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M+, Hong Kong
M+, Hong Kong’s new museum of visual culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District, announces the acquisition of the complete body of work of YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES, a digital artist duo based in Seoul. In a globally unprecedented move, M+ has also acquired the rights to any future pieces produced by the artists for as long as they continue to make new work and present projects internationally. This enhances the strength and diversity of the M+ Collections, which consist of design and architecture, moving image, and visual art works.
YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES: THE COMPLETE WORKS (YHCHANG.COM/AP2), acquired by M+, is an archive of all of the artists’ works, including the text-based animations published on their website, www.yhchang.com. It also contains hundreds of gallery installations, lecture performances, and drafts, as well as alternative and translated versions of artworks, some of which have never been published or exhibited before. This extraordinary archive will be updated twice each year and will be made available to future visitors to M+, on-site and on demand.
South Korean artist Young-Hae Chang and American artist Marc Voge established YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES in 1997, and were among the first artists to use the internet as a platform for artistic experimentation. Their deceptively simple text-based computer animations, synchronised with original music, cross boundaries and disciplines, combining moving image art, music, poetry, graphic design, and web design.
Suhanya Raffel, Executive Director of M+, underscores the importance of the acquisition: “The M+ Collections have always been at the heart of the institution. They embody M+’s mission of being a global, multidisciplinary museum of twentieth- and twenty-first-century visual culture, where digital culture is absolutely integral. No other artists working online can boast the longevity and continued relevance of YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES, making them undeniably worthy of this high-profile position in the M+ Collections.”
Doryun Chong, Deputy Director and Chief Curator of M+, emphasises the cross-disciplinary significance of the artists’ work and the unique collaborative nature of the acquisition: “YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES’ groundbreaking oeuvre is an excellent fit for M+, a new museum of contemporary visual culture located in Asia, where the largest number of netizens reside, and where most innovations for the future are born. We are extremely proud to be investing in the life’s work of YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES, the trailblazer of internet art. YHCHANG.COM/AP2 will function as a crucial anchor in the M+ Collections, and our commitment to their work is practiced through ongoing collaboration with the artists and caretaking of the archive that continues to grow.”
YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES says: “We’re lucky dogs.”
In celebration of this pioneering acquisition, YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES will present their final-ever artist talk, THE ARTIST TALK TO END ALL ARTIST TALKS — OR, THE STRUGGLE SESSION CONTINUES! on 31 August 2018 at JC Cube Auditorium, Tai Kwun Centre for Heritage and Arts, Hong Kong. The lecture performance will be followed by a discussion between the artists; Tobias Berger, Head of Arts at Tai Kwun; and Ulanda Blair, Curator, Moving Image, M+. It will launch the symposium M+ Matters: Art and Design in the Digital Realm, taking place on 31 August and 1 September 2018.
M+ Matters: Art and Design in the Digital Realm will also feature a full day of artist talks on 1 September, exploring how data collection, artificial intelligence, simulations, social media, and creative programming are all being leveraged by contemporary practitioners working online. Speakers include Miao Ying, Moniker / Thomas Boland, Ian Cheng, and Taeyoon Choi, in conversation with Kerry Doran.
Rounding out the programme is the M+ Data Design Hackathon, happening in parallel with the other events on 31 August and 1 September. The hackathon invites designers, artists, technologists, and others to examine how content from the M+ Collections might meaningfully add to open-source knowledge bases and be activated through new research and creative projects.
For further details on the programme, please visit www.westkowloon.hk/mplusmatters.
Remarks
About YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES
Established in 1997 and based in Seoul, YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES consists of South Korean artist Young-Hae Chang and American artist Marc Voge. The two have been working collaboratively and online for nearly twenty years. Exploring the dynamics of media, technology, and power in our globalised world, their trenchant and witty work takes the form of computer animations that use bold, frenetic texts synchronised with music. These genre-busting artworks explore contemporary life from the particular position of South Korea, as well as from a globally fluid and informed viewpoint. With work created in twenty-six languages, YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES has exhibited at most major international contemporary art museums over the past two decades. Their website—www.yhchang.com—regularly attracts thousands of visits per month, from audiences in more than one hundred countries.
About M+
M+ is a museum dedicated to collecting, exhibiting, and interpreting visual art, design and architecture, moving image, and Hong Kong visual culture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District, we are building one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary visual culture in the world, with a bold ambition to establish ourselves as one of the world’s leading cultural institutions. Our aim is to create a new kind of museum that reflects our unique time and place, a museum that builds on Hong Kong’s historic balance of the local and the international to define a distinctive and innovative voice for Asia’s twenty-first century.
About the M+ Collections
The M+ Collections encompass the disciplines of design and architecture, moving image, and visual art, and the thematic area of Hong Kong visual culture. They consist of the M+ Collection, the M+ Sigg Collection, and the M+ Collection Archives. Established in 2012, the M+ Collections include almost 5,000 works and more than 12,000 archival items.
About West Kowloon Cultural District
Located on Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour, West Kowloon Cultural District is one of the largest cultural projects in the world. Its vision is to create a vibrant new cultural quarter for Hong Kong. With a complex of theatres, performance spaces and museums, the West Kowloon Cultural District will produce and host world-class exhibitions, performances and cultural events, as well as provide 23 hectares of public open space, including a two-kilometre waterfront promenade.
Annex
YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES PRESENTS
THE ARTIST TALK TO END ALL ARTIST TALKS —
OR, THE STRUGGLE SESSION CONTINUES!
Date: 31 August 2018 (Friday)
Time: 7–9pm
Venue: JC Cube Auditorium, Tai Kwun Centre for Heritage and Arts (10 Hollywood Road, Central, Hong Kong)
Language: Performance: English. Panel discussion: English, with simultaneous interpretation in Cantonese
Registration: Free admission. Limited capacity on a first-come, first-served basis. Click here to register.
M+ Data Design Hackathon
Dates: 31 August (Friday)–1 September 2018 (Saturday)
Times: Friday, 7–10pm. Saturday, 10am–5:30pm
Venue: A Hall Studio, Tai Kwun Centre for Heritage and Arts (10 Hollywood Rd, Central, Hong Kong)
Language: English
Registration: Free admission. Join as an individual or as a team of up to four people. Individuals who register will be grouped into teams of four by M+. Click here to register.
M+ Matters: Art and Design in the Digital Realm
Date: 1 September 2018 (Saturday)
Time: 10am–5:30pm
Venue: JC Cube Auditorium, Tai Kwun Centre for Heritage and Arts (10 Hollywood Road, Central, Hong Kong)
Language: English, with simultaneous interpretation in Cantonese
Registration: Free admission. Limited capacity on a first-come, first-served basis. Click here to register.
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