Dr. Yang Beichen is a researcher and a curator based in Beijing, currently serving as the director of MACA Art Center, and an associate professor at the Central Academy of Drama. Prior to that, he was a senior editor of Artforum.com.cn (2012-2017), a guest researcher at the New Century Art Foundation (NCAF, 2019-2021) and one of the members of the Thought Council at the Fondazione Prada (2021-2023).
His research explores the agency and potentialities of the moving image in the context of contemporary technology and ecology. Utilizing media archaeology as a radical framework, he excavates alternative modernities and reinterprets history and geopolitics from a New Materialist perspective. His curatorial practices grow out of and attest to his multidisciplinary academic approaches. Notable curatorial projects include “New Metallurgists” (Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf), “Micro-Era” (Kulturforum, Berlin), the Guangzhou Image Triennial 2021 “The Intermingling Flux” (Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou), “Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg: A MOON WRAPPED IN BROWN PAPER” (Prada Rong Zhai, Shanghai) , and “Cao Fei: Tidal Flux” (Museum of Art Pudong, Shanghai), etc.. From 2022-2024, he curated a three-year research-based exhibition project titled “Who Owns Nature?” at MACA focusing on pressing ecological issues, which is divided into three chapters: “Multispecies Clouds”, “Elemental Constellations”, and “Gaia Should Be Safe”. From 2019 and 2021, he led a three-year research project on Chinese moving image art at NCAF, curating three research-based exhibitions including “Anti-Projection: Media Sculptures in Early Chinese Video Art”, “Embodied Mirror: Performances in Chinese Video Art”, and “Polyphonic Strategies: The Moving Image and its Expanded Field”. He has also contributed critical essays for catalogues featuring artists such as Laure Prouvost, Omer Fast, Antony Gormley, HO Tzu Nyen, Cao Fei, Wang Tuo, among others. His academic monograph, “Film as Archive,” is forthcoming.