IT may be a gathering of Go players at Peace Park’s Go corner, a neighborhood walk through Shanghai’s traditional shikumen (stone-gate) houses, an exhibition of hand-painted movie posters, a memorial event for a special day in history or a live online broadcast of Taoist music. In each case, discussions between the person hosting the event and the participants lasted long after they were scheduled to end.

Curated by the New Delhi-based artist group Raqs Media Collective and executed by curatorial collegiate Chen Yun and the Shanghai-based Dinghaiqiao Mutual Aid Society, the “51 Personae” project includes a series of gatherings, or programs, throughout the city during the 11th Shanghai Biennale, which ends on March 12.

“In average, three programs, each featuring a Shanghai person, are presented in the city every week over the 17-week duration of the biennale,” says Chen.

As an extension of the biennale’s theme, “Why Not Ask Again: Arguments, Counter-arguments, and Stories,” the project presents 51 real-life scenarios and 51 stories of common people, which explore the possibilities of everyday life in Shanghai.

To find suitable personae, Chen and her colleagues at the Dinghaiqiao Mutual Aid Society first solicited ideas from the public in May 2016 through platforms like WeChat.

“We didn’t want merely a lecture, a tour, a performance, or an exhibition ... but real ‘characters’ whose life stories could cut open a layer of the city’s surface and present the inner connections of its urban development,” she says.

Chen has been to New Delhi and is familiar with Raqs’ work.

“Conversations around urban life and how to make sense of it have been part of the Raqs’ work for the last two decades. In December 2015, while walking the streets of Shanghai with our friends from Mumbai, Prasad Shetty and Rupali Gupte, we spoke again about the complexity of encounters in mega-cities. Led on by their questions, we arrived at a proposal for an encounter with the multiplicities — and specificities — that make Shanghai: ‘51 Personae’,” Chen recalls.

Having taken on board the ideas as an experiment, Chen decided to extend the proposition to her colleagues in Dinghaiqiao Mutual Aid Society, a co-working place she founded in Shanghai where people can work together, learn, organize and work together creatively.

“With an open and playful curiosity, we had a series of meetings at our shabby house in Dinghaiqiao before the list of ‘51 Personae’ was finalized through our observations and connections in the city. We hope they cover Shanghai’s over 24 million population from all walks of life,” Chen tells Shanghai Daily.

So far more that 30 programs have been realized. With a cast of ordinary and exceptional figures from various parts of the city — including a knife sharpener, a soccer veteran, a man seeking geographical centers of Shanghai, a delivery agent, a poet, and a lady with incense — the city of Shanghai expresses its true character.

Wency, a participant in the program titled “In Praise of Staying Power,” came by bullet train from Suzhou to Shanghai for the one-day event held in a historic shikumen house in Jing Yun Li two weeks ago.

The day’s proceedings included spraying an artistic image of author Lu Xun on the partly torn down walls and joining an evening discussion of renovation issues with locals in the community.

As an architecture student, Wency says she came to find ideas for her thesis. “At school, I have always taken it for granted that renovation of old houses is just a science to make the old new again. Today’s event has made me see the tug-of-war between private gain and public good.”

The “51 Personae” project embodies Raqs’ curatorial approach, through which multiple triggering mechanisms are developed. It activates different perspectives in the audience, enriching the dialogue between art and life, friction between philosophical whims and literature, and the flow between intellect and emotion.

SHANGHAI Daily has followed several of the programs within “51 Personae” and talked with Chen Yun on her encounters with interesting Shanghai characters.

Q: How was each program designed and presented?

A: We first talked with the person on how he or she would like to tell their story. A thorough communication between the two sides was the premise for what form of presentation should take place later on.

For the story of a radio enthusiast, we commissioned a special radio broadcast show at the site where he trained youngsters in short-wave skills.

For the story of a palliative caregiver, we helped her organize a roundtable discussion, where people who work in the various professions associated with this final stage of life were invited to prepare for the “future of dying.”

Through different platforms, we managed to connect to a far greater number of social, cultural, and historical threads than we can imagine.

Also we care a lot about the interrelationship between each event. When three retired movie poster painters were invited to present their craft for visitors of the Shanghai Biennale ... their newly created poster will later be used to inaugurate a movie screening of “Go for Broke,” centered on laid-off workers.

Q: Have any of the programs ever run away from your control?

A: At an open site with an open discussion and an open audience, we get to work when celebrities are replaced by common people. Sometimes questions are raised by the audience from a unique perspective. But I see it as positive rather than an embarrassment, which helps me understand our own intentions and reflect on what we are doing.

More often than not, I am surprised at the thoughts and emotions we trigger on the spot.

The beauty lies in the uncertainty of the performance, because we are not working with professional artists who know what to present, and the audience we face are not trained to take risks.

It is completely different from going to the theater or an exhibition, where both the performers and audiences are certain of what to expect next. We are constantly challenged to face a wider audience through which you find their interests are the interests of the city itself, and their fears represent a loss in life that has gone with the winds of changes in the city.

Q: Considering the scale and time span of the project, “51 Personae” is a test to the curator. Any gains you would like to share?

A: The project has pushed me to rethink the relationship between the city and the individual.

Each of these 51 individuals is a small wave in the ocean of the city’s history, and a spindrift of the human race. With their personal accounts, we are allowed to open the city in 51 different ways to explore the great art of living together.

Individual stories are embedded with uncertainty, diversity, and vitality, as is indicated in the proverb: “There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people’s eyes.”

I also found that some cultural or social incidents have kept occurring over and over again in this city through history.

The stories of others in the past are more or less linked to ours of today. The awakening of the self is synonymous to the collective awakening.

Q: Do you have any plans for the materials you have collected after the project?

A: We interviewed some of the persons during the preparation phase in written form. We also followed and recorded all the programs and activities. For each of the program teams, we have set up a WeChat group where all participants can share their experiences and resources after the event to expand new possibilities.

When all these finish, a 153-minute documentary on the “51 Personae” project is next on the agenda, with each person taking up to three minutes in the film.

Besides, all the inspirational stories from the 51 personae will be compiled in a book in both Chinese and English — to crystallize a moment in the city which came into being from long ago and is now pointing to the future.

Those who are interested in joining the program can check http://51personae.shanghaibiennale.org/en or e-mail to personae51@powerstationofart.com for registration.