S.W.E.A.T.

This months conversation is with visual artist and sculptor Chang Gao. Chang Gao is a visual artist using multiple media in her practice production, like sculpture, hologram installation and photographic languages. Her work overlapped with the field of psychology, aiming to trigger audience’s desire and bodily responses. By exploring the relations between the very personal matter of the human body and the public space, her artwork serves as an alternative method to address the pressing cultural issue in Chinese public space. She worked as a public art researcher at the Public Art Research Centre of China – China Central Academy of Fine Arts. Meanwhile, she is a co-founder and director at the International Laboratory of Social Innovation - China Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA-ILSI). She gave a Ted Talk on May 23rd, 2016 and presented her PhD topic at Collision doctoral conference at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama twice in 2019 and 2020 and IEEE Sentimental Robotics and Automation Conference, Sharing Biological Practice Symposium RCA. She has shown her works internationally, in London galleries like London Art Biennale, Beaconsfield Gallery, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Dyson Gallery at the Royal College of Art, 508 King’s Road Gallery in London Battersea, Korean Collage of Fine Arts at Hongik University in Seoul, together with Japan Tama University and Alto University, Helsinki and many museums and galleries in China. She also held a Double Solo exhibition: Public Intimacy in March 2020 at Dyson Gallery, Royal College of Art. More about Chang: www.gaochangart.net https://www.rca.ac.uk/research-innovation/research-degrees/research-students/chang-gao/ Latest show in Utrecht Netherland: COME ALIVE-the power of pleasure: https://come-alive.nl Ongoing show at CHIANCIANO Biennale in Tuscany Italy: https://biennalechianciano.org/artisti-2022/ Ongoing show They/Them/Their: Naturally No Binary at IMT Gallery London: https://imagemusictext.com/ Most recent publication: Representation: http://www.gaochangart.net/rca-book-launch_representation-communique/ We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage. You can find out more https://www.alfabus.us/s-w-e-a-t/ Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, sound designer, performance artist and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004, expanding their unique identity-queering, genderfcking and sexpositive performative work throughout music, theatre and film. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world. Media Mentioned Audre Lorde – The Uses of the Erotic Deirdre Barrett – Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose photo by Torsten Weller