An Experiment in Connectivity: From the 'West Heavens' to the 'Middle Kingdom'

This essay is based on my curatorial work for the exhibition Place.Time.Play: Contemporary Art from the ‘West Heavens’ to the ‘Middle Kingdom’ (various venues in Shanghai, October–December 2010). The first instance of contemporary art collaboration between artists from India and China, this exhibition resulted from unprecedented opportunities and challenges for artists, curators and scholars from the two countries. In addition to the exhibition, this project involved fieldwork and dialogue for participants from both countries, and fed into the ongoing ‘West Heavens’ platform that has grown to encompass Sino-Indian dialogue across art, architecture, political theory and film.1 A major bilingual (Mandarin and English) publication was produced that recorded the exhibition and the process of dialogue through edited and footnoted transcriptions of conversations between Indian and Chinese participants.2 The following text represents a retrospective consideration of the 2010 exhibition, intended to highlight questions relevant to the theme of Asian connectivities and intra-Asia regional connections.