Automatism Studio

[Session Notes] TALK_06 [顺流而下辩释： 长江中下游的与水关系和沿岸城镇的人造电力基础设施] [Downstream Benshi Commentary: Human-Water Relations in the Middle and Lower Yangtze River Basin, and the Man-Made Electrical Infrastructure of Its Riverside Towns] [Guest] @junelee220 
@gonghao758 @yzy8003 [ 一边播放《路上行舟》《武汉过年七天乐序列》和顺流而下影像，一边辩白。从武汉沿长江顺流而下到达上海的三人辩士团，随身放映，张口就来。 #《路上行舟》，辩士：子杰 #《武汉过年七天乐序列》，辩士：龚豪 #>>>顺流而下！辩士：园子园 *顺流而下：龚豪、子杰和园子园从今年夏天开始造船、夏末秋初下水，沿着长江划船1200km，小组成员相互感知和协助，联动沿途朋友，朝着互助合作一路到达上海。是一次行动/事件，也是小组本身（towards COOP）。 *辩士：默片配备的声音讲解。] [ Screening 《Road Boat》, 《Wuhan New Year Seven-Day Joy Sequence》, and the Downstream footage — all while narrating live. A trio of benshi who have traveled downstream from Wuhan to Shanghai along the Yangtze River, projecting as they go, speaking as the moment demands.
 #Road Boat — Benshi(辩士): Zijie 
#Wuhan New Year Seven-Day Joy Sequence — Benshi(辩士): Gong Hao >>>Downstream! — Benshi(辩士): Yuanzi Yuan * Downstream: Beginning this summer, Gong Hao, Zijie, and Yuanzi Yuan built a boat together. They set it on the water in late summer and early autumn, rowing 1,200 kilometers along the Yangtze River toward Shanghai — sensing and supporting one another along the way, connecting with friends and communities encountered en route, moving toward mutual aid and cooperation. It is at once an action and an event, and the collective itself (towards COOP). * Benshi: The live vocal narrators traditionally accompanying silent film screenings.] [Date] Nov 25, 2025 (TUE) 19:30 – Later tonight

[Session Notes] TALK_05 [覆盖与揭取——蹩脚地利用陌生感] [Overlay and Uncover — Awkwardly Harnessing a Sense of Strangeness] [Guest] @lilun__lilun [ As arguably one of the most familiar art forms to the Chinese people, murals appear across an extraordinary range of surfaces — from Kizil to Dunhuang to Maiji Mountain, from tombs to living rooms to city streets. Nearly every wall capable of bearing meaning has, at some point, been painted upon. What I find compelling about murals is the way they function as cultural strata: layers that resist, overwrite, and coexist with one another, sedimenting within them the capillary details of everyday political life — the mundane and the underworld, pilgrimage and warfare, migration and settlement — alongside the subsequent processes through which these layers are covered over, peeled away, transported, and preserved. It is from this that one of the points of departure for my practice emerged: “How does one perform a clumsy act of resurrection?” The word clumsy captures my feeling upon reading the expedition journals of Langdon Warner. One hundred years ago, Warner set off for Dunhuang with only an assistant and a translator who had followed him from Henan, armed with nothing more than secondhand knowledge of mural-detachment techniques. He entered the cave grottoes and applied those techniques directly to the walls of the Library Cave — with such poor results that Thompson, the Harvard conservator who later received the detached fragments, expressed profound frustration at the impossibility of restoration. In this sharing session, artist Li Lun will begin with this Harvard adventurer, and trace from there his own understanding — developed through reading and artistic practice — of strata and technique, and his reflections on a series of actions: “covering,” “peeling away,” and what lies between.] [Date] Nov 23, 2025(SUN) 19:30 - 21:00

