For her first European solo exhibition, Li Shuang has created a body of work exploring the bio politics of sex and the body through an inside-outsider point of view. The works orbit around a fictional dialogue, written by Li, between a contemporary AI sex doll and the ancient concubine off of which she was based. Together they survey the history of sexuality in relation to the state and investigate how the notion of “sex” has both changed and expanded in the age of omnipresent audio-visual and psycho-pharmagenic technologies.

The changes within neoliberalism that we are witnessing are characterized not only by the transformation of “gender,” “sex,” “sexuality,” “sexual identity,” and “pleasure” into objects of the political management of living, but also by the fact that this management itself is carried out through the new dynamics of advanced techno-capitalism, global media, and biotechnologies. We are being confronted with a new type of hot, psychotropic punk capitalism. These recent transformations are imposing an ensemble of new micro-prosthetic mechanisms of control of subjectivity by means of biomolecular and multimedia technical protocols.

Paul B. Preciado, Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics, translated from the French by Bruce Benderson, Feminist Press, September 2013.

The regulation of sexuality, gender and the body has historically been implemented as form of social control by the state. In globalized, post- digital contemporary life, this has developed into the artery of “pharmacopornographic capitalism”. Li’s immersive installation including video, sculpture, sound and architectural intervention contextualizes this global transformation within the history of sexual regulation and consumerism.

Li Shuang (b. 1990, Nanping, CN) lives and works in Yiwu, China. Intro to Civil War opens July 27th, 2019 from 6-8PM at Open Forum, Berlin. It will be on view by appointment through August 31st, 2019. For inquiries, please contact Hannes or Nick at hannes@‌‍openforum‌‍.‌info or nick@openforum.info