Fwd: eARTS BEYOND: Shanghai International Gallery Exhibition of Media Art

eARTS BEYOND - Shanghai International Gallery Exhibition of Media Art

September 11th – September 20th, 2009

Shanghai Oriental Pearl TV Tower | Shanghai Exhibition Center (SH Contemporary)


Preview: September 10th

Artistic Director: ZHANG Ga
Producer: LI  Zhenhua


e-ARTS Beyond is a new platform and destination for adventurous minds that aims to cultivate a marketplace for media art's unique and vibrant contemporary aesthetic experience.

e-Arts Beyond is a project of eARTS Shanghai which is funded by the Shanghai Cultural Development Foundation under the joint supervision of the Shanghai World Expo 2010 Coordination Bureau and the Shanghai Municipal Administration of Culture, Radio, Film and TV, among other government agencies. eARTS Shanghai stages the citywide eARTS Festival celebrating electronic and digital art and culture in the form of exhibitions, performances, public events, workshops and symposia that welcome millions of local and international enthusiasts.

"base target=new" is the inaugural exhibition of eARTS Beyond, which borrows a common but often overlooked HTML tag as a metaphor, annotating a technical concept in which any hyperlink triggered by a click in a master page will produce a child window to load newly queried content. The title symbolizes new horizons of artistic propositions and formal strategies that resonate with contemporary experiences underlined by the ubiquitous presence of electronic and media technologies. On view are works spanning four decades of media art history, witnessing the trajectory of artistic experiments with electronic media from the inception of conceptual art as seen in Joseph Kosuth's 1965 seminal work Five Fives (to Donald Judd), one of the first artworks to explore neon as a visual and textual medium to Kristin Lucas's 2007 interventionist act which parrots the ubiquitous phenomena of  "refreshing a webpage" to Refresh the artist's own real world identity, succinctly critiquing the contemporary paradox of multiple realities and expanding the tradition of conceptual art. From video's early adaptation as a creative toolkit in documenting performance art as evident in Marina Abramovic's 1975 work Art Must Be Beautiful, Artist Must Be Beautiful to Wolfgang Staehle's Umbria (August 30, 2006) which uses webcam latency as an inherent means of expression to evoke a transcendent moment of nature's sublime; from Takeshi Murata's expressionist abstraction of video imagery to Miao Xiaochun's complex 3D worlds; from video painting (Ben Jones) to algorithmically generated moving images (David Rokeby, George Legrady and Michael Grey), these exemplary works implicitly delineate video art's rich subject matter and evolving visual language. Among the many installation works presented in the exhibition, Nam June Paik's interactive work Enlightenment Compressed critiques media culture with a tint of tranquility and irony, while Zhang Peili's latest video installation Hard Evidence, No. 2, alternating live images taken from audience with the footage of destruction of the TV set, assaults the culture of the screen with an unmistakably visceral force. The forty-four works on display encompass classic pieces by media art pioneers such as Rebecca Horn, Anthony McCall, Bill Viola and Manfred Mohr to mid-career artists like Kevin and Jennifer McCoy, Luc Courchesne and Jim Campbell to new talents including Leandro Erlich, Evan Gruzis and exonemo, to name just a few. Chico MacMurtrie's large pneumatic sculpture installed on the plaza is a spectacle in its own right. The organic forms intuitively engage public participation with elegance and surprise as if to show new media art's amorphous capacity that can be as unpredictably intrusive as agreeably playful. The exhibition runs a wide gamut of artistic positions and critical voices giving a glimpse of the development of media art from its formative years to its current state of affairs.

Along with the exhibition, an expert panel discussion will take place at the Shanghai Exhibition Center as an integral part of the lecture series of Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair. The panel will bring together media art professionals, dealers and collectors to engage in discussions about the positioning, evaluation, collection and distribution of media art in the context of the art marketplace.

Participating galleries:
Arario Gallery | bitforms gallery | James Cohan Gallery | Boers-Li Gallery | DAC/DAS | Deitch Projects | Eastlink Gallery | Sean Kelly Gallery | Lucy Mackintosh Gallery | Groupe Molior | Pari Nadimi Gallery | Postmasters Gallery | Dam Stuhltrager Gallery | Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery

Exhibiting artists:

Marina Abramovic | Jim Campbell | collectif_fact | Luc Courchesne | Jean Dubois | Leandro Erlich | exonemo | Michael Joaquin Grey | Evan Gruzis | Rebecca Horn | Huang / Waldvogel | Jodi | Ben Jones | Joseph Kosuth | Ryota Kuwakubo | Yongbaek Lee | George Legrady | Li Fuchun | Li Ming | Kristin Lucas | Chico MacMurtrie | Nalini Malani | Anthony McCall | Jennifer and Kevin McCoy | Miao Xiaochun | Manfred Mohr | Takeshi Murata | Nam June Paik | Brose Partington | Ara Peterson | Alan Rath | Atelier Hauert Reichmuth | David Rokeby | Lincoln Schatz | Björn Schülke | Wolfgang Staehle | Olaf Val | Bill Viola | Ryan Wolfe | Zhang Liaoyuan | Zhang Peili |









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Fwd: Public Programme Art Economies beyond Pattern Recognition艺术新经济-公共交流项目讲座-Osage Shanghai上海奥沙

各位朋友：

上海奥沙画廊将于2009年7月3日(本周五)下午4：00举办“艺术新经济-公共交流项目”讲座系列二，诚邀您的光临，请提前来电预定座位。

 

讲座主题：

“当代艺术的媒体平台——对待文化各自的策略”

本次进行的系列谈话将把近阶段较为活跃的几家当代艺术媒体平台带到现场，话题集中在他们一直在进行的针对当代艺术文献方面的工作及其不同的目标。对话试图制造一个交流的平台，使这些以媒体身份对当代艺术的过去和现在进行文献编辑的嘉宾分别介绍各自的运作策略及支撑系统。

 

受邀嘉宾包括：

郑为民-Artlink（中国当代艺术的维基百科）

龚燕-《艺术世界》杂志

左靖-《艺术与投资》杂志

王宝菊-《今日美术》杂志

何彬-东方视觉（“展览史”板块）

比利安娜-Art-ba-ba（超级资料）

 

“艺术新经济-公共交流项目”讲座系列二

概念策划：比利安娜

时间：2009年7月3日 16:00

地点: 奥沙画廊 上海市虹口区多伦路93号（靠近多伦美术馆）

电话：86-21-56713605

联系人：李一鸣

 

Dear friends:

Osage-Shanghai will hold the Public Programme： Art Economies beyond Pattern Recognition on July 3rd 2009. We cordially invite you to the lecture on this Friday, July 3rd at 16:00.

 

Lecture Theme:

Contemporary Art Media Platforms- Archive Initiatives

This series of talks aims to bring recent initiative of media platforms in archiving of contemporary art and their different approaches. Dialogue tempts to share exchange of ideas in using media platforms in archiving present and past and their different supporting systems

 

Speakers Include:

Artlinkart (wikipedia of Chinese contemporary art): Zheng Weimin

Art World ( new media art archiving): Gong Yan

Art and Investment: Zuo Jing

Today Art: Wang Baoju

Ionly ( exhibition history project): He Bin

Art-ba-ba: Biljana Ciric

 

Public Programming: Art Economies beyond Pattern Recognition

Lecture concept by Biljana Ciric

Venue: Osage Shanghai
Address: 93 Duolun Road, Hongkou District, Shanghai 200081 (close to Duolun Museum of Modern Art)

Date: 3rd July, 2009 16:00
Tel: 86-21-56713605

Contact: Reika Li

 

Fraction of Interview with Jutta Friedrichs

Zachary Velazquez

Contemporary Art/New Media in China

Defne Ayas and Zhao Chuan

Interview with Jutta Friedrichs

- In what ways has living in Shanghai influence your work?

No matter where, the environment always influences or depending on the
level of engagement, shapes one's character. Those changes can be slow
and subtle and may only manifest them self much later. I think living
here in China will influence my work even long time after I will be
gone (or perhaps I'll never leave, who knows).

For my last line, my main inspiration was contrast, which I found a
lot in a city on a fast train of trying to overcome old traditions and
poverty. The city's increasing awareness of environmental issues
contrasting the excitement for consuming the newest products
(pollution through production) was an other inspiration to combine
natural with manufactured elements, aesthetically as well as in the
material.

- How do you resolve the matter of being a Western artist working in
China?

I don't know if there is anything to resolve. It provides a chance to
engage with something new, which sets my experience, myself and in the
end my work apart from most other artists and designers in the world.
There were and are personal issues to address of how to develop a new
aesthetic true to myself and my new environment. Funny enough, in the
beginning I was given the impression that I had an advantage of being
a foreign designer here in China. I easily got credibility. Very
recently the tables have turned. There seams to be a new sudden,
wildly urge to find China's exotic super designer of tomorrow and with
a foreign passport, I am now often excluded from competitions. Either
way has no relevance to the quality of the design but the
differentiation and exclusivity has become a marketing tool, following
the trend of the Arts.

- I read that you used to design Italian kitchens. Is there any
specific reason why you chose to concentrate on designing furniture
upon moving to Shanghai?

I moved to China for a tempting product design position. I had 70
products produced with the first two years. It was a very condensed
experience but soon I didn't feel comfortable anymore throwing one low
value product after the other into the world. Products often end up in
drawers and most of the time have a much shorter lifespan than
furniture. Furniture occupies a beautiful space in between the body
and the environment/architecture communicating between the two. It is
always exposed as oppose to products of occasional use. Good furniture
gains value over time whereas electronics for example loose value fast
and with it fades its design.

- The wood in your furniture is quite beautiful. Is there anything
you distinctly look for when choosing wood for your pieces? Do you
feel this is important?

Of course. Design is all in the detail and the material is one
important detail. I love the idea of creating colourful pieces with
natural materials. All the wood is naturally finished, showing it's
original colour and grain. I handpick the veneer for the first
samples. Since it is a natural material, the grain shape and width,
the contrast and colour can vary a lot. Getting it right can make a
huge difference.

- Recently, the lines between art and design have increasingly worn
thin. Do you feel any need to categorize your work as one or the other?

Historically a differentiation between the two didn't exist. The
distinction is a product of the industrialization. The consumer/
market has more power and is demanding certain product in a certain
style. In a way, addressing a brief (designing) is a lot easier than
setting your very own guidance as an artist. For MÜ I have fully
followed my own call but I have still created functional and sellable
pieces. I guess there, I felt for the first time that I was touching
the border between design and art. The pieces, I am working on now, I
consider much more as art. They will be exhibited in a gallery and be
communicating pieces of my thought process. I often think, it is a
waist of time that everybody spends so much time thinking and talking
about the difference between art and design. However, I think there is
a difference. Maybe we just need a new word for the people that work
in the grey zone "dancing on both parties" - perhaps creators - then
it can be easily confused with curators...great, another blurry zone...

Other References

- http://re-title.com/artists/Xue-Tao.asp

- http://www.100percentdesign.com.cn/2008/ENG/news.5d66947ee84323c6.htm

- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/3347809/Shao-Fan-at-Chelsea-fertile-ground.html

- http://phillipsartexpert.com/forums/7/597/

- Twelve Experimental Exhibitions – A Documented History

The Space Between Furniture and Art by Zachary Velazquez

Zachary Velazquez

Contemporary Art/New Media in China

Defne Ayas and Zhao Chuan

The Space Between Furniture and Art

When considering our surroundings it is natural to intuitively view
our environment as occupying its own space, separate from the self.
After all, as an individual, one can only assume complete control over
him/herself. Every other object in our surroundings exists as its own
entity, created and swayed by multiple influences that extend far
beyond the individual. However, today we no longer live in a world
oblivious to mankind. Humans have molded and created the material
world that we live in. Not only has the land around us been reshaped
and partitioned, but almost every object in our daily lives is the
result of human interference and design. This includes something as
seemingly natural as a home garden, as simple as a kitchen table, and
as complex as a computer. People not only rely on the objects and
environment that surround them, but these external things are the
direct result of the human mind.

In one way or another, it has taken will, creativity, innovation, and
an understanding of emotion to develop the objects that are now often
dismissed as purely functional. Without the artistic mind, much
around us could not have possibly developed to the point that it has.
Furniture, which can be viewed as one of the most common and
functional objects of our daily lives, is no exception to this.
Furniture has had an important role in our lives for thousands of
years, acting as an extension of local culture. Different designs and
variations in structure are telling of a people's customs, idea of
beauty, method of interacting with the world, and concept of their
surroundings. China is a country with a long history of furniture
design, with a unique aesthetic that developed independently from the
West. However, today, as China opens itself up to globalization and
receives influence from the West, contemporary Chinese artists are
designing furniture that comments on change and the space that we
currently live in. As this investigation continues, Chinese artists
are gradually picking away at the line between art and design,
creating work that tackles this conflict and tries to surpass
limitations.

Furniture, as an object, is not only identified by itself, but also
the space that it inhabits. In an interview, designer Jutta
Friedrichs states, "Furniture occupies a beautiful space between the
body and the environment/architecture, communicating between the
two." Furniture acts as a mediator between the individual and the
greater space that he/she occupies. The flow, direction, and emotion
of a room can be determined by where a piece of furniture sits. It
creates the boundaries in which one can move and invites an individual
to act and rest in a particular manner. But just as furniture is
designed and arranged to create order within one daily life, it can be
contorted and rearranged to create confusion and a new context for
interpretation. Ai Weiwei's "Furniture" series, which was started in
1997, dissects and reinterprets furniture pieces from the Ming and
Qing Dynasties. Works such as "Table with Two Legs on the Wall," in
which a table is folded in half so that two legs are weighted on the
floor and the other two rest against the wall, beg the viewer to re-
evaluate the way they experience their environment. This simple
gesture pushes a traditional item of stability onto its side, where it
remains in a defunct order, hanging on the edge of reality. Another
piece by the name of "Grapes" is composed of nine partially merged
stools that curl around each other to form a single piece that
resembles a cluster of grapes. By deconstructing and rearranging the
stools, Ai Weiwei is able to change our conception of ordinary form.
"Grapes" takes away the preconceived notion of how stools are supposed
to function, while at the same time drawing attention to the
traditional form's structure and capacity for a more playful use. Ai
Weiwei doesn't simple destroy the old and make a new, but is able to
use a long and established history of precise wood working, fitted
joints, and shaping to his advantage. He works within the old
structure, making adjustments so that he can create an evolved form
that can stand on its own as a unique piece. The space as we know it
is not destroyed, but reconsidered and worked into a context that
provides depth and understanding.

The idea of re-evaluating the spaces we have grown accustomed to has
been a reoccurring trend in contemporary Chinese art that goes beyond
furniture design. Experimental exhibitions such as Art for Sale
(1999) and Post-Sense Sensibility: Distorted Bodies and Delusion
(1999) have tried to find a new way to display and curate a show. The
Persistent Deviation/Corruptionists (1998) exhibition focused on
giving the artist a platform to develop his or her own obsessions and
not be restricted to conforming to a "commonality or mutual
relationship." This show attempted to do away with exhibition
limitations that try to have a group of artists adhere to a theme or
method. The show was thus held in the basement of a residential
building in Beijing, away from the white wall galleries and the eye of
the government, allowing the artist to explore their freedom of
individual expression. The artist's space became his own, and he was
able to use it according to his own will and ambition. Acknowledging
that a piece derives important and meaning through the space that it
occupies, gives an artist the freedom to experiment with its context
and the established notion of what something is supposed to do.

Since most furniture is viewed primarily as a commercial product, and
not as art, the more artistically geared designers end up working in
the grey space between the fine arts and design. Each category has
its own context that implies a certain way of evaluating the work.
Furniture works such as the Ai Weiwei series are created specifically
for the gallery. In Ai Weiwei's case, functionality is not his
primary concern. Although certain pieces such as "Table with Two Legs
on the Wall" could theoretically be used like a traditional table, the
piece was primarily created to be studied and interpreted by a viewer
and not used as a common object. Furniture designers such as XYZ
Design and Jutta Friedrichs of MÜ Furniture, on the other hand, create
works that must be functional and reproducible by request or within an
edition. When explaining the distinction between design and art,
Jutta Friedrichs says, "Historically, a difference between the two
didn't exist. The distinction is a product of industrialization. The
consumer/market has more power and is demanding certain products in a
certain style. In a way, addressing a brief (designing) is a lot
easier than setting your very own guidance as an artist." Although
furniture design first relies on making works that are sellable in a
commercial market, the pieces can often be considered as art and shown
in expos, competitions, and galleries.

A problem that contemporary furniture faces in both the design and art
world is accessibility. Although furniture made by design companies
is marketed to people interested in this type of product, both
networks are relatively small and unknown to the greater public.
Furniture shown in art galleries, especially in China, is viewed by a
small public of insiders and intellectuals who come to see the pieces
as sculptural works of art. In Shanghai and Beijing, most exhibitions
are not well advertised and there isn't a well-developed class of
people interested in contemporary art. However, if a piece or series
is really well received, it has the opportunity of reaching
international circles. Works by furniture designers are viewed as
contemporary furniture first and works of art second. This means that
some pieces, no matter how artistic they seem, may not get the
attention they deserve. These furniture pieces also reach a specific
group of people and are produced in relatively small numbers.

The issue of accessibility does not lie in the content or design of
these works, but in the platform on which they are shown. Many
furniture pieces benefit from being displayed in a gallery setting
since it provides the work with a neutral environment that allows it
to be read as art. The problem, however, is that China does not
promote the study of contemporary art to its people. One of the more
successful contemporary Chinese art districts, 798 in Beijing, has had
more success in attracting a visiting public. However, a large
percentage of viewers are Westerners and are only in town for vacation
or business. Through education, advertising, and a better-developed
gallery scene, one could be certain that contemporary art could reach
a much larger Chinese population. However, fully functional and
sellable furniture that is shown in design exhibitions, might have a
harder time reaching the public since its geared to a much more
specific array of people. If the design works are brought directly to
the people in an open setting that allows the passing public to
stumble upon the exhibition, then more interest can be stirred and a
more general public could be aware of the artist's work.

Although this divide between furniture design and fine art is more
discernable in the works of artists like Ai Weiwei and XYZ, certain
artists, such as Xue Tao, drift closer to that ambiguous border. Art
website re-title.com writes, "Xue Tao is one of a young generation of
artists who are unconcerned with the category in which people wish to
place them, preferring to work unconstrained, between disciplines. He
leaves the decision of whether his works are to be viewed as art or
design to the viewer." Xue Tao's furniture contains a rich social
critique as well an appealing aesthetic that easily puts his work on
the edge of art and design. By making sculptures entirely of knotted
newspaper, Xue Tao is able to make works that comment on the
experience of living in modern day China. The country's rapid change
and constant influx of information make newspaper a perfect material,
while the delicate hand worked technique calls back to a more
traditional and labor intensive time. By curling and knotting the
newspaper, Xue Tao is able to evoke an active struggle that is laden
in the framework of contemporary culture. The fact that he makes one
of a kind pieces that aren't mass-produced, widely circulated, or
often functional has little importance when trying to classify the
piece as art or design. There are many examples of one of a kind
furniture pieces that have very little physical practicality (such as
a ceramic craft vase). Pieces like "Stool 1" have the shape and
design that allow it to be labeled as furniture and the content that
helps describe it as art. As more and more artists realize that
categories are often inaccurate and vague, they can create without the
pressure of feeling as though they need to conform.

A category that can, with certainty, be used to classify Chinese
furniture designers are those that are foreign born, but now living
and working in China, and those that are native Chinese. What really
divides these two types of artists is the inherent cultural struggle
and sense of identity that is worked into their individual pieces.
Shao Fan, one of the most notable Chinese artists to work with
furniture, reconstructs and juxtaposes modern and traditional forms to
create a dialogue on language and identity. While Ai Weiwei uses
existing artifacts from past dynasties, Shao Fan will often integrate
contemporary design and material, with the style of furniture from the
Ming dynasty. When commenting on his piece entitled "Ming Turd," a
fat and distinctly designed curved bench, he says, "I wanted to show
that even the most ordinary, base things can be made beautiful and
turned into art. Of course, no artist who wanted to live would have
dared to offer the divine emperor an artwork that might suggest he was
human. But we are all emperors now. We are all the same." A piece
such as "Ming Turd" is able to comment on social developments in China
by altering a traditional form so that it can create an internal
dialogue. Other works, such as his chair pieces, interject sleek
metal forms into the worn wooden curves of traditional Ming dynasty
chairs. The chair piece entitled "Moon" had been designed to contain
the logographic nature of its character, while at the same time
indicating an obvious gap between the old and new. The constructed
contrast between modern minimalistic aesthetics and tradition shape
and material is brought to light when Shao Fan reflects on his art
education. In an interview with Telegraph newspaper, Shao Fan says,
"I realize now that my education was Western. As I got older I wanted
to move away from the Western aesthetic – the aesthetic that academics
in China teach and which are espoused by most contemporary Chinese
artists. I had to learn by myself how to be a Chinese artist, by
trial and error." This is a conflict of identity that is apparent in
his work, and one that can only be expressed by a Chinese artist.
Even if a foreign artist attempted to mimic Shao Fan's style, there
would be an ingrained emotional conflict and personal struggle missing
from the confines of the piece.

Although there are certain Chinese issues that a foreign artist living
in China would have less success tackling, a foreign artist can
without a doubt make Chinese furniture that is relevant to
contemporary issues. MÜ Furniture designer Jutta Friedrichs is a
German born artist, who went to school in London, and moved to China
in 2005. After doing product design in Shanghai for two year,
Friedrichs decided to branch out on her own and start designing
furniture, something she felt had greater value and a more meaningful
lifespan. When designing her last line, she drew direct inspiration
from the city of Shanghai as well as her impulse to connect with
nature. Friedrichs states, "My main inspiration was contrast, which I
found a lot in a city on a fast train of trying to overcome old
traditions and poverty. The city's increasing awareness of
environmental issues contrasting the excitement for consuming the
newest products (pollution through production) was an other
inspiration to combine natural with manufactured elements,
aesthetically as well as in the material." This contrast is a
signature element of her pieces, which combine a sleek manufactured
aesthetic with richly textured wood. Her furniture pieces are
beautifully simple and provocative, juxtaposing the hard lines of the
city with the tapering grain of nature. By engaging in a new
environment, Friedrichs was able to eventually find a new aesthetic
that was true to both herself and her surroundings. This is a
transformation within the visual arts that is the direct result of her
experience as a foreigner living in China. Her furniture pieces thus
become just as much a part of Chinese culture as any local artists'
work.

Contemporary Chinese furniture design currently occupies a conflicting
yet exciting space in both the art world and within China's quickly
developing society. Tottering between the applied and fine arts gives
the artist the opportunity to design furniture that works within
different contexts and plays with different notions of our
surroundings. Globalization and social conflicts that are unique to
China bring forth an investigation of identity and a desire to come to
terms with contrasting perspectives. In the process of breaking down
these boundaries, Chinese artists are freeing up their minds to
uninhibited expression and tackling issues that are true to themselves
and the surroundings that have influenced them.

blog collection by Daniel Kekacs

Outstanding Art: Underwhelming Experience

 

I saw a sign for Contemporary Art in M50 the other day and decided to check it out. Outstand Art Gallery was having an exhibition featuring the works of artists Yu Jin, Wei Ru, Qin Shengxian, Zhang Yuyin, and Jin Shi, among others. I was curious to see how this contemporary art would compare to the works we mention in class, but ultimately I was somewhat disappointed. Too much red, too many of the same cultural symbols, too much Mao. Yu Jin's Red Guard series depicted black and white young adults with something prominently red, like the flag of China, or their arm bands. They stood around and didn't really do anything, nor did they do anything for me. Jin Shi's masks featured disgustingly obese and effeminate men doing uncomfortable things, their lips painted a bright, luscious red, not unlike Wei Ru's Sentiment series, featuring the familiar combination of black and white people with only one color: red lips. Buddhas smile in the background. My favorite piece was a silhouette of Mao, with Buddhas in his face. It felt completely uninspired. The plaque describing Zhang Yuying's inspiration for painting animals seemed interesting, but the paintings were, again, somewhat uninspired. Cute donkeys, dogs, pigs, etc wandered around with sad faces while easily recognizable landmarks (like the Imperial City) floated in the background.

 

Whether it was their response to pressure from the external world or their own conception, I hope that emerging artists will discard the notion that Chinese art can't be Chinese unless it contains the same tired cultural symbols (Mao, the Imperial City, propaganda-style posters, emphasis on the color red, etc). I'm sick of Mao in every possible way, and I never want to see him ugly mug again.

 

Zhongjian: Midway at Eastlink Gallery

 

Seeing something that looks like a bird skeleton wrapped in cabbage is kind of cool, but only the first five times. Are six nearly identical, bone-white bird skeletons wrapped in cabbage necessary for anything? Does the fourth one convey some message that the first three, either individually or collectively, do not? Or the fifth? Eastlink's Zhongjian – Midway exhibition just opened on Sunday, and I was still in Shanghai, waiting for an erroneously-booked Monday flight home, although in retrospect I'm glad I got to have the extra two or three days to settle down before leaving. In addition to Shen Shaomin's cabbages, Zhongjian featured the works of Liu Qinghe, Julie Bartholomew, Zhang Qing, and Jin Sha, who was also the curator.

 

Liu Qinghe's paintings of waif-like girl I mistook for a calligraphy painting at first glance, thinking their wispy hair was strands from a willow tree or something similar. Not the case, fortunately. I particularly enjoyed Jin Sha's Fading Away, the plaque for which discussed the commoditization of culture, and like how so many aspects of China before, it, Chinese culture too would soon become defined, delimited, and purchasable anywhere you want, except in the places where it used to be. Based on my time in China, I have the same fears: that something that used to be natural and unique will become just another Chinese export, as fake and plastic as everything else in this country.

 

Huaihai 570

 

Right down the road is the art center at 570 Huaihai Lu. Its open space and nicely renovated buildings aren't as shabby as those of M50, the entire space is far more open and inviting, which I much prefer to claustrophobia. In this sense, it sort of reminds me of 798 in Beijing than the A ring of galleries and cafes surround a relatively open green space, where various sculptures have been installed – multicolored feet, a tantalizingly inviting bicycle with one open seat that reads, "Do not touch," and my favorite piece, a massive, hulking, metal bull. Part animal, part machine, the bull charges, frozen in time, the power conveyed by its size and posture amplified by both the impenetrable metal from which it is made and the pipes, bolts, and gears that gradually take over its body from head to toe. Its horns are almost 1/3 of its entire length, and they are slim, graceful, and deadly.

 

Right across from the bull is the Red Bridge sculpture gallery, a space that I really enjoyed and strongly recommend checking out. With maybe 100 sculptures inside, the space was very inviting and many of the artworks were both interesting and innovative. Xiang Yi's simple Waiting for the Next Bus resin sculpture depicted a man leaning forward and peering with an intense scrutiny, ostensibly waiting for the next bus. His body was all white, except where shadows were suggested in dark blue. The plaque describing the work expanded the simple act of waiting for a ride home into a metaphor for life in general: "Life is full of occasions where we are waiting alone for something to come. Life is full of dreams that are to be realized through everything that we are doing. We experience the tune of growing up in the course of expecting one after another." At the risk of getting too personal, this piece struck me because I felt like I've spent far too much time waiting alone for something to come or something to happen, a passivity that I have always disliked about myself, yet I also suspect I am far from being the only person who feels this way. Thinking back to the sculpture, I could see how much energy the blue and white man had invested in simply waiting, and I wondered what else he might have been able to do right now. This sculpture reminded me that in order to live the lives we want to lead and experience the things that we want to see and feel, we can't be content with simply waiting for things to come to us – we must become active participants in our own lives in order to make our dreams and desires reality.

 

Jin Xing and Modern Dance

 

Frankly, I was surprised to discover that the Chinese army was so supportive of the arts, let alone a transsexual dancer. I knew that the PLA was a major patron of the arts in China, currently trying to purchase Chinese works from all around the globe to bring them back to China, but I was surprised that they seemed so personally invested in the life and success of Jin Xing, especially in light of her transsexuality.

 

How did the army come to be such a major destination for children whose parents want them to pursue a future in dance? It seems strange that an institution that so many associate with power, control, and "evil" could have produced someone as progressive and potentially controversial as Jin Xing. Sylvie Levey's documentary did an excellent job capturing the emotions, motivations, and methodology of both Jin Xing and her peers, and I was glad that it was more than just a sensationalized documentary on a sensational subject. We previously watched another of her documentaries and even had a chance to talk with her in class The City and the Environment. She followed the lives of a relatively poor family in Shanghai for seven years while they waited to receive the news of their home's demolition and the plans for their future relocation. While she was forced to abandon filming before any conclusion ever came, while editing and producing the film back home she received the news that their relocation had been ultimately successful. Both documentaries were excellent and I would love to see more of her work in the future.

 

Blackboard Exhibition at ShanghART H-Space

 

While I wasn't expecting to find 20 different blackboards made by 20 different artists decorated with chalk landscapes or portraits or covered with Hello Kitty stickers at the Blackboard exhibition, I was pleasantly surprised to discover an exhibition more creative than I had thought it would be. The first piece visitors encounter is He An's blackboard, which is neither black nor a board. Colored neon lights frame a large white space as each side and color illuminates, clockwise, in turn. It felt like an advertisement for something ("Car Wash!" or "99 cent Hamburger!"), but where any text or photo might have been, instead was an open white space, freeing the viewer to imagine anything they wanted inside of this "blackboard."

 

Cheng Ran's blackboard was exactly the opposite: it was an entirely spray-painted black creation, a cutout scene where physical layers provided the only way to differentiate between this black and that black… for whatever reason my first thought was of Halloween, which of course made me miss every kind of chocolate other than Dove (like Hershey's!).

