Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing presents Time After Time: The Polychronicity in Blockchain

Time After Time: The Polychronicity in Blockchain, curated by Xin Bi, one of the two Hyundai Blue Prize Art+Tech 2022 grantees, opens at Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing. The exhibition conceptually analyzes a new timescale in the digital realm based on the concept of blockchain.

The Hyundai Blue Prize Art+Tech has been a major forum for recognizing and promoting rising Chinese curators since its inception in 2017 by Hyundai Motor Company and Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing. It encourages imaginative and critical investigation of key contemporary issues by proposing annual themes. The Hyundai Blue Prize Art+Tech 2022 topic is “Disruptive Futures,” which aims to spark a collaborative dialogue about how to construct a more diversified and sustainable future for humanity in an age of disruptive technologies and drastic transformations.

Time After Time: The Polychronicity in Blockchain explores the issue by conducting a critical and philosophical investigation of time in the digital world. The artworks in this exhibition investigate continued cyber time and discrete block time from the intersections of computer science, distributed technology, social relationship structures, and literature, examining how the probabilistic nature of block time allows us to reconsider the possibilities of time and how discrete blocks of time create a plethora of pathways towards innumerable futures.

Xin Bi’s curatorial work is focused on the interface of art, distributed technology, and current socio- and sub-cultures. Through writing, experimentation, and prototype building, Xin Bi seeks to reconsider the ethical relationship between technological progress and ecological balance, as well as infrastructure and sustainable technologies in the Web 3.0 era.

Time After Time: The Polychronicity in Blockchain focuses on 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 time forks and technological poetry by constructing three parallel networks of time: Chimera Time, Energy Time, and Spime. Chimera Time (Algorithm-Time) uses blockchain technology to investigate the probabilistic nature of time. Energy Time (Ecology-Time) examines the tensions and interdependence between technology advancement and ecological equilibrium. Spime (Social Connection-Time) combines time and space, examining the paths of political, emotional, and community ties, as well as the interpenetration of the digital and physical worlds.

The Hyundai Blue Prize Art+Tech 2023 invitation for submissions is still open, and five curators have been shortlisted under the theme “Decentralized Reworlding.” In December, Hyundai Motor Company will announce the two awardees and their unique proposals.

Artists: César Escudero Andaluz, Martín Nadal, Simon Denny in collaboration with Guile Twardowski and Cosmographia, eeefff, Cheng Guo, Helen Knowles, Lee Tzu-tung, Chuang Liu, Nascent (Paul Seidler & Max Hampshire) in cooperation with Amy Ireland, Yuri Pattison, Ruini Shi.