13th Shanghai Biennale

Wet-Togetherness

June, 2021

The 13th Shanghai Biennale releases three new episodes of the Wet-Togetherness series, which includes sound pieces commissioned by the Biennale from artists and scholars: Torkwase Dyson, Itziar Okariz, Cao Minghao and Chen Jianjun (in collaboration), Michael Wang, Iván L. Munuera, P. Staff, and Himali Singh Soin.

These three episodes are titled Breathing, Melting and Transfusing.

Bodies exceed humanity. They remind us that we are part of something vaster—and smaller—more complex, more connected than our mere existence as an atomized species. Our bodies, and bodies in general, are comprised of heterogeneity and multitudes. All bodies are wet collective bodies defined by how they link to other bodies, places, environments, technologies. Think of breathing, clogging, decomposing, discharging, flushing, lubricating, melting, menstruating, transfusing. Bodies exist as trans- and extra-territorial beings. They live in hybridity. This porous condition produces a planetary wet-togetherness, a “commoning” force that constitutes all bodies as collective hydro-subjects.

Wet-Togetherness is a collaboration between e-flux and the 13th Shanghai Biennale, Bodies of Water, curated by Andrés Jaque, Marina Otero Verzier, Lucia Pietroiusti, Filipa Ramos, and YOU Mi, and organized and promoted by the Power Station of Art. It consists of nine sound pieces in which 21 artists, activists, and researchers enact aqueousness through sound.

Editors: José Luis Espejo and Rubén Coll

Sound design: Tomoko Sauvage

Coordination: Roberto González García

Locutions: Yang Yang