 

Jin Shan did use an actual blackboard to create his work, but not in any way that you might be expecting. He tied a rope to the board and strapped it to his back, stood on the side of the road, and created a six minute video of himself asking passing motorists to take him to New York, thus the title of the piece: To New York. If Jin Shan has ever seen an episode of Candid Camera, the concept might not be all that creative, but it was an enjoyable video at least, and certainly used the blackboard in an unexpected way. I'm not sure whether the performance was staged or not, but the video ends with the driver of a white van agreeing to load his blackboard into the back: they drive off into the distance, before the video fades to black. I'm not sure they made it to New York.

 

My favorite piece was Qiu Zhijie's blackboard, which he sprayed black before lending it to various committees, organizations, and even a farmers' market to use for periods of time ranging from a few weeks to a few months. He photographed the blackboard in use at each location, wiped it clean after the final use, and attached the four photos to the blank slate.

 

 

Tiananmen 20 Years Later: Art from a Soldier

 

A former soldier who was present at the Tiananmen square events in 1989 is turning his photographs into oil paintings, despite pressure from officials. Stationed at the square to subdue the protests in June 1989, Chen Guang took photographs of the event as a routine procedure, but ended up keeping nearly 100 of the photos. Showing once again the army's connection with the arts, Chen was only a soldier for a little longer before transferring from a military art school to the Chinese Academy of Fine Art.

 

I am curious to see what these paintings will depict, how they will be received, and if they will ever be displayed, or even viewed, and even if they are viewed, will anyone discuss them? There are almost too many variables to consider. I also wonder why he is converting photographs into oil paintings – does this legitimize them as artistic instead of the complete realism that photographs contain? Is Chen afraid that photos of such a sensitive event would be considered too 'dangerous,' while oil paintings are completely harmless? I do not think this is the case, but I am interested what the content of the work will be, and also to see how it will be received within China. "I'm not doing anything wrong," he said. "I'm just talking about my experiences."

Read the full article at the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/world/asia/04soldier.html

 

Performance Art and Experimental Theater

 

Saying that I struggled to make sense of Gerry Pryor, let alone his video of Chance Running, would be an understatement. He's a colorful character, and I would have liked to see some of his other performances too, because I don't think I was the only person who felt a little confused about what they had just seen and who they had just met. My only real issue was the barely-suppressed glee with which he proclaimed, "Using my body in this way is sort of like a sin. Every time I create art... I'm actually sinning." He seemed tickled to death by this fact, but I'll leave my criticism at that.

 

Last week, we watched a variety of performance art videos with Zhao Chuan, and these were somewhat greater in scope and in length of time than Chance Running. This type of art is definitely abstract, but never to the point of meaninglessness. While I won't claim to be able to extract a single, clear, direct message from any of these works, it is still more than possible to take something away from them. Thinking about Li Ning's work in particular, as emphasized by the frequent nudity, the human body is an essential component of the performance art we saw. As simple as it sounds, I was especially struck by how the actors/performers moved in strange ways, and in ways I wasn't expecting. Eventually, I made a list of what these performances were all "doing." Sure they were running around naked and lighting meat on fire or whatever, but generally these videos emphasized:

1. Thinking about and using our bodies in new ways, and

2. Interacting with and moving through the world in different ways,

both concepts that I think easily translate to a larger, more accessible "meaning," raising questions about anything from the fragility of the human body or the fragility of humanity in general, to posing questions about our roles as individuals within the world or in society, and to what extent our lives and our ways of thinking are shaped (or constrained, or guided) by the particular environment in which we live.

 

Finally, I was almost surprised at how much I enjoyed the grass stage performance last Friday. I know that accessbility isn't a requirement of any form of art, but I found that a lot of the material presented or addressed in the show felt quite relevant to either my own life and experiences or to humanity in general. It was also a fun opportunity to get to talk to a few of the actors later at the Mommy Foundation party, and hear about how the ways in which they invented and developed the performances, and where they found inspiration for their individual characters.

 

James Cohan Gallery

 

Last week Xiaoxia and I spent an absurd amount of time trying to find Stephen the Spectacular at ddmwarehouse, failed, but did manage to see the exhibition at the James Cohan gallery. Featuring works by Xu Zhen, Bill Viola, Nam June Paik, and Anselm Kiefer, Matters of Faith is a small but surprisingly enjoyable exhibition (although it took me a while to figure out that the creepy, giant monkey guarding the bathroom wasn't actually part of this show).

 

The painted palm leaves didn't manage to engage me at all, and Xu Zhen's model of the Potala Palace built from thousands of miniature playing cards seemed like it was tedious to build but not overly innovative, but I particularly enjoyed the two video art installations. Nam June Paik's Enlightenment Compressed presented a small bronze Buddha watching its own live image displayed on a television screen a few inches in front of it. At first whimsically comical (Buddha seeking enlightenment by contemplating his own image, and on a TV screen, no less), but gradually encountering the layers of meaning, I wondered whether this Buddha was meditating, or merely in a mindless trance. And what about my own childhood, mostly spent inches away from a similar TV? Was Sesame Street really just a vehicle to reaching nirvana? Something tells me no.

 

Finally, Bill Viola's video featured two women, initially obscured by wierd fuzz. As they approaced the viewer, their forms passed through a grey veil of water before emerging into a world of clarity and color. Upon reaching this world (our world?), a mix of apprehension, outright fear, longing, and hope flashed across their faces. Ultimately, either defeated or disappointed, one woman seemed unable to bear the sight of the new world she had discovered, and fled back through the sheet of water into shades of grey; her companion, after a final warm glance, allowed herself to be pulled back through as well. I found this work to be the most engaging, and I enjoyed hypothesizing what lay on each side of the veil: knowledge and ignorance? order and chaos? Or maybe it was just a room full of monkeys, and the grey-haired lady had a bad childhood experience.

 

Lin Fengmian

 

With a relatively limited knowledge of Chinese art, I wanted to do some research for my blog this week. It seemed logical to begin with one of the pioneers in what can be considered modern Chinese art: Lin Fengmian.

 

Lin Fengmian was born in 1900 in Guangdong, China. The son of a traditional Chinese painter, Lin studied European styles in France and Germany before returning to China in the mid 1920's. His work primarily attempted to synthesize Eastern and Western artistic styles, blending traditional Chinese methods with European modernism. After gaining much fame for his innovative style, Lin Fengmian helped to found the National Academy of Art in Hanghzou, a school that focused both on developing Chinese culture and on integrating Eastern and Western art.

 

Lin Fengmian produced a large number of paintings depicting autumnal landscapes, many of which are relatively dark and emotive.

 

Unfortunately, many of his works have been destroyed, first during the Japanese invasion that began in 1937, and later during the Cultural Revolution, when he destroyed many of his own works due to criticism from the Communist Party and the Gang of Four. Despite this, he was still imprisoned for nearly four years, after which he moved to Hong Kong in 1977, where he lived until his death in 1991.

 

Hello from Hangzhou

 

While I didn't check out any galleries or studios this weekend, I did get a chance to see something that I think I'd be unlikely to see while exploring Shanghai: nature (or something like it). Specifically, I saw big trees, green grass, and blue sky this weekend in Hangzhou – three things I have yet to see in this gray, hazy metropolis. Sure, I'm from Maine, where we have a lot of trees, but I wasn't expecting every inch of this city to be paved over. I've seen a lot of places here where there's plenty of room for a patch of grass or even a little bush, but instead it's just a big empty space covered with pavement or dirty tiles.

 

Yet even in Hangzhou, where trees are more than 30 feet tall, the fields of surprisingly green grass were off-limits, and in a park the size of ECNU on the shore of the West Lake, there were something like 10 benches for 10,000 people. Although beautiful, the throng of people trying to enjoy the weather were forced to keep moving, walking on paving stones through this artificial and untouchable landscape.

 

In the end we decided to jump the fence and play a game of cards on the grass. Four thousand Chinese followed our example. I wish I had before and after pictures of this phenomenon, but all I have is a "before-the-police-arrived-to-kick-us-out" picture of everyone finally enjoying themselves, sitting on the grass. Just because it's simple doesn't mean we don't need it. Does China hate nature? Probably not – but where has it gone?

 

Panda Propaganda

 

If not necessarily a record of China's growth as a nation, the Propaganda Poster Art Museum in Shanghai is at least a unique view into the ideological growth of the Communist Party. A chronicle of propaganda posters from the Mao Era, the artwork enables viewers to construct a sort of timeline of events occurring within China and around the world during this time. Yet even with my limited knowledge of modern Chinese history, the world depicted in these posters feels more like a parallel universe from The Twilight Zone than anything close to reality: when I saw peasants happily working in the fields with baskets full of food, I guessed that at the time this poster was created, China was probably starving, or close to it. When hundreds of tanks, airplanes, and soldiers had their guns pointed toward Taiwan, I tried to imagine how threatening Taiwan and its American allies must have seemed.

 

More interestingly, the characters depicted in the propaganda posters highlight an interesting evolution in China's perception of itself and its allies. Older posters prominently feature Stalin, Lenin, Marx, and Engels superimposed onto pictures of Chinese commoners, industries, or military, reinforcing the link between these older philosophers and China's present reality. Eventually, perhaps as the relationship between China and its Soviet uncle declined, Lenin and the others are nowhere to be found, replaced by Mao himself as the ideological leader of China. Still later, one can observe through the posters as Mao transcends from mere human to a revered symbol of China as a whole.

 

Finally, my favorite poster was one of the last posters in the collection, a futuristic scene from 1979 that reminded me of the intro of The Jetsons. Set in a forest of futuristic buildings, the viewer is surrounded by warplanes, elevated railways, cars, bizarre helicopters, spaceships, and cargo trucks as they try zoom out of the poster and into my face, into the future, but they can't quite make it. Even 30 years later, this utopian vision of a modernized China is still incomplete, and I'm not sure when, if ever, it will become a reality.

 

An Instant in the Process

 

Common themes among the projects of the Intrude: Art and Life 366 exhibition at the Zendai MoMA were those of identity and change. In a constantly changing world, and especially in a city like Shanghai, how does one define or even create his or her identity? A culture in flux and a city under construction complicate this process, endlessly replacing old cultural landmarks and traditions with newer, arguably less meaningful ones.

 

Zhang Jianjun's chalk and painting performance, "An Instant in the Process – 2008 Shanghai Shikumen Scene," highlights both the endless progression of modern life and the inevitable recession of the present into mere memory. Zhang chose two locations where traditional stone gate shikumen houses were being demolished to make room for new apartments or office buildings as locations for his performance. After painting the scenes on paper with water, he invited young children, the new generation of Shanghai, to come draw the scenes on the sidewalk with chalk. Zhang's paintings likely faded within a few hours, and the children's chalk might have lasted a few days, but all eventually faded from sight, as will the shikumen homes, brick by brick. Ultimately, very little will be left of these uniquely Shanghai buildings other than memories, perhaps preserved for another generation in the minds of the children who helped Zhang Jianjun with his project, but in time even these memories will fade.

 

Interestingly, a project directly beside "An Instant in the Process" provided some comfort for those seeking to reconnect with the past. Huang Dehua's green tile installation, "Echo," consisted of patterned green floor tiles from the 1970's and 1980's placed in various locations within Shanghai. The patterns of the tiles were supposedly well-known, and had "become part of the collective memory of a whole generation." In this way, these simple tiles gave people "a sense of nostalgia and security" that the endless cranes and construction sites around the city likely do not. Things that are constant, and images of daily realities, are always comforting to see, "reminding people of the simple beauty of the past." Though neither a solution to the difficulties of retaining traditional cultural symbols nor a resolution for the tension between old and new, the tiles at least allow for some brief moments to remember a time when things did not feel quite so uncertain.

The New Space

The New Space

By: James Donovan

The evolution of "artificial" space began, in part, as a progression
of sophisticated technologies developed to meet the demands of an ever
more complicated human society. When the first cities grew up out of
Samaria in the Fertile Crescent and along the Nile delta, it was
precipitated by the advent the enormous accomplishment of the
agricultural revolution. In effect, man had designed an artificial
environment for the cultivations of crops. The spread of farmland
across the world increased dramatically and increased the human
population substantially as the need to find food became a peripheral
concern. This type of grandiose transformation only happens rarely in
history, but the affects they have on society are always felt for
generations after their inception. When the Industrial Revolution
began in North America and Europe in the late 19th century the world
began to see a migration of people from the farm to the factory.
Factories began mechanically reproducing vast quantities of goods in
ways the world had never seen before. The mass urban development that
the world has seen in the past century marks another transformation in
the way people experience life and information. Most recently, with
the proliferation of computer technologies, the number and range of
channels people use to share information increased tremendously,
making information accessible in unprecedented density, volume, and
speed. The information revolution has created yet another facet of
space in the human experience, virtual space. After each great
revolution in human history, society begins tremendous upheavals as
the rules of the past must give way to the workings of the day. It is
a matter of addressing the jobs of today with the tools of yesterday.

Electronic technology has built upon the foundation of interaction.
From the television, to the radio, to the personal computer,
electronic devices are a principle form of communication between
people everywhere in the world. These technologies have become
interwoven into the fabric of our societies. Electronic billboards
ensconce the facades of buildings; individuals carry cellular
telephones which are capable of high speed internet, while radios
signals sound with the latest news and music from every car stereo.
The flow of information, regardless of its quality or content,
bombards the senses of every urban dweller. The complexity of the
urban landscape has only just begun to reflect these new reformations.
Both in the architectural planning and physical construction of
buildings, information technology and new media have begun to play
more intricate rolls in the synthesis of the urban environment.

The new media city as an all inclusive environment can be seen most
vividly in the world's most recently developed cities. Shanghai,
Mainland China's main financial center, has grown by leaps and bounds
in the past thirty years, and because thirty percent of the city has
been built within the last three decades public, commercial, and
virtual space have been seamlessly integrated into the fabric of the
urban environment. From the outset Shanghai was a city that modernized
with the world. Since the late 20th century Shanghai's architectural
identity has become the epitome of futurism in form and function. The
Oriental Pearl TV Tower, located in the Pudong financial district, is
a dramatic reinterpretation of Chinese history in the form of a modern
skyscraper. The tower rises 468 m high into the neon lit Pudong
skyline. The symbolic design of the building originates from a Tang
Dynasty poem named Pipa Song by Bai Juyi. The short poem likened the
song of the pipa to the chiming of pearls falling upon a jade plate.
Eleven spheres comprise the building's inspired form. One enormous red
triangular-faced ball rests atop three interlaced pillars, creating
the effect of a kind of toy-like spaceship. The building serves as a
monument to the ultra futurist appeal of the city. The tower continues
to capture the visual imagination of people who interact and dream
about Shanghai's great potential in the coming decades. Although, the
tower was eclipsed as the tallest building in China by the nearby
China World Financial Center in 2007, depictions in popular media
publications such as billboards and web advertisements perpetually
feature the Pearl Tower as being the taller of the two.

The two most dominant new styles of architecture in Shanghai are the
futuristic and the pre-fabricated. A symphony of buildings fluctuate
between the tall skyscrapers that strive for individuality in a sea of
bombastic novelty and the ready to repeat Lego like building who's
unvarying floors stack one on top of the other. These buildings become
a legible text both in terms of their stylistic form and function as
well as their incorporation and sheer volume of signage which gives a
depth of transient meaning to the buildings themselves. The
architectural facade of Shanghai is a complicated interaction between
the historical precedence of cultural transformation that grips the
city every time China as a whole changes. Shanghai is a global city,
and as such with each new wave of globalization Shanghai flowers.
Today it is as if Shanghai has come alive in the light of a new
technology assisted era of globalization.

Approximately seventy percent of Shanghai is composed of older
buildings, many of whom are remnants from the previous era's great
transformation which transmogrified Shanghai into a world class city
at the beginning of the 1900's. During this time in Shanghai's past,
European and western influences swept through the city, bringing with
it the culture, style, and perspective inherent in those cultural.
Despite being inexplicably Chinese, the buildings along the Bund are
more reminiscent of European cities then anything else in China. Many
other old buildings in Shanghai have begun to be revitalized in a
phenomenon commonly referred to as the creative cluster. The
unofficial arts district at 50 Moganshan Road, for example, was once a
large compound of vacant warehouses and factories along Suzhou Creek.
However in recent years the area has become a sprawling maze of white
cube galleries and studio spaces. 50 Moganshan Lu has become an
epicenter for fine art in Shanghai. The installation of the compound
was a joint venture between the Chinese government and a commercial
developer in order to revitalize the failing industrial area. Since
that time the tremendous success has lead other cities and areas use
this method of gentrification and urban renewal.

The ability of artist to gentrify and revitalize failing commercial
and industrial zones has only just started to be utilized by the urban
planners of Shanghai. The unofficial commercial use of artist in the
promotion of different area is akin to a mass advertisement. Artist
create additional value to land, buildings, and property, not because
they are necessarily improving the hardware of the area, but more
because artist encode multiple levels of valuable information into the
forms themselves, and because the value of the information if higher
then the cost of the materials to apply it. The artist increases the
value of invaluable land by expanding the informational dimension of
the place. When a room is painted it becomes a fraction of an inch
smaller. The paint adds density to the wall, however slight it may be.
The gain, however, of color information is worth the small loss of
space. The space becomes an informative text and therefore valuable.
After all, the new informational revolution has made information king.

The proliferation of advertisements in the physical vernacular of
urban life has generated new outlets for the sharing of information,
including extra-commercial. Advertisements are no longer simply
created to convince people to buy products and merchandise.
Advertisements engage our physical sensibility, they mirror our
desires, they bring us news and current information, they are symbols
of personal and civic duty, they are political, and often times they
are artist and aesthetically appealing as they convey these concepts,
ideas, and products. The plane of commercial interaction has expanded,
as has the boundaries of the city. Computer technologies permeate our
homes. In the most remote towns and cities of the world the
interaction of people is facilitated by the informational proximity
created by the internet. These new interactions have created value in
the most mandate of activates and text we read and engage with. These
new kinds of media have become a space for interaction. They are real
and powerful, and as of yet still untapped in terms of creative and
dynamic realizations.

Shanghai's Xujiahui is a milieu of billboards, video screens,
interactive displays, and interwoven pedestrian walkways that lead
through the mélange of high tech electronic stores and fast food
eateries. This is the new media city. The engineering of the spaces
has been meticulously designed to maximize signage, and minimize the
effort of shoppers. Escalators lead from street level up to outdoor
elevated platforms which overlook a sea of signs and animated video
screens of all shapes and sizes. These platforms connect the
sidewalks of three opposite streets, and open onto elevated store
fronts. The subways stations are part of shopping complexes that rise
several stories and incorporate luxury high rises into their
structures. These are the new human habitat. Shanghai has more
elevators then any other city in the world. These are the ligaments
and tendons of the city, while the electrical and internet system form
part of the nervous system. The enormous computer farms that compute
the billions of bit of information flow from the city are the brain,
and the public video screens are the eyes of this evolving new media
city.

The video screen has integrated itself so fully into society that a
new space has grown out of them, it is as if we have created wormholes
into a new virtual dimension, a dimension which exists in time rather
then space. Systematically, lights flash and encode data for depth and
form color and motion. In 2008 The E-arts Festival and its curators
coordinated an outdoor exhibit of new media art on the video displays
of Xujiahui. The event featured several new media artist from across
Asia and lasted a week as the numerous tourists and shoppers saw a new
vision of this virtual space. The video installations created for the
area perceptually expanded the space as the audience was challenged to
look deeper into the spaces which they frequent. The exhibit was also
linked to a series of outdoor performances which emphasized the
collaboration of new media artist, musicians, and dancers to interact
in the public domain. These kinds of artistic interventions are a
necessary check on the rampant progression of urban space. Without the
artist to reinvasion and expand boundaries a complacency and blind
acceptance to the status quo ensues. As the sheer number and size of
transient media outlets such as public video screens multiply a
question arises of what is to be shown on this multitude of viewing
surfaces. Can hundreds of thousand of square feet of video viewing
space be responsibly dedicated to simply commerce alone? When is it
more valuable to reallocate this space for the pursuit of cultural
enrichment or public education? And what roll does the artist,
commercial artists and fine artists, play in defining this innately
creatively demanding new space.

In 2003 in Melbourne Australia, the artist James Geurts constructed a
multi-screen video installation sponsored by the Australia Council for
the Arts in a public square. The project featured looping video on
view in a public square. The project was so popular that the council
decided to extend the exhibit and eventually took it over as a
platform for delivering public speeches and announcements. Instances
such as these demonstrate the complexities of new media in the public
domain. The sharing of information has become almost more important
then what information is being shared. The content of the video
installation proved to be less important then the fact that there was
a public platform for the screening of information.

Cao Fei, the Chinese new media artist, has taken advantage of this new
virtual stage in an allegorical parody of the Red Detachment of Women
which she has been choreographing in the second life avatar gaming
environment. Her work as an artist has often centered on the creation
of alternative narratives, disrupting the space and time in which
people live by carrying out scenarios or performances which are
unusual or unprecedented in public space. Although, the play she is
performing is relatively common and popular in Chinese theater the
fact that it will be performed in the digital sphere removes the play
from its contemporary standing and repositions its former political
message with a new meaning. The media is the message. If Cao Fei were
simply to choreograph and perform this play in a Chinese theater it
would have little appeal apart from its aesthetics and the minor fame
of the director, however because the work is being exhibited in an
artificial environment it is imbued with new significance.

Second life is, by all modern gaming standards, a graphically
unsophisticated on-line multiplayer avatar based system which receives
a large amount of media attention because of its grandiose mission to
engineer an entire world of internet based human interaction. However,
because the platform design is relatively hard to personally design,
the most sophisticated and aesthetically pleasing environments are the
product of artists and other creative minded individuals. This
fundamental conundrum of engineering expertise and unbalanced creative
style is seen in many fields, especially when the development of the
system outpaces the creative output of the individuals involved.
Culture is the soft power that makes an environment like the ones in
second life interesting and worth while.

The artist Ai Weiwei has been a revolutionary in the Chinese art world
from the beginning of Chinese Contemporary. The works of Ai Weiwei
remained reactionary and controversial for the better part of his
career, but despite his often hyper-critical position Ai has earned a
level of utmost respect by the Chinese government as is exemplifies by
his collaboration on the new Olympic Stadium, the Birds Nest. The
ubiquitous interlacing form of the Birds Nest in modern Beijing
architecture has certainly been a visionary innovation in some sense.
The fact that the Chinese government included an artist such as Ai
Weiwei into the planning of the structure is a promising venture in
the political collaboration of the artist and the socio-political
environment. Ai Weiwei's feelings on the project remain as critical as
his outlook on the government. He has made this point clear in his
popular blog. However, this inclusionary step is step by the
government of China toward a greater vision of what an aesthetic and
functional environment can yield when collaboration with the creative
class is involved in the prossess. In a demanding metropolis, the
integration of artistic vision and functional realization serves the
public by generating a more harmonious state of interaction.

The current state of globalization in the world is a product of the
rapid digitization of information, making it possible for the
instantaneous transmission and retrieval of information. The
unfathomable amount of energy required to maintain these new systems
is often not thought of, but as organizations such as Google expand in
response to the demands of information hungry denizens of the digital
world new land and resources are diverted to the sustenance of these
server farm. The digital dimension does have a density, and
information does have a weight. The exploration of this new space
should be handled with care, as the influence it has on the physical
world is more relevant then is immediately evident.

The exploration of digital spaces will increasingly become the visual
and physical realities of our world. In an age ruled by information
and a population of urbanites, the influences of new media in our
lives will continue to be presupposing as a passive element in our
societies for the fact that it is ever-present. However, because
digital technology is completely a human invention, and is composed of
information, both creative and empirical, rendered by human hands, the
future of digital architecture and the connections it gives way to are
very much in our hands. Information technology is the ultimate tool of
the government, architect, artist, and engineer. The ability to use
these forms of digital commerce to exchange and collaborate as well as
create and incite are almost endless. The synchronicity of light speed
information will continue to be the challenge of an evolving human
existence. This new space is infinitely dynamic, and its effects are
wide reaching. What forms grow out of it is the venture of the
creators and the builders. Our environment is one nearing new
frontiers and complexities. To collaborate, and bring into these
spaces the needs and wants and desires of the many is to enrich the
offerings of today with the tools of today.

What is "artificial" is real. Virtual reality has a density, and
architecture.

It spills out of the confined windows of video screens and fills the
real world.

It becomes political, it becomes physical, and it becomes artistic.

It is already all of these things.

These are the new space.

Contemporary Art and New Media

Spring 2009, Shanghai, China

Bibliography

Works Cited

"A Conversation with Koon Wee." Personal interview. 4 June 2009.

Marshall, McLuhan,. Medium is the massage an inventory of effects. San
Francisco, CA: HardWired, 1996.

Venturi, Robert. Learning from Las Vegas. Cambridge, Mass: MIT P, 1972.

Graham Bannon - Blog Posts

Graham Bannon

Blog Posts

On Last Week and Performance Art, Gerry Pryor & Zhu Yu; A Criticism

During last week's class, Gerry Pryor, a professor at NYU and an
artist himself, came in to talk with us as well as show us a clip form
a recent performance he put on entitled Chance Running. The visit, as
well as our further discussions on some examples of contemporary art
from the Fuck Off exhibit, got me thinking about the meaning behind
these often seemingly inaccessible "shock" works.

To begin with, I have no qualms with - what I believe to be - the
main focus of these works: that of confronting taboos and absolutes in
our society; things that, no matter our stated beliefs or how open we
may say we are, still make us feel uncomfortable for reasons we can't
fully explain - in fact, I wholly support it. The male nude is one
example, as Mr. Pryor pointed out (though his assertion that no male
nudes appear in western art (with the exclusion of Jesus and Greek
pottery) is not true); why is it that, on a purely reactional/
instinctual feeling, we accept female nudity as acceptable/beautiful/
normal, but the male form (especially the genitals - as opposed to the
female "equivalent") is much more taboo/disgusting/unsettling.
Moreover, what does this say about the subjugation of both genders to
certain roles.

And so, with this grounding, art would seem to be an appropriate
means of addressing these issues. However, I feel the execution is
often times (and this applies fully to Mr. Pryor's work Chance
Running) deeply flawed, often times too caught up in a desire to be
something esoteric and consequently, not quite sure itself what it is
trying to say. First off, if Mr. Pryor were using his art to address
the points I brought up above, he would have used full nudity as
opposed to simple stripping to his underwear. By remaining in his
underwear, I fail to see how he is doing anything more than merely re-
enforcing the same strict gender conforming roles and taboos he claims
to confront: still the male is not allowed to be unclothed, always to
be hidden behind some artificial construction of what masculinity
should be (here I feel I could analyze "clothes" as symbolizing a lot
- with reference to the art piece - about societally enforced notions
of masculinity that males are required to "wear", but then I might
just be going too far). (He mentioned posing nude - or simply
stripping - for his class, did he remove all his clothes?). To me, it
seems that his work is merely taking the symbols of what "radical" is,
but is lacking any of the meaning or bite, being instead, just an
empty husk. The work should make the audience feel uncomfortable so
that they are forced to, at the very least, evaluate (or re-evaluate)
their views. It shouldn't make us laugh at how ridiculous it seems.

What about the other parts of the performance Chance Running? I felt
I was only given vague explanations about why any of the particular
actions he took were taken - a reason that contemporary art is often
derided for: for example, saying, "'X' really shows 'Y'", without
explaining how or why. I'm not sure there was any part of the
performance I found crucial - or for that matter important - to the
work. And I certainly could not have found meaning in it without the
artist himself explaining what it meant (with explanations that often
seem to come not actually from the art piece). The work seemed so
caught up in absurdity, but not absurdity for absurdity's sake (which
is an entirely different movement), but (meaningless) absurdity that
claims with a straight face to be profound.

Zhu Yu

The work "Eating People" by Zhu Yu, form the Fuck Off exhibit is a
work for which I haven't fully settled upon a conclusion - not that
that is necessary, or even desirable. In the work, Zhu takes pictures
of himself eating, what he claims to be, a human fetus. Zhu described
the work as by saying, "No religion forbids cannibalism. Nor can I
find any law which prevents us from eating people. I took advantage of
the space between morality and the law and based my work on it". As a
work intending to be "radical" (a word which is itself rather vague),
it certainly succeeds in packing a punch. Cannibalism is something
that I think almost everybody is disgusted by and the very thought of
it makes us feel uncomfortable and (the work eventually drew attention
from the CIA and Scotland Yard after rumors of cannibalism in China/
Taiwan grew out of hand). At first I was more than skeptical of the
work, to the point of ridicule. But to Zhu's credit, after reading
over his statements on the work, I actually began to turn a much more
appreciative eye towards it. Like most contemporary art pieces, it's
vague, but there is a definite message here, and it does get you to
think about where law comes from and how it relates to humanity and a
sense of some absolute morality. It seems silly to say, but if law
(secular or religious) doesn't forbid something we almost unanimously
agree as wrong, what does it deal with? Is it really connected to
reason, or perhaps - to an opposite end of the spectrum - it is just a
tool, created by men, used for control. The fact that I am still
uncomfortable with how I view the work - as a piece of art - makes me
think that perhaps it really is successful at what it set out to do.

Anyhow, I'd like to hear what everyone else thinks about these two
works.

Xu Zhen

The visits the other week to the two artists' studios in M50 was a
valuable experience to get to talk with artists about how they've gone
about their work. I know Xiaoxia mentioned in the previous post about
exploring some of the artists' works before we go to talk with them
which I completely agree with. Xu Zhen has that exhibit open now
("Matters of Faith") so here are some links to some web-pages about
him and with some of his works (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) When Xu was talking
about his history so far, I was intrigued when he was describing how
he and his group of friends collectively decided to abandon several of
the traditional media of art and focus solely on installation pieces.
I didn't ask him at the time, but I am curious as to the specific
benefits and limitations of each media, as he sees it related to his
work and ideas, and what made the group shift their focus then later,
as Xu explained most of the group eventually did, give up on
installations.

