Exhibition & Scenography Design

“COSMOS, CINEMA”

The 14th Shanghai Biennale Cosmos Cinema, “offers visitors a spacetime in which to reflect on the operations of the universe and our place within it.”

COLLECTIVE imagines the space of the exhibition—a harmonious universe—as the COSMOS, full of celestial bodies, galaxies, blackness, and starlight, with no fixed scale and free of gravity.

CINEMA, understood as movement, is the experience of such a COSMOS. Montage is the strategy we use to CINEMA the COSMOS.

The spaces of the Power Station of Art are captured in frames edited into a sequence. Following an orbital course, visitors experience the same planets, galaxies, and constellations from different points of view, at different distances, in different moments of their journey.

These space-frames are arranged through two large-scale blackout curtains and a series of geometric vessels containing works of art. These are strategically placed to provide directional cues that help the visitor to navigate this cinematic cosmos.

Space is cosmos, movement is cinema.

Client: Power Station of Art, Shanghai

Chief Curator: Anton Vidokle

Curators: Hallie Ayres, Lukas Brasiskis, Zairong Xiang

Publications Editor: Ben Eastham

Exhibition & Scenography Architect: COLLECTIVE

Art Direction: Mengyi Qian & NONPLACE Studio

Area: 100,000 ft2

Photography: Power Station of Art, Shanghai