[Session Notes] TALK_04 [迭代的残响：电子废料与影像的流动] [Resonances of Iteration: The Circulation of E-Waste and Images] [Guests] @z_k_z_k_ @eishinko [ This sharing session takes “electronic waste” and “image fragments” as its guiding threads, seeking to rethink the boundaries between “disposal” and “regeneration” in contemporary society — tracing the circulation of technological objects alongside the shifting currents of memory. The two initiators come from distinct fields of practice: one runs a mobile phone repair shop, where daily work brings them face to face with replaced screens, batteries, and chips; the other works with image and sound as media, and has long explored the latent potential of discarded cassette tapes, cut-out CDs, and digital footage in the processes of perception and remaking. Within the global production system, China has undergone a transformation from an “importer” to an “exporter” of electronic waste. Electronic products are rapidly consumed and discarded under the logic of constant iteration, only to recirculate in another form as scraps and salvage. The material networks formed through this process not only reveal the hidden costs behind technological progress, but also reflect how individual memory and ways of living are being reshaped in the tension between speed and forgetting. The session will unfold through examples drawn from images and objects. Participants are invited to bring one personal object connected to their own memory — an old phone, a photograph, a recording, or anything that has carried a piece of lived experience — to serve as a point of departure for discussion. Through these objects, shaped by time, technology, and the body in equal measure, we hope to ask: Has “iteration” in contemporary society become an institutionalized inevitability? And within this cycle, how might we reimagine the meaning of “use,” “disposal,” and “keeping”?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ ] [Date] Nov 14, 2025 (FRI) 19:30 - 21:00

[Session Notes] TALK_03 [从观察到出版：阅读巨鹿路] [From Observation to Publication： Reading Julu Road] [Guest] @banruo.chen [ Banruo’s practice consistently explores the relationship between everyday urban life and forms of publication. In this session, she will present two projects—Hangin’ the Sun and What to Take/Leave?—focusing on their research processes and methodologies. Hangin’ the Sun draws on the outdoor laundry racks found in Shanghai’s historic neighbourhoods (nongtang), translating the act of hanging clothes into the structure of a publication. What to Take/Leave? organises the designer’s personal experience of moving, cataloguing the material memory of a home in the form of an inventory list. Together, the two works form an ongoing inquiry into how both the content and form of a publication can respond to everyday life and lived experience. In the workshop that follows, Reading Julu Road, participants will step out of the phone repair shop and “read” the street through walking. Each person will select a site or object along Julu Road that sparks curiosity—a building, a doorplate, a fence—and document it. They will then distil their observations into verbs and respond to these actions on a single A4 sheet, transforming observation into tangible form, and completing a small publishing exercise.] [Date] Nov 08, 2025 (SAT) 15:00 – 16:30

[Session Notes] TALK_02 [今天你扫码了吗？] [Did you scan a QR code today?] [Guest] @ceciliyazi [ Have you scanned a code today? Have you captured an image yet? Have you made a payment? Do you remember how you raised your hand? This session begins with every scan we make upon entering the phone repair shop. By consciously observing the act of raising the phone and turning on the camera, we tune into our own gestures while scanning, explore how a network of QR codes can be self-built in the space, and exchange our experiences, sensations, and memories of scanning. The phone must be repaired. The camera must be ready. Aim— In this session, we will unfold a series of actions situating between a guided tour and a performance. The artist will lead participants in observing the environment surrounding the phone repair shop, re-sensing the everyday bodily gestures of raising the phone, aiming, and scanning. Participants will then enter the shop and take part in a practice of collective “scanning.” ] [Date] Oct 25, 2025 (SAT) 19:00 – 21:00

[Session Notes] TALK_01 [摄影作为一种方法] [Photobook as a method] [Guests] @6wei26 @css911229 This talk, titled “The Photobook as Method,” brings together participating artists Cui Shansheng and Liu Weier, two photographers engaged in independent publishing. They will share their individual creative journeys and reflect on why, in the digital age, they continue to choose the photobook as a medium for expression. From the act of photographing to the formation of a book, the conversation will explore how the photobook can function as a way of thinking and a mode of action, while also revisiting their experiences participating in art book fairs. The discussion will further extend to the current conditions and challenges of photography and print media today. When everything can be instantly uploaded and consumed, does the “slowness” of the printed book still hold meaning? What makes the photobook, as a method, still necessary? [Date] Oct 18, 2025 (SAT) 19:00 - 20:00

Exhibition views: 「？」 Duration 11 Oct. - 07 Dec. 2025 Open daily from 10:00 to 21:00 for the entire duration of the exhibition Venue No.790, Julu Rd, Jing’an District, Shanghai

Exhibition views: 「？」 Duration 11 Oct. - 07 Dec. 2025 Open daily from 10:00 to 21:00 for the entire duration of the exhibition Venue No.790, Julu Rd, Jing’an District, Shanghai