I think the "In Just a Blink of an Eye" series is one of the more
accessible collections and, at the very least, aesthetically
interesting.

Pop-Mao

Yu Youhan and the Mao Series:

I think Yu's series of pop-art styled paintings of Mao Zedong are very
interesting. What fascinates me about this series, is the
juxtaposition of reverentials. What works about these pieces is their
grounding in the hyper-politicized period of China from the late
sixties well into the seventies - the cultural revolution. Mao's
status became (as it was already becoming), something no longer human.
His image instead took on its own life independent of the physical
Mao. In the pop-art series (the one with Whitney Huston is a great
example) we see this revered image that is so part of the public
consciousness next to and within a style (as well as with the images
themselves) of the new generations revered culture. With the advent of
capitalism, consumerism - as well as Westernism in a more general
sense - these have taken on a sort of quasi-divine status that is
held, by and large in the public conscious, as the new fixation of the
public cult of worship. This fits into the increasingly depoliticized
world that China has descended into (as well as the art scene). The
use of Mao in the art work serves to remind us of the recent hyper-
politicization and where the current political and social world stands
and has changed, with a satiric eye towards the similarities.

Chinese art market in the global scene and it's meanings

I've been reading up about the contemporary art scene and it's
position in the global art and political world and have come across
several interesting things. The growth of importance of the Chinese
art scene upon the global world has walked hand-in-hand with China's
emergence upon the world stage as a major player. I'm curious about
the relation of the two. Is sudden interest in Chinese contemporary
art linked with a growing inquisitiveness about the people behind this
new global player. Does interest into the Chinese art scene correlate
to an attempt by the rest of the world to better understand
contemporary Chinese culture and society as well as the spirit and
feel of the average Chinese citizen. Does insight into the art of a
culture provide insight into the people of that culture as well and
help us better understand the Chinese as human beings?

Or is the interest just another attempt to jump onto the profitable
Chinese-market wagon? Works by big name contemporary Chinese artists
were (and still are to a lesser extent) selling in the millions of USD
at auction. Is this an appreciation of the art movement here or an
attempt at a smart investment? On the Chinese side of it, is the art
movement still connected to its roots or has it too been sucked into
the world of high monetary returns? With the "good artwork" produced,
there has been a horde of "junk being traded as 'meaningful
work,'" ("Chinese contemporary art bubble goes flat") producing art as
a commodity for the sole means of profit. Now however, there seems to
be a burst in the Chinese art bubble pointing to the idea that maybe
all this interest was just an overexcited fad. Or maybe not; works by
the big names, although not reaching Christie's auction expectations,
are still fetching price tags in the millions.
Propaganda Museum

I found the propaganda exhibit to be the most interesting of the
galleries we have visited recently. It was fascinating to walk along
the posters noticing the developments of styles and messages
presented. It is, in a sense, a historical lens into China's recent
history and the social, political and economic desires of the
government. The early posters had a surreal cartoonish style to them
reminiscent of European early forays into the new medium of large-
scale industrial print propaganda. As the Korean war drew to a close,
you can see the entrance of more Socialist-realism influences with the
idealized and heroic workers in their utopian communities. An
interesting side note was the influence of the 1930s Shanghai calendar
girl poster on some of these 1950s posters. The change to the red-art
style of the cultural revolution and there violent and militaristic
themes is a sudden shift that gives the reader some impression of the
mood of the time.

I was most interested in he collection of big-character posters
(dazibao) tucked away in the back room. These posters to me are the
most powerful work of the cultural revolution. Each poster is so bound
up with fear, violence, paranoia, and chaos with students denouncing
teachers for being reactionary because they actually believed or they
were too scared not to attack and look like a rightist-sympathizer.
The mention of these works of calligraphy on paper as art pieces in
themselves (as opposed to historical documents) brings up ethical
considerations about what art can be used for and what it can do. Many
people's careers (and more) were ruined by such posters (it is
possible that someone's life was ruined by one of the posters on
display). And yet many of the posters were imaginative creations,
bearing almost no link to any truth, standing as works contained only
within themselves yet still having such a real ability to drag the
physical world into the reality of their illusions

366. New China and Old Nostalgia

There were several pieces from the exhibition, Interlude: Art and Life
366 at the Zendai MoMA that I found to be interesting. A common theme
that i found interesting in many of the works is the changing nature
of life in Shanghai, and China as a whole. The work "Line of Sight,'
by artist Maldev Lopez took the approach of examining the increase of
advertisements upon the city's visage. In the work, Lopez set up a
several large orange panels that, when observed at a certain angle,
blocked out all of the surrounding logos and advertisement. What i
found fascinating about this piece is seeing a side of China that is
not wholly comfortable with the sudden onslaught of capitalism that
has taken hold of China, especially Shanghai. There is a whole
population that has come, and is coming of age in a China so radically
different from that of their parents. This generation has no
connection to the communism of the past except for a vague and often
mythicized history that frames the past in a reverent tone that is
often off limits for discussion. A sense of nostalgia for a past many
never lived seems sprout up every now in then when listening to he
younger generation that is mistrustful of free-market, anything goes
capitalism, which they often see as cold and uncaring

The piece "Echo," by artist Huang Dehua provides an interesting
viewpoint to this. The work is an artistic recreation of old cheap
floor tiles from the '70's and '80's that have entered the collective
memory of an entire people. This memory, and this nostalgia, remains
as a constant in so many as the world around them is razed block at a
time as new rows of high-rises spring up at a dizzying rate. There is
a comfort in those old floor tiles and a pleasant notion that one
didn't have to worry as much about their place in the world, about
being left behind - there is a comfort in living in the past, a past
removed from reality and hardship, and idealized into a dream.

Shanghai Ballet

The Shanghai Ballet, this weekend, put on a performance of several
mainstays of the Western classical repertoire as well as several
pieces by contemporary Chinese choreographers. The production value of
the performance was on the whole, rather low. The music was not live
and was of a noticeably poor quality projected through the speakers.

Of the pieces performed, the contemporary Chinese pieces were the most
interesting, the Western pieces feeling uninspired and unsure of
themselves. The show opened with a piece by a contemporary Chinese
choreographer performed with a solo piano accompaniment, the dancers
making use of simply brightly colored outfits telling a tale of
courtship of the single female dancer. The finale was a choreographed
version of the final movement of Beethoven's ninth symphony. This
piece above all was a poor choice of closing, though it is an
interesting selection in what it is. The performance was meant to
showcase the range and depth of ballet and the classics, bringing in
the Western classics to give an unfamiliar audience a taste of Western
ballet. As such, that they picked Beethoven's 9th – arguably the most
famous piece in all of Western music – is rather funny: showing off
the best there is to offer. The problem being that piece is not a
ballet, but a symphony, and the pinnacle of the form, and so any
choreography comes up as wholly lacking compared to the music. It came
off far to gaudy and inappropriate to the piece, the dancing more akin
to a poor Hollywood production.

One piece worth mentioning however was a contemporary Chinese dance
piece performed before the finale. The piece incorporated Chinese fan
dancing but in a much less traditional way, utilizing modern ballet
techniques combined with a decidedly more Chinese feel.

Speedism

The Belgian futurist architecure/visual design duo "Speedism" on
Saturday gave a preview of their work as part of a symposium on
futurism and architecture in Shanghai held at Lounge 18 on the Bund.
The duo presented a computer rendered tour of a strange model of a
future (and possibly futurist-based) Shanghai. The piece, while quite
colorful and at times intricate, was overall much too silly to really
have a point. I was reminded more of small games and movies I used to
make using Flash that, while fun to make, weren't really worth much
more. And though the panel gathered for the occasion repeatedly
informed us audience members that this duo was doing some really
"provocative," "daring," and "new" designs that are "leading the
architecture world forward" and that will surely have "a lot of
influence in the architecture world," I never got the answer of what
exactly it was about their works that were these things, or for that
matter that this stuff really even had anything to do with
architecture, and not just some guys creating weird looking things, on
their computers.

Dutch Pavillion for Expo 2010

On Saturday at Lounge 18 this past weekend, the architect, John
Körmeling, of the Dutch pavilion for Shanghai's Expo 2010 gave a short
presentation of his upcoming work as well as talked about his
experiences as an architect and as an architect working in China. An
interesting note about his piece for the Expo 2010 is the fact that
the entire pavilion is lacking doors and is meant to be experienced as
a single entity, as opposed to a series of rooms. The pavilion is
built on an elevated spiraling road with buildings almost hanging off
the edges. The overall effect looks something like a mix between
Shanghai's elevated highways and a 17th century traditional Dutch
styled town. Of note in Körmeling's talk was a statement that China
provides a level of freedom and experimentation to the architect (and
not to mention the commissions).

Blackboard

The exhibit Blackboard held in Shaghai's M50 district at ShangART
asked artist to create works around the central theme of the
Blackboard, a tool that has played such a large role in the
development and education of an entire country and that holds such a
definite place in the collective conscious of the Chinese people. Many
of the artists took radically different approaches to the task
producing works as varied as: neon lights shaped like the outline of a
blackboard to a small garden attached to a physical blackboard. Of the
exhibit, one specific piece worth mentioning was one in which several
large pieces of a computer hard drive were attached to a board and
spray painted black to look like a traditional blackboard. The work
points out the changing structure of the modern classroom with
electronics playing an ever larger and larger role, pushing out the
traditional tools such as the blackboard. The piece succeeded as well
in retaining an aesthetic balance, the black spray paint at first
making the complex and intricately designed computer chips look overly
simple from a distance, yet at close range revealing the true, and
beautiful, nature of the sight.

Titanic

Zhang Liaoyuan's new video installation Titanic, presented at the
Shanghai Gallery of Art (Three on the Bund), shows three videos of
people performing everyday activities (shopping for groceries, at a
library, eating at a restaurant) while water sprays at them. The
effect is supposed to call to mind the Titanic as it sank, sprouting
high-pressure leaks as the ship's hull was breached. The point of the
work is supposed to be a comment on modern society, as if we are like
those passengers of the Titanic. However, where the actual passengers
of the Titanic were surely fleeing for their lives, the actors in
Zhang's work remain calm, as if to say our society is trying to
pretend that those life-threatening leaks in our world don't exist.
The problem with Zhang's work is it is too blunt, to clichéd, and too
simple without enough context or explanation. Sure he thinks our world
is going to Hell. Why? He could explore why the people aren't fleeing
for their lives, but he doesn't. He could explain what those "leaks"
in our society are, but he doesn't. In fact, he doesn't even make an
attempt. The work is overly vague and ultimately meaningless, coming
off as more pretentious than anything else.

Daily Rituals

This weekend, on May 23th, Shanghai Art Gallery opened up a new
exhibition entitled Daily Rituals, with works gathered from previous
exhibitions. The exhibit's linking theme is that the works all are
explorations by the artists of the everyday. It seems like a very
broad definition and it is. Works range from Zeng Li's photography of
Chinese streets to Qiu Shi-hua's abstract lanscape paintings to Zhang
Liaoyuan's "sculpture" piece of public lockers (meant to "question our
desire for security in public space and the way in which we accept and
comply with a synchronized order in return"). One of the few
noteworthy pieces at the exhibition was Yang Jiechang's "100 Layers of
Ink." Yang, trained in traditional Chinese ink paintings, in "100
Layers of Ink" does just as the title suggests, puts 100 layers of ink
on paper. As the ink dries, it constricts, crinkling the paper. When
the work dries, the cracks and stretch lines present an abstract image
– a newly created aesthetic from an old medium.

Video Gaming in Art

The idea of video gaming in art presents an interesting new range of
possibilities in the interactive, individual, unique, and random
nature of art. In works we have seen in class, video game technology
has been used to allow the audience the ability to affect the art as
it is going on. This creates a new dynamic where the art becomes more
fluid, and the audience becomes part of the art. This is an idea that
has been firmly entrenched into contemporary art theory over the past
40 years, yet has new means of exploration now. Other fields opened to
this are the roles of chance now opened up into the artworks. Like the
aleatoric music of John Cage, video game technology allows new ways
for chance to be written into the "score." I would be curious to see
where these developments lead and to what degree they will be
connected with the world of video game industry, which has a major
step forward in the range and depth they can create in a program.

Additional Posts by Wesley Auyeung

May 1, 2009

Grassroots Performance

The performance we saw at the Grassroots theater was amazing. I really enjoyed all the different characters that we saw at the performance. I found myself empathizing with many of the characters we saw, and I could relate the characters I could not emphathize with to many of the things I saw in Shanghai.

 One of my favorite characters in the performance was the old man with the red bandana. I did not find out until after the performance that that red band was something that was given to students that performed well academically. Even so, I thought it was interesting how this old man still seemed like such a child despite his scholarly achievement and his age. In a way he reminded me a lot of my own grandfather. Even though my grandfather is not really childish, many of his mannerisms and habits match that of the character in the performance.

The beggar in the beginning reminded me of many of the beggars that I see in the streets of China. It was interesting to see her transformation from a beggar to a mother. At least, I thought that her performance at the end signified that she became a mother. Either way, I thought it was a very interesting twist. I had seen beggars in the streets before, and many of them use their children to manipulate foreigners' feelings to get foreigners to give them money and food.

May 14, 2009

 

Jin Xing – Chinese Ballet

Today we had a guest speaker named Alison Friedman, who was very knowledgeable in the field of ballet, especially in China. We also were able to watch a video about Jin Xing, one of China's most famous ballet performers. Her story was very interesting because she came at a time when China was even more conservative than it is today.

Jin Xing started her dancing career in the People's Liberation Army. She gained high recognition as a dancer in the PLA. After leaving the PLA, she went to New York to build up her career. Even though she was widely known in China as a great, if not the best, dancer, she was virtually a nobody in America. At this point, she had already started cross dressing, but she did not have her sexual reassignment surgery yet.

After she gained more fame in the West, she returned to China and had her sex reassignment surgery. Unfortunately, her left leg was left paralyzed for some time after her surgery, but she gained mobility back. She now teaches in Shanghai and is happily married with three children.

I found Jin Xing's story to be very interesting, especially since she was one of the first few transgender women to be recognized by the Chinese government. I feel that she has opened up many doors for transgender people in China in addition to creating awesome spectacles in dance in both China and the U.S.

May 21, 2009

Contemporary Mediums

Today in class, we learned about Chen Zhen and watched a video of various performances from artists such as aaaJiao. I found the lesson on Chen Zhen very enlightening. His idea of the world as a "bank" of ideas from which artists can deposit and withdraw from was very interesting. In addition, much of his art deals with breaking down traditional Chinese characters to find smaller meanings inside them to make up a bigger meaning of the entire character. I found Chen Zhen's art and ideas very interesting. Even though many of the ideas that Chen Zhen had were similar to some ideas I've had before, I still found his method of using them in his art to be unique. Many of his works convey the idea of him being a global citizen, and he has never been accused of playing the "China card". Ironically, I still believe many of his pieces are deeply rooted in Chinese culture, but it just is not as obvious with him as it is with other contemporary Chinese artists.

 

May 29, 2009

 Blackboard and other exhibits

 was able to visit various exhibits today. The blackboard exhibition was interesting, but I feel that some of the artists defeated the point of the blackboard exhibition. One of the first exhibits in the blackboard exhibition was an artist who had painted his blackboard completely white, and all I could think was "really?", but other than that, many of the pieces were very interesting. I especially liked the pieces where the artist had plants coming out of the board. Personally, I love texture in art, and I thought this was so cool.

I also got to visit the Shanghai Gallery of Art on the Bund today and that was pretty awesome. One piece really stuck out to me here, which was called New Machine by Liang Wei. The piece consisted of two giant adjacent canvases with a simple sketch of a really complicated machine on it. Careful observation of the piece made me notice that there were some imperfections on the piece that led me to think whether or not these imperfections were intentional or just laziness on the artist's part. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and figured that they were intentional. With or without the imperfections and blemishes, the meaning of the piece was pretty clear to me. I felt that the piece was a sketch of Shanghai and its physical development as a city for the past decade or so. The "new machine" was actually the "new shanghai". The relationship between Shanghai and machines is that Shanghai functions much like a machine. It doesn't need rest, it is almost constantly working, and people are always trying to upgrade it, ultimately making Shanghai bigger and better than it was yesterday.

 May 31, 2009

 Interview with Ben Houge

 I met up with Ben Houge today at Abbey Road near the Bund today. It was a pretty awesome interview, and I feel a little guilty calling it an interview since it was more like a conversation. I found out Ben used to work for Sierra, which makes a game called Counter-strike that I used to play religiously back in middle school. I also found out that Ben was a musical composition major in college and had some experience with digital audio but not an extensive background in it. Now, he is mainly a video game music composer with his own little projects on the side. Actually, he is on a break right now to do his own thing, so I'm pretty excited to see what he's coming up with in the near future.

During his interview, he talked about one of his pieces called Kaleidoscope which was featured in Beijing. This piece basically made a kaleidoscope out of both images and sound by positioning cameras and microphones outside of a hexagonal room with filters on both. The images and sounds were projected and played on walls in the hexagonal room to create a kaleidoscope effect. In addition, the filters on the cameras and microphones were fixed in such a way that it created an interesting blend of visuals and audio inside the hexagonal room. There is a more in-depth description of this exhibit in my paper, so I will not go into it too much here.

 I thought his piece was awesome, and I really wanted to see it, but I could not find it on his blog unfortunately. Either way, I had a great time interviewing him, and I learned a lot about digital audio and the video game industry as a whole through my interview. I really want to keep up with Ben through the internet, so hopefully I'll be able to keep up with his blog in the future.

 I really feel like I experienced a lot through the Chinese Contemporary Art Course in Shanghai. I came into the class with a pretty close-minded view of contemporary art in China, but now I feel like I am open to a lot more. I enjoyed going to many of the art exhibits we visited, and I feel cultured now that I have visited them. I probably won't have another chance to visit Shanghai in a long time, so all I can do now is keep up with the Shanghai art scene via the internet.

 

Chinese Peasant Paintings

After visiting the Zhonghong folk painting village outside of Shanghai I couldn’t help but wonder if these peasant paintings could be considered a form of contemporary Chinese art.  Their simplistic style and use of solid colors flattened the images and created an odd sense of perspective that reminded me of avant-garde paintings from the turn of the 20^th Century.  Although these paintings are depictions of daily life and folk culture, they are not painted in a realistic manner and make use of abstraction and patterning in its representational images.  Some of these painting have an interesting play of color and a simple stylized technique that is concurrent with the folk lifestyle.

However, paintings from artist to artist show very little variation.  It seems as though a style was developed and simply appropriated by the whole lot of Chinese peasant painters.  Any degree of creative is only shown through the composition and the scenes the artist chooses to paint.  But even these details are generally very similar from painting to painting.

These artists are working in their own gallery spaces and selling work, but upon visiting a painting village, one will notice that the row of galleries feels as if it belongs to some kind of mocked up theme park, designed to attract tourist.

There is tradition and style to these works, but little innovation and place within the changing times.

    

Bai Yiluo and Movana Chen at the Opposite House hotel in Beijing

Although showing in the lobby of a hotel, which seems odd for a mixed media installation of this type, this body of work was able to demand attention and importance while fittingly incorporating itself with the sleek open design of the atrium.

By using untraditional art materials, such as supermarket catalogue pages and Chinese passport photos, both artists were able to make interesting comments on identity and our compulsive desire to consume.  The Body Container pieces were especially impressive.  By deconstructing the supermarket advertisement pages to resemble coiled metal, Movana Chen was able to build an armored body suit that devours the human bodies’ figure.  In our relentless desire to consume, at the end of the day, it is the product that actually consumes our life.  Bai Yiluo’s Camouflage Jackets express a very similar idea that specifically makes the statement that we are what surround ourselves with. 

     

Sun Xun: Shock of Time

The morning before going to SZ Art Center so see this animation, I was stuck in my hotel room with a broken arm flipping through the channels on my television.  After aimlessly scanning through the same old junk, I came across a channel that was showing old black and white cartoon animations from the 1930’s.  Although the dialogue was in French, and thus hard for me to understand, it was infrequently scattered throughout the animation and of little importance when compared to the drawings.  This old animation was a breath of fresh air.  The rhythm had a strange cadence and the hand of the creator was made obvious and even played upon.  By acknowledging that it was a series of drawings, the cartoon was exciting and unlimited by the restraints or expectations of reality.  Today, too many animations try to fool the viewer into thinking that they are following some kind of created reality with rules and control.

Shock of Time dismissed any sense of rules or reality and acknowledged the fact that it was created by an artist’s hand.  This self-awareness brought forth a strange and intriguing narrative that was open ended and allowed for more viewer involvement.  The style was simple and ghostly and the choice of newspaper background was an interesting investigation of time.

Yu Na and Xu Yong: Solution Scheme

Solution Scheme consists of a series of large color photographs that talk about artist Yu Na’s experience as a prostitute.  Each scene is constructed and show Yu Na as the central figure.  Her gaze is directed towards the viewer, expressing the fact that she is self-aware and in conversation with the external world.  As the piece description describes, Yu Na “holds a button that controls the camera shutter; she is the one with her finger on the button, the one in control of each scene.  Thus is her identity and status transformed from prostitute to artist.”  The personal content and the artist’s desire for control are especially touching and revealing.  This series becomes less about the world of prostitution than about an individuals struggle to find herself.

The space where these pieces are hung is also notable.  The works are at the very end of an old warehouse in the 798 Art District, hung on the top section of a café, that requires the viewer to climb up a set of stairs and duck under a dividing beam to see each individual photo.  The space is inconvenient and out of the way, but inviting to those that dare to take the initiative and dive into its racy content.

“Individual” Show at JoyArt

This exhibition seemed to unite its pieces with the theme of the individual within the massive context of the human race and the increased mechanization of human contact.  Pieces include works such as long strip of white paper that was ripped into pieces of similar sizes and taped back together again, as well as a framed grid intertwined with rubber human figurines, most of which are caught in its system leaving just a few to wander on its edge.

One of the more interesting pieces was an installation titled Widows by Judith Neilson and Wang Zhiyuan.  It consisted of a ring of plastic robotic females, each identical except for the sequence at which its light blinked and the time at which their “fan-heads” would face each other.  All were powered by the same electrical source, which was placed in the center.  One of the most eerie qualities of the piece was the way in which the figures communicated with each other.  Each is reserved and separated in an orderly fashion, but all seem to have the same purpose or source of expression.  The manner in which the fans move imply an effort towards conversation, but the uniform way in which the fans sway back and forth and spew up air is limited and very specific.  When thinking of these sculptures as widows it easy to see a common struggle to move out of their shell and reach out to the world, yet all are unified under the same struggle and can begin to connect back with life.

Ye Nan: The Ball is Flat

This installation as well as the oil piece Who hid that secret in the space between the football and the football field, which was shown in the same room, was a great consideration of space and a clever/insightful comment on the human race.  Ye Nan uses soccer as a culminating symbol of the game of life.  Soccer is the most popular and widely played sport of the world for a reason, and its ability to bring different cultures together, and get to our desire for competition, interaction, and companionship is especially revealing.

This exhibition is impressive in the way it makes use of the entire room.  Soccer ball shells are carefully pieced together to create linoleum type flooring that covers every inch of the floor.  Upon entering the room my attention was immediately taken by the large earth shaped ball that was covered in real grass and painted with a small isolated goal box.  I didn’t even notice the floor until I could feel how it changed my movements and received the weight of my body.  It’s no wonder that this installation was curetted by Qiu Zhijie, who considers space in a very similar way.

This piece points to a trend that I feel separates the contemporary Chinese art scene from the West.  Exhibitions such as Art for Sale (1999), Post-Sense Sensibility: Distorted Bodies and Delusion (1999), Persistent Deviation/Corruptionists (1998) to more recent exhibition such as Breaking Through the Ice and The Ball is Flat, all put a considerable amount of thought into the environment that art creates.  Chinese artists have been quite experimental with finding new places and ways to display their art.  Much can be lost when a gallery hangs artists’ painting next to each other in the same exact way.  This neutrality can be boring and take away life, emotion, and intent.  After all, if an artist is to display a work for audience to see, he/she should be sure that the viewer can be drawn to it existence and given a context to completely appreciate the work.

Qiu Zhijie: Breaking Through the Ice

This installation, which was shown at UCCA in Beijing, is massive in its scale and ambition.  Upon walking into the space, one cannot help but be overwhelmed by its size and ability to completely envelope the viewer.  However, when entering this exhibition, one no longer remains the viewer but becomes a participant.  The individual is left to wander through the hull of a gigantic ship, obsessing over the impressive intricate details, while trying to piece together the larger puzzle that speaks on the modernization of China and remembering the hardships and troubles of its past.

This installation was probably the most impressive and complete exhibition that I had seen during my few months in China.  It is able to balance a dense amount of information with the space it gives to the viewer.  All the pieces are distributed through the space in a way that allows the viewer to explore without being bombarded with an overwhelming amount of data.  Qiu Zhijie considers every inch of the space, from the floor, to the walls, and the shape and feel of the room.  The curvature of the upper walls fits seamlessly with the thick wooden barricades that resemble the belly of an old and massive ship.  The space is also contained but opened to the point where the ceiling seems to disappear.  I was able to see this exhibition at two separate occasions (during the week of its opening and closing) and each time was just as exciting, full of new discoveries and insights. 

       

Shen Yuan: Hurried Words

Hair holds a very special place in the lives of humans across the world.  Its natural appearance, thickness, color, and shape holds enough information to indicate a person’s cultural background, while the way one chooses to cut, style, color, or maintain their hair is an indicator of a person’s character and personal identity.  One’s hair becomes an external representation of a person, showing aspects of an individual’s identity for everyone to see.  But at the same time, hair has movement.  Its appearance changes with the flow of time and it physically leaves our body in its natural shedding and our imposed desire to have it cut away from us.  We love it because it is a part of us, but at times we loathe it because it doesn’t always hold up to our desires.

The Hurried Words show at Ullens Center for Contemporary Art exemplifies these cultural ideas of hair.  It consists of two installations, one a large brush that has captured the hair of many and the other a sea of hanging hair dryers that blows air through rolling cloth tongues at timed intervals.  The brush’s size indicates the magnitude at which we are joined by this common expression of identity, while the number of different hairstyles is a reference to our individuality.  We all seem to filter ourselves through this physical manifestation of the modern world, where part of us is inevitably caught in its crosshairs.  To me, the hair dryers represent time and language and way our voices can be droned out by the concurrent sound of the many.  Time is unexpected but relentless and forever moving. 

Chinese Art and Animation

Matthew White
June 1, 2009
Contemporary Art & New Media in China
Final Paper

Chinese Art and Animation

New technology has, in recent decades, allowed for a
plethora of new and innovative methods to create as well as display
art. Artists today aren't limited to static images hung on walls or
placed on the floor, and instead take advantage of entire spaces with
sound, light and movement. One such medium that utilizes all three of
these elements while still possessing an emphasis on technical
drafting skill would be animation. Still seen as somewhat commercial
in China's contemporary art world, a number of artists have been
working with animation, and in turn are slowly legitimizing a highly
fertile art form that's potential has only begun to be investigated.
Much like its immobile cousin, illustration, animation is
still struggling to assert itself into the world of high art. Despite
many artists primarily working with illustration and/or animation, it
is still more aligned with design as opposed to painting. Whether or
not this is where it belongs is up for debate, and a number of Chinese
artists, specifically Shanghai-born artist Tang Maohong, are using
their unique take to catapult the medium into the galleries and
museums, right alongside traditional oil landscapes and marble
sculpted-figures. Unfortunately, animation, both in its commercial and
fine art form, is locked in an uphill battle, fighting its label as
"cartoons," which in turn applies an arbitrary naiveté to the work,
regardless of the actual content and themes being presented and
explored. Although this can certainly be a disadvantage, there are
also benefits. Animation allows for a certain amount of playfulness
and can often slip by being too heady as a video or documentary may
be, simultaneously putting forth the same questions and discussing the
same issues. It can also create any scenario with unlimited
possibilities which would be impossible for a live action video. This
sort of ambivalent space is where many artists are working, especially
young tech-savvy Chinese artists such as Wu Junyong, Bu Hua, Tang
Maohong, Qiu Anxiong, Chen Shaoxiong, Sun Xun and others. In fact it
is mostly artists born after 1970 (and after most of the Cultural
Revolution) that have taken to animation to the point where it is its
own emerging and growing movement (along with digital works) in
contemporary Chinese art. Each artist contributes to this movement
through their own individual styles and processes, as well as methods
of exhibition.

