Exhalation: Stories

Together with the artist, we will read a selected piece from the fiction Exhalation (2019). Exhalation: Stories, is a collection of short stories by American writer Ted Chiang. The nine stories introduce life-changing inventions and new worlds with radically different physical laws. 

Jun Zhang

Jun Zhang is an interdisciplinary artist, ceramist, designer and researcher currently based in Amsterdam. Jun’s artistic practice often starts from a fascination with an alien landscape or space, for example, extraordinary geological heritage or abandoned industrial relics. Through field research and material experimenting, Jun searches to fathom and grasp these sites’ mysterious internal energy which he then metabolizes and conveys through his artistic language – be it fiction, material object, or performance.

Jun Zhang was born in 1990 in Shanghai, China. Jun studied at Shanghai University, Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Sandberg Instituut. Jun’s work has previously been exhibited at Het Hem, Reneenee/Maison Descartes, Het Nieuwe Instituut, and Stedelijk museum. He has also finished a series of site-specific works in the public spaces of different cities like Shanghai, Berlin and Amsterdam. Through his work, Jun seeks to evoke scenarios that invite critical reflection on human cultures, spiritual worlds, and natural environments. His investigations lead him from site-specific aspects (such as historical contexts, ancient technologies and crafts), over folklore and mythology to belief, witchcraft, and protoscience. As such Jun’s practice focuses both on nature/social sciences such as climatology, geology, archaeology, and occult sciences such as astrology, alchemy, and witchcraft. Through the integration of nature/social sciences and occult sciences, his works try to explore an ecological future and anti-Anthropocentrism world in which human culture is deeply entangled with geo-energy and planetary metabolism.

Website Jun Zhang

The programme of reading sessions:

27.10.2022 reading with Anna Zvyagintseva
25.08.2022 reading with Christopher van Ginhoven Rey
in fold V. on Awakening

02.12.2021 reading with Laura Castro
18.11.2021 reading with Sophia Holst
16.09.2021 reading with Amy Franceschini
in fold II. on Commons

08.07.2021 reading with Sheng-Wen Lo
17.06.2021 reading with Katarina Jazbec
20.05.2021 reading with Mari Kesi-Korsu
in fold I. on Empathy

More any suggestions for reading? Check out the Awakening recommended booklist