Tag Archives: prd culture

exhibitionism

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Yesterday, I went to the OCAT Contemporary Art Space opening, 小运动：当代艺术中的自我实践（Little Movements: Self Practice in Contemporary Art). I saw many friends and we chatted about what we are doing. Yes, this is the point: the Little Movements exhibition formally presents videos, writings, and photos of artists talking about being artists. And at this level, I like the idea of examining how we make art through day to day encounters. So, if you are interested in this history, the exhibition is well worth the trip. If, however, you want to know what young Chinese artists are doing, visit He Xiangning, the Art Space’s mother organization to checkout the Fresh Eyes exhibit.

Planned obsolescence? The Dafen Lisa and Shenzhen Identity

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507 artists worked on the  Dafen Lisa for the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. However, as the City beautifies for the next big international event (the Universiade), the piece was targeted for removal because it does not conform to (ever changing) urban plans. Unexpectedly, the decision was successfully protested because the scale of Dafen’s collective copy of the Mona Lisa has produced a cultural item that is recognized as being unique to Shenzhen, which in turn, has led to debates about “to raze or not to raze (拆，还是不拆).”

This debate interests because it speaks to Shenzheners’ increasing recognition that over the past thirty years, what they have done is valuable and worthwhile, no matter what other people think. The birth, if you will, of civic pride against the very standards that were once the city’s raison d’être. Here’s the quote:

深圳为大运会整顿市容本没有错，街道、城管相关部门没有错。政府关注的是安全、规范、整洁；媒体关注的是文化艺术氛围，艺术家与画工关注的则是生存与创造环境。若果一定要说错，那可能是我们的文化错了：在一次次国际盛会面前，我们是如此“激动”，以至于显得不太自信。

Shenzhen is not wrong to beautify the city for the universiade, the relevant street and city departments are also not wrong. The government is concerned with safety, order, and tidiness; the media is concerned about cultural and artistic atmosphere, artists and art workers are concerned about their living and creative environment. Perhaps if we have to say something is wrong, maybe its that our culture is wrong: in international event after international event, we become this “excited”, which makes us seem to lack self-confidence.

possible vocabulary games: xu tan language workshop

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Xu Tan is a Shenzhen / New York based artist by way of Guangzhou, getting his artistic start as part of the Big Tail Elephant Group almost twenty years ago. From January 22 through March 20 (with a ten-day break for Spring Festival, Feb 1-10), every afternoon from 3 to 5 p.m. Xu Tan is holding a language workshop at the OCT Contemporary Arts Terminal, where he discusses various keywords in Shenzhen’s development with invited guests and those who sign up to participate.

Xu Tan’s keywords project grapples with the instability of linguistic meaning in contemporary China. Specifically, Xu Tan investigates how industrial urbanization changes the meaning and relative importance of different words. For example, at Convection, the Dafen International Contemporary Arts Exhibition, Xu Tan installed a mixed media space, where he spoke with different artists and museum visitors about the meaning of words such as, creativity, originality, and copyright. At OCT, the words have been drawn from the Shenzhen public sphere and the interests of the workshop guest.

Why participate in one (or several) OCT workshop(s)?

In the first place, if you go tomorrow or sometime over the next week, you can still sign up to be a special guest and be part of the unfolding of the piece. Second, the workshops model and are a continued effort to perform public intellectual life in the city. Indeed, this weekend’s guest, Zhang Zhiyang （张志扬） is a wonderfully quirky yet erudite philosopher, who had much to say about how western belief in God is the context for our keywords, even when we don’t believe, he argued, westerners are striving to transcend. For him, this makes us interestingly different from Chinese, who “live in the world”. Third, it’s fun to grapple with language in cross-cultural contexts because the misunderstandings, confusions, and heated emotions teach all sorts of unexpected lessons about what we think we mean when we impose our ideas on the world and the world resists classification.

All about “Eye”

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“Eye” has been well received. Links to local reviews, here, here, and here.

Body Work

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Short comments on two dance pieces that I saw at the OCAT contemporary dance festival 2010. Both pieces were intensely personal responses to objective reality – here, objective reality in the sense of “can not be changed”, and personal response as “adapting to” and eventually “overcome by” said reality.

First, 朗诵 (recitation or reading) from 纸老虎喜剧工作室 (Paper Tiger Theatre Studio, 2010). Here, objective reality to the form of tests, descriptions from medical textbooks, lists, newspaper articles – printed matter that is taken to accurately represent reality. Direct Tian Gebing’s (田戈兵) response subjected five, young and amazingly fit young men to difficult motions that they repeated until the men were obviously exhausted. In one movement series, for example, the dancers stood at the back of the stage, back to the audience, arms and legs stretched into an X. While one or several read the text, one or several would bend from the knees backward until collapsing with a thud onto the floor. He / they then pushed themselves forward, leaving a wake of sweat. He / they abruptly jumped up. Returned to the back of the stage. Stood in the X position and began again. And yes, the thud was important. Most of the sound for the performance was thumping bodies. For over an hour. Through a rain storm. All the while the dancers clutched pages of text that they continuously read out loud. Until two pairs of dancers sat on two chairs, cradling the partner, who continued to read. Between, around, and behind the seated pairs, a lone dancer continued to dance.