Ranging from manual hand drawn images to computer generated objects,
animation, in a way, less an art movement within itself and more of an
extension or "upgrade" to pre-existing art forms like painting and
drawing. There are many features animation has over other art forms.
Obviously the major difference is the presence of movement. Animation
is, simply, moving pictures so motion is vital to a piece of animated
work. What movement also brings is the element of time, something an
unmoving piece of work doesn't possess in of itself. To watch an
animation, one must stop and watch the screen or projected image for
the full duration of the piece. Thus, the viewing process is
transformed into an experience where the viewer and work are
interacting rather than the viewer just gazing upon a piece. To
elevate or enhance this experience, music and sound are often included
in animation. While little static artwork incorporate sound or music,
it is one of the key characteristics of animation that set it apart
from other art forms. So with the addition of sound, viewing animation
takes on a cinematic feel, drawing the audience in more completely,
thus allowing for a more satisfying viewing. As an added perk, many
popular musicians or sound artists collaborate with animators, and a
melding of art scenes occur. In the case of China, with the art world
still somewhat small I comparison to either the US or Europe, cross-
overs such as this are possible, with the result far outweighing the
sum of its parts. However there are also some downsides to animation,
such as the time and money required to produce it. To hire a studio or
use professional equipment to produce a work would be far too costly,
especially since many animation artists are young and not as
established. Their solutions are as inventive as they are frugal such
as Bu Hua using Flash and showing much of her work online, Sun Xun
using newspaper or Qiu Anxiong who hand paints every frame himself.
Another obstacle is time. Animating takes a long time since each frame
(usually around 12 a second) must be created by the artist. It is
unlikely that an artist would devote years of their life to create one
animated feature, therefore they opt for shorts over full-length
features. In terms of artistic value, animation has few flaws, and
they mostly occur upon viewing the work. While mostly a problem for
longer works, watching an animation forces the viewer to see exactly
what the artist intends, thus eliminating any self-discovery or
interpretation. In addition, an animation exists in its fully realized
form, with little room for potential or change. It is in its final
state and rarely takes into account the environment in which it is in.
Whereas a painting or sculpture can interact with the room or viewer
in terms of space, animation forces the audience to stay in front of a
screen or projection and watch the images on the screen. The visual
alone harkens a sort of Orwellian propaganda or that old Apple
advertisement. Although early Chinese animation dealt with shadow
puppets, today all animation is displayed on a screen, thus needing
electricity, viewing space and a number of other requirements. While
this may seem limiting to some, many young Chinese artists have been
able to capitalize on animations unique strengths and weaknesses to
create very exciting modern works.

Of the handful of Chinese animation artists, there are a few whose
work stands out for both its form and content. Tang Maohong is a
native Chinese artist in his early 30s who has been working almost
exclusively in animation for the last few years. He studied
traditional styles in school and dabbled with photography and video
before moving on to animation. Currently based in Shanghai, Tang
Maohong has been exhibiting his animated shorts at a number of places
including Shanghart Gallery, BizArt and the Zendai Museum of Modern
Art. His 2005 show, Orchid Finger, was quite well received and is an
accurate example of Tang's work. By combining traditional Chinese
forms with absurd and often perverse content, Tang's animations border
on the humorous, critical and surreal. By utilizing a light box and
recognizable subject matter, Tang's works show technical skill, while
at the same time commenting on China's constantly moving modern
culture. Most of Tang's pieces are displayed in a circular format,
echoing Song Dynasty era paintings of flowers and birds. Many of his
pieces contain things such as animals, plants and fruit that are
always subverted in some way. Alongside these traditional elements,
are usually two or three figures, interacting with the oversized fruit
and animals in a comedic way. The figures almost consistently faceless
and are engaged in perverse acts, juxtaposing repressed sexual
thoughts with serious matters including revolution, the environment
and human interaction. Tang takes full advantage of animation's
ability to be both meaningfully significant and tongue and cheek. So a
figure may be dressed in a Chinese military uniform holding a rifle,
but his pants are pulled down around his ankles. Tang describes his
work as being a way of expressing his thoughts and emotions, but also
making the viewer laugh. By using essentially cartoon characters, Tang
can break certain social taboos and avoid any negative backlash or
having his work being labeled as "shock art." Tang also enjoys being
able to do anything he wants within a certain set of guides, such as
the size of the work, the style, etc. For the time he is content with
his short animated works, but would still be open to creating longer,
more extensive cycles. His main focus is to raise animation and
cartooning to the level of high art by referencing art history in
addition to popular culture in a lighthearted yet mature way, in order
to explore the kinds of issues a painting or a performance would
address.

Similar to Tang Maohong's work is that of Wu Junyong, particularly his
animated works. Known internationally due to a 2006 solo show at the
Chinese Contemporary Art gallery in New York, Wu uses software such as
flash to create his animated music videos such as "When We Are Rich,"
a flash movie aimed at critiquing China's ever-increasing
materialistic mentality with inane images and music. Wu also includes
undressed figures in his pieces, but they are the majority of the
content. The figures are always naked and wearing red cone hats acting
in a goofy manner, and the animations are also short clips looped over
and over into a hypnotizing repetition of colors and line (something
unreachable for regular drawing). Wu work is often labeled as
unintelligible or nonsense, however the inherent silliness of his
pieces exist to soften the true social content being discussed. The
similarities between Wu and Tang's works show a sort of universal
animation language, using simple gestures and movements, sometimes
along with quick sound clips, endlessly looped. The lack of a plot or
even a loose narrative moves the artists' works away from commercial
animation and more towards fine art. Since nearly all commercial
animation exists in the form of cartoons for either TV or movies, the
removal of specific events or characters undermines one of the
characteristics that keeps animation in the realm of popular culture
as opposed to the contemporary Chinese art world.

Contrary to this is the work of Qiu Anxiong, which relies on a
narrative and story and has a clear beginning and end. More like a
short film, Qiu's works draw heavily upon cinematic traditions and
techniques to create a sort of short (roughly thirty minutes) animated
art movie. Qiu admits that normal, non-moving mediums are "not enough"
to get his point across and he prefers the meditative act of painting
each frame by hand. The resulting piece is a beautiful, flowing
display of what only animation can do including music, in order to
evoke an emotional response from the viewer. The subject matter Qiu
uses in his work is very controversial such as war, rapid
modernization and urbanization, as well as biological issues such as
cloning. While watching one of Qiu's works, the viewer is deeply drawn
into the constant movement of the ink and paint, which transforms from
one frame to the next. To Qiu Anxiong, a narrative is a necessity,
there in order to bring the viewer into the dystopic painted world he
has created. Qiu's work exists as a warning towards the rapid
industrialization of the world and the possible consequences that may
arise because of it. But unlike Wu and Tang's works which deal almost
exclusively with traditional Chinese imagery, Qiu's animations,
specifically "The New Book of Mountains and Oceans," a two-part black
and white film, seems to function on a more global scale, referencing
both the 9/11 attacks as well as the chaotic situation in the Middle
East. In the videos, technology and machines are replaced with
nightmarish creatures with Qiu treating the modernization of China as
an insectoid invasion. Displayed at the 2006 Shanghai Bienniale, Qiu's
animations have achieved the level of reverence often reserved for
more traditional high art forms. Perhaps it is because Qiu's work is
basically a series of paintings and is not so different from existing
Chinese ink paintings. But instead of representing one school of
thought within animation, Qiu, along with Tang and Wu, are of a small
group of artists using today's technology to create a set of works
aimed to entertain as well as educate.

Aside from the aforementioned artists, there are a number of Chinese
artists whose work broadens animation in terms of both production and
presentation. Bu Hua, a female artist originally born in Beijing in
1975, uses vector images and flash to create modern animations about
life in a constantly growing and changing urban landscape. Bu Hua then
uses the internet as her main form of exhibiting and already has a
following online. Trained as a painter, Bu's style is very much a
product of her traditional upbringing combined with today's technology
to create work similar to Qiu Anxiong, but with a focus on young
people. Perhaps Bu blurs the line between high art and popular
consumption animation the most by displaying her works online for
free, yet achieving a level of sophistication and maturity that
resonates with both the average viewer and the seasoned art critic.
Sux Xun is another animator who's interesting style has inserted him
into today's foremost Chinese animators. Xun's work incorporates text
and outside images, amongst his own renderings, as he mixes
traditional art techniques with new media. Often political or
historical, Xun's work address the world today, which he accomplishes
by creating his animation on newspapers. The viewer sees the date,
images and headlines that immediately place a context around the Xun's
moving images. While not as revolutionary or innovative as Bu's work,
Xun tackles sensitive subject matter within his animations.

Similarities are obvious between many of China's young artist
animators who present absurd surrealist images always with a dash of
humor and fun. Perhaps because animation makes this possible, most of
the above artists ingeniously employ ridiculous content in order to
discuss serious issues in China today including censorship, military,
aggressive modernization, etc. By using a cartoon, the viewer is not
seeing a realistic representation of say a person with their head
blown off, or little naked men in red hats dancing, but instead a
illustrative rendering that can achieve the same effect, without the
starkness and controversy of a real picture. In this way animation's
potential is far higher than photography or even video, which is why
so many young artists choose to work in it. With computers being more
and more integrated into daily life, digital animation seems to be the
way of the future. Instead of spending hours in a studio slaving over
a canvas with oils and brushes, the new generation of Chinese artists
is in front of the monitor, seamlessly moving the mouse to create new
digitally generated imagery. Artists like Feng Mengbo utilize 3-D
imaging programs to create work that exists as data rather than
tangible materials. Feng's work, while not really considered animation
as much as digital art, seems to made with the same perspective – one
driven by the irony and wit of youth culture.

For now animation art in China is in a youthful state with its leading
figures experimenting and having fun with a relatively new medium. The
movement's leading artists are varied, but with one common language
consisting of moving images, sound and experience. Through their
works, animation can exist as both high art and commercial
entertainment, with occasional sublime overlap. Currently entering a
stage of adolescence, the next step of Chinese animation art seems to
be getting through puberty. A hectic time of changes and upheaval, but
with animation being considered high art as the end result. But
perhaps where animation exists now is its true place within the art
world. Forever skirting the line between animation art and popular
cartoons, animation in China seems to be coming into its own, creating
a language of visuals and audio, marrying the two to envelope the
viewer in a unique artistic, yet entertaining experience.

Wesley AuYeung - Midterm

Wesley AuYeung

            The Cultural Revolution in China opened up a whole new world in which the people of China could more freely express themselves. In particular, much of the censorship placed on art other forms of media was repealed following the end of the Cultural Revolution. As a result, art flourished throughout China. Many cities in China, starting with Beijing, began allowing artists to put up their work in public exhibitions, parks, and buildings. Exhibitions such as the China/Avant-Garde Exhibition, the first national Chinese art exhibition featuring works from avant-garde artists, gave aspiring Chinese artists and non-artists a chance to finally see artists’ works without the veil of censorship covering whatever the government did not want the people to see.

            Many art exhibitions have popped up in China since then, especially in Beijing. Apart from being China’s political capital for the past few hundred years, Beijing has always been very cultural. Many famous and historical structures reside in Beijing, such as the Palace of Heaven, the Forbidden City, and Tiananmen Square amongst other historical sites. As such, it comes as no surprise that Beijing is also the art capital of China as well. However, Shanghai has recently become more and more involved with the art scene, and the art community located in and around the Bund has been expanding. But even though Shanghai is on its way to one day stealing the spotlight from Beijing, it may never truly be the art capital of China due to reasons rooted in Shanghai’s economy-oriented culture.

            Shanghai is known for its lively nightlife and thriving economy, but the city’s art community is not something that instantly flashes to mind when mentioning Shanghai. For those searching for a more cultural and bohemian part of Shanghai, the Bund would be the best bet. The Bund is the place to go for people wanting to visit art exhibitions and galleries in Shanghai. But even though the Bund and the areas surrounding the Bund are pouring with art and culture, the rest of Shanghai overshadows the creative sector with its fast-paced metropolitan atmosphere.

            Despite Shanghai’s overall atmosphere, the creative sector in Shanghai is still something to behold. Towards the beginning of the semester, I went to the “Intrude Art & Life 366” exhibit at the Zendai MoMA. Inside, I saw many works from various Chinese artists in the form of pictures, paintings, drawings, messages, sculptures, and videos. One exhibit that really caught my eye was the “Injured Angels” exhibit by Liu Jin. I suppose one of the main reasons this exhibit got my attention was because the angels in the exhibit were hanging from two ledges perpendicular to the entrance, but I was intrigued nonetheless. When I read the little placard that gave the description and reasoning behind the artist’s work, I found myself nodding my head in agreement. The angels had been displayed in public before they reached the Zendai MoMA. Liu Jin hung the angels from buildings across Shanghai to represent the fragility of Shanghainese people amidst the urbanization of Shanghai. In my opinion, I do not believe it is the people who are fragile; it is the culture that is truly at risk during this time of rapid change for Shanghai.

            I did not know what to expect from contemporary Chinese art before I saw it on display at the Zendai MoMA. All I could think about when I heard Chinese art were those classic paintings of tigers against a mountainous background that many older Chinese artists paint on scroll paper. With this in mind, I figured contemporary Chinese art would be something that resembled artworks I’ve seen in New York, except with an Asian influence. Unfortunately, I was a little disappointed to find that many of the pieces I saw in the Zendai MoMA did not have the Asian influence I expected. I suppose my sense of art may not be as sharp as some of my peers since I myself am not an artist, but I did not see anything in the artworks that truly set them apart from what I might find at an American art gallery or even a European one, for that matter.

            More recently, I was lucky enough to visit the Propaganda Poster Art Center. There was a huge collection of propaganda posters from the Mao era in this gallery that Yang Pei Ming, the owner of the center, collected. Though the posters themselves weren’t created with the intention of displaying the artists’ creativity, I enjoyed it nonetheless. As I walked through the gallery viewing each poster and reading its corresponding caption, I could not help but think to myself about how I would probably never be able to find a gallery quite like this in the United States. Each poster portrayed Americans and other non-communist Western people as monsters or demons, while the Chinese and China’s communist comrades were drawn as glorious heroes. In the United States, it was much more likely to see the opposite. Even though the creative aspect of this poster art was suppressed by the censorship the government instilled at the time, I still admired each poster for its cultural purpose. The posters represented a time in China that was unique to China, and because the posters are physically from that time, they are that much more valuable as cultural and artistic works.

            Fortunately, things have changed a lot since then. Though many artists continue to get censored by the government, censorship is much lighter than it was during Mao’s era. During Mao’s reign, nearly anything that represented independent thought that did not coincide with communist thought was destroyed. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao set up campaigns to destroy any type of art including literature, paintings, and sculptures. Intellectuals would be persecuted, and people were driven to the point where they would report their own family members to the government in fear of the government punishing the entire family for hiding something. Now, artists can enjoy the freedom of painting and creating nearly anything they want. The only limitation as far as censorship goes is censorship of works put on public display.

            Despite the fact that censorship laws in China are much less severe than they were in the past, this selective censorship still creates some problems in the art community. Due to the selective censorship the government now enforces, some artists have been bullied into creating for the people as opposed to creating for themselves. Artists begin to think that the only way to become successful is to create art that can be displayed and that other people will like. Thus, these artists lose their potential by succumbing to the will of the government. Even so, many artists still create whatever they want regardless of what the government says.

            During the “Fuck Off” exhibition, held in the Eastlink Gallery warehouse in Shanghai, many contemporary Chinese artists put up various pieces on display. The exhibition was notorious for the selection of artwork that went up on display. Many of the pieces had a very disturbing nature. One artist, Zhu Yu, submitted a performance entitled “Eating People”. The exhibit itself contained photographs of the artist presumably cooking and ultimately eating human fetuses. After one of the photographs leaked on the internet, the FBI and Scotland Yard began investigating the circumstances. Eventually, the Shanghai police shut down the exhibition before its intended closing date. The exhibition marked Shanghai’s first attempt at an international gallery of contemporary Chinese art. Though some may consider the exhibition a little dark, it set the wheels in motion for future international surveys to be held in Shanghai and the rest of China.

            Art has come a long way in China since the end of the Cultural Revolution. Though artists now experience much more freedom than they did in the past, I still do not feel that contemporary art in China is quite up to par. I have seen few artists, let alone works that truly distinguish contemporary Chinese art from the rest of the world’s contemporary art. The only artist that I can really think of to accomplish such a feat is Yu Youhan, who made pop-art out of photographs of Mao Zedong. Though the pieces themselves resembled what Andy Warhol had done with Marilyn Monroe’s photographs, I felt that what Yu Youhan did was a step in the right direction for contemporary Chinese art.

            Contemporary art in China is still young. Many artists in Beijing and Shanghai are still experimenting with different types of mediums to convey their ideas to their audiences. Though the cultural capital of China is currently Beijing, it may change someday. There has been a lot of recent growth in the art sector in Shanghai. Many artists have come to Shanghai to try and cultivate the art scene here, and hopefully they’ll make a difference. But I think in order for the artists in Shanghai to truly make a difference, they have to embrace China’s past and incorporate more of it into their works, including the parts of China’s history they may not particularly want to remember.  

The Art Scenes of Beijing and Shanghai - A Comparison by Doreen Ho

Chinese contemporary art in Shanghai has developed a persistent momentum in the past few decades and continues to develop with the encouragement of creative clusters, namely creative spaces such as 50 Moganshan Road and Tianzifang. Yet, Shanghai, as an international, leading economic metropolis, has not yet seen the magnitude of commercialism and renown as Beijing’s 798 Dashanzi Art District has experienced in the past ten years. Why hasn’t Shanghai’s art scene been able to attain the international recognition and success of Beijing’s art scene? In what direction is Shanghai’s art scene heading?
In order to understand this divide, it is important to understand Shanghai’s unique history and development within the past few decades. Following the Opium Wars in the 19th century, foreign concessions were established in Shanghai, most prominent of which were of British and French influence. Thus, early on, Shanghai was exposed to the influence of the Western world. Today, Shanghai has become an international metropolis, the city that represents modern China and the possibilities for the future. Beijing hosts a different city dynamic, however. Politically central, Beijing protects the ancient traditional Chinese architectural constructs such as the Forbidden City and is the home base for the government. Artists from all provinces have convened in the nation’s capital, all striving to produce their works. Perhaps the city allows an identity that conditions artwork produced in the nation’s capitol to be deemed authentic Chinese contemporary art, as a strong nationalist pride in Beijing reckons it the cultural center of China. Additionally, Beijing hosts the famous academic art academies in the nation, including the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA).
Contrastingly, Shanghai, the global metropolis of business and the economic hub of China, has established itself as the quintessential modern international city of the world that developed from a history steeped in international identity. Additionally, the art scene in Shanghai has grown from a grassroots movement, under the artists’ advisement, that has been less commercial than Beijing’s 798. The battle to represent contemporary Chinese art continues to oscillate between the two cities.
Shanghai’s art scene has developed out of a distinguished history. Shanghai’s art development has been continually interrupted since the 1930s, during which works were lost, burned, and damaged during the Sino-Japanese war and during the period of civil war unrest that ensued. By 1949, art was solely used as a political mechanism, controlled by the Communist Party as a means to carry out massive, sweeping political campaigns, such as the Cultural Revolution. Only in the early 1980s, after the initiation of Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms and the opening of China’s doors to the world, did art begin to develop for art’s sake and experimentation become a new way of expression. In retrospect, the Chinese contemporary art scene is actually quite young. Throughout the 1980s, artists explored and learned from Western art books, catching up on over 150 years of the progression of modern Western art. China had been isolated for nearly 30 years following the inception of Communism, so it was only beginning in the 1980s that artists could gain exposure and exchange with the Western art world. It was beginning in the 1980s that artists had the new opportunity to experiment and explore art for themselves and for art’s sake, and not for the people or to push wide spread government policy. It was also not until the year 2000, when the Shanghai Biennale was the first time the government officially allowed multimedia projects to be exhibited to the public.
The concept for an art community like 50 Moganshan has been somewhat successful, as these creative spaces have become commercialized, attractive and accessible to tourists and foreigners. Whereas, the concept for a creative cluster such as 50 Moganshan and Beijing’s 798 is a strategic means of connecting with the local environment, these creative spaces have also emphasized the great contrast between Chinese contemporary art as it is viewed domestically and internationally. While innovative in theory, Shanghai’s 50 Moganshan attracts foreign art collectors and tourists, which begs to question whether or not more local faces can become a greater demographic of whom the Chinese contemporary art world can effectively reach. At a recent studio visit, artist Xu Zhen remarked on the importance of capturing a wider audience and forging connections with Chinese citizens. He noted that the art scene might develop stronger if there is attention for Chinese art beyond the art community. Art must reach out to the people-- and maybe this could develop better in Shanghai if M50 had more of a user-friendly atmosphere, including more cafes and shopping in the area, similar to 798. Moreover, it is crucial that local Chinese citizens are given the opportunity to engage within the development of art culture in Shanghai and in the nation. This kind of local grassroots approach is essential to establishing a strong art scene in Shanghai and within China.
Notably, the “A Starting Point: Intrude Art & Life 366” exhibition at ZendaiMOMA gallery was a forward step towards addressing this issue. The exhibition brought creative art, performance art, and new media art directly in contact with Chinese citizens. The local Chinese held a leading role in the art created for the year long project. Furthermore, “A Starting Point” explored many contemporary social issues that China faces today. From the right to privacy and youth identity, to consumerism, prison reform, women’s rights, and how to live in a harmonious society as the nation with the world’s largest population, the exhibition provided a looking glass into China’s new struggles and the challenges that face the nation’s stability and identity as it strives towards rapid development and change initiated by the government and pressure from the international realm. There exists an underlying tension, internal and external forces that are pulling China in different directions, in a paradigm of pressures and expectations. Is China ready to live up to its title as an economic power and its consequential implications, socially and politically? In recent years, China has been the center focus as a rapidly developing nation, an economic powerhouse, with the potential to expand its military might. It seems that everyone wants a piece of the development—China is developing ties with all nations, with dense pressures from the global economy and especially with the onset of the recent global financial crisis. Chinese contemporary art struggles with international pressures as well, and more and more often, it must reconcile external perceptions with domestic perceptions, or rather, a readiness attitude, that come from within the nation; this is the foundation for development that spans multiple disciplines, including the Chinese economy and art world. Are the people ready to change, to move, to develop? Inevitably, infrastructure may change and develop at a fast pace, but the Chinese people must also be ready for that change as well. Otherwise, Shanghai and China will be built with infrastructure but no real foundation to maintain and encourage future growth.
Chinese contemporary art is realizing this identity struggle that involves the complex interweaving of Chinese contemporary art being its own art, and not a mere imitation of Western modern art. Moreover, the international art market, and the international realm in general, all have their eyes on China. They see rapid change and potential. However, China must change on its own from within its nation. More importantly, Chinese contemporary art should be allowed and accepted to stand on its own. Herein lies another divide: the concept of East and West is still quite foreign to today’s newly emerging globalization and interconnected world. Until the word “foreign” can be diluted to mean less of what it means, certain divided notions of what Chinese contemporary art should be compared to what Western contemporary art has already established will still exist.
The development of identity spans across disciplines; music and art are in the midst of developing a strong identity that is solely Modern Chinese. Arts culture may also be dependent on the economic well-being of Chinese citizens. As more and more local Chinese reap the rewards of the market economy, perhaps the income disparity gap will seem less apparent and art will be accessible to both the foreigners/expat world and local world alike.
Another significant factor that influences the momentum for development of art in Shanghai is invariably the issue of censorship. Censorship continues to impede on the free expression and possibilities for experimentation in the art world. The Fuckoff Exhibition in 2000 was a striking example of the gravity and sensitivity of government censorship in art exhibitions. The exhibition, featuring 46 avant-garde artists’ works, was closed by Shanghai police due to controversial works, most notably, the performance art installation of “Eating People” by Zhu Yu. Censorship continues to be a sensitive topic in the development of experimentation in Chinese contemporary art.
Additionally, a generation gap has formed among different aged artists in China. This ultimately has affected the different experimentations and artistic works produced in the past thirty years. For example, artists such as Yu Youhan have produced works that touch upon Maoist era content, while artists such as Shi Yong and Xu Zhen have focused on more of China’s contemporary social issues. Qiu Zhijie’s recent exhibition, “Breaking Through The Ice”, at the UCCA in Beijing’s 798 District explores the idea of “total art”. Total art refers to the social and cultural research of Qiu’s work and his presentation of the historical significance of the Nanjing Bridge against today’s social backdrop; his installation combines his research and emanates social awareness. Qiu’s installation work creates a model for artistic experimentation via pushing the limits of what one can and cannot do within the constraints of government censorship. More and more experimental conceptual and performance art have been created in the past ten years and continues to push the limits of censorship today.
For some artists, such a Shi Yong, Chinese contemporary art is trying to find expression in new forms; for Shi, he found this new expression in installation art. He was looking for a new form of expression that built upon the abstract art thru the 1980’s and the political pop he felt was “too kitsch”. He wanted to build a new language, a new style, a new identity to Chinese contemporary art. However, in forming his own artistic language, he realized the challenge of trying to balance his own artistic ideas while being careful of not losing his audience. Therein lies a tension: how far can one push the limits in art experimentation? However, this point must also coincide within the same plane as the artists’ vision and the government’s censorship. With artists being arrested and exhibits being closed down on the day they open, it is difficult to measure how much experimental artistic action an artist can take. There is a constant fear of the Propaganda Department that creates a censorship dilemma, a dilemma that emanates in the back of everyone’s mind.
The artists’ initiative in organizing large-scale art productions is a testament to strength in numbers and continues to be a grassroots movement that allows discussion and experimentation and engagement with local Chinese. Social constructs have helped build a social art community, in which artists live in artist villages and exchange ideas and opinions, and even come together to work on special exhibitions and large-scale creative projects, such as the Long March Project and the Twelve Artists’ exhibition held in Shanghai, which was the first exhibition organized by the artists themselves.
I’d like to see art develop within the country first— it takes time and also, developing a domestic audience. It is important to learn from the examples of artists in the West; however, it is also important to let Chinese art grow from its own soil. A deeper exchange between the East and West will facilitate growth of contemporary art in China. Also, art may be more effective if it is fed deeper into daily life for locals to access arts culture information via media and in education. The art world must continue to draw an ever-widening audience; it must open up, reach out and relate to the Chinese people.
With a long history of international expats and foreigners mixed with local Chinese, Shanghai has begun to intertwine these demographics along economic lines. As the economy continues to raise the quality of life in China, new Chinese wealth will help Shanghai facilitate a flourishing art scene as new collectors and help develop a higher appreciation for arts culture in China. This gradual opening up and exposure to the art scene will allow exploration and continued experimentation in the art world. Furthermore, the booming of internet users and thriving netizen bloggers in China have aggregated efficient and widespread resources to information. The internet is now making censorship more and more costly for the government, as it is becoming harder and harder to stop the free flow of information, internationally and domestically. Censorship may gradually dissipate or at least become less apparent as time goes on. It is crucial that experimental art continues to push the limits further and further, challenging censorship and building a foundation for contemporary art in China. It is only a matter of time before Shanghai’s art scene will flourish and open up economically, socially, and politically from its present stance.

Shows at ShanghART and Bizart

There is a combined artists show at ShanghART, with our friends Zhou Tiehai, Shi Yong, and Yu Youhan and many others. There are a some interesting works in the show-- such as a wild millet-coated polyester sculpture by Wang Guanyi, titled "The Materialist" and collages by Xue Song. There is a really cool and colorful piece by Wei Guangqing, titled "The Zhu Family Instructions 19-24" that reminds me of a Justice song, with bright colors forming vertical stripes, creating the background for the everyday movements of moral righteousness as recorded in the ancient book of the Zhu Family Instructions, depicting figures similar to those seen in old Chinese scroll paintings. Each panel of moral instruction is labeled by a traditional saying that are timeless and can be applied universally, such as: "If others are experiencing good fortune, do not become jealous." I particularly enjoy this work because it mixes a kind of pop contemporary, modern culture, symbolizing the modern development of China fused with old traditional moral codes and standards. Wei does a great job incorporating the modern with ancient Chinese roots.

The Group Show at ShanghART Gallery runs from April 5, 2009 thru June 15, 2009.

(Photos courtesy of ShanghART Gallery: http://www.shanghartgallery.com/galleryarchive/exhibition.htm?exbId=2401)

NYTimes article on Contemporary Chinese Art during Economic Recession

"China's Art Market: Cold or Maybe Hibernating?"
An Article from the New York Times written by David Barboza, published on March 10, 2009

The New York Times published an article with a brief overview of the contemporary chinese art scene in March. The article begins by describing the massive and decadent studio of famous chinese artist, Zeng Fanzhi, whose works can sell up to the millions of dollars in international auction houses. However, with the recent downturn and financial crisis depressing the world economy, the demand for Chinese contemporary art has fallen, after recent years of high success in the international art market. The article states that "by 2007, 5 of the 10 best-selling living artists at auction were Chinese-born, led by Zhang Xiaogang, who trailed only Gerhard Richter and Damien Hirst. That year, Mr. Zhang’s auction sales totaled $56 million, according to Artprice.com." Many critics said that the suddenly explosive demand for Chinese contemporary art in recent years would find itself in a bubble market in the coming years, and most recently that bubble has been stressed by the economic crisis. Galleries have been closing, people losing their jobs...it seems the Chinese art world has hit a wall.

However, there are some who see this time as an optimistic opportunity for creativity to thrive. oduced their most popular works. “The market zooming up made a lot of people blind and deaf,” said Jérôme Sans, director of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing. “Now, we can have production of the mind, not just the product. No more of this making fast money" (qtd. in NYTimes). There were concerns that for a time, the commercial success of rising-fast chinese artists whose works were hitting jackpot in auction houses, were directing the chinese contemporary art world into imitations and reproductions and not enough original works-- the art was working for the market and money, but not art for art's sake. However, with the market at a hault, it seems that chinese artists can take this time to develop strong and innovative works without the pressures of money, hype, and sales. It will be interesting to see where the direction of chinese contemporary art moves towards during this recession and further down the line.

"China's Art Market: Cold or Maybe Hibernating?" can be found at NYTimes.com: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/arts/design/11decl.html

Chen Zhen on Transexperience

Chen Zhen’s interview on Transexperiences was an insightful look into the discussions and debates of cross cultural experiences and conflicting consequences that may emerge out of a newly interconnected world. Chen explains that a “’Spiritual running-away’ is the most profound experience one can have in life. One should learn to break out of one’s own “cocoon” and be courageous enough to break away from one’s own self and to abandon one’s own cultural context…..[this is when] creative capacity has reached the most active zenith.” This “self-sought loneliness” via moving about and engaging with transexperiences reminds me a lot of Thoreau’s escape to Walden. I was also reminded of all our students’ experiences studying abroad and traveling—Chen’s words relate precisely to our own experiences being here in Shanghai and away from our safety zones, “our cocoons”. In this light, Chen encourages the movement of the art world to encompass artists’ experiences that include both the perspectives of home and away from home, both literally and figuratively. Chen also illustrates that “to immerse oneself in life, to blend and identify oneself with others” is a foundational concept of art, and transexperiences help us to recognize this. He goes on further to say “You have me in you, and I have you in me.”

