Top Shanghai nightclub throws post-pandemic party with video art

Among the many cultural venues struggling to stay afloat after several months’ Covid lockdown. Shanghai’s beloved independent nightclub All has gone make-or-break for May, with a frantic events lineup that included a two-night exhibition of video art influenced by club life. Organised by the Shanghai-based writer and curator Alvin Li, the show ran on 13 and 14 May featuring nine artists including Victoria Sin, Tao Hui, Kenneth Tam and Chen Tianzhuo, who also performed at All with his Asian Dope Boys on 9 May. Though All only opened in 2017, its predecessor Shelter was a decade-long institution in Shanghai, and its affiliated label SVBKVLT “managed to hone a soundscape that is distinctly their own and that has come to inspire many artists working here,” Li says. All is as among the “very few spaces where visual and sound artists intersect” and crucially “the go-to place for young artists to explore more experimental modes of artistic expression," he adds. The All or Nothing series of artistic offerings also included a performance by local experimental dance troupe In The Flesh on 27 May. Li says his project came together in three weeks, with screens loaned from Antenna Space and Chronus Art Center.