COMPOST (《堆肥》) is a new publishing platform and annual residency of the ICA at NYU Shanghai.
Each year, together with the ICA's biennial artistic research programs, COMPOST invites an editor-in-residence to inhabit the platform as a "living publication." The editor invites contributions of texts, images, sound, and video, and cultivates their engagement by other artists, thinkers, and practitioners.
COMPOST is a space for progressive and collaborative creation, discussion, and sharing. It provides a continuous vertical space, allowing multimedia contributions to stack upon each other. COMPOST also spreads horizontally, as the editor composes new stacks alongside each other. All stacks are layered with media-rich marginalia. Out of these stacks and spreads, readers may compose their own.
COMPOST can be bilingual (English and Chinese), but it does not know about languages – it is language agnostic.
COMPOST lives through a process of stacking and spreading over the seasons, as editors, contributors, and readers "fatten the heap" or 堆肥 (duīféi). Duifei means compost.
COMPOST’s inaugural editor-in-residence is Shanghai-based curator and writer, Zian Chen. Chen’s residency is in conjunction with the ICA’s second biennial artistic research program Another Knowledge Is Possible (2021-23), exploring neglected and repressed ways of knowing and the complex politics of knowledge decolonization.
COMPOST (《堆肥》) was developed in collaboration with The Exercises (LIANG Lu) and Amir Houieh, along with inaugural editor-in-residence Zian Chen (2021-22).
