Delighted to share Tromarama and Samson Young’s work at group exhibition, 52 ARTISTS 52 ACTIONS, Artspace’s ambitious, year-long online project running from January 2018 – January 2019. This exhibition surveys and highlights the artistic practice across Asia. The project commissioned 52 artists and collectives to stage actions in unique locations throughout the region and share them with global audiences online in order to address the social, cultural and political implications of working in the region and consider how art as action has the power to invoke change.

Tromarama’s project brings forth a software developed to anticipate the future by employing a system which collects tweets from the public based on a specific hashtag related to time. Additionally, the software functions to reformat the tweets received, further eliminating the embedded identity while also assorting the tweets into several lines of text. This project aims at exploring the individuals’ activities on social media with an intention to predict the future through their lens.

Samson Young’s project works by uploading an image each day from a series of correspondences dating back to the 1900s between Alexander Won Cumyow – the first Chinese person born in Canada and a representative of the Chinese Empire Reform Association – and the British and American heads of governments, concerning the political crisis in China post-collapse of the Qing dynasty. In these correspondences, the Association petitioned for the international community to reinstate the monarch on the throne and to establish a ‘Joint Protectorate’.