning such insulated and sanitized spaces into a ground for political action and dissent.
A Work by: Bo Wang
Sound Mixing: Julian Schulze
Music:In Isolation
Over the Black
Chunk's Travel Diary
Artist: Fionnlagh, Album: What Came Before, Label: Ambientologist Records This work was commissioned by Junni Chen, for the exhibition Lustrous Like Plastic, Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard College, NY. Exhibitions and Screenings
2023 Bienal Sesc_Videobrasil, São Paulo
2023 Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Seoul
2023 Inventory of the Week, the National Center for Dance, Bucharest
2022 The Revolution Will Not Be Air-conditioned, LUX, London
2022 Lustrous Like Plastic, Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard College, NY
Award
2023 Ostrovsky Family Fund Award, the 22th Bienal Sesc_Videobrasil, São Paulo
Installation Views
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