Second, 治疗 (medical treatment, 2008) from 生活舞蹈工作室 (Living Dance Studio). In this piece, objective reality was the suffering and eventual decay and death of the human body. Choreographer Wen Hui (文慧), Wu Wenguang (吴文光), several other studio members, and Shenzhen residents performed the experience of dying and growing old despite medical treatment. The spark for this piece was the last 12 days of a mother’s life. The piece began with a young girl playing with motorized shoes that hummed around the stage throughout the show. One by one, studio dancers and audience members came onstage and then painstakingly moved from the back of the stage to the front. While watching I felt caught somewhere between Noh and Waiting for Godot because dancers held contortions effortlessly, with the end result of relentless pessimism. Indeed, I felt distressed not only because performers used over an hour to move about 50 meters, but also because by the end of the show about 30 or so slow moving, contorted figures had overtaking the space where the one girl – and halfway through the piece it was clear she was the only young, healthy body onstage – continued to keep the motorized shoes moving.

Youth exhausted. Spent in industrial repetitions. Relentless pages of knowledge that never made the movement easier. A single girl. A slow, determined, frightening accretion of misshapen, yet still oozing forward bodies.

Interestingly, although these two pieces provide insight into the experience of China’s boom, I am more interested in how these pieces continue and expand upon the general nihilism of modernist art, when its not being over the top utopian. Living in Shenzhen, we are used to this relentless exhaustion of bodies and the seemingly unlimited replacement bodies that slip onstage and remain unnoticed except and until a critical mass forms. But Shenzhen also thrives on the experience, the energy before one steps into the vortex of change. The threshold moment, when we turn from the past and leap into all that is possible – plans can’t keep up with change, here.

I keep thinking about sighs and the expression 没办法 – no way out as the experience of work and meeting the demands of family and friends by way of exhausting work situations. And I’m wondering when all this exhaustion becomes something other than resignation and nihilism. In this sense, I remain skeptical of any assertion that the only response to “objective reality” is resilient adaptation unto decay. Noticing this reality, yes, step one. But I yearn for alternative second steps.

Fat Bird Premiere!!!

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“Eye of the Universe”

Those in the PRD are respectfully invited to attend the premiere of the sci-fi musical, “Eye of the Universe”. “Eye” was co-produced by Fat Bird and the Shenzhen University Department of Acting.

Time: 7:30 p.m. 17-21 December, 2010
Place: New Blackbox Theater, Shenzhen University
深圳大学师范学院B座（深圳大学正门左侧建筑）新黑匣子剧场（进正门左转20米，停车场对面地下一层)

To reserve seats for the performance, please contact me before December 13.

thoughts on the culture of commerce

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information about the shenzhen bay fringe festival is now online. the dates are december 4-12, 2010. there will be events everyday at the nanshan culture center, which is in fact the string of malls that run from baoli in the east through coastal city over houhai road to nanshan book city. and yes, the conflation of “culture” with “commerce” is both strategic and unfortunate. strategic because commerce is the way shenzhen artists step around politically sensitive questions. unfortunate because most shenzhen residents do not see interesting frissions between commerce and culture.

the hopeful aspect of commerce as culture is that what starts out as a strategy to introduce shenzhen residents to a wider variety of cultural forms may pry open an alternative space within the relentless commercialism of the area. the more distressing aspect, of course, is that the commercialism is relentless and, for many, an unquestioned good precisely because of its alliance with culture, especially, education. after all, commercialized shenzhen art remains primarily a means of earning additional gaokao points, even when a student actually enjoys music or painting or the ballet. for adults, art is a hobby.

the shenzhen conflation of commerce and culture is not unlike the american confusion of freedom to purchase with human emancipation. we buy sniper dolls for our daughters and do not question the principles organizing our toy stores (why dolls? why plastic bullets? why do we differentiate between children based on what their parents can and cannot afford?) and yes, this confusion annoys me; on bad days, i end up snapping at mothers who have done nothing more than ask if their daughters can earn alot of money if they go to the right colleges. (i haven’t recently taken out my frustration on americans because i left the country. next trip home i’m sure i’ll be snapping with the best of the turtles. sigh.)

come anyway. be the fissure that cracks open our hearts.

Hi, Fringe, High 艺穗！

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In December this year, Nanshan District will organize and host the First (might become) Annual Shenzhen Bay International Fringe Festival. The purpose is to bring alternative artists and their art to the city.

