Events in Beijing & Guangzhou
Lost Contact

I. Tao Hui: Only Cruelty Can Prove the Greatness of Love

Screening: Two short films by Tao Hui followed by Q&A with the director
Sept. 6, 2025, 4–5:30pm
  Despite their formal and aesthetic differences, both of these short films by Tao Hui explore the intricacies and complexities of relationships between women and their often suppressed feelings of anger, sadness and loss. “Only cruelty can prove the greatness of love” is a telltale quote from one of the films.

The first film on the program, Night of Peacemaking, takes the form of a Chinese reality show in which families discuss their problems with lawyers, psychologists and other outside observers, who try to help them resolve their conflicts. The film portrays the mounting tensions and festering conflicts between three female members of a family embroiled in a bitter quarrel.

The second short, Private City, tells the story of two women who used to be lovers and eventually meet up again, years after the breakup. In the meantime, their lives and the city they live in have changed dramatically, and they are now overcome by feelings of loss and hopelessness.

II. Deals & Darlings

Workshop
Sept. 7, 2025, 3–5pm
  Marriage and dating are complicated nowadays. The interactive workshop “Deals & Darlings” was initiated by the Social Sensibility R&D Department of Bernard Controls (Beijing) and curated by the Social Practice Lab. Participants were invited to join in discussions, games and other forms of interaction revolving around the subjects of marriage, relationships and loneliness.

They were asked to reflect on their own experiences and share their views. After a round of introductions, they were divided up into small groups to discuss their thoughts on relationships and love. Each group then drafted and presented a written recap of the outcomes of their discussions.

After the discussions, everyone was asked to pick a side on questions of marriage, love and relationships. In each round of the ensuing debate, the participants presented their different views – though some ended up changing their minds over the course of the debate.

The Social Sensibility R&D Department at Bernard Controls (Beijing) develops artistic formats for companies to integrate into their working environments. The idea is to create a space for creative thinking and social sensibility in the workplace.

III. The Conversation

Performance
Nov. 23, 2025, 2-6pm
  Within the framework of the Goethe-Institut’s regional cooperation project “Solitude: Loneliness and Freedom”, the Goethe-Institut Beijing invited the Singaporean artist duo Chow and Lin to engage in a four-hour conversation in which the audience could participate at any point. The talk was divided up into four different sections on the following topics: personal and cultural identity, tech and society, life and “reaching your peak”, and the transience of life and art.

In their “Dangerous Contact” conversation, Chow and Lin discussed love and relationships, interpersonal connections and belonging, and technology. This participatory project with a live audience was a follow-up to their 2021 project, which comprised a 12-hour recorded conversation about similar subjects.

IV. Another Grammar of Intimacy

Workshop
Nov. 22, 2025

“Another Grammar of Intimacy” a workshop held by the Social Practice Lab along the lines of the preceding “Deals & Darlings” workshop, invited people who’ve experienced an atypical intimate relationship to participate. The discussion this time around focused on narratives of love and intimate relationships that deviate from cultural and linguistic norms. Workshop participants were asked to recount their experiences and, through games and other forms of interaction, to talk to the others about atypical aspects of love and relationships.

Guangzhou

I. Borrowed Space, Dwelling Body

Theatre Workshop
Aug. 16, 2025, 1–4:30pm
  The “Borrowed Space, Dwelling Body” project was curated by the Throw Stone group and the Ye Xi theatre collective. It was mainly about using images and movement to explore the relationship between people and buildings.

On August 16, participants were invited to take part in this theatre workshop, which involved a mix of performance exercises, games and group work. The main question to be addressed was: “Where do you feel at home?” The object was to reflect on how our feelings of home and belonging are tied to physical spaces and surroundings. The participants were asked to explore feelings of belonging, not belonging and “in-betweenness” in relation to their city and their home.

Where do people feel at home? In a student dormitory? In a one-bedroom apartment? Or nowhere at all? And another question: How well do people know their neighbors?

II. Catching Breath in Words

A talk about workers’ writing
Aug. 16, 2025, 2pm (online)
  “Catching Breath in Words” is a quote from Wu Xia’s latest essay. The project comprised a discussion between the author Wu Xia and literary scholar Zhang Lei about working-class literature. How can writing serve as a way to “catch your breath” for workers who struggle to find the time to write at all? How can we create a literary community among working-class people with an interest in writing? To address these questions, Wu Xia read selections from her own poetry and prose, and Zhang Lei discussed her research on communities of worker-writers in East and Southeast Asia and the influence of manual labor and migration on literary expression.

III. Pure Love Clinic: Fall in Sick with You

Workshop
Oct. 12, 2025, 2–5:30pm
  The workshop entitled “Pure Love Clinic: Fall in Sick with You”, led by the Shanzhai MFA Care team, invited participants to explore experiences of love, especially romantic love, as a personal “sickness” and as a shared cultural condition, in a playful and performative format.

Participants were asked to share their experiences of “love-sickness” and undergo the “Pure Love Clinic” treatment, which involved using their bodies to symbolically transfer that sickness to others in a form of emotional exchange.

Everyone’s personal stories were then transformed by other participants through storytelling and sharing. Thanks to sharing these stories and emotions, meeting new people and reworking their stories, by the end of the workshop some of the participants may well have gained some perspective and come to see things differently – and maybe even found themselves cured of their “love-sickness”.

IV. “Walks Among Self-Combed Sisters’ Lives”

Nov. 16, 2025, 10am–5pm
  “Walks Among Self-Combed Sisters’ Lives” retraces the histories of Guangdong’s so-called “Self-Combed Sisters”, locally known as gupo. Beginning in the late Qing period, the practice of shuqi allowed women to refuse marriage, attain socially recognized adulthood through a ritualized act of “self-combing” (i.e. combing their long braids into a bun as worn by married women), and support themselves and their families through hard work (chiefly in the silk industry). They formed sisterhood-based communities outside of patriarchal family structures. Over time, these women established gupo houses: collective living spaces, ritual sites and mutual-aid networks for unmarried women, widows and others excluded from patrilineal systems.

The walk through the gupo houses draws on the research and practice of the artist Chen Jialu, who has devoted herself since 2020 to documenting and revisiting the overlooked histories and physical traces of these communities across the Pearl River Delta and Southeast Asia. Her ongoing “Gupouk” project makes use of works in multiple media and diverse narrative approaches to explore autonomy, memory and connections between people and the land. The project not only revives the legacy of the Self-Combed Sisters, but also provides a prism through which to consider contemporary forms of intimacy, kinship and collective living.