Drawing themes fromDenny’s exhibition at the Serpentine Galleries, which compared hacking culture and innovation in different contexts, the exhibition brought together practices that question, cheat, flip, redefine and short-cut notions of space, buildings and creative practices. Redefining notions of innovation, one of the leading values of today’s world, through an unconventional organisational, social and spatial arrangement, the hacker-like Shan Zhai principle is an underlying link between the exhibited works in HACK SPACE. The Shan Zhai phenomenon is no longer only restricted to low-cost fake products, it has become associated with how a certain type of Chinese company achieves success without following conventional wisdom and develops competitive advantage through innovative hacks. From New Year galas to medicine and movies, Chinese consumers encounter Shan Zhai in almost every aspect of their daily lives. Originally used to refer to a bandit stronghold outside government control, it has today become shorthand for fake or pirated products, from mobile phones to digital cameras, among many other products. HACK SPACE sits adjacent to the phenomenon of Shan Zhai (山寨), a widespread term in China often associated with nearby ‘silicon valley of hardware’ city Shenzhen.

The exhibition took at its core the theme of hacking space – the idea that place, territory and infrastructure can be radically adapted in unorthodox ways to solve problems. HACK SPACE was a new iteration and expansion of Denny’s exhibition Products for Organising. Serpentine Galleries and the K11 Art Foundation presented the group exhibition HACK SPACE, with New Zealand artist Simon Denny and a group of China-based artists.

Instal Space Hack free