Exhibition views: 「？」 Duration 11 Oct. - 07 Dec. 2025 Open daily from 10:00 to 21:00 for the entire duration of the exhibition Venue No.790, Julu Rd, Jing’an District, Shanghai

New Exhibition: 「?」 is not only a gesture of questioning, but also an existence that drifts beyond certainty. It marks the blank that language cannot reach, refuses closure, and signals the flow of knowledge. In this era of information overload, questioning grants the unnamed the possibility of existence.
 As the first exhibition curated by Automatism Studio, we take this symbol as our title and locate it within the mobile phone repair shop run by the father of the exhibition’s initiator. This unintended intervention, where information technology intersects with printed media, opens up a chain of further questions.
 In this exhibition, together with 28 creators, we unfold practices around the three themes of “Dilemma,” “Resistance,” and “Symbiosis,” jointly constructing this experimental space. We seek to explore the endlessly extending edges and subtle interlacings between the physical and the digital, to search for individual voices within a fragmented cognitive world, and to shape an open and fluid field of dialogue.
 The mobile phone repair shop is not only a vessel for the exhibition, but also part of the exhibition itself. Situated in the cracks of the city, between online and offline, repair and replacement, its role is not erased by the exhibition’s intervention, but rather transformed into a parasitic symbiosis—artworks endow the shop with new meaning, while the rhythms of everyday life in turn reshape the exhibition experience.
 Perhaps none of us can pierce through the mist, but at the very least we are still willing to knock upon the unknown with a question mark, seeking within the ceaseless transformations that yet-unnamed light. Artists 陈般若、曹澍、崔善生、DaRongdaaa、GUAI、HIKITA CHISATO、黄佳怡、滑惜子、刘灿缤、李论、路淞、六尾儿、穆野、Nadine Zhan、便宜球、彭袁清荷、沈同舟、王不可、王琦、王之玉、徐布语、姚思婷、一一、张继弛、张峻峰、郑可、郑若岐、甄祯 Curators  洪锐深、周文昊 @eishinko , @vincentzhou96 Visual Design  enkit @enkit_graphic Duration 11 Oct. - 21 Dec. 2025
Open daily from 10:00 to 21:00 for the entire duration of the exhibition Opening  Saturday, 11 Oct. 2025 15:00 - 22:00 Guided Tour  Saturday, 11 Oct. 2025 15:20 Venue  No.790, Julu Rd, Jing’an District, Shanghai

OPEN CALL 「？」 Quick note for all artists. The open call closes in 5 days — don’t miss out! 🔳Submission Deadline: 
24:00, July 15, 2025 UTC+8 🔳All info, see link in bio @automatism_studio #opencall #callforartists

OPEN CALL 「？」 The 「？」 is more than a question.
It exists beyond certainty—pointing to blank spaces where language hasn’t reached, resisting closure, and hinting at the fluidity of knowledge. In an age of information overload, questions grant presence to what has yet to be named. Automatism Studio’s first exhibition takes 「？」 as its title and unfolds in a mobile phone repair shop run by the curator’s father. In this chance encounter between information technology and print media, a new line of inquiry begins. We invite artists and zine creators from all over the world to submit work that responds to one or more of the following themes: Dilemma, Resistance, and Symbiosis. In a world overwhelmed by images and data, our perception accelerates while our choices are silently shaped by algorithms. Zines act as a form of slow media—a small yet steady resistance that leaves behind legible traces. The repair shop is not just a venue, but part of the exhibition itself. Situated in an urban margin—between online and offline, repair and renewal—it hosts a parasitic form of coexistence. Art brings new meaning to the shop, while the rhythms of daily life reshape the show in return. We hope to co-create an experimental space that explores the blurred boundaries between material and digital, and gathers individual voices into an open, ongoing dialogue. Even if we can’t see through the fog, we believe in knocking on the unknown—with a question mark. 🔳Submission Deadline: 
From now until 24:00, July 15, 2025 UTC+8 🔳Selection Criteria:
Submissions must respond to one or more of the three themes: Dilemma, Resistance, and Symbiosis. This open call is open to individual or collective artists and creators of all nationalities. 🔳All info, see link in bio @automatism_studio 🔳Organizing members Curator: @eishinko Co-curator: @vincentzhou96 Visual Design: @enkit_graphic #opencall#artopencall #callforartists