Constellations

Oct 2 2025

Li Yizhuo

Almost every visitor’s first impression of the Signal series is of constellations of stars, probably because of the intuitive intrigue of celestial patterns, probably because of the call of ad astra per aspera that runs through histories—whether via popular culture references like Star Trek or the many institutions that uphold the spirit of striving toward the stars through hardship. In Tan Mu’s Signal paintings, the constellation points away from subject or telos toward a telecommunication system, a critical infrastructure with greater significance than is often assumed: the submarine cables. As of 2025 the network comprises 597 cable systems and 1712 landings in the latest cable map produced by TeleGeography. It is by no means an even system. One easily traces clusters and geometries that mirror geographical surfaces and socioeconomic activities. The cables and landings in Signal 04 (Norway, 2025), for example, exude a commanding glow with a dash of airiness in the upper right, conveying the orderliness and austerity of magnificent coastlines. Signal 06 (Caribbean Sea, 2025), in comparison, is flamboyant and unapologetically convoluted, reflecting the dense archipelago. More than mapping the negative space of inhabited land, the paintings portray the evolving co-authorship of geography, economy, politics, and technology. In oil and acrylic, the thick yellow dots and pale lines create a luminous image that some read as collage or even electrically lit installation. 

Some attributes, however, are harder to recognize. The 2022 undersea volcanic eruption in the South Pacific kingdom of Tonga, the subject of Tan Mu’s Eruption (2022), revealed a unique convergence of interests. For the artist, also a freediver, Tonga is a famed destination. For some others, Tonga’s loose regulation may raise eyebrows for the “.to” domain, under which pirate platforms have flourished. In 2022, the eruption severed the main undersea cable, putting Tonga off the grid until the connection was restored five weeks later. Tan Mu painted an overhead view of the erupting volcano Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai that same day, overlaying two crossing lines that evoke machine targeting. The event first brought to Tan Mu’s attention the fragility of everyday communication, whose capacity is increasingly taken for granted but is in fact enabled by the undersea construction that usually lies out of sight. In Eruption, blurry patches form around the umbrella cloud of volcanic ash, complicating the instantaneity of the image. The satellite photo of a disconnected Tonga, shared instantly with the world, is realized in the painting, but only when the communication cable is restored. It is as if all these condensed layers are about to burst from a static image.

These complex conditions and experiences of connectedness are brought forth by harpist Sophie Steiner and shō performer Chatori Shimizu in Everything on the Line, a music performance in response to this exhibition at BEK Forum. Allow me an excursion to my first conversation with Tan Mu about inviting musicians to collaborate, supported unsurprisingly by transatlantic cable systems. It has to do with my motivation for starting BEK—as a production and research platform for art, music, and performance—and, importantly, the fascinating layers of space and time in the Signal series. We had been discussing expanding the exhibition from Tan Mu’s primary practice of oil painting to other media. At one performance of John Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra at the Musikverein, the conductor’s alternating arms moving like clock hands and the musicians playing from boxes on two tiers left me mesmerized. The Signal series appeared in a new light, each composition of lines and dots full of tension and anticipation. Similarly in the performance, time and space, sound and visual representation are woven together with such perceptiveness and imagination. Everyone is visibly connected to—pulling, nudging, blocking—one another through the blue yarn. Sophie will later in this book elaborate the artistic concept in her essay. If Cage’s graphic notation invites musicians to construe the lines, graphs, and their relations as mappings to sound, submarine cables fold some areas into pockets of reliable, near-instant communication, of extreme proximity, and stretch the distance between others, as if assigning register, pitch, timbre, and duration to each configuration of individuals, cities, or infrastructural systems on the world map. Between you and me now, perhaps, a humming bass note. We become the stars in a certain constellation, and our connectedness is called Signal. 

Li Yizhuo ist Wissenschaftlerin und Direktorin des BEK Forums. Sie ist Mitarbeiterin des FWF-Forschungsprojekts Performance und Postsozialismus im China des 21. Jahrhundert an der Universität Wien. Ihre Arbeit untersucht die Geschichte und das Konzept des Experiments in der zeitgenössischen chinesischen Kunst und künstlerische Formen des transnationalen Postsozialismus. Das 2025 von Li gegründete BEK (Büro für experimentelle Kunst) unterstützt die Produktion und Forschung in den Bereichen Bildende Kunst, Performance und Musik in seinem Wiener Ausstellungsraum und international. Vor ihrer Tätigkeit in Wien leitete Li gemeinnützige Programme und Projekte mit Galerien und Privatsammlungen in New York und Peking.