Chen also talks about what is familiar to us in relation to what is “the other” or what is foreign to us. Chen says that in a “Multi-other world…the center will be left totally blank. This is my revision of the definition of “Others””. Cultural protection, going back to the roots, rediscovering and rebirthing the classics in Chinese philosophy and way of life has been a recent reaction to the imitation of the West. Some Chinese feel they’ve lost their own country’s distinctions and special cultural traits, because the country is trying so hard to modernize and with that, they look towards the West. Chen adds, “Those that are in power suffer from a major paradox: being ideologically conservative, they worship nonetheless whatever is foreign. It is the same disease they’ve been having over the last hundred years.” Therefore, Chen wants us to realize that transexperiences help us to find perspective and balance between the familiar and the other: “A long spell of separation leads to reunion, and a long spell of reunion leads to separation” is no other than a principle of dealing with the world and its people….its called “the self-sought loneliness of opening-up and moving-about”. He also suggests a new way of looking at cultures, not as foreign and conflicting or contrasting, but rather Chen says, “I pay more attention to the psychological processes of their culture.” And therein lies the key to understanding different cultures and peoples as well as applying those new ways of thinking to contemporary art that is fresh, original, revitalizing, and engaging.

Blackboard Show at ShanghART H-Space

The concept of the Blackboard exhibition at ShanghART H-Space is interesting—how to reformat and rethink the use of the traditional tool of learning in the classroom. The exhibition, featuring works by several contemporary artists, included the restructuring and imaginative designs around a 1m by 2m blackboard. It was exciting to see each artist’s interpretations when given a blackboard to work with. Many artists added 3D elements to their works, such as shoes, microchips, etc. whereas some created video performances (Jin Shan's video, To New York, where he pursues illegal taxis to give him a life to New York with the blackboard attached to his back was humorous and creative). Blackboard carvings were quite popular as well, and artist Kan Xuan rebuilt his blackboard to resemble a trash bin. While some works were less original, there are a few works that stood out among the crowd. I particularly enjoyed the crow’s eye video piece by Lu Lei, the sound system blackboard piece by Ye Linghan and of course, it was a riot to see Zhu Yu’s depiction of himself in Court Transcript, on trial for his controversial work in the 2000 Fuck Off Exhibition for eating a fetus (i wonder if it will ever grow old!).

The Blackboard exhibition, curated by Fu Xiaodong including works by artists Wang Xing Wei, Xu Zhen, Yang Zhen Zhong, Xiang Li Qing, Liu Wei Jian, Lu Chun Sheng, Huang Kui, Tang Mao Hong, Shao Yi, Yang Fu dong, Shi Yong, Xiao Jing Feng, Zhang Ding, Qiu AN Xiong, Liu Chuang, Chu Yun, Liu Wei, Jiang Zhi, Jiang Yun Ke, Qiu zhi jie, Chen wen Bo, Kan Xuan, Zhu Yu,Wang Yu Yang, He An, Cheng Ran, Zhang Pei Li, Geng Jian YI, Sun Xun, Lu Lei, Chen Xiao Yun, Tong Biao, Zhao Yang, Wu Jun Yong, Ye Ling Han, Jin Shan, Chen Wei, and Chen Yu Fan, runs from May 23, 2009 thru June 30, 2009 at ShanghART H-Space at 50 Moganshan Road.


(Photos courtesy of Art-Ba-Ba: http://www.art-ba-ba.com/mainframe.asp?ThreadID=24667&ForumID=0&Category=&lange=en)

Modern Dance Lecture: Parallels with Contemporary Chinese Art - Alison M. Friedman

Alison M. Friedman visited our art class to give an insightful presentation on modern dance in China. Very intelligent and energetic, the Fulbright scholar gave a well organized and interesting lecture on the brief history of modern dance and initiated very important discourse on modern dance development in China vs. internationally. The China vs. West debate, and local vs. global debate are discussions that have cycled itself in the classroom, studio visits, and in our readings. It seems to be a discussion that spans across many disciplines, not just art, but modern dance, hip-hop/music culture, etc.

Friedman touched upon the internal and external factors that have a great influence on the direction of modern dance in China today, many factors, in fact, that also correlate along the same lines as those seen in Contemporary art in China. Friedman explained that there is very little funding for modern dance, as well as a limited audience. In addition, there are very little theater infrastructures, limited opportunity to perform, and modern dance education is still developing and being realized within the community, with a brief history of about 20 years. These are all internal factors that have affected modern dance development in China in recent years. Furthermore, external factors include demand that is overwhelming the supply for creative works. There is pressure to create something that is the quintessential expectation of “what is Chinese” in Chinese modern dance (this speaks true of contemporary Chinese art as well). Friendman explained that dance is often interpreted as “not Chinese enough, or too Chinese.” This pressure from the external community is a very frustrating argument among arguments. When we think of Contemporary art or modern dance in the West we think of Contemporary art and modern dance, in general, as it seems the West dictates (or have dictated) the definitions of these artistic movements. However, when we think of modern dance or contemporary art in China, there is always the, “well what makes this Chinese?” I think the greatest fault in this debate is that artists from China already innately include their backgrounds and culture in their works, but this does not mean their Chinese stories have to stick out and be obnoxiously obvious that everyone else can tell it is a Chinese artist’s work (I'm thinking like bright colored dragon printed on the canvas). The fault in this debate is that “Chinese” is so specific that it has perverted the conception of the East as being extraordinarily foreign, and this has become the international expectation for Chinese art.

Friedman mentioned the reception of modern dance in China. Modern dance, as with other modern forms, asks something different from what the audience is traditionally used to. Friedman explained that traditional theater and dance in China has always been very narrative, whereas modern dance asks the audience for their own understanding and concentrated focus (similar to traditional Chinese ink paintings vs. contemporary art). I was shocked to hear that Beijing has over 400 theaters, but less than 10% currently operate. It is an endless and vicious cycle for underground/underdog movements because when you have no audience, you have no ticket sales, and no ticket sales result in no performances, and no performance means you won’t have an audience to sell tickets too, etc. and this keeps going in an endless cycle. It is important to build a diverse community around arts and culture.

Photo Courtesy of Beijing Modern Dance Company and BBC: www.bbc.co.uk/.../china_in_london_feature.shtml)

Hanzhou architecture—Lecture by Mathieu Borysevicz

Last week in class, photographer Mathieu Borysevicz visited us to talk about his recent works in China. Borysevicz's interest in signage in urban areas have reached between New York City, Beijing, Nebraska, and Shanghai. For the past few years, Borysevicz has spent time researching in Hangzhou and compiling a photo archive of the city’s architecture and signage for his new book, Learning From Hangzhou, due to premiere this summer. The book is well-organized with collages of colorful photographs bound to tickle your senses. I hadn’t realized that Hangzhou was such a modge-podge of architecturally savvy design and innovation! I was impressed to see Borysevicz’s photos of a Paris-inspired Hanzhou, as well as hints of Venice. Loved the photographs of the Hangzhou Architecture Design school. I particularly enjoy seeing the modern chic Chinese design in constructing smart and innovative buildings with steel and wood and bamboo. I thought his concept of photographing mirroring images for billboards was interesting, particularly for his project in Nebraska. In a recent project in Shanghai, Borysevicz made a collage of photographs he had taken of local construction workers and placed their smiling faces on the outside of the construction site for passerbys to view, as if seeing what was going on behind the construction gate. Borysevicz also interpreted this as a way of giving character to the construction of the building. I thought the concept was pretty interesting, although afterward it seemed that the construction workers were a bit shy about having their faces posted on the side of the street. I thought it was kind of fun and gave them due credit for the amazing work they do.

Mathieu Borysevicz on the web: www.mabz.net/

Nostalgia for the Future by Juan I-Jong at epSITE Imaging Gallery

On a recent visit to Moganshan 50, I came across the exhibition “Nostalgia for the Future” at the epSITE Imaging Gallery, a retrospective look at Taiwan through the lense of Taiwanese photographer, Juan I-Jong.
An interesting title for an exhibition and very fitting. Juan does a great job of bringing the viewer into the action and makes one feel engaged with the people in his photographs.
Looking at the black and white photographs of Taiwan, I was instantly taken back to the 1970’s life of the island’s citizens. Moreover, I couldn’t help but think of my parents and see my parents in the stunning portrait photographs of young children, elders, and workers carrying on with their day-to-day lives. Looking at Juan's photographs, I was also moved to reminisce about my own experiences and summers spent in Taiwan, finding a personal nostalgia for Guanyin Mountain and Danshui, the Fisherman’s wharf, just north of downtown Taipei. Juan got the mood and feel of the atmosphere just right in these photos, as I remember them.

When I was reflecting on the photographs in “Nostalgia for the Future”, I was swept up in hopeful and calming thoughts for the future. Of all the hardships between the mainland and Taiwan in the past decades, I thought of the recent developments for freer trade and how big of a deal it was when China and Taiwan agreed to have direct flights between Shanghai and Taipei (for so long, you had to transfer flights via Hong Kong). “Nostalgia for the Future” seems to remind us of what’s going on on the other side of the Taiwan strait, and reminds us that these friendly faces staring back at you through the lense of Juan is a gesture of outreach and an unveiling of many tense and divided decades.

The EPSON gallery is a fresh space with spot-on lighting that made Juan's photos come alive. The EPSON gallery is definitely worth a visit if you get the chance.



(Photo courtesy of epSITE Imaging Gallery in Shanghai: http://www.epson.com.cn/epsite/shanghai/index.html)

The exhibition “Nostalgia for the Future” runs from April 10, 2009 To May 19, 2009.

RMB City, Second Life, and the Future of Art by Daniel Kekacs

Daniel Kekacs

June 4, 2009

The Search for Real Meaning in Virtual Reality:

RMB City, Second Life, and the Future of Art

Creating a complex, interactive video game might be considered the
ultimate exercise in interdisciplinarity. The physical terrain must
first be constructed: sandy beaches, mountainous tundra, lush jungles,
fertile fields, fetid swamps, arid grasslands, and desolate wastes
flow like a palette of colors into one another and back again, forming
a seamless, logical, and hopefully realistic world. Defining
characteristics can be added next – moss-covered rocks, trees with
drooping vines, bales of hay, roads, and flowers, gradually giving way
to the addition of actual structures. Commonly, the type of people who
will inhabit these structures or the physical environment in which
they are located contribute greatly to the thematic mood and
architectural design of the buildings: nomadic people live in straw
huts in the grasslands, reclusive wizards live in spired castles
frosted with snow, and evil witches wear the skins of animals they
killed in the swamps, etc. But this is just the graphical, visual-arts
dimension of a video game. Once the entire world has been created,
even filled with doodads, textures, and thematic hues, the world still
feels one-dimensional. A story must be invented – who lives here, what
is their livelihood, what motivates them to go about their lives, from
what do they draw comfort, inspiration, and meaning? What are their
future hopes and greatest fears? Finally, a third element can be
introduced to further augment the quality of the world: sound. Music,
whether dark and foreboding or loud and triumphant, is but one element
to be considered, although it is certainly the most influential.
Insects chirp at night, waves wash against the shore, wind howls
through snowy crevasses and water bubbles through shady streams. Each
element – the graphics, the music, and the story – must complement one
another precisely in order to achieve an effect as fully realistic and
as fully immersive as possible. Without ultimate perfection in each of
these fields, a virtual world could not possibly hope to fulfill the
players who will inhabit it or maintain their interest for more than a
little while. After all, if the virtual world isn't perfectly
enjoyable, why would anyone want to remain in it instead of the real
world? At least, this is what I thought, until I encountered the
bizarre creation known as Second Life.

Created in 2003, Second Life has none of the elements
I've come to expect from a "role playing" game, fantasy or otherwise.
To be frank, the gameplay is chunky, the graphics are cheesy, and
there's no music to speak of, though there are occasional sound
effects. How can I feel like I'm surfing if I can't hear the waves?
But the fundamental difference between Second Life and other popular
role playing games, like World of Warcraft, The Sims, Everquest, Final
Fantasy, Ultima Online, and the Elder Scrolls, isn't that play in
Second Life occurs entirely online (some of these games are for single
players only, others must be played online with others). It has to do
with the way that content is presented to the player. In Second Life,
the player literally has complete freedom to do and create whatever
they want, a power that is at once both limiting and incredibly
liberating. Games like World of Warcraft, however expansive, beautiful
and comprehensive, force upon players a single story, a single world,
and a single way of interacting with that world and the other players
who inhabit it. Even with all the freedom that these role playing
games promise, none can grant the freedom one can enjoy in Second
Life. If you are the sort of person who happens to like a pre-
constructed world, or who is lucky enough to find that another's
conception of visual or aural beauty agrees with your own, then you
might never feel an urge to explore Second Life. This is especially
true if you are lacking in a creative imagination or skill with
computer graphical design – and I happen to fall into both of these
categories. But even as frustrated as I can become with Second Life's
inability to immerse me completely, and even though I could argue that
the game literally has no point, I can wholeheartedly admit that its
potential is great.

I am no "noob" (newbie, or newcomer) to the underground
world of role playing games, online or offline, single player or
multiplayer. In the Elder Scrolls I've saved entire races from
malicious gods (multiple times, all by myself), I've raised countless
families and built many mansions for myself in The Sims (I only cheat
sometimes), and every once in a while my father and I still fight for
the Horde against the armies of the Alliance in World of Warcraft,
although lately the undead Lich King has become a more dangerous
threat. Over the course of our years playing computer games (I still
very much consider myself a casual gamer, although my dad more and
more defends himself by claiming, "I'm just good at what I do"), we
have had several serious discussions about the ultimate value of
playing video games, and while I won't claim to have reached a
conclusion, I do have some well-defined thoughts on the subject. I
know next to nothing about economics, but the best way I can explain
the value of video games is as an investment: the ultimate price of a
video game is the amount of time you invest playing it. At certain
times of the day, or during certain parts of the year, investing that
time in other activities is more beneficial than spending it playing
video games, whether in terms of your social, physical, or mental
health. Sometimes the question is easy: "Should I spend an hour
fishing by myself in virtual reality, or spend an hour fishing with my
uncle at our favorite spot this one last time before the cancer takes
him away?" (Hypothetical.) Other times, the question is simply shades
of gray. Unfortunately, it ultimately becomes a matter of how much you
have invested in a certain game. The more time you've spent within a
particular world, the more time you will have ultimately wasted if you
suddenly decide that it is better for your marriage or your schoolwork
if you quit playing altogether. So it becomes a dual issue: you must
not only invest your time sensibly, but make sure that you are getting
reasonable returns on your investment. If playing a particular video
game isn't fun anymore, you are wasting your time. But if my father
and I enjoy spending an hour or two once or twice a week wandering
around World of Warcraft together, I think that is a justified use of
my time. I am interacting with other people, whatever the interface,
and more importantly, I am deriving enjoyment from the thing I am doing.

Interestingly, through my travels in Second Life and my
interactions with players there, I came to realize that for some
people, it is not necessarily an enjoyment of virtual life that drives
them to play online games, but rather a profound unhappiness with
their real lives. I spent about four days floating around Second Life
before I discovered that every character had a public profile that
other people could read. By this point I had already begun to assemble
my impressions about Second Life, the worlds that comprise it and the
people that inhabit it, but I will come to that later. On this fourth
day, on a virtual island of Oahu, Hawaii, walking down the docks to
vote in the Miss Tropic Hawaiian 2009 beauty pageant (the girls'
photos were displayed on walls nearby, and I couldn't tell if they
were real or virtual), I happened to find a woman sitting on a couch
on the dock. Her name was Delanna Anatra, and this is her profile:
"Sadly divorced, Live in Florida. Letting SL save me as i survive the
death of my parents. Thanks Second Life as I can finally laugh again,
without the help of my doctors prescribtions.

Pending a surgery I am afraid to have. Sl makes life fun again."

While the skeptic in me grated at the almost cliché nature of this
profile, I had just ended nearly three hours of wandering around the
most popular parts of Second Life and the "Showcase" areas, and seen
next to no one. I was feeling lonely and pessimistic because of my
experiences in a virtual reality, and I wasn't about to question the
legitimacy of this woman's actual reality. Delanna seemed absorbed in
thought as I stood nearby reading her profile, and I was reluctant to
disturb her. I teleported to Rome instead.

My encounters with other people were not more meaningful or uplifting.
I met my first friend, named Grave Rumble, flying around a beautiful
garden world named Botanica. I had already given up trying to meet
people in RMB City, and was going through a random player's Top 5
favorite places list that I'd found online. When I met Grave Rumble, I
was overcome with joy. "How come second life always feels so empty?" I
immediately asked. "I don't know. I don't see too many people," he
replied. Not sure what else to talk about, and not ready to get too
personal, I asked him if he had ever been here before. "No, I fell off
my friend's island, and now I don't know how to get back :( " and
later confided, "ur actually the first person ive talked to other than
my friend." A poignant image of this boy (or man, or whatever) falling
out of the sky and landing in some strange land full of people he
didn't know flashed through my head, and I thought of Dorothy from the
Wizard of Oz, but with scuffed black boots instead of magical ruby
slippers. "You should get a new texture for your eyes," he suddenly
told me. "Like this." I looked closer at his eyes: "They're black?"
"Nah, if you look closer its actually chain-link." I told him it
looked kind of creepy. "That's the point."

We flew around another minute or two, our conversational ability
exhausted. Finally, he asked me, "hey, I gotta go, but can I add you
as a friend?" Why not? If this doesn't count as friendship, then what
does? I said, "Sure." I haven't heard from him since.

As I said before, the islands of Second Life are not as exciting or
full of people as I thought they would be. Some like Botanica are
forest oases, and the emptiness feels peaceful. But in Paris, Rome,
and the one Celtic village I rode a motorcycle through, it felt more
like a post-apocalyptic universe than any utopia I would want to live
in. Where were all the people? The more beautiful and complex the
city, the more uncomfortable I felt wandering its empty streets,
passing hollow shops and riding empty metros. I do not know if you are
familiar with Shanghai's nearby European-themed cities, but I visited
the Northern European-themed city with a friend, and have also seen
pictures of Thames Town, the bizarre replica of London. Both seem to
be completely deserted. In the town I visited, all of the spaces set
aside for stores or cafés had unopened letters that had been slipped
under the door, everything was covered with dust, and it seemed
unlikely to ever open. I couldn't help but remember this feeling of
being in a ghost town as I wandered the empty streets of Second Life
Paris:

Rome was a similar experience, although the poorer attention to detail
on buildings and the lack of "little things" made it feel less like an
empty city than simply an unfinished diorama.

I wound up in the Celtic village a few days later because I was trying
to find worlds with hot-air balloon rides, but I was pleasantly
surprised to find a motorcycle waiting for me. All of the buildings
turned out to be stores where people were peddling objects they had
rendered or clothes they had designed, but of course nobody was
present – you can simply click and purchase items, if you have the
money.

Yesterday while searching for a world with a hang glider, I found
myself in Panta ta Ethne, which was an Egyptian-themed island, or so I
thought. It was one of the most beautiful places I have visited,
columns and sphinxes and pyramids galore, although when I tried to
ride the crocodile, a script had been written that made it appear as
if the crocodile were eating me! He growled and said something to me
about being stupid, but I just clicked "stand up" and was magically
out of his stomach. Something about the look of the papyrus reeds and
riverside dwelling nearby felt oddly familiar, until I heard a baby
crying, and I knew immediately that I had stumbled upon Moses, or a
world devoted to Moses, or at least something related to Christianity.
I noticed frogs hopping all around me; when my mouse flashed over one,
text popped up that read, "Want to know why there are so many frogs?
Click here!" I was pretty sure I already knew why. Before the locusts
could come, I ran away from the screaming baby until I hit the beach,
rode a surfboard (then an orca whale!), before moving on to explore
other parts of the island. I soon stumbled upon ominous signposts that
read, "Sick of Real Life? Click for some hope," "Loneliness. Can it be
cured? Click for notecard," and "Depressed? Learn about the Causes and
Cures." I clicked on them all, but either someone was playing a cruel
joke, or something script wasn't working anymore.

I had already made up my mind to leave when I spotted the last sign:
"Did this happen by accident? Click here." I'm pretty sure they
weren't referring to Second Life.

Although I already knew Second Life granted users freedom limited only
by their imagination, I realized in Panta ta Ethne that in this
virtual reality, people could literally do whatever they wanted. The
game even has features that enable users to embed audio and video into
certain locations, which is why I am now able to take you to the exact
place where the Dead Sea Scrolls were hidden (but I'll need an
internet connection and a Second Life account to show you). Whatever
your agenda, Second Life is a tool to use as you wish, which exactly
what Cao Fei's has done with RMB City.

Unlike "MAO – The Land of the Great Wall of China," a picturesque
world with an abbreviated but beautiful replication of the Great Wall
(plus a few rice paddies for authenticity), RMB City does not aim to
be a physical reflection of China or Chinese culture. In fact, most
worlds that I visited strove to be as beautiful as possible, but RMB
City is more of an abstract sculpture. Cranes fly in the sky, a Mao
statue sits tilted in the ocean, liquid pollution flows out of pipes
into streams while red and white striped smokestacks belch clouds of
smoke into the sky, something like the Imperial City in Beijing floats
high above the city, and above it all is a giant panda, suspended by a
crane that rests on the CCTV building. It's a jumble bits of pieces,
and I know there are plenty of "quirks" I haven't found yet, but its
more authentically Chinese than anything other Chinese world I
explored. While not exactly an inhabitable city, RMB City functions
more as a statement of contemporary Chinese issues than a place where
random Chinese Second Life players would be likely to come and say,
"Cool, I'm in China!" (Much like I did in Paris.)

To be honest, RMB City was one of the least interesting places I
discovered in Second Life. It was completely devoid of life, there
were no sharks or hang gliders to ride on, and the mayor's speech,
presumably defining the immediate purpose and goals of the city, was
vague at best:

"The stimulus package I am proposing has 3 parts: create jobs, offer
aid to those who need it the most, and stimulate the minds of our
fellow avatar citizens… Thousands are losing their jobs, people are
not spending, and our streets and buildings are deserted…We must now
act on a broad stimulus package to bring prosperity back to RMB City
and its avatar citizens…The time for talk is over. The time for action
is now! Let us learn our lesson: continue your excesses, not on
borrowing and spending, but on dreams and ideas instead!" – RMB City
Mayor Alan Lau

But as much as it fails at being a functional city – and was that ever
its intent? – I think it most effectively answers the question of what
the future of virtual worlds like Second Life can or will be. As I
mentioned before, constructed worlds are always confronted with the
difficulty of staying relevant and engaging to those who inhabit them.
RMB City addresses this issue by directly portraying real-life issues
in the virtual world of Second Life: it is not inventing narratives or
problems, but rather presenting them in a completely new medium,
allowing people to confront and question these issues at times and in
ways they never would have before.

Second Life could very easily become a new medium for integrating art
more seamlessly with our daily lives. I once searched broadly for
MOCA, and while I didn't find a museum, I did discover a world where a
man was selling his collection of Botticellis. RMB City is currently
hosting an exhibition within Second Life; although the project can be
viewed externally, it can only be experienced fully by avatars within
the game. Entrance is of course free, and available at any time of
day. Museums could easily construct Second Life extensions, and
immediately become accessible to any of its 15 million registered users.

But from my personal experiences and interactions in Second Life, the
purpose of the game seems, at least for now, to be a tool for lonely
people to add some excitement into their lives. I scoured many more
profiles, and while none were quite as heart-wrenching as the Florida
woman's I did stumble across on in Portuguese. Unable to speak the
language, I was forced to run it through Google Translate. When Jessy
Zardak is playing Second Life, this is the message she has chosen to
give to the rest of the virtual world:

is sad…….

It is not easy, not thinking of you
It is not easy, it is strange
Not tell you my plans, do not you find
All day in the morning while I take my coffee bitter
is still a day but faith you have in my hand
Actually, I need to learn
It is not easy, not easy

Where do you come, where are you?
Every time I leave I see you prepare for perhaps
Actually I need to forget
It is not easy, not easy

fica trissssssssssssssssssssssssssssssste

Não é fácil, não pensar em você

Não é fácil, é estranho

Não te contar meus planos, não te encontrar

Todo o dia de manhã enquanto eu tomo o meu café amargo

é, ainda boto fé de um dia te ter ao meu lado

Na verdade, eu preciso aprender

Não é fácil, não é fácil

Onde você anda, onde está você?

Toda a vez que eu saio me preparo para talvez te ver

Na verdade eu preciso esquecer

Não é fácil, não é fácil

The translation is rough, but the meaning comes through. And I am not
the only one to find undertones of emptiness and sadness in my Second
Life travels. For the 52nd Venice Biennale, Cao Fei created the short
film i.Mirror, chronicling her experiences in the virtual world.
Created with footage shot in Second Life, the film is just under 30
minutes long, and comprised of three parts: the first presents the
rampant capitalization and consumerism in Second Life, a trend not
limited to our own reality, while the second and third deal with the
feelings of loneliness that many people feel both in their real lives
and in their Second Lives. The best part, although it feels heavily
scripted, is part II:

http://coolkidsonly.org/0_o.php/882190/8b85f7/b52Oi8/vd3d3L/nlvdXR/1YmUuY/29tL3d/hdGNoP/3Y9akQ/4eVpoT/VdrdzA/mZmVhd/HVyZT1/yZWxhd/GVk/
China Tracy, Cao's avatar in Second Life, accompanies her friend/
partner "Hug Yue" through empty streets, while their piano duet plays
hauntingly in the background. "Why you enjoy SL?" asks China Tracy. "I
am looking for something, I think," replies Hug Yue, "But I don't know
what." "Forgot your pain?" continues China. "I suppose SL is a drug,"
comes the reply. Their stunted dialogue and the distance between these
two acquaintances further emphasized by China's broken English, only
reinforces the distance between their Second Lives and their
realities. "There is a cross-over between RL and SL," explains Hug,
"as you know, it is hard to separate feelings." As their feelings of
affection become slightly more developed, the pair are seen running
towards a dead end road, but a fence blocks their way. They cannot
jump to either freedom or death, as the chase camera angle would
suggest. Instead, they simply stop at the fence, and stare at the sign
"Bridge Out." Eating dinner against the background of New York City,
China asks, "What do you think it about the digital world?" "It's one
that is dominated by youth, by beauty, and money. And it's all an
illusion." Finally, the handsome Hug reveals that he is in fact in his
60s: "So there you are. I am old enough to be your father." China
seems unfazed: "Well, in SL, we are young forever." "Yes," Hug
concludes, "another illusion…"

Enjoying the rides in an amusement park I thought was
abandoned, I suddenly discovered myself in a water ride with another
woman. "Is second life always this empty?" I asked her.

"Not if you have friends."

Chinese Art and Animation

Matthew White
June 1, 2009
Contemporary Art & New Media in China
Final Paper

Chinese Art and Animation

New technology has, in recent decades, allowed for a
plethora of new and innovative methods to create as well as display
art. Artists today aren't limited to static images hung on walls or
placed on the floor, and instead take advantage of entire spaces with
sound, light and movement. One such medium that utilizes all three of
these elements while still possessing an emphasis on technical
drafting skill would be animation. Still seen as somewhat commercial
in China's contemporary art world, a number of artists have been
working with animation, and in turn are slowly legitimizing a highly
fertile art form that's potential has only begun to be investigated.
Much like its immobile cousin, illustration, animation is
still struggling to assert itself into the world of high art. Despite
many artists primarily working with illustration and/or animation, it
is still more aligned with design as opposed to painting. Whether or
not this is where it belongs is up for debate, and a number of Chinese
artists, specifically Shanghai-born artist Tang Maohong, are using
their unique take to catapult the medium into the galleries and
museums, right alongside traditional oil landscapes and marble
sculpted-figures. Unfortunately, animation, both in its commercial and
fine art form, is locked in an uphill battle, fighting its label as
"cartoons," which in turn applies an arbitrary naiveté to the work,
regardless of the actual content and themes being presented and
explored. Although this can certainly be a disadvantage, there are
also benefits. Animation allows for a certain amount of playfulness
and can often slip by being too heady as a video or documentary may
be, simultaneously putting forth the same questions and discussing the
same issues. It can also create any scenario with unlimited
possibilities which would be impossible for a live action video. This
sort of ambivalent space is where many artists are working, especially
young tech-savvy Chinese artists such as Wu Junyong, Bu Hua, Tang
Maohong, Qiu Anxiong, Chen Shaoxiong, Sun Xun and others. In fact it
is mostly artists born after 1970 (and after most of the Cultural
Revolution) that have taken to animation to the point where it is its
own emerging and growing movement (along with digital works) in
contemporary Chinese art. Each artist contributes to this movement
through their own individual styles and processes, as well as methods
of exhibition.

