Asymmetry Rituals: Day Rituals

About

We are thrilled to present our new initiative Asymmetry Rituals, a one-day experience in two parts taking place on Friday, 13 October 2023, during London Frieze Week at One Marylebone.

In the morning, Day Rituals will kick off with a spoken word performance by Amiko Li as an invocation to start the day in community. Adapting his recent work ‘too quiet to hear’ to the unique space of One Marylebone, it will be a performance intertwining the artist’s personal stories into a sonic experience through the use of text, voice, and the slippages of meaning. It will be Li’s inaugural performance in the UK and Europe. 

Following the performance, Li will be joined by artist Michele Chu, and curator and educator Ute Meta Bauer for a panel discussion, moderated by Director Michèle Ruo Yi Landolt. 

At the heart of human nature lies the want to engage in rituals to hold emotion, forge connection and seek transformation. Especially in times of change and uncertainty, we resort to actions arising from convention, habit, or ceremony to create safety, and bond with ourselves, others and beyond. Breaking down the barriers between ritual as a series of actions in prescribed order and performance as expressive exploration, the panel delves into notions of ritualistic engagement in artistic practice today. While Li's multidisciplinary work spans language, structures, sounds and their interstices, Chu interrogates the field of tension between the collective and the individual through the body. Together, the speakers will explore the manifold meanings that rituals and rites can invoke and how institutional practice can support and maintain it.

After a break of coffee and snacks, the current Asymmetry Fellows in residence at our partner institutions - Goldsmiths University, the Courtauld Institute of Art, Chisenhale Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery, and Delfina Foundation – will give introductory presentations on their research and practice. 

Day Rituals Programme: 

10-10.15: ‘too quiet to hear’, performance by Amiko Li 

10.15 – 11.15: Panel discussion and Q&A, joined by Amiko Li, Michele Chu, Ute Meta Bauer, chaired by Michèle Ruo Yi Landolt

11.15 – 11.45: Coffee and snacks break

11.45 – 12.45: Research presentations by Asymmetry Fellows Eugene Yiu Nam Cheung (Whitechapel Gallery), Weitian Liu (Goldsmiths), Rachel Be-Yun Wang (Chisenhale Gallery), Jason Wee (Goldsmiths), Feixuan Xu (The Courtauld), Yuhang Zhang (Goldsmiths)

Please note that the timings provided indicate the start times of the event. Kindly ensure you arrive prior to the start time to minimise disruption to both the audience and the artists.

Visit here to book your ticket for Night Rituals.

In the evening, the space will be transformed into Night Rituals, a celebration of musical spectacles with a line-up of cutting-edge performances, audio-visual shows, and club DJ sets by some of the most internationally acclaimed artists and musicians, including five UK premieres, spanning two stages.

BIOGRAPHY

Ute Meta Bauer is the Founding Director of NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and a Professor in the School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University. She co-chairs the Master of Arts in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices and is the Principal Investigator for “Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss”. Most recently, Bauer curated the Singapore Pavilion at the 59th Biennale di Venezia, featuring Shubigi Rao’s Pulp III: A Short Biography of the Banished Book. She also served as a curator of the 17th Istanbul Biennial alongside David Teh and Amar Kanwar (both in 2022). She is currently the artistic director of Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale (2024). Bauer’s current edited volumes include Climates. Habitats. Environments. (MIT Press and NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, 2022); Joan Jonas: Moving of the Land (Walther König, 2022); and, Of Haunted Spaces: Cinema, Heterotopias, and China’s Hyperurbanization on the films of Ella Raidel (NUS Press, 2023).

Michele Chu is an interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in Hong Kong. Her practice explores intimacy and human connection, specifically the interplay between sensory elements and space to amplify emotional connection between individuals. Her works contemplate what makes us human, through mediums like performances, sculptures, multi-sensory installations and public interventions amongst others.

Michele graduated from the Royal College of Art & Imperial College London with an MA/MSc in Global Innovation Design, and Pratt Institute with a BFA in Communications Design (Illustration). Her works have received coverage in publications including ArtReview, The New York Times, ArtForum and Frieze, and have been shared on global platforms such as TEDx. Her work has been shown at 1a Space (Hong Kong), Negative Space (Hong Kong), and Tai Kwun Contemporary (Hong Kong).

Amiko Li is an interdisciplinary artist who translates everyday stories and encounters into film, installation, and performance, to explore and contextualize the underlying complexities and themes, such as intimacy, waiting, and value. Li received his BFA from the School of Art Institute of Chicago and his MFA from Rutgers University. His most recent exhibitions and performances include: Center for Art, Research and Alliances, New York, USA (2023); Power Station of Art, Shanghai, China (2022); The Shed, New York, USA (2021); House of Electronic Arts, Basel, Switzerland (2021); UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China (2020); University of Georgia, Athens, USA (2020); Anthology Film Archive, New York, USA (2019) and Abrons Arts Center, New York, USA (2018) Li is currently an artist-in-residence at Delfina Foundation.

Artworks: Jingxin Wang