Guo Cheng participates in “Time After Time: The Polychronicity in Blockchain” at Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing.

Curator: BI Xin

Duration: 2022.11.17-2023.3.31

The global precision of time, as driven by computers and networks, accurately standardises the rhythms of modern life, with power being cashed out in temporal standardisation. In an era of “no future”, how can we understand the latency, differences, and repetition of time? How can we re-consider time beyond metrics and computation? How can we perceive the traces left behind by technology in the space of time? Starting with block time, this exhibition attempts to search for a new timeframe based on the reference of blockchain, a data space impregnated with a topological arrow of time. Using three parallel networks of time – Chimera (#proregression #myth #dream), Energy (#incentives #sustainability #power), and Spime (#order #circulation #consensus), this exhibition delves into 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.

The projects featured in this exhibition explore the continued cyber time and discrete block time from the intersection of computer science, distributed technology, social relationship structures, and literature. The probabilistic nature of block time creates a new dimension for how we can ponder the possibilities of time. Discrete blocks of time give birth to perpetual forks toward innumerable futures, thought on the other hand, such distributed structures do not automatically create an equal distribution of wealth and power. The realisation of transparency and equality that blockchain technology advocates, as well as the vision of a posthuman economic prototype it proposes, still depend on complex participation, experimentation, and collaboration. At the same time, we still need to consider the question of sustainability, since if we cannot balance technological developments and ecological consumption, there is the concern that we will eventually run out of time. The internal logic of technology itself may be singular, but artistic, creative, imaginative, and emotional elements make this logic complex and fascinating. Perhaps the artistic disruption of technology is the force required to escape linear time.