Ranging from manual hand drawn images to computer generated objects,
animation, in a way, less an art movement within itself and more of an
extension or "upgrade" to pre-existing art forms like painting and
drawing. There are many features animation has over other art forms.
Obviously the major difference is the presence of movement. Animation
is, simply, moving pictures so motion is vital to a piece of animated
work. What movement also brings is the element of time, something an
unmoving piece of work doesn't possess in of itself. To watch an
animation, one must stop and watch the screen or projected image for
the full duration of the piece. Thus, the viewing process is
transformed into an experience where the viewer and work are
interacting rather than the viewer just gazing upon a piece. To
elevate or enhance this experience, music and sound are often included
in animation. While little static artwork incorporate sound or music,
it is one of the key characteristics of animation that set it apart
from other art forms. So with the addition of sound, viewing animation
takes on a cinematic feel, drawing the audience in more completely,
thus allowing for a more satisfying viewing. As an added perk, many
popular musicians or sound artists collaborate with animators, and a
melding of art scenes occur. In the case of China, with the art world
still somewhat small I comparison to either the US or Europe, cross-
overs such as this are possible, with the result far outweighing the
sum of its parts. However there are also some downsides to animation,
such as the time and money required to produce it. To hire a studio or
use professional equipment to produce a work would be far too costly,
especially since many animation artists are young and not as
established. Their solutions are as inventive as they are frugal such
as Bu Hua using Flash and showing much of her work online, Sun Xun
using newspaper or Qiu Anxiong who hand paints every frame himself.
Another obstacle is time. Animating takes a long time since each frame
(usually around 12 a second) must be created by the artist. It is
unlikely that an artist would devote years of their life to create one
animated feature, therefore they opt for shorts over full-length
features. In terms of artistic value, animation has few flaws, and
they mostly occur upon viewing the work. While mostly a problem for
longer works, watching an animation forces the viewer to see exactly
what the artist intends, thus eliminating any self-discovery or
interpretation. In addition, an animation exists in its fully realized
form, with little room for potential or change. It is in its final
state and rarely takes into account the environment in which it is in.
Whereas a painting or sculpture can interact with the room or viewer
in terms of space, animation forces the audience to stay in front of a
screen or projection and watch the images on the screen. The visual
alone harkens a sort of Orwellian propaganda or that old Apple
advertisement. Although early Chinese animation dealt with shadow
puppets, today all animation is displayed on a screen, thus needing
electricity, viewing space and a number of other requirements. While
this may seem limiting to some, many young Chinese artists have been
able to capitalize on animations unique strengths and weaknesses to
create very exciting modern works.

Of the handful of Chinese animation artists, there are a few whose
work stands out for both its form and content. Tang Maohong is a
native Chinese artist in his early 30s who has been working almost
exclusively in animation for the last few years. He studied
traditional styles in school and dabbled with photography and video
before moving on to animation. Currently based in Shanghai, Tang
Maohong has been exhibiting his animated shorts at a number of places
including Shanghart Gallery, BizArt and the Zendai Museum of Modern
Art. His 2005 show, Orchid Finger, was quite well received and is an
accurate example of Tang's work. By combining traditional Chinese
forms with absurd and often perverse content, Tang's animations border
on the humorous, critical and surreal. By utilizing a light box and
recognizable subject matter, Tang's works show technical skill, while
at the same time commenting on China's constantly moving modern
culture. Most of Tang's pieces are displayed in a circular format,
echoing Song Dynasty era paintings of flowers and birds. Many of his
pieces contain things such as animals, plants and fruit that are
always subverted in some way. Alongside these traditional elements,
are usually two or three figures, interacting with the oversized fruit
and animals in a comedic way. The figures almost consistently faceless
and are engaged in perverse acts, juxtaposing repressed sexual
thoughts with serious matters including revolution, the environment
and human interaction. Tang takes full advantage of animation's
ability to be both meaningfully significant and tongue and cheek. So a
figure may be dressed in a Chinese military uniform holding a rifle,
but his pants are pulled down around his ankles. Tang describes his
work as being a way of expressing his thoughts and emotions, but also
making the viewer laugh. By using essentially cartoon characters, Tang
can break certain social taboos and avoid any negative backlash or
having his work being labeled as "shock art." Tang also enjoys being
able to do anything he wants within a certain set of guides, such as
the size of the work, the style, etc. For the time he is content with
his short animated works, but would still be open to creating longer,
more extensive cycles. His main focus is to raise animation and
cartooning to the level of high art by referencing art history in
addition to popular culture in a lighthearted yet mature way, in order
to explore the kinds of issues a painting or a performance would
address.

Similar to Tang Maohong's work is that of Wu Junyong, particularly his
animated works. Known internationally due to a 2006 solo show at the
Chinese Contemporary Art gallery in New York, Wu uses software such as
flash to create his animated music videos such as "When We Are Rich,"
a flash movie aimed at critiquing China's ever-increasing
materialistic mentality with inane images and music. Wu also includes
undressed figures in his pieces, but they are the majority of the
content. The figures are always naked and wearing red cone hats acting
in a goofy manner, and the animations are also short clips looped over
and over into a hypnotizing repetition of colors and line (something
unreachable for regular drawing). Wu work is often labeled as
unintelligible or nonsense, however the inherent silliness of his
pieces exist to soften the true social content being discussed. The
similarities between Wu and Tang's works show a sort of universal
animation language, using simple gestures and movements, sometimes
along with quick sound clips, endlessly looped. The lack of a plot or
even a loose narrative moves the artists' works away from commercial
animation and more towards fine art. Since nearly all commercial
animation exists in the form of cartoons for either TV or movies, the
removal of specific events or characters undermines one of the
characteristics that keeps animation in the realm of popular culture
as opposed to the contemporary Chinese art world.

Contrary to this is the work of Qiu Anxiong, which relies on a
narrative and story and has a clear beginning and end. More like a
short film, Qiu's works draw heavily upon cinematic traditions and
techniques to create a sort of short (roughly thirty minutes) animated
art movie. Qiu admits that normal, non-moving mediums are "not enough"
to get his point across and he prefers the meditative act of painting
each frame by hand. The resulting piece is a beautiful, flowing
display of what only animation can do including music, in order to
evoke an emotional response from the viewer. The subject matter Qiu
uses in his work is very controversial such as war, rapid
modernization and urbanization, as well as biological issues such as
cloning. While watching one of Qiu's works, the viewer is deeply drawn
into the constant movement of the ink and paint, which transforms from
one frame to the next. To Qiu Anxiong, a narrative is a necessity,
there in order to bring the viewer into the dystopic painted world he
has created. Qiu's work exists as a warning towards the rapid
industrialization of the world and the possible consequences that may
arise because of it. But unlike Wu and Tang's works which deal almost
exclusively with traditional Chinese imagery, Qiu's animations,
specifically "The New Book of Mountains and Oceans," a two-part black
and white film, seems to function on a more global scale, referencing
both the 9/11 attacks as well as the chaotic situation in the Middle
East. In the videos, technology and machines are replaced with
nightmarish creatures with Qiu treating the modernization of China as
an insectoid invasion. Displayed at the 2006 Shanghai Bienniale, Qiu's
animations have achieved the level of reverence often reserved for
more traditional high art forms. Perhaps it is because Qiu's work is
basically a series of paintings and is not so different from existing
Chinese ink paintings. But instead of representing one school of
thought within animation, Qiu, along with Tang and Wu, are of a small
group of artists using today's technology to create a set of works
aimed to entertain as well as educate.

Aside from the aforementioned artists, there are a number of Chinese
artists whose work broadens animation in terms of both production and
presentation. Bu Hua, a female artist originally born in Beijing in
1975, uses vector images and flash to create modern animations about
life in a constantly growing and changing urban landscape. Bu Hua then
uses the internet as her main form of exhibiting and already has a
following online. Trained as a painter, Bu's style is very much a
product of her traditional upbringing combined with today's technology
to create work similar to Qiu Anxiong, but with a focus on young
people. Perhaps Bu blurs the line between high art and popular
consumption animation the most by displaying her works online for
free, yet achieving a level of sophistication and maturity that
resonates with both the average viewer and the seasoned art critic.
Sux Xun is another animator who's interesting style has inserted him
into today's foremost Chinese animators. Xun's work incorporates text
and outside images, amongst his own renderings, as he mixes
traditional art techniques with new media. Often political or
historical, Xun's work address the world today, which he accomplishes
by creating his animation on newspapers. The viewer sees the date,
images and headlines that immediately place a context around the Xun's
moving images. While not as revolutionary or innovative as Bu's work,
Xun tackles sensitive subject matter within his animations.

Similarities are obvious between many of China's young artist
animators who present absurd surrealist images always with a dash of
humor and fun. Perhaps because animation makes this possible, most of
the above artists ingeniously employ ridiculous content in order to
discuss serious issues in China today including censorship, military,
aggressive modernization, etc. By using a cartoon, the viewer is not
seeing a realistic representation of say a person with their head
blown off, or little naked men in red hats dancing, but instead a
illustrative rendering that can achieve the same effect, without the
starkness and controversy of a real picture. In this way animation's
potential is far higher than photography or even video, which is why
so many young artists choose to work in it. With computers being more
and more integrated into daily life, digital animation seems to be the
way of the future. Instead of spending hours in a studio slaving over
a canvas with oils and brushes, the new generation of Chinese artists
is in front of the monitor, seamlessly moving the mouse to create new
digitally generated imagery. Artists like Feng Mengbo utilize 3-D
imaging programs to create work that exists as data rather than
tangible materials. Feng's work, while not really considered animation
as much as digital art, seems to made with the same perspective – one
driven by the irony and wit of youth culture.

For now animation art in China is in a youthful state with its leading
figures experimenting and having fun with a relatively new medium. The
movement's leading artists are varied, but with one common language
consisting of moving images, sound and experience. Through their
works, animation can exist as both high art and commercial
entertainment, with occasional sublime overlap. Currently entering a
stage of adolescence, the next step of Chinese animation art seems to
be getting through puberty. A hectic time of changes and upheaval, but
with animation being considered high art as the end result. But
perhaps where animation exists now is its true place within the art
world. Forever skirting the line between animation art and popular
cartoons, animation in China seems to be coming into its own, creating
a language of visuals and audio, marrying the two to envelope the
viewer in a unique artistic, yet entertaining experience.

Hip-Hop-Visual Arts Interdisciplarity and Pop Culture by Graham Bannon

Graham Bannon

Contemporary Art and New Media in China

Defne Ayas & Zhao Chuan

4 June 2009

Hip-Hop-Visual Arts Interdisciplarity and Pop Culture

The contemporary visual arts scene in China has recently begun to
delve into hip-hop as a new means of exploration and expression. Two
aspects of hip-hop that are so appealing are its relation to popular
culture and its subsequent status as a symbol of globalization. By
using hip-hop in conjunction with visual arts, artists have been able
to create works that are uniquely situated to comment of the state of
pop culture and globalization and their effects on modern Chinese
society, with a heavy focus on the advent of capitalism in China

Before we delve further into the connection established with popular
culture in the binding of the fields of visual arts and hip-hop, it is
important that we have an academic and philosophical grounding in what
exactly pop culture is and means. This grounding will allow us the
understanding to form the basis of what the visual arts world attempts
through interdisciplinarity. Specifically, pop culture's relationship
with society and forms of mass culture must be developed.

The theorist Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, in their essay "The
Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception," examine the
relation of popular thought with those objects of mass production-
oriented media. The two particularly dive into the concept of the
system of media and culture as a facet of the constant reproduction of
the capitalist cycle. What is worthwhile to our study here is their
analyses of the language and logical confines of this system and its
supposed manifestations in the public. A key concept to Adorno and
Horkheimer is how language and images have become tools used in such a
way as to effectively negate thought, serving only the endless
reproduction of society in a pre-fabricated mold while eroding the
possibility of intellectual exploration and creativity. It is such a
system of simultaneous subtlety and self-imposition by the same
population it seeks to chain, that, remark the two: it is "more
binding than" any "official rules and prohibitions" (47).

This is a concern that has begun to rear its head in Chinese society
as a more Western influence creeps in. Following the Cultural
Revolution and the domination of Soviet realism, the trend of Pop Art
began to take hold in various art circles throughout China. From the
1990's, Lee Shan's Rogue series and Yu Youhan's Mao series presented
those sacred images of the Cultural Revolution (Mao's portrait, for
example) in an irreverent and light-hearted tone. The pieces, with
their grounding in the hyper-politicized past of China, juxtapose the
images of Cultural Revolution China against the modern depoliticized
world of the increasingly capitalized China.

However, the works, with their appropriation of pop cultural images,
instead began to signify only that China had moved from the cult of
Mao to the cult of the RMB. With artists beginning to be accused – by
organizations as prominent as Forbes – of factory style production of
art for Western buyers ("Forbes Calls Chinese Contemporary Art a
Scam"), the credibility of the Chinese contemporary art scene was
called into question. These works, to Adorno and Horkheimer, signified
a growing social trend in which "developments are to emerge from the
directly preceding situation, not from the idea as a whole" (52).
Development is taken piece-by-piece, moment-by-moment, fractured and
meaningless with no relation back to a greater picture from which to
draw an understanding. Explains Kenneth Thompson in "Social Pluralism
and Post-Modernity," a study of post-modern thought:

If the links 'between the sequential chain of words' become unstable
and the sequence disjointed, then there will be a fragmentation of
meaning, manifested in an inability to think things through…Experience
is reduced to a series of unrelated presences in time and the
experience of present becomes overwhelmingly vivid (570).

This trend, to some, proved the flaws in much of the art world and the
pop-art movement of the 1990's. The works lost meaning as pieces
themselves that said anything and became instead merely empty attempts
to cash in on the current trend. This focus on the present – the over
eagerness of Western buyers – was heavily blamed in the bursting of
the art market bubble ("How the Contemporary Art Bubble Burst").
Several artists began to explore new approaches, such as Lu Xun who
began to experiment with installation pieces, or Cao Fei, emblematic
of the younger generation of artists who have begun to develop the
digital world they were raised in into their art.

What is it specifically about their concept of the language of culture
that abstraction can gain such a stranglehold over reality? To Adorno
and Horkheimer, cultural language (of which visual art is a part of)
operates within a superficial history of prior neural connections. The
meaning of words and images, the direction of thought – or the
subsequent logic of thought – is predefined along a set path cast by
an understanding of popular culture. The language has become merely
associative. It relies not on the meaning of what is presented, but
instead places that object, that meaning, in relation to some other
thing. As opposed to finding meaning through that other, its physical
from is supposed to act as a substitute for deeper understanding, for
actually any meaning. Here is, as described earlier, the equivalent
nature of language; all words can thus theoretically become equal, as
the associative reference is empty and meaningless. Cultural language
has become a second order semiological system with anything being
understood only in relation to some other representation of itself
(one which is wholly understood; its analysis already completed and it
is taken as a whole); the whole is understood only in relation to some
particular and the particular is only understood in relation to mass
culture, "crushing equally the whole and the parts" (45).

Hip-hop in China has the unique characteristic of, not
only straddling but also resting firmly in, both the realms of
mainstream mass culture and an independent experimental culture. The
distinction can be made between the two dominant sides of the hip-hop
world: the mainstream pop culture hip-hop found often in clubs and the
radio; and "underground hip-hop," a scene which is focused less on
mass recognition and more on the value of the artist as an
independent, creative, and experimental source. In many ways, the
entrance of artists usually associated with the visual arts world into
hip-hop culture is an attempt to escape the confines and influence of
galleries by working with independent experimental hip-hop artists.
The relationship can cover the range from: using hip-hop music as a
soundtrack to video works ("Wait Us Rich" by Wu Junyang), creating
performance pieces in which the art and hip-hop are more unified into
a single entity ("Hip-hop" by Cao Fei), and visual design works (i.e.
flyers, album covers, advertisements).

Mainstream, or "club hip-hop" (as its main platform
comes from clubs), holds with it the associations of the Western
American culture from which it comes (almost all "club hip-hop" is
American produced), speaking of wealth, modernization, and
globalization. "Club hip-hop" is comfortable in its role as a
commodity; it's audience as consumers of its production. In fact, this
form of hip-hop is dependent on a form of self-reproduction and
planned obsolescence exemplified by the field of DJing and "song-
mixes" (the reworking of songs with different beats and computerized
editing). DJ V-nutz, also known as Gary Wong, a two-time DMC China
champion, believes that pop culture appropriation in China is
prevalent, linked to a desire to be associated with the wealth and
status of the West:

So music scene is about pop music scene 99 percent. Even hip-hop you
can find a lot of club play hip hop but its Chinese people treating
hip hop as a pop culture…But Chinese people love pop culture. So no
matter what kind of new things come into china they will find a way to
make popular as soon as possible.

Works such as Wu Junyong's "Wait Us Rich" are full of
commentary on aspects of consumerist hip-hop, utilizing the stylistic
motif of "clone" images, in works such as "Parade":

[A] magical, mesmerizing continuum a character and its clones traverse
the scene variously losing their faces in sudden glutinous drops,
digging and cultivating the brain of a leviathan or simply bobbing
along playing their drums ("Wu Junyong: The Sky Has A Mouth").

Other examples such as this still from "Wait Us Rich" also play to
this idea, albeit in a slightly cruder fashion, the clone-like figures
literarily defecting money, a visual

representation of the waste involved in the process and to point to
the sameness created by turning art into a universal equivalent: here
shown to be money.

"Wait Us Rich." Artist Wu Junyong, 2005. ("Wu Junyong: The Sky Has A
Mouth").

In this regard, visual artists are given a medium whose
very structure is a means of expressing many of the growing issues
raised by increased capitalism and globalization. The introduction of
large sums of wealth into China over the past decades is reflected in
the opulent culture existing around mainstream hip-hop, in which
spending on luxury items (the so called "bling bling") is regarded as
the ultimate fulfillment. Mainstream hip-hop's connection with
expensive jewelry and brands such as Cadillac and Crystal Champaign
are examples. With luxury being centered on a preconceived Western
notion, the artwork tends towards the belief in a global sameness, a
loss of diversity into a universal culture. The use of hip-hop here
can be still further examined in the technical nature of the musical
genre, one in which the sound "loop" (a segment of sound connected in
a loop so as to have the sound constantly repeated as desired) plays a
large role. The sound loop, with its basic nature as a repeated copy,
something not in itself unique, provides a simple example. This idea
of a loss of diversity is mirrored in the advent of a universal
sameness of economics, with China's centrally planned economy
devolving into the private market capitalism of the same Western
culture from which the musical style originates.

This cultural language, argue Adorno and Horkheimer, acts on a subtle
level, promoting a specific "alertness" to its contours "so ingrained
that it does not even need to be activated" – it is entirely
automatic, drawing you in without your approval or even knowledge so
that it "can be alertly consumed even in a state of distraction" (45).
Every image or word, by being in reference to some other, by its very
nature acts to reproduce the system and bypass thought; the reference
is activated before the meaning of the word and before any analysis
can kick in, the fleeting character of modern media language has
darted off once again to some new, unconnected situation.

This analysis of the pop cultural elements of hip-hop is one that has
attracted several visual artists to try and examine how this plays
into the everyday lives of people. Wu's work "Wait Us Rich"
sarcastically uses several images that work to automatically call up
ideas of middle class life and consumption (a house, a garage, three
cars), along with a hip-hop track (the associations here being the
glorification of luxury consumption), but acts to cut off the
associations of the positive aspects of consumption by inserting in
direct references to waste and greed, hoping to create new references
or at least, to stop the automatic process and force the viewer to
step back for a moment as reevaluate the situation.

"Underground hip-hop" attempts to remove itself from the
capitalist cycle of reproduction by valuing the independence of the
artist. Wang, speaking on his time as a free lance DJ, sums up this
sentiment: "I'm pretty stubborn to play what I like to play. If the
place didn't allow me to play the stuff I like to play I would never
stay there" (Wang). It is this sentiment exactly that appeals to many
in the visual arts world.

Wang founded the Lab, a non-profit DJ studio for public
use in Shanghai in order to lay some foundations of support for
independent artists creating their own art. Speaking on the
development of the independent scene in Shanghai, Wang elaborates,
"the scene is not that good, that's why you have the opportunity to
build something new here… build something cultural" (Wang). The Lab
operates hand in hand with the bar Shelter, also owned by Wang. Wang
uses Shelter similar to an independent gallery, offering performance
time to promising DJ's from the Lab.

The underground hip-hop world here, based on its
undeveloped status, allows a figurative tabula rasa for artists to
create as they like. The community provides a haven also for
interdisciplinarity, rooted in a culture that transcends purely music.
The Lab's main room, for example, is dominated by a huge (10x5 foot)
chalk on blackboard art piece created by musician and artist Cut
Chemist; while the hallways are adorned with elaborate and colorful
graffiti by local artists. Says Wang, "music is really street
cultural, t-shirts, sneakers all relate together" (Wang). Wang also
plans on opening a boutique in which to sell clothing with designs and
designed by local artists. Shelter too has been used to involve the
visual arts world, such as the May collaborative effort with art
students from New York University's Shanghai study abroad program,
hosted an art auction during a fund-raiser for the 2008 Sichuan
earthquake.

Other venues in Shanghai supporting independent hip-hop
also produce collaborative media works with local visual artists.
These flyers from the bar Logo

are works produced in conjunction between the performing musicians and
visual artists. The flyers use elements of digital design,
photography, ink, and painting – art appropriated for use outside of
the gallery circuit.

That consumerism itself becomes a driving force behind
the independent hip-hop scene is not necessarily contradictory, as the
"independent" scene is ultimately dependent upon the larger mainstream
scene so as to stand in contradiction to. Adorno and Horkheimer take
the view that the result of all of this is a "permanent compulsion to
produce new effects which yet remain bound to the old schema…merely
increase[ing] the power of the tradition which the individual seeks to
escape" (46). It is a system with the appearance of being healthy and
able-bodied, capable of producing thought, yet it can only act to re-
produce, bounding those who use it by "proving" all that it produces
that is new is merely part of the old. So while the independent hip-
hop scene appears to attempt to provide artists a haven outside of the
moving wheels of economics, the ultimate affect is to become an agent
of advanced capitalism, a narrow-casted niche marketing movement able
to more effectively home in to specific demographics than does the
behemoth of "mainstream" culture.

Another feature that hip-hop provides the visual arts
world with is its uniquely socially minded voice. Author Todd Boyd
writes, from "his book The New H.N.I.C.: The Death of Civil Rights and
the Reign of Hip Hop, 'Hip hop is inherently political, the language
is political. It uses language as a weapon -- not a weapon to violate
or to offend, but a weapon that pushes the envelope, that provokes
people, makes people think'" (Hip Hop 6). Hip-hop acts from the early
1990's (such as Jurassic 5, A tribe called Quest, or De La Sol)
established the music form as one of socially conscious lyrics,
reflecting the quality of life in inner city environments, addressing
poverty, drugs, violence, and other social, economic, and political
afflictions.

When contemporary artists in China began to examine the
world of hip-hop, they found that these same themes could be
transferred into their works. Cao Fei, on describing her work "Hip-
Hop" states,

[t]he Hip-Hop project is about giving a street-created form the most
relevant interpretation through the movements of common people, to let
it go back to the streets, to people, to the inquiry and questioning
of reality. Pop culture is not my goal, it is rather a bridge. It can
reach many questions outside itself. It lets outsiders get inside
while allowing the insiders to know the outside. It smoothes the way
between the superficial look and truth of an issue (Hip Hop 8).

The work Hip-Hop, Cao Fei's second solo exhibition, is a series of
three videos in which Cao Fei presents ordinary people from the
streets of Guangzhou, China; Fukuoka, Japan; and Chinatown, New York
City, USA dancing to hip-hop music. Presented by Lombard-Freid
Projects, the works description sates:

Hip-Hop Guangzhou is projected on a bed sheet hanging on a laundry
line amidst towels and underwear; Hip-Hop Chinatown appears on a
fallen over Chinese restaurant banquet table surrounded by Chinese
steam baskets and kitchen utensils spread out in disarray; Hip-Hop
Fukuoka is projected on a Japanese hanging doorway complete with
oriental kite fish and printed curtains (Hip Hop 4).

The means of presentation itself is an important part of the work, the
aesthetics recreating an image of poverty that persists many of the
communities in which Cao Fei filmed.

The works are centered on musical collaborations with the artists DJ
Osho from Japan and Notorious MSG from New York City. While utilizing
the associative elements of hip-hop and social activism, the use of
the music also interestingly makes a subtle comment of the state of
globalization. A wall text from Tokyo's Mori Art Museum "argued for
the works as proof of Chinese people's fundamental Chineseness: The
dancers in the videos attempt to get down, only to find that they
inadvertently move to the inherited rhythms of traditional
taijiquan" (Tinari 5). In this context, one of hip-hop's major
elements is its globalized nature, travelling in its musical
development from Africa to the United States to Japan and Asia.
However, while sharing its thematic elements across the board, the
appropriation of hip-hop – and thus, the work seems to be saying, of a
universal global culture – by each unique culture is different.

Visual art's interdisciplinary connection with hip-hop
has allowed a new path to examine the changing nature of Chinese life
and society while escaping staid forms that evolved out of the initial
opening of the Chinese economy but have since lost part of their
meaning. This interdisciplinarity has overall allowed artists new
forms of examining pop culture while adapting to the changing
paradigms of the modern world.

Adorno, Theodore W.; Max Horkheimer. "The Culture Industry:
Enlightenment as Mass Deception. Media and Cultural Studies. Ed.
Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas M. Keller. Blackwell Publishing. 2006

"Forbes Calls Chinese Contemporary Art a Scam." Art Market Monitor. http://www.artmarketmonitor.com/2009/04/10/forbes-calls-chinese-contemporary-art-a-scam/

"Hip Hop." Chelsea Art Gallery. June 2009. http://chelseaartgalleries.com/Lombard-Freid+Projects/Hip+Hop.html

"How the contemporary art bubble burst." Timesonline. June 2009. http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article6275738.ece

Stills from "Hip Hop Guangzhou." Global Heart Me. June 2009. http://www.globalheartme.com/hiphop.htm

"Still from 'Wait Us Rich.'" Chinese Contemporary. June 2009. http://www.chinesecontemporary.com/exhibitions_2006_7_20.htm

Tinari, Philip. "Hip Hop Humans: On The Streets Of Chinatown
International With Cao Fei." Alternate Archive. June 2009. http://www.alternativearchive.com/en/news/20060303-2.htm

Wang, Gary. Personal interview. May, 2009

"Wu Junyong: The Sky Has A Mouth." Chinese Contemporary. June 2009. http://www.chinesecontemporary.com/exhibitions_2006_7_20.htm

Beijing vs Shanghai by Xiaoxia Zhuang

Xiaoxia Zhuang

Although Beijing is China's political (and arguably the cultural)
capital, Shanghai has quickly emerged from its booming economic growth
to situate itself as the foremost contender against Beijing in the
competition for being China's artistic capital. Gaining momentum
since the post-Mao "Reform and Opening" (改革开放, găigé
kāifàng ), artistic ventures in China has exploded into a complicated
panoply of expression—where history, political, economic, social, and
cultural forces collide and form a labyrinthine and intricate present.

The contemporary visual artscape in China is a complicated arena to
fully understand without a working knowledge of the history in which
it grew out of. Arguably, the most influentially damaging era for
many of the early figures in Chinese contemporary art was the period
from 1966 to 1976 known as the Cultural Revolution (文化大革命,
wénhuà dà gémìng). During this period of upheaval, Chinese
society was under the helm and whimsy of an ideologically narrow
political policy: one that brought educational institutions to a
standstill, that encouraged the deification of Chairman Mao (at the
expense of a traditional family structure centered around Confucian
interests), and finally, one that stressed uniformity in Mao-centric
ideas and punished any ideas that deviated from that norm. After
Mao's death, this previous imposition upon members of China's
intellectual and artistic contingency was left to tread the unknown
and untested waters of post-Cultural Revolution opening.

After the Cultural Revolution's decade of intellectual and artistic
suppression and oppression, breaking free from Maoist ideology would
have been inevitably difficult, especially since intellectuals and
artists emerging from this era would have been understandably haunted
by the antagonism that was once directed towards them. What emerged
from this era was a collective mentality of fear and isolation from
ideas of free speech and artistic attitudes. These ideas (which I
would assert come primarily from a Western paradigm steeped in
democracy and free inquiry) though not promoted in China even after
the Cultural Revolution, were nevertheless introduced in subtle ways
as the post-Mao economic reforms (the aforementioned "Reform and
Opening") brought in foreign investments into China. With the influx
of foreign investments inevitably came artistic ideas.

This influx of foreign artistic ideas primarily meant the influx of
Western artistic ideas; however, there were also domestic strides that
were undertaken with the reopening of educational institutions (such
as art academies) in 1978. Despite this, the artists who emerged
during these formative years (in addition to being amongst the first
to graduate from these academies since the closing of educational
institutions at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution) were often
faced with difficulties and underwent a period of "perplexing
struggle as they endeavoured to transcend a staunchly academic
training, which corralled all personal impulses to rigid principles
that placed absolute emphasis upon figurative realism"[1] Even in
the educational environment, rigidity reigned supreme and Socialist
Realism was held supreme as

"All students were taught that the sole purpose of great art was to
present the common people with an uplifting spiritual experience, via
an unambiguous expression of recognisable forms and emotions that
would leave no doubt as to the greatness of the socio-historical age
and civilization to which they belonged"[2]

Artists that emerged from the first few graduating classes of art
academies from the post-Mao era (including Xu Bing and Zhang Xiaogang)
sought to create an artistic dialogue that looked beyond the auspices
of the artistic confines that were promulgated by the government-
controlled institutions. Key to developing a discourse of
experimental and avant-garde art came from publications that were
"imported from the free world"[3] and the modernization prized by
the Chinese government when it came to technology and society was a
similar anthem sung by the emerging artists. The challenge that
undoubtedly came with this, however, was the fact that many of these
artists had to quickly brush up on "one hundred and fifty years of
Western cultural development from Modernism to Post-Modernism" and
"apply it to local conditions"[4]

This emergence of what one can consider "contemporary Chinese art"
was nestled out of the cocoon created out of this era's negotiation
amongst traditional Chinese thought, Cultural Revolution ideology, and
the introduction of Western artistic ideas and artists. The latter
created a disjunction as "the formative experiences of China's new
artists were at enormous odds with those that informed Western frames
of reference" and "this adopted lexicon sat awkward aboard the
willful determination of the avant-garde to embrace its tenets"[5].
This "awkwardness" is something that I personally have difficulty
digesting when it comes to interpreting the art produced by the
Chinese artists considered a part of the experimental and avant-garde
realm. Specifically, there seems to be an ambiguity in my mind
concerning the impetus that drives many of these artists.

However, the 2000 Shanghai Biennale gave me clearer insight towards
the driving forces that propel these artists and form the foundation
of their works. These driving forces, while important to
understanding the works that are produced, have to balance themselves
with the fact that the emergence of art in this contemporary artscape
has to take into consideration the specific ways in order to display
these works. The Shanghai Biennale raised dialogue concerning these
issues, but also, cemented its momentous importance by showcasing some
of China's most well-known and influential artists. Showcased at the
Shanghai Art Museum, the show was a testament to China's understanding
of its development in forces like globalization and also, of its more
tolerant attitudes towards newer forms of art. Not only does it
exhibit a more lax and welcoming attitude towards these newer forms of
expression, but the fact that the show was state-sponsored is a
tremendous milestone for contemporary Chinese art in that contemporary
art was then able to be a state-legitimized venture—receiving the
accolades and funding it deserved from what would otherwise be a force
of censorship. Also important is the fact that the Biennale invited
foreign artists to exhibit their works on a Chinese platform and
opened itself to non-traditional artworks (such as paintings).
Although the Shanghai Biennale was undoubtedly small compared to art-
house giants like the Venice Biennale, it nevertheless served as a
momentous occasion for the artists and art world here in China.

Insofar as I have delved into understanding the contemporary art
landscape here in China, I still find many issues surrounding this
topic to be problematic. So far, I have had the fortunate privilege
and pleasure to engage with the art community in Shanghai (as well as
Beijing), and have been privy to artists talks and studio visits—
despite this, I do feel that there is a distinctive disconnect that
China's contemporary art world has with the everyday Chinese culture.
Though, it might be that I might not have been engaged too much with
the local art culture (after all, going to galleries does not
automatically merit me the freedom to pass judgment on the totality of
the local contemporary art scene), but there are a few key problematic
points that arise whenever I start thinking of the contextual forces
surrounding contemporary art in China. One of the smaller (though
still nagging) issues that I have seen is that there doesn't seem to
be much in the vein of art education, especially art education for
children and young adults. More or less, what I have experienced from
the gallery visits is that they are almost a strictly economic zone—
primarily interested in promoting specific artworks for either
financial gain or fame. Even at the Zendai MOMA—a more "typical"
museum setting (as opposed to a gallery, which serves to function both
to display and sell artwork) that I have been accustomed to in the
United States—lacked the art education resources that make the works
in these spaces to be of vital, relevant use for educating and
inspiring youth. Part of the issue is that I think that Chinese
culture is still ardently proud of its long-standing traditions and in
this respect comes traditionalism in art. So while traditional forms
of Chinese art (watercolors or calligraphy) are practiced and
encouraged, newer forms or media and new artistic themes (many of
which might not be palatable, or even relevant, for contemporary
Chinese audience influenced by traditionalism) are often left neglected.

Also, I have noticed that within what I have seen, heard, or read
about contemporary Chinese art in these past two months, there is a
lack of vernacular art or art that serves as carriers of social
justice. As an example of the former, the quilts of Gee's Bend serves
as the most well-known American example. Made by black women in rural
Alabama, the Gee's Bend quilts—with their architecturally-striking
patterns that were initially made out of necessity out of old pieces
of fabric—have been a staple of the contemporary American art scene
and the quilts have been used for educational and historical
purposes. As an example of the latter, I have only seen a handful of
works that address social justice issues and have only seen one that I
think has an unadulterated and genuine stance towards contemporary
China's issues (Mo Chanlue's "Art Education, Damn It!", which I
wrote my first blog entry about).

However, by far the biggest issue that I have difficulty factoring
into my understanding of contemporary Chinese art is trying to
reconcile the financial disparities between audiences who consume said
art and those who do not have the privilege to participate in such
discourse. I strongly contend that the aforementioned influences
concerning how contemporary Chinese art is contextualized within the
turbulent history of the past thirty-plus years since post-Mao reforms
play an integral role in this. This being said, I believe that
contemporary Chinese society is largely a class-ist society, with a
privileged urban and foreign gentry versus the rural "have-nots".
And with this, I of course do not hope to cause offense or demean to
those who consume or produce contemporary Chinese art (especially
since I myself am implicated in this class-based inequality), but
still, I just wished that more of the artworks from Shanghai and
Beijing addressed these issues. Admittedly, I understand that
artistic censorship still exists in China, but the realm for
expression has grown by leaps and bounds since the closed doors of the
Cultural Revolution. Perhaps my desire for contemporary Chinese
artists to these address issues (by investing more of a social justice
bent in the works) is pitting my Western-influenced ideology at odds
with the psyche behind these artists; perhaps they view many of these
issues as "没颁发" (mei banfa, or "no choice") so they
choose not to talk about it. It could possibly be that these issues
are not allowed to be talked about, but then again, I still think that
the galleries and museums here afford these artists the privilege to
be able to display works that are critical of economic and social
situations in China. The lack of discussion and dialogue raised by
the works I have seen thus far concerning economic and societal issues
troubles me, so I hope that Chinese art can open itself to these
issues, especially since I believe that an open dialogue concerning
the China's present economic and societal concerns helps to draw newer
(domestic) audiences to the world of contemporary Chinese art.

In terms of dissecting the scope of the contemporary art world in
China, the process is exceedingly difficult, especially as a Westerner
just beginning to understand the vast complications of not only
China's relationship with the West, but also, how China's relationship
with its own past and present. Hermeneutic difficulties aside, I
fully the emergence of visual art in the past thirty-plus years in
China stands as a remarkable testament to the powers of the human
imagination a triumph against adversity and hardship against a once-
oppressive past and a still-difficult present. The realization of
future artistic freedoms and nation-wide legitimization of these works
will hopefully not be too far away.

WORKS CITED:

"Contemporary Chineses Art and New Media" course-reader

Shi, Yang Y. China Gallery. 09 Apr. 2009 <http://www.china-gallery.com/en/yang/ev_biennale.htm
>.

[1] Pg 25, "Contemporary Art and New Media" course reader

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Id. at pg 26

[5] Ibid.

“Interdisciplinarity”: A new mode of discourse and its relations/effects on film by Xiaoxia Zhuang

Xiaoxia Zhuang

June 4, 2009

Contemporary Art and New Media

"Interdisciplinarity": A new mode of discourse and its relations/
effects on film.

The concept of "interdisciplinarity" has seen precipitous growth and
potential in the past few years as a contemporary force that
inevitably comes from the whirlwind conglomeration of an ever-evolving
society. With the rise of technology, transportation, and
communication becoming more available to global consumers, the lines
bordering once-insular and self-contained fields (i.e. film, painting,
music, etc.) are quickly being blurred, and in some instances,
completely erased. This is globalization, plain and simple. And its
effects on the concept of "interdisciplinarity" has consequences that
are incredibly multi-faceted and since we are still undergoing the
ramifications of its development, the only thing that one can do is to
speculate as to its current (and future) effects on society.

However, this is to say that it does have an effect, and though it
would be impossible to have an objective, "outsider's" perspective
concerning this global phenomenon (since one lives within the
globalized world and theoretically, cannot step outside this
perspective to analyze it), one must critically think about this vital
juncture in contemporary society. One of the keystones of
"interdisciplinarity" is that within its specified model of fluidity
and malleability, the old guard is being replaced by the vanguard, and
this vanguard is leading the helm of experimenting with and changing
the definitions of what was staid and stale.

In terms of its relation to the contemporary Chinese artscape, the
concept of "interdisciplinarity" is key to understanding the forces
that are currently at work in key artistic and creative realms.
Artists who once primarily worked in painting are now exploring
different avenues of what can be considered "art", for example,
exploring the implications and impact of new media with video
installations, or utilizing (and perhaps, harnessing) the far-reaching
spans of the internet to garner buzz for impromptu warehouse
gatherings, etc. The term "artists" is in constant flux—not defined
as a point on a linear spectrum, but as an indefinable fuzz in a large
cloud of interacting forces—and with it, the idea of
"interdisciplinarity" takes hold, as the term seeks to change the
range of those who fit under the category of "artist". It seems that
as the term "interdisciplinarity" takes a stronger foothold on
society, cultural producers in the field of contemporary art expand to
include musicians, writers, technicians, and others who once might not
have been considered an aspect of contemporary art.

In addition, "interdisciplinarity" has inviolably altered the mode of
discourse concerning the way one talks about globalization and
contemporary art (both those two subjects by themselves, and also, how
they are inter-related). Previously, contemporary art was led by the
individual (the curator, the artist, et al.), but as both the mode of
production and the mode of consumption have changed in light of our
increasingly inter-connected world, discourse has moved to include a
much broader base, generates discussion on a more massive scale, and
moves the discussion from being solely defined in galleries and museums.

One arena in which "interdisciplinarity" has been slow to work its
effects into is cinema, as I believe that the lines between cinematic
"movies" and cinematic "art" has still not begun blurring (not just in
China, but in the world). There is a definite disjunction between
what I have just termed "cinematic 'movies'" versus what I believe to
be "cinematic 'art'" and that comes from several different avenues—
from its mode of production, authorship, audience, content, economic
potential, its (formal) cinematic structure, etc. There are certain
audience expectations when it comes to watching a movie and that is to
be entertained, to have the movie be an "escape" and to get enraptured
in the movie's diegesis. For those on the producing-end of movies,
the movie's economic potential is at stake and this guards much of the
discourse surrounding how film is discussed (and of course, I say this
almost exclusively from being breed from an American film-going
background, but years of being brought up in a household where Chinese
film was watched and academic background in the study of Chinese film
have helped me bridge out of a solely American point of view).
Merchandising tie-in's, domestic box-office gross, opening weekend
ticket sales—these terms guide much of the understanding that many
people have with movies. With cinematic "art" however, the
expectations (from both the producers and consumers) are drastically
different than they are for cinematic "movies". The modes of
production, the author(s) and audience base(s) are typically
different, and the viewing locations are on-the-whole, different.

Therefore, cinematic "art" already carries with it preconceived
stereotypes, which thankfully, "interdisciplinarity" and fusion of
fields have begun to dissolve and transcend. However, the question
now concerns why cinematic "art" has been unable (thus far) to evolve
to a level where it is not only economically sustainable, but
economically viable as well. For me, I think the aforementioned
preconceived notions concerning cinematic "art" (such as where its
exhibited and the specific types of consumers that it is geared
towards) hinder its widespread-ness (though of course, there is also
the question of whether or not the producers/consumers of cinematic
"art" want to encourage and promote these works for a widespread
audience). Rather than confining this fusion of film and art strictly
to the gallery setting, it is important to understand the place in
which a film is shown is a very key component of how one responds to
film.

And of course in China, censorship plays a big factor in the film
industry. Films have to be submitted to the State Administration of
Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT) and only once it passes with the
approval of SARFT can it be shown in Chinese theaters. Otherwise, it
becomes relegated to distribution through illegal DVDs. For the film
directors working within these confines, the whole process at times
annoying, but it has become a part of their creative and directorial
processes. For example, Shanghainese director Lou Ye who has directed
Suzhou River (2000) and the film that has gotten him banned from
making films in China for five years, Summer Palace (2006) has said
that he has slowly come to accept this process:

When the official document was handed down to me, stating that I was
not permitted to make films for three years [after Suzhou River],
therefore, I didn't feel shocked at all. Why? First, it was nothing
new to me. My first film was banned for two years...Ten years ago, I
did not have such an understanding. I was angry and irritated [about
my first film being banned]. Now I am able to remain calm." (Sun and
Li, 74)

Though directors like Lou Ye have slowly accepted the situation,
perhaps this tie-in and association with the Film Bureau is what
creates the imaginary fence between directors of cinematic "film" and
those who produce cinematic "art". Nevertheless, the concept of
censorship is at stake, and for Lou Ye, artistic censorship is always
wrapped up in political, economic, and social developments. (Sun and
Li, 74).

In terms of how to address issues plaguing the confinement of what I
have termed "cinematic 'art'" to a strictly gallery-type setting, I
believe that a fusing of the contemporary Chinese cinema and art
worlds (the "interdisciplinarity" of these two fields, if you will) is
plausible, but depends on the relaxation of attitudes towards these
fields from not only the government censors, but also, from the
producers and audiences. So to have cinematic "art" evolve into what
this essay prompt deems as an "open platform that offers a viable
alternative to the existing museum and gallery system", the primary
change would be ideological. Cinematic "movies'" mass audience have
to be open to watching movies that might challenge his or her
preconceived notions of what a film is, which is to say, the audience
has to abandon his or her previous notions (if any) of a film's
formulaic-ness (familiarization with the typical camera angles, film
pace, genre conventions, etc.). And conversely, the cinematic "art's"
audience should recognize that even if a film does follow formulaic-
ness and what he or she deems as following in the "mainstream" vein,
the film's function as art should not be discarded. On both ends of
the spectrum, the primary audiences for both cinematic "movies" and
cinematic "arts" should depart with negative connotations associated
with the other end of the spectrum (i.e. art-film goers should not
view movie-goers as those with "mainstream"/common tastes, and movie-
goers should not view art-film goers as those who enjoy viewing art-
films just so they can relish in the fact that they are consuming
"high culture"). The expectations of both audiences concerning
cinematic "art" versus cinematic "movies" also have to change, most
notably, the idea that movies are strictly entertainment versus the
idea that art is strictly set to function as an intellectual/creative
output devoid of entertainment value.

A democratization of contemporary Chinese art must also occur for an
ideological reform to occur. As many students (including me) have
mentioned several times throughout the course of the semester,
contemporary Chinese art (unfortunately) seems to be fixated upon
itself as an insular entity. There is a socioeconomic exclusivity
that comes from being a producer, consumer, and overall participant in
these circles and though there have been several notable and
commendable instances of expanding and integrating contemporary art
into Chinese society (most visibly, the "Intrude: Art & Life 366"
exhibit at the Zendai MOMA), this simply is not enough. Though the
exhibit at the Zendai MOMA was a forward-thinking move towards the
acceptance of contemporary art by the Chinese public and conversely,
was also a forward-thinking move towards the art world's recognition
that their works do have a powerful and necessary space within the
public realm. Of course, this is much easier said than done.

Moving away from this need for ideological change, practical
implementations must also occur for cinematic "art" to bridge itself
from a strictly gallery/museum system. To welcome a wider audience
for cinematic "art", the presentation of it should be one of the first
changes to occur. No, this is not to say that Bill Viola or Yang
Fudong should be exhibited in a large megaplex-like setting, but
museums and galleries should be more accessible to cinema-going
audiences. The most pragmatic change in presentation would be to have
galleries and museums invest in a screening room, that way, the
viewing of these works of video art/film can be enjoyed as if it were
the same as a cinematic "movie". Otherwise, standing around a flat
television screen that is fixed on a blank white wall can be not only
tiresome, but daunting for certain audiences. The subject matter of
many of these works (assuming there is a subject matter in certain
works) might not fit within the common understandings of film that the
average film-goer has, so in order to change conceptions of what
constitutes "film", an easing-in of those unfamiliar with film/video
art is needed, and the most drastic and simple measure is to change
the presentation of these works. These films might not follow
familiar narrative formats and/or genre conventions, so naturally,
given human beings' nature/propensity to understand through narrative
discourse, they might be difficult to digest and comprehend. However,
one needs to promote these works as viable commodities that have the
ability to not only function as intellectual/creative outputs, but as
well as entertainment.

Yang Fudong is an artist whose presence in the contemporary Chinese
art scene heralds the intertwining of art and film. Born in Beijing
in 1971[1], Yang Fudong currently lives and produces his works in
Shanghai[2]. Most recently, his newest works are being exhibited at
Shanghai's Zendai MOMA in an exhibition called "Dawn Mist, Separation
Faith". As a showcase of his recent works, the exhibition itself
focused on a long, rectangular table upon which was projected a place-
setting for a dinner and above which was hung flat screens exhibiting
Yang Fudong's other works. These flat screens were also hung around
the walls, bombarding the gallery-goer with an overflow of visuals.
It took awhile to situate myself within the exhibition because it was
difficult to focus on one work while a different work was being played
not too far away on another screen. Perhaps this was part of either
Yang Fudong or the curator's objective—to make some sort of statement
on the overflow of technology and media that the average consumer
faces in today's ever-expanding mediascape—but for me, this detracted
from focusing on Yang Fudong's works by themselves. And in addition,
the previous point I had raised about standing around a screen (and
sometimes craning my neck for extended periods of time to watch some
of them) was completely realized as I stood in front of the screen,
trying to focus on the visuals in front of me, while the distractions
hammered away at my patience. This, of course, is not to say that
Yang Fudong's work was not interesting—it was—but the exhibition of
these works deserves attention to find a way that better suit the
audience's viewing of them. A healthy marriage between what the
artist and curator want for these works and what way the works can
best be exhibited for a viewing audience needs to be configured.

However, despite these hesitations concerning the presentation of Yang
Fudong's latest works at the Zendai MOMA, I still found his work as an
auteur and artist to be incredible, which was why I was inspired to
find more information about his "The Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo
Forest". Presented for the 50th Venice Biennale, this was the first
in his five-part series called "The Seven Intellectuals", which is
based off of "The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove", a set of well-
known and traditional Chinese stories[3]. Drawing inspiration from
Chinese film canon including Fei Mu's Spring in a Small Town (1948)
and Yuan Muzhi's Street Angel (1937)[4], Yang Fudong pays homage to
his predecessors in Chinese film, but builds upon them as he uses his
films to explore the contemporary issues plaguing China.

I recently spoke to my film professor here at NYU Shanghai, Dr. Shaoyi
Sun, about his thoughts concerning the conflux of film and art.
Professor Sun is academically focused and concerned about film, which
is why he admittedly did not want to give concrete and definitive
thoughts concerning how film fits within the contemporary art world.
However, his responses to me did echo sentiments and ideas that I
already have in my own response to the question of why film and art
are crossing and dissolving borders. Namely, forces of globalization
and media convergence were what we had discussed, with special
emphasis placed on media convergence as the key impetus driving the
blurring of the lines between art and film. Right now, in an rapidly
growing technological age of social-networking sites, user-generated
content, and in general, with the electronic/digital world
proliferating at an almost exponentially-increasing speed, the use of
film as an artistic medium is a natural evolution of both the fields
of contemporary art, but also, cinema as well.

Another point of discussion was a focus on censorship, which of course
for China, is a key issue regarding the exhibition of both art and
cinematic works. Professor Sun pointed me to his book of interviews
that he conducted with several well-known "Sixth Generation" authors
concerning their views on working within the confines of censorship
and referring back to director Lou Ye, Lou remarked:

"I don't think film censorship is simply a film-related issue.
Therefore, you cannot just accuse the Film Bureau. It is only part of
a larger issue. The current mechanism of film censorship is actually
a partial reflection of today's political system and economic
environment. If our environment continues to improve, or, if our
political system becomes more liberal, film censorship will naturally
disappear and be relegated to history. The fate of film censorship,
therefore, is closely connected to the political, social, and economic
development of a nation." (Sun and Li, 74)
These sentiments ring completely true to several issues that I have
raised, as it includes the necessary call for contextualization why
censorship exists and its effects on cinema. What Lou Ye said about
films naturally fits in with discussion of censorship within
contemporary art.

In terms of the development of the new fusion of cinema as art, and
vice versa, I believe that Yang Fudong is a necessary step in the
right direction in blurring the distinctions between what one can call
"art" and what one calls "cinema", and his solo exhibition at the
Zendai MOMA is proof that cinematic "art" is on its way to being
legitimized and recognized as a form of cinema that fits rightfully
with other filmmakers, such as Jia Zhangke, Fellini, Martin Scorsese,
or mainstream favorites like Steven Spielberg or Danny Boyle. China
does have a prominent film journal, called simply China Film Journal,
but a quick search within its website found no mentions of Yang
Fudong. However, in the requisite contemporary art publications like
Yishu, ArtForum, et al., Yang Fudong's films have garnered mentions
and analysis. While the idea of "cinematic 'art'" may not have found
itself within film publications, its presence as "art" is solidified,
but Yang Fudong is still absent from being a fixture on the
contemporary Chinese "cinematic 'movies'" realm. However, with the
trend of converging media forms and the blurring of lines between what
one knows as "art" versus what one knows as "cinema", Yang Fudong will
be a fixture in both the art and film worlds—bridging them together.

Works Cited:

China Film Journal: www.chinafilmjournal.com

Yang Fudong on Artnet: http://www.artnet.com/artist/6591/yang-fudong.html

Obrist, Hans-Ulrich. Yang, Fudong. "A Thousand Words: Yang Fudong
talks about the Seven Intellectuals". ArtForum, September 2003.

Sun, Shaoyi. Xun, Li. Chapter Three: "'Dancing with the Shackles:' The
(Un)censored Voices of the 'Sixth Generation'". Lights! Camera! Kai
Shi!: In Depth Interviews with China's New Generation of Movie
Directors.

[1] Obrist, Hans-Ulrich, "A Thousand Words: Yang Fudong talks about
The Seven Intellectuals".

[2] http://www.artnet.com/artist/6591/yang-fudong.html

[3] Obrist, Hans-Ulrich, "A Thousand Words: Yang Fudong talks about
The Seven Intellectuals".

[4] Ibid.

Fashion Design and the Visual Arts in Shanghai by Doreen Ho

Fashion Design and the Visual Arts in Shanghai

Introduction

Interdisciplinary, as it involves the visual arts and the fashion design world, has always been a fundamental part of the most forward-thinking and innovative works. Where design and art meet functionality and new and creative ways of thinking, it is crucial to explore how fashion design and the visual arts can be better integrated in an emerging interdisciplinary arts scene in Shanghai. To look more in-depth on this topic, I have asked for the advice and expertise of Helen Liu and Helen Lee, both outstanding women in the fashion industry worldwide, and well-informed on the Shanghai fashion and art scene today. Helen Liu, a graduate and visiting faculty of Parson's School of Design in New York City, is a fashion designer and a member of Fashion Group International. She is both an Honorary Advisor for the Shanghai Professional Fashion and Accessory Designers Society as well as a Foreign Fashion Design Advisor for the Shanghai Fashion Week. Helen Lee is an acclaimed designer from Shanghai, and founder of fashion line, insh. Her top quality and cutting-edge designs, combining high-end fashion with her Chinese culture and background, have won her international recognition and awards, including China's "Jeanswest Fashion Award" and Belgium's "Les Etoiles De La Mode" (insh).

A Brief History

After the fall of feudal society in China, modern times brought about modern fashions that greatly contrasted the limited scope and option of fashion in earlier years. Modern times allowed for individuals to choose what to wear according to what they liked, and soon Shanghai became the fashion capital of China, also earning the reputation as the "Eastern Paris" (SHME.com). Following the encroachment of the West in the late 19th century through the 1930's, Shanghai fashion transformed within an international metropolis hub that was greatly influenced by Western dress. However, during the formation of the Republic of China and as Communism developed under Mao, the 1950's-1970's was dominated by the grass green color military uniform that was worn regardless of ones gender (SHME.com). After the 1979 economic reforms and opening up of China, fashion began to flourish again as the nation's economy reaped the benefits of an open market. Men and women alike began to customize and personalize their fashion sense to gradually integrate within the international context of a new globalizing society (SHME.com).
Current Trends

Today, Liu explains, "taste and understanding of art and fashion is developing". This follows after a long period of concerns over basic rudimentary provisions for survival, particularly during the Mao era; however, today as Shanghai's economy flourishes and its middle class emerges, more and more locals are beginning to upgrade their lifestyles and increase their education, which includes a keener appreciation and recognition for arts and culture. While the current market in Shanghai remains dominated by Western luxury brands, "international-brand-obsessed" consumers, and many designers accused of merely imitating Western styles, there are some fashion forward, innovative and original local Shanghai designers and brands. Shanghai Tang is a famous fashion line whose designs have reached a wide audience, from Shanghai to New York. Designers such as Han Feng, Qiu Hao, and Helen Lee have received international awards for their work, and their work has been seen in fashion shows all over the world.
Today, a sense of individualism and personalized style is taking over the Shanghai fashion scene. Today, you will find local designers opening shop on Chang Le Road and Taicang Road. Additionally, more and more fashion organizations are being established, including the Creative Bazaar. Established in November 2006, the Bazaar was a series of design shows organized by Aga Zhu, to muster greater support for Chinese fashion designers and showcase their works. Both domestic and international fashion houses were in attendance, including Jooi, Vervia, insh, etc. with 100 or so vendors (Xuan).

Additionally, the construction of The International Fashion Center of Shanghai, to be located in Shanghai's North Bund area, is expected to be complete by the end of 2011. The Center will be Asia's largest fashion innovation park and will concentrate on textile concepts and allow for designers to showcase their designs in a creative space (People's Daily). The International Fashion Center will host six major fashion functional areas, including a multi-functional show site, a reception chamber, an innovation office, a showroom, a condo hotel, and a food, beverage and entertainment area (People's Daily). The Center will also host the Shanghai International Garment Festival and Shanghai Fashion Week.

Challenges

Today, fashion design in Shanghai still faces several challenges. While many local Shanghainese flock towards international designed luxury goods, local Shanghai designers could be better supported and recognized by not only local consumers, but also local government (TimeOut 142). Lee spoke of her own experience running her boutique: "In early 2000, local people were looking to buy international brands…in 2002, 90 percent of people buying my clothes were foreigners." However, Lee sees a shift in consumer behavior, saying, "Now, this is changing- more local people are paying attention to local designers, and that's with help from international media." Lee adds that it is important to "make people think about making their lives better and more beautiful…when you wear a design, to see it as a piece of art", signifying the importance of integrating art and fashion. Additionally, the local government hosts the Shanghai Fashion Week, which takes place twice a year, but much of the funding goes into supporting bigger and more established Western brands rather than promoting domestic designers (TimeOut 142-143). Liu, who is a frequent traveler and has attended fashion shows in fashion capitals around the world, touched upon a need for a more professional presentation of Shanghai fashion during Shanghai Fashion Week. "New York Fashion Week is very professional and put together, whereas Shanghai's Fashion Week hasn't really met global or international standards yet", said Liu.

Furthermore, Shanghai's fashion scene must aspire to meet at the level of international design. "Shanghai has very regional fashion, yet it has to be in-sync with what will be most attractive to the international scene," Liu explained, "local designers are put aside because they don't have the kind of caliber to be enticing and sustainable…the thing about sustainability is international, the fashion in Shanghai has to be more international." Shanghai fashion must move towards being more internationally recognized. Some of the best and most potential Shanghai designers Liu has seen have already been internationally recognized for their work, similar to Chinese visual artists. "The avant-garde designers of Shanghai have received awards abroad," Liu explained, pointing out Shanghai designer, Qiu Hao as an example. Hao received the Woolmark Prize in 2008 for his innovative designs and applications with Merino wool (Australian Wool Innovation Limited).

Liu explained that Shanghai designers are going abroad to compete in fashion design competitions, but their designs are not yet commercially successful. Lee recommends that integrating art and fashion design is a great way to foster wider support for both disciplines on a commercial level. "Fashion design is more commercial, while art is more about ideas and concepts, so the combination of the two would reach a wider audience," Lee said.

Fashion Design Education

Building a solid interdisciplinary fashion design education that exposes students to the international world of fashion and art will be an important development to the development of arts and culture in Shanghai. However, fashion design education remains tremendously competitive in Shanghai. About 100,000 students may apply to the Shanghai Design Institute, but only less than 600-800 students will be accepted (Liu). Liu says that fashion design education has too many people and too little institutions and quality programs that can support such a massive student body. She suggests that more and more Shanghai fashion design students should look to go abroad, but also understands that many cannot afford the financial burden of studying abroad. Liu did mention that certain design schools that stress international exchange programs should follow the recruitment model of the Central St. Martins College Design program in London. "They have over 100 recruitment stations", Liu said. Raffles Design Institute of Shanghai is a popular design program with an emphasis on international fashion design; in fact, Raffles is the only international design college in Shanghai, according to its website (Raffles). On its website, the school proposed the importance of having quality world-class design education in Shanghai:

"It is known that fashion design has always been the weakest point in China's fashion industry. The design level in China's fashion industry falls far behind international standards. Many companies are depending mainly on copying and imitation and do not have their own styles, which hinders China's fashion design from stepping up to a higher level" (qtd. in Raffles).
Receiving abroad experience may be a key to opening up both the visual arts and fashion design scene of Shanghai to the world. Many successful visual artists and fashion designers have strong backgrounds to meet international recognition. For instance, Qiu Hao attended Central Saint Martins College in London, but also holds a degree in interior design from Suzhou University (Business of Fashion). Additionally, Helen Lee worked in Japan for three years before coming back to establish her store in Shanghai. "I learned about what is quality and what is not quality design while I was in Japan," Lee said, "I've also taken many good things that I've seen from working and traveling abroad, and combined these together with my own Chinese background." Many successful Chinese visual artists, who are internationally acclaimed, have also had experience working or studying abroad, such as Zhang Huan and Cai Guo Qiang.

Liu mentioned that the emerging middle class will also help bolster support for the arts. "Education will help support appreciation of the arts and Chinese culture", Liu stated. Many people may be discouraged to develop their taste for something such as Chinese art because for those with little to no education, it may be even more difficult to understand, and they push it aside. "When you have such a mass of people, only some people will try to understand art, but a lot will not. Because of this gap, Beijing and Shanghai are very cosmopolitan, very internationally influenced, and with that influence, there's more interest to learn and reach out and understand the pleasure of enjoying art", said Liu, "Those with the financial power have the ability to go to museums, travel abroad, etc., but it is really a small percentage of the population." As Shanghai's economy continues to burgeon, perhaps more attention and resources will be directed towards developing Shanghai's arts education and widen the visual arts and fashion design receptive audience.

