《夜间拍卖》是在北京中间美术馆三层、由 Christian Nyampeta 持续主持的“夜校”项目中完成的一次参与式艺术实践。“夜校”以公共学习、知识共享与制度的再组织为方法，持续追问“我们如何共同生活？”这一问题。在受邀成为第五位值班艺术家期间，我将自己长期对“知识在跨文化语境中的失效”这一议题的研究，转化为一套可在现场运行的制度结构：一个以“词语”为最小单位的拍卖系统。
Night Auction is a participatory art project realized within Night School, a program held on the third floor of the Inside-Out Art Museum in Beijing and continuously led by Christian Nyampeta. Night School takes public learning, knowledge sharing, and the reorganization of institutional structures as its core methodologies, persistently asking the question: How do we live together? When invited to participate as the fifth artist-in-residence, I transformed my long-term research into the failure of knowledge in cross-cultural contexts into a system that could be activated live: an auction mechanism in which words function as the smallest unit of exchange.
This research originated in my field experience during my studies in London. While traveling by Uber, I frequently engaged in conversations with drivers from Bangladesh, South Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. Many of them held advanced degrees in fields such as English literature, economics, or medicine, yet were unable to convert this educational capital into economic or professional mobility within the UK’s social and labor structures, instead entering forms of manual or service labor. The rupture, devaluation, and non-transferability of knowledge in cross-cultural circulation became the point of departure for this project.
Within the context of Night School in Beijing, I invited volunteers to submit their own educational and professional backgrounds, extending the issue of cross-cultural knowledge failure beyond the migrant experience encountered in London into a broader social condition. The work unfolds through five consecutive institutional stages: collection, revaluation, preview, auction, and disclosure.
During the collection stage, participants submitted personal résumés through an online system. These materials were not displayed in the exhibition space but instead served as the raw input for institutional transcription.
In the revaluation stage, I worked with a team to transform these submissions into newly constructed “knowledge-based words,” which were edited into an Auction Catalogue. Each entry was accompanied by a set of analytical descriptors, including phonetic notation, inferred geographical circulation, stroke and character structure, traceable textual origins, variant forms, and its relationship to English loanword systems. Knowledge originally embedded within individual life histories was reformatted into a circulating institutional object, echoing the processes of knowledge re-encoding experienced by the Uber drivers I encountered in London.
In the preview stage, the words were printed, framed, and installed on the exhibition walls. Visitors could obtain copies of the Auction Catalogue, which functioned simultaneously as an exhibition medium, an institutional document, and a transactional tool.
During the auction stage, I assumed the role of auctioneer. All words were offered with a starting price of zero, with each bid increasing by one unit, and no reserve price. Upon completion of a transaction, the buyer and the word’s contributor signed a contract and completed payment. The core of the exchange was not monetary, but discursive: contributors were required to explain how the word came into being, whether it had produced economic value, whether it could persist across linguistic contexts, and whether it was “worth” its final price. Knowledge was thus compelled to confront its efficacy, fragility, and dependence on context.
In the final disclosure stage, I published all transaction data, including highest prices, bidding frequency, and unsold words, rendering the logic of the system transparent.
In Night Auction, I do not propose conclusions regarding the value of knowledge. Instead, I am concerned with how knowledge—and the individuals who carry it—are re-evaluated, rejected, misread, or rendered silent when removed from their original cultural systems and placed within a temporarily constructed institutional framework.
1.Collection (online) Participants register by submitting their resumes via a QR code, including educational background, work experience, and skills.
2. Revaluation (online) The collected content is edited into an "auction catalog," comprising:
Newly constructed terms based on participants' knowledge and skills.
Analysis and Authentication (etymological research):
a. Phonetic annotations
b. Geographical analysis (regions in China where terms originated)
c. Character and stroke count
d. Historical comparisons tracing terms to earliest Chinese sources
e. Examination of character variants
f. Loanword analysis tracing foreign origins and adaptations
3. Preview (20 minutes) Auction items (terms and their analyses) are printed, framed, and displayed. Visitors receive printed catalogs and guided introductions.
4. Auction and Transaction (50 minutes) An onsite auction of collected "knowledge terms" begins from ¥0, incrementing by ¥1 each bid. Successful buyers sign contracts and pay sellers directly through Alipay. Sellers then explain terms, their personal significance, economic implications, and cultural context.
5. Public Disclosure of Auction Statistics Summary statistics of highest-priced items and unsold lots are publicly presented.