Yeah!

More to the point, those in the city during December will be able to enjoy performance art, installations, theater, and low carbon creativity throughout the Nanshan Culture Area (which includes the Poly Center, Coastal City, and the area around Nanshan Book City, including the small park).

As events are finalized I will post more details.

spherical tabby

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poet steven schoeder inspires me because he creates conversations across continents, cultures, and genres. moreover, his work successfully models an alternative form of globalization – attentively collaborative and wide as space.

visit his latest project with poet and artist kit kelen, this is the speech of my hands. for more prd cultural collaborations, visit the virtual publishing site, spherical tabby and read one of my favorite collaborations, in a human hand, a dialogue between steve and macau poet and painter, debby sou vai keng.

anxious masses: Thinking about Gu Wenda´s Ink Alchemy

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Yesterday at the opening for experimental ink artist Gu Wenda, I was struck by the unfolding of scale in his work. His early work could be completed by one person. There were large paintings, like Surreal Horizon (超现实地平线) or images from Lost Empires (遗失的王朝) but nevertheless the actual works themselves conformed to a human-sized world as I have come to know it. I felt myself and the art to be at the same scale. Indeed, often I was larger than the pieces and some, like the Red Heart Series (红心系列) of seals on small, abstract ink paintings, I could hold in my hand. However the later work, such as the Ink Alchemy Series (水墨炼金术系列 – above image) was large scale industrial. As such, these pieces could not be completed by any one person or even by a group of people working with their hands. Instead, the artist became both an industrial designer and an organizer of human labor and machines over time.

Made entirely of died braids of human hair, Gu Wenda’s most recent installation Black Gold (黑金)  fills the entire OCT Art Terminal. In the middle of the cavernous room, a large rectangle of ink powder lies flat beneath a canopy of black braids. To the left and right of the canopy, evenly spaced sections of died braids hang from ceiling to floor in fine, delicate loops. The installation is deceptively simple – blocks of color shimmering neatly beneath gallery lights. However, Black Gold took three years (2008-2010) to complete and thinking about what would be necessary to complete such a project left me feeling both frightened and exhilarated. Frightened because I imaged thousands of woman, who had given several years of their lives to grow their hair, scalped to make an epic statement. Exhilarated because the level of coordinated precision needed to execute Black Gold spoke to me of how one might go about representing Chinese society – massive blocks that from a distance seem a well-organized whole, but which upon closer inspection dissolve into idiosyncratic anonymity.

Neatness or tidiness (整齐) of large groups or objects is one of the mass aesthetic values that I have had difficulty appreciating. Not that I don´t enjoy watching several thousands of people making the same motion at precisely the same time, but when I think about the level of work that is necessary to achieve such precision, I feel the same anxiety that I felt upon seeing Black Gold. Several examples of mass coordination come to mind: military marching, classrooms full of Chinese students taking tests over and over and over again to prepare for the gaokao, highways full of cars, miles of grazing pasture in the American West and wheat fields in the Mid. Massive, national bureaucracies. Each of these instances of mass coordination exemplifies the human potential to submit to external hierarchies that take sameness and repetition to be the signs of unity and belonging.

And here´s the rub: one what?

Military marching and mass test-taking provide living metonyms for the modern, industrial state. Nevertheless, these mass exercises also remind me of feudal traditions, in which being born into oneś place enabled large societies to hold their form for generations. In other words, for many to become one, for each to find her ¨place¨ takes a lifetime of practice. This taking one´s place in a larger order is natural insofar as to be human is to belong to various groups of various sizes. Indeed, as far as I can tell, this is the whole point of education – helping young people figure out how to inhabit diverse sets of coordinated relationships.

The anxiety I feel when thinking about Black Gold, specifically and mass coordination, more generally has to do with the means and goals of mass practices. Military marching, mass test-taking, driving on the highway, planting acres of wheat: each of these practices takes an abstract idea of what it means to be human and imposes it on the diversity of the world, creating conditions of idiosyncratic anonymity. Moreover, these practices aren´t particularly healthy. Armies go to war, Chinese students become test-taking machines, carbon monoxide kills as do the pesticides necessary to maintain wheat fields.

In contrast, if there is such a ¨one¨ out there, I’m Buddhist enough to believe that the point is to create conditions of mutual recognition. Creative collaboration rather than mass coordination, so to speak. I’m not sure what this means in terms of reorganizing nations or highway systems or college entrance requirements. Yet I trust the process. When I take the time to understand each of my students, something happens between us. And that state of sharing between – elusive, delicate, and quite beautiful – could transform mass culture in unexpected and wonderful ways.

Gu Wendaś Ink Alchemy retrospective is currently up at the He Xiangning Museum of Art and the OCT Contemporary Art Terminal. Worth a visit.