Media Coverage and Publications

Liu informed me that there are a few resources available on covering the latest in Shanghai fashion, but still there is opportunity to grow. Liu looks towards fashion magazines imported from Japan; however, Chinese editions of Elle magazine and Vogue, to name a few, are also in circulation, but often at a higher price than other publications found on Shanghai news stands. Comprehensive online resources also run scarce, although there is an ever-growing presence in online forums and fashion blogs (when they are not censored). Furthermore, U.S. editions of Vogue as well as other fashion editorials devote a section to arts reviews on books and current exhibitions. However, publications in Shanghai do not have extended reviews or recommendations or a section specifically for arts reviews. Lee believes that media would do well by paying more attention to the arts in China. This may also be a potential area to develop the interdisciplinary bridge between visual art followers and fashion forward citizens.

Integration/Case Studies: Where Art and Fashion Meet

"Collaborations are good," Lee said on visual artists and fashion designers teaming up. Lee joked and explained, "I mean, my husband is an artist!" Lee has worked on many projects with her husband, in addition to the artworks she collects and displays within her own boutique shop. "They make good shop decorations", Lee said on her shop's art collection. Lee also works with artists to develop window displays and interior designs for her store. Lee also includes interdisciplinary arts in her work. For example, her recent collection, Dou hong, is inspired by Chinese "Yue" Opera. Collaborative projects such as these would be an excellent way to foster brand imaging for visual artists and also for fashion design houses. On the other hand, Lee's designs have been featured in the Shanghai Art Museum, in addition to other international exhibition spaces. Featuring fashion designs within an established institution, such as the Shanghai Art Museum and also the Costume Institute in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is also a strategic move in integrating art and fashion to a commercial audience.

Liu also believes collaborations between local and international talents and between visual artists and fashion designers is an innovative way to draw more international and domestic attention to both Shanghai's fashion scene and visual arts scene. Liu states that it is important for both the visual artist and fashion designer to work well together on a project, which means visions and technical skills must compliment each other. "It's like they have to kind of go on dates," says Liu of the visual artist and fashion designer, "Synergy and chemistry must happen." It is a long and arduous process of brainstorming, sketching, and transforming 2D to 3D. Liu stressed that, "Design is not art. It has to commercially viable. Design is more about usage and utility, it has to work on the body, it has to play a function." Therefore, the visual artist and fashion designer must compromise and acknowledge what is best for both sides and best for the project at stake. "It is a process of refinement…not everything works on the body, so both sets of skills [from the visual artist and fashion designer] must be complementary. You want to bring out the best in both people."

There have been several collaborations within the past few years that can serve as models for opening up both the collective fashion and visual arts scenes. In 1998, Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake and Chinese visual artist Cai Quo Qiang teamed up to present Dragon: Explosion on Issey Miyake, Gunpowder on Pleats Please garments.  Cai Quo Qiang utilized his famous pyrotechnics and created gunpowder prints that were designed onto Issey Miyake garments. Another famous collaboration between visual artist and fashion designer was in the Murakami exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 2008, when Marc Jacobs, artistic director for luxury brand, Louis Vuitton, collaborated with Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. Contemporary visual artist, Zhao Bandi, recently designed a fashion line for his Panda Fashion Show, which debuted in 2008. Most recently, the UCCA at Beijing's 798 Dashanzi District presented a Christian Dior show, in collaboration with several contemporary artists, including works by Wen Feng and Zhang Xiaogang. Integrating visual arts and fashion design through collaborative works and exhibitions may be a strong strategic move to tap into a commercial audience and reach out to various demographics.

Conclusion and Recommendations

Liu explained that "location is key." A great difficulty in the Shanghai visual arts scene is how the local government poured massive funding into the creative space at 50 Moganshan Road, but have unsuccessfully met return profits. Liu feels that a major obstacle to this is that 50 Moganshan Road is an isolated creative hub. She pointed to SoHo, where art boomed in the 1980's, partially to the great support of local shops and restaurants that wove between galleries. "SoHo and Chelsea art scenes are all multi-user environments—you have great cafés and great shopping, and you have the Meat Packing District," Liu explained. In recent years, creative spaces have become more and more popular and are also a strategic way of bringing in people of different walks of life into the art and fashion world. Lee disclosed to me that her designs will be featured in a creative concept store that features artwork, a fashion boutique, and a coffee shop, due to open in New York City this coming July. Multi-user environments, such as these, not only attract the art lover audience but reaches out to a widened audience as well.

Collaborations between visual artists and fashion designers will be an important way to open up both scenes and attract wider audiences from both genres. When artist meets fashion designer, such a creative team can produce "a really astonishing, new product that you can show to the world. You show it as an art form and as a design form", Liu said. She encourages local Shanghai fashion designers and artists to work with each other and to also work with internationally recognized artists and designers.

Collaborations could carry out into collective promotions and attract new audiences this way, as well. Promotions such as exhibition openings tied with sales of fashion commodities, or purchasing a fashion item and receiving free admission to upcoming exhibitions, etc.; these types of promotions will increase interdisciplinary awareness and discussion among different crowds of people. There are many successful examples of this: Louis Vuitton established a shop in the 2008 Murakami Exhibition; selling scarves at the MET with visual art from Monet to works by animators; holding design and art competitions that attract audiences from all walks of life. Another promotional feat that is highly popular is the "Limited Edition Series". Inviting visual artists and fashion designers to come in and design limited edition street wear and accessories, like the UNIQLO tee-shirt model, is a strategic way of building brand recognition. Limited edition series are also highly successful because human psyche dictates that most of us like to have something special, unique, and customized, that others may not have.

Within China, and within Shanghai, specifically, Liu points out that the demographics are widely varied. For a visual artist or fashion designer from Shanghai to succeed on both domestic and international fronts, they must find inspiration from their own individual experiences to bring forth to the world a new style, a new way of thinking, a new creative scope. "Life, work, income, where they are from, etc. anchors brand recognition," Liu said, referring to Donna Karan's fashion line, Donna Karan New York (DKNY), as an example. Furthermore, improved quality of arts education and a better-educated citizenry will help burgeon the appreciation and understanding of the arts. Interdisciplinary aspects shared between the visual arts and fashion design in Shanghai will flourish when different artists, from different backgrounds, and different designers, from different backgrounds merge in exciting dialogue and discourse that also involves the inspiration and enthusiasm of the local, international, and commercial audiences.



Works Cited



Interview: Helen Liu



Helen Liu is currently an Honorary Advisor for the Shanghai Professional Fashion and Accessory Designers Society, a Foreign Fashion Design Advisor for the Shanghai Fashion Week, and a member of Fashion Group International. Liu is also Founder and Creative Director for Freshwave Studio and is a Visiting Faculty member at Parson's School of Design in New York City. She is also a Senior fashion show panel judge for Parson's Fashion Design Department, and has been a visiting designer critic at Kent State University and Massachusetts's College of Art.

nterview: Helen Lee



Helen Lee is one of the leading figures in Shanghai's emerging fashion scene. A graduate of China's most prestigious fashion institue, DHU - Lasalle International Design College, Helen's talent has been recognized through awards such as China's "Jeanswest Fashion Award" and Belgium's "Les Etoiles De La Mode."

Immediately after graduating, Helen spent 3 years working with Japanese fashion houses before striking out on her own to start a successful denim brand that targeted the sophisticated, difficult Tokyo boutique market.

Three years ago, Helen returned to her hometown – Shanghai – and founded insh based on her dream of bringing the world an image of Shanghai fashion that moved beyond a colonial 1930's or Communist-era aesthetic.

While other designers in Shanghai derive their designs from Europe's top runway figures, Helen looks to Shanghai's past, present and a vision of its future for design inspiration.



(Courtesy of www.insh.com.cn)





Australian Wool Innovation Limited. "Shanghai designer, Qiu Hao wins Woolmark Prize."            Merinoinnovation.com. 2008. Web. 31 May 2009.                                    <http://www.merinoinnovation.com/awi/en/Home/about+awi/latest+news/>.



People's Daily Online. "Shanghai Starts Construction of International Fashion Center."

People's Daily Online. 30 Apr. 2009. Web. 30 May 2009.            <http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/6649082.html>.



"Qiu Hao and Helen Lee | Diversity in design, comrades in commerce." Business of Fashion.

17 Jun. 2008. Web. 29 May 2009.
<www.businessoffashion.com/tag/china>.



Raffles Design Institute Shanghai. "Faculties/Fashion Design." Raffles Design Institute            Shanghai. 2009. Web. 1 Jun. 2009.                                                                         <http://en.raffles-design.com.cn/en/faculty/fashion-design/>.



SHME.com. "Fashion." SHME.com. 2004. Web. 30 May 2009.            <http://www.shme.com/shanghai_other/fashion/f_costume.htm>.



TimeOut Group Ltd. TimeOut Shanghai. 2nd ed. London: TimeOut Guides Ltd., 2006. Print.



Xuan, Zuo. "Trend: Fashion Design in Shanghai." CScout Trend Consulting. 5 Mar. 2008. Web.            31 May 2009.                                                                        <http://www.cscout.com/blog/2008/03/05/trend-fashion-design-in-shanghai.html>.

The absence of Chinese traditional arts By Ling Wenyi

The absence of Chinese traditional arts

By Ling wenyi(10072710214)

China's recent success in holding the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and
near future's hosting the 2010 Shanghai Expo mark another step in
China's integration with the world., an integration that is at times
fitful and contradictory. Although China has a long history which
provides a rich resource from culture and art, to some extent, China
grows so fast in short a period of time that may result a lot of
conflicts and problem which never exist before when the transition
went smoothly. It is now exactly sixty years since the foundation of
the People Republic of China, a new era that differentiates it from
the monarch periods. It is now more than thirty years since the
conclusion of the Cultural Revolution, a transitional period with
tears and lessons that ironically paved the way for what is happening
in China today. It is also now about thirty years since the
implementation of Deng Xiaoping's Four Modernization, a starting time
for Chinese intellects to learn from Western World. Before the
foundation of People Republic of China, our country is regarded as
colonialism. After the foundation, we turn into classical socialism.
However, we claim us socialistic country with Chinese feature after
the Cultural Revolution. But now symbolized with the entry into the
World Trade Organization, we tend to accept we like most people from
the rest countries are in a brand new era of global capitalism.

From April 18 to 20, 2002, the British Museum hosted a conference
entitled "Contemporary Chinese Arts in the Cultural Arena." Organize
by the British Museum, in collaboration with the Chinese Arts Centre,
this event brought together over twenty artists, writers, and curators
from around the world to present their views on the state of
contemporary Chinese art today. Though the conference lasted for three
whole days with the attendance of top artists, writers, and curators,
some definitions about the contemporary Chinese arts are still on the
air. One reason of the difficulty to conclude some issues of Chinese
contemporary art is that it is still alive. In another words, artists
and critics still needs close observation of what is happening and
will happened for a long period of time before drawing the final
conclusion.

However, the definition of contemporary of Chinese art is quite
different between foreigners and Chinese which don't work in art
field. My friends and me have interviewed several traditional Chinese
art crafts and professors of folklore. During the class, we are lucky
enough to talk with some famous artists such as XuZhen and Shi Yong.
Compared with their view of contemporary Chinese art with I found
recently, we are puzzled so much what is the real situation of
contemporary is, because the two parts opinions are just opposite.

We calls those art work existed in recent 100 years contemporary, and
several scholars just give their quite different definitions of it. Li
Xiaoshan said, it is the art borrowed from foreign world and we just
make some change of it. Wu Hong said, our art work is like an
experiment of trying everything new. He Qin said, our work is just a
follower of American art. Other popular about what is contemporary
Chinese art include art originated from opening policy (Lu Hong) , art
of new social problems(Wu Wei) and art reflected the cultural
revolution.

In order to know the general condition of contemporary Chinese art, it
is needed for us to review the history of it.

I general history of contemporary Chinese art(private vs public)

The early twenty-first century forms a particularly opportune moment
to look back in very broad terms at the inter-relation between
different art discourses in China. These discourses have been driven
by two kinds of distinct but related historicist motivation, both of
which are now still influencing our way of life greatly. firstly,
there are those" patriotic" or "Mao's" revolution. Secondly, there are
those economic and "opening" developments. Characterizing these two
important discourse have been two adjectives: that of the "public" and
that of the "private," which also exist in the art field.

In ancient china, people had little right to stand for their own
privacy and live independent. To a large degree, they all belonged to
the emperor. In order to take control people's behavior, the monarch
built a special army to watch the works of artists and writers. Once a
kind of offensive action, especially towards the royal family instead
of the country, the artists including his whole families would always
sentence death or send on an exile. During which period of time, the
art works was more for the upper class and the royal families.

The rebellion resulted the end of Feudal dynasty, and birth of a
capital new China, the Republic of China.

Although it only lasted for around twenty years, it was a golden
period for artists to learn talents and skills from the out world.

The launch of the Cultural Revolution in China in 1966 can seem a
deeply irrational event of the New China. However, the art production
from that period now represents an important influence on today's art
production. "zaofan you li"( revolution is reasonable) and "wei ren
min fu wu"(serve the people) became the top principles for people to
follow. During the first period of Cultural Revolution, every Chinese
work for the big community with great passion and enthusiasm, a time
which illustrate the "everything is for the people" thoroughly.

Most people of that time believed in whatever Chairman Mao said and
followed it without any hesitation. Since the Fourth Front Red Army
arrived in Yan'an after the Long March at the end of 1936, Mao Zedong
become a trope of Chinese art production. During the Cultural
Revolution , the production of Mao pictures entered into a new phase
of production. the earliest and most popular image of Mao is a colored
woodblock print entitled Portrait of Mao by Wang Shikuo. Mao's image
could later be seen on various poster and New Year pictures. It was
that time the " Four Guard" leaded by Jiang Qing , Mao's wife, took
advantage of people's blind belief to steal the authority from other
officers. In order to have a seemingly proper name of big revolution,
they announced that some guys with "bad purposes" were hiding in the
innocent people and waiting for the opportunity to rebel the New China
and Chairman Mao. They also exclaimed that most spies were in the
group of artists and writers and propagandized people to fight with
them which greatly interrupted artists' creative work. Besides, the
government actually leaded by the " Four Guard" built the so-called
"Red Guard" to observe people and forbid artists to learn from Western
world.

Under the circumstance, the aim of art had turn from "for the public"
to "for some certain people" , a situation just like that of ancient
china. Many intellects who had great confidence and wanted to build a
new china with their passion at first forced to leave their motherland
for fear of the obsession and unfair judgment from the government.

The transition was symbolically located between 1976 and 1979 with the
death of Mao Zedong and the implementation of Deng Xiaoping's opening
policy. The nearly ten years tumultuous Cultural Revolution has
greatly influenced the growth of national economy and development in
most fields. Deng Xiaoping wanted to find a shortcut to catch up other
countries. Collection a large amount of information, doing enough
research and study, Deng finally put forward the very famous policy,
opening policy in mid 1980s. The core of it is learning advanced
experience from the developed countries directly. Since the mapping of
many cultural developments in China has, the last thirty years, been
in terms of "china" and the "west", it is important to try and
conceptualize what these two elements might mean. Underlying these two
originality of Chinese contemporary art has been two idea: that of the
"public" and that of the "private'. In traditional Chinese characters,
people always believe person are part of a group who should put the
requirement of the group at their first position and ready to
sacrifice themselves when the individual benefits against the group's.
On the other hand, popular western value makes people believe seeking
the person's enjoyment and protecting the individual is not greedy but
accepted.

As a result, the new idea of art also has been brought into China with
a large number of artists coming back from foreign countries. Most
artists had oversea experience are more likely to regard arts as a
form of self-expression. They are more self-centered when create a new
pieces of works. Because they focus more on their changes of inner
feeling, their production are always abstract and difficult to
understand which usually combine a lot of individual motion and
confusion in it.

II traditional Chinese art

Actually, since the first time I had this class, I was always puzzled
about what is the position of traditional art. To our Chinese, when we
mention what is Chinese art, the fisrt thing comes into our mind is
traditional art such as ink painting ,calligraphy and peking opera.

Experts and critics in art field are always contemplating the aim and
originality of art. Although they still have not reach an argument on
them, the most popular one is that the art is created by people and
art should serve the people.

Professor Zhong said, art is an important part of a country's culture.
And just like our long history, the most necessary thing for us is to
help our art to keep its roots. According to him, the so-called
contemporary Chinese art is a kind of fake thing which is created for
fulfilling the curiosity of foreigners. It is not real because the
absolutely absence of traditional Chinese art.

Mrs. Wang, an artist in paper cutting, told us her worry about the
future of Chinese art. In her opinion, the avant-grade art works are
more kind of copy of westen work. And there is few elements in them.

Another artists in ink painting ,we called him Mr. Li,also showed his
attitude towards the contemporary Chinese art. " It is unhealthy to
create art work only based on politics and scandals of the government,
which is exactly the situation of china nowadays." Foreigners seem to
have a lot of interests in the history of the Cultural Revolution and
the events of 1989. As a result, some artists just created some works
to fufill their curiosity .

When we asked him that his idea is a little bit too extreme , he said
" Maybe those things really influenced some artists and forced them go
abroad. However , don't you it is normal for Chinese artists never use
or talk about ink painting and calligraphy.

Mr. Li's view is some kind of too person. Nowadays , a lot of Chinese
artists try to put some Chinese traditional elements into their work.
A good example of it is the work ,borrowing your enemy's arrows,of Cai
Quoqian. Actually he borrowed inspiration from the old story of great
ancient novel, the Romance of Three Kingdom. Other artists also
created some famous works with Chinese elements in them like Chinese
characters, idea and religious.

However, those works are rare and not very successful. One reason of
its failure in the world stage is that it is difficult to understand
for people from another different culture to understand some thing
with subtle cultural meaning.

But most important reason is that we have not taken those traditional
elements very seriously. We ourselves just regard them as a kind of
way of self entertainment.

One of my Singapore friends whose major is Archeology shocked when she
first come to china, because a large number of things here have a
history of hundreds of years. It sounds like a joke. Otherwise, we
have 5000 history which leave as a lot of tradition and we just behave
like a rich man who never care about the thing belonged to us very
much..

On one hand, the relationship between contemporary Chinese art and
contemporary western art is a hot topic. On the other hand ,the art
field nowadays seldom looks back to explore and cherish what have had.
On the contrary, to forigners, the contemporary Chinese art are art of
suficial and ethnic Chinese elements. Gao Minglu, a famous critic,
used to point out that contemporary Chinese art is in a very confict
situation. Up to now, our art is still sway between western and
tradition style. We want our art be accepted by people around the
world. We want our artists be more exposed to the style of successful
western style. However, most conservative Chinese call people to keep
the purity of traditional Chinese art. With the fast process of
globalization, almost all countries start to realize the importance of
protecting their own culture and art.

"Japan is a good example to illustrate my view on the necessity of
cultural protection." Professor Zhong said. " I have been to Japan's
old capital, which is east of Tokyo. The old architecture is preserved
so well that when you look out of the window, you may fell you live in
ancient Japan. I am pity to think of our capital Beijing, which
changed a lot." " Those traditional things serve as symbols, and it
also give people from same cultural background a kind of identity. To
this extent, art is far more important about itself. It plays a big
role in anthropology?"

Furthermore, it is very difficult to talk about the relationship
between traditional art and contemporary art in theory, because our
contemporary art is based on the opposite position of traditional art
and serves as a critics to old art style.

However, china ,a county with 5000 yeas old, with rich cultural
treasure should confront the question about how to find a balance
between tradition and modern. Moreover, the system of western art is
base on the condition of other countries and it also has some
questions of itself. In another words, we should cherish our
traditional art and build our own art theory.

Videogaming in Visual Arts - by Wesley Auyeung

I grew up in a very diverse neighborhood. My street alone had three
Chinese families, three Indian families, one Italian family, one
Korean family, three Irish families and at least two or three Jewish
families. Approximately half of the students who attended my high
school were Asian (including Indian, Korean, Japanese, Filipino, and
Thai), and the other half of my school was comprised of kids of
various European heritages along with a few African American kids.
Growing up in this diverse environment not only helped me learn about
other cultures and beliefs, it also helped me learn about stereotypes
regarding my own culture.

For as long as I can remember, my friends would always say, "Man,
you are so Asian" whenever they caught me playing video games. I would
usually just laugh and shrug it off without giving it much thought,
but the stereotype seemed to follow me everywhere. As much as I
enjoyed spending time with my friends, they were not always available
to spend time with me. Thus, when I was alone I would resort to video
games to pass the time, never assuming that it could be turned into an
art form.

When I arrived in China, I was somewhat surprised by the amount of
time people spend playing video games. I had thought that Chinese
people, especially students, would be too busy with other obligations
that would keep them from having free time to play video games.
However, many observations I have made around Shanghai and other areas
of China have proven to me that the video game culture in China is far
more intense than the one in the U.S. to the point where video games
have become a part of Chinese culture, and many Chinese people, young
and old, reflect this notion with their video game habits.

Part of the reason this is so is because nearly all the latest
movies, video games, and music albums can be bought from one of the
street vendors selling pirated media. The prices of the fake DVDs and
video games are also much cheaper than their legitimate counterparts
while the quality remains comparable. And with such a tremendous
amount of pirated media, Chinese people have a huge selection of
affordable entertainment just waiting around the corner.

Another reason video games have become such a huge hit in China is
because the creation of online games has allowed gamers to interact
with other people while playing. Massively Multiplayer Online Role-
Playing Games, otherwise known as MMORPGs, have become the most
popular games amongst Chinese gamers according to The Eighth China
Online Game Market Survey (Tan). This genre of video games is mainly
played on computers because they require Internet connectivity for
players to play together online. The interaction that gamers
experience online can be addicting, and many times, Chinese gamers
become absorbed in the vast beautiful worlds that the creators of
these video games dream up and realize.

And it is no wonder that Chinese people spend so much time playing
video games since Chinese people have little else to do for
entertainment, at least within the confines of what is deemed
acceptable by society and what is not. Through talking to people who
grew up in China and know the culture, I learned that Chinese people
do not do the same things people elsewhere do for fun. Whereas many
people western countries enjoy going out to bars to have a drink or
perhaps to a club to meet people and dance, Chinese people tend to
enjoy staying home and spending time with family. Chinese culture in
addition to Confucianism views drinking and staying out late at night
as improper, thus many Chinese people tend to choose quieter forms of
entertainment.

The One Child Policy is another huge factor in the popularity and
assimilation of video games in Chinese culture. Since families are
officially only allowed one child, many of those children become very
lonely while growing up. Even though they have friends at school they
can play with, their friends will not always be available to keep them
company, thus video games provides a convenient outlet for children's
social needs in China.

But apart from being lonely, parents tend to spoil kids because of the
One Child Policy. Since parents can only have one child, they more
often than not cave into many of the child's requests. Thus, many kids
spend countless hours playing video games while they grow up because
their parents are reluctant to tell them no. Sometimes, parents even
use video games as incentives for their children to do certain things
such as performing well on exams. This method of rewarding children
with video games only further reinforces Chinese kids' video game
habits.

Video games have become so rooted in Chinese culture now that Chinese
artists have begun experimenting with video games as a medium of
expression. Artists like Feng Mengbo and Cao Fei have manipulated
games to include elements of their choice to express themselves. Much
of the work that they do is not done on their own since the amount of
work and time that goes into a video game can be quite a lot, but the
possibilities that they have with this medium are virtually endless.

Though video game art's beginnings are somewhat cloudy, many consider
Feng Mengbo to be the grandfather of video game art. Hailing from
Beijing, this video game fanatic utilizes interactive CD-ROMs in many
of his installations. "A primary reason for choosing the interactive
CD-ROM as a medium for artistic expression is grounded in the artist's
strong commitment to democratic populism. Video games are a source of
empowerment and participation for their youthful practitioners… The
versatility of the digital medium gives the audience freedom to
participate in the artwork itself, and the technical possibilities for
interaction by the artist and the user help to free the process of
making art from conventional linear narrative structures. For Feng
Mengbo, new technologies offer new ways of exploring human concerns
and returning to individuals the opportunity to imaginatively reshape
their own cultural participation." (Carter).

One of Feng Mengbo's more traditional pieces, entitled "My Private
Album" consisted of a set of images capturing various aspects of
Chinese Culture in the late twentieth century. The pictures were put
on a Macintosh computer hooked up to a projector. The projector shot
the images onto a screen enwrapped by curtains to give observers a
sense as if they were inside a movie theater. The installation was
interactive, and users could put the images in the order that they
wished to see them by using the keyboard and mouse on the computer.

Another piece by Feng Mengbo, called Q4U, is a little less traditional
than his "My Private Album" piece. In Q4U, Feng Mengbo takes the game
Quake III and places a model of himself as the protagonist of the
game. The model sports camouflage pants and a video camera, and the
point of the game is to go around killing other players for points
(Murray). The game itself was projected onto three large screens where
viewers could access the game and play other people, sometimes
including Feng Mengbo himself, via a broadband Internet connection
(Murray).

The Q4U piece was meant to reflect on relation between self-image and
militarism, which is something Feng Mengbo could relate to when he was
a child (Murray). The piece could also be seen as an indicator of how
teens sometimes base their reality on video games. Gamers sometimes
identify themselves with the protagonist of the game they are playing
and become obsessed with the idea of becoming more like the
protagonist as a result, which is why people often blame video games
for some of the teen violence that occurs on campuses across the
United States.

I feel that the most unique aspect of Feng Mengbo's Q4U, however, was
not the ideas it was trying to convey but the interaction his
installation had with his viewers. While many installations that
artists set up are interactive, few can achieve what video games can.
In Feng Mengbo's case he can allow his viewers to assume the identity
of almost anyone in the world. For Q4U, Feng Mengbo chose his own
identity for viewers to assume.

In comparison with more traditional mediums used by artists, video
games are usually much more interactive. Even compared to some more
contemporary mediums, such as performances, video games are still
somewhat more interactive than these mediums. But that's not to say
that video games are better. It only means that video games can
achieve what other mediums cannot, just as other mediums can allow the
artist to offer his or her viewers something video games cannot.

For instance, Zhang Huan, one of the major performance artists I
studied in Contemporary Art in China, sat on a toilet covered in a
sticky substance comprised primarily of honey. The performance lasted
for an hour, and by the time it was done flies covered Huan from head
to toe. The performance was a display of the living conditions that
many Chinese people experience throughout the country and their
ability to deal with these conditions.

The performance was interactive, but not to the same degree as Feng
Mengbo's Q4U. In performance art, artists choose whether or not to
interact with their viewers. But even if the performer chooses not to
interact with his viewers, there will still be some level of
interaction even if it is quite limited. The presence of the viewer
does affect the artist's performance in some way even if it is not
noticeable.

In Gerald (Gerry) Pryor's performances, he mainly uses body rubbings
on different mediums to produce different effects. In his performance
that we saw in class, he jogged around the room his performance was in
while viewers looked on. He told us that a small child kept shouting
during his performance, and he modified his performance slightly in
response to this child. Pryor also told us that his performances tend
to differ from place to place because the atmosphere is different and
nothing is ever quite the same. This is a perfect example of how
performance art is still interactive, even if the interaction is
limited.

But despite the interaction that video games offer as an artistic
medium, it is not all fun and games for artists working with video
games. It is almost impossible for an artist to finish an entire video
game himself, unless he already has a fundamental foundation set up
for him. In Feng Mengbo's case, he took the already existing game,
Quake III, and modified it so that he was in the game. Though his
piece was creative and influential, he did not create a whole new
game. He only modified parts of the game to express his ideas.

For some artists, they do not consider this to be a good practice. In
my interview with Ben Houge, I learned many things about the video
game industry and art in the industry. Ben has worked for various
video game corporations like Sierra and Ubisoft in their audio
division composing scores for hit games like the Leisure Suit Larry
series and Endwar. His view on Feng Mengbo is that the artist does not
truly create anything special. Feng Mengbo uses something called the
"Quake Engine" to produce his visual effects. This engine acts as a
real-time interpreter to code that Feng Mengbo throws in. After the
code is thrown in, the engine runs the commands according to what Feng
Mengbo inputted. Though this method of creating a video game is
efficient, Houge believes it limits the artist in what he can do since
the way the engine interprets the code might not be exactly how the
artist wants it. Even though the artist can modify the code to get the
engine to produce something as close to what he wants as possible, it
will probably not come out exactly the way he wants it. If this is the
case, crucial elements of his piece may be left out. This is a problem
that many artists working with video games encounter.

Cao Fei, who works with the online game Second Life, tries to solve
this problem with outsourcing. While this is a good idea, Houge
believes that Cao Fei is also limited by the tools she chooses to use.
Since she uses the Second Life program for many of her video game
applications, she is even further limited by her tools than Feng Menbo
is. She has even less control over what her character model looks like
and the environment that the character will be in since she relies on
the game's conventions and engine to get the job done.

Houge believes that artists should have a more profound understanding
of video games before they try to create art using video games. He
states, "If artists do not have a good understanding of the tools
that they use, then they will be limited by their knowledge." He
himself graduated with a degree in music composition, so much of his
understanding of digital audio is self-taught. After gaining a better
understanding of digital audio and its workings, Houge applied it to
video games through creating scores and figuring out the most
efficient way of storing the audio files he creates on the medium that
the video games will be presented on (usually a CD). However, he has
also done a few of his own, more personal, projects.

In his Kaleidoscope installation, Houge teamed up with Chen Hangfeng
to create an installation that would have a kaleidoscope effect on the
senses. The installation consisted of multiple microphones and cameras
that were positioned outside of a hexagonal room. The cameras were
linked to projectors that projected the feed onto every other wall in
the hexagonal room. The cameras had filters in front of them that
fractured the image, much like a kaleidoscope. In addition, each
camera had a motor that spun the camera in circles. The microphones
were positioned near the cameras and had 30 digital filters that would
only allow a specific pitch through. When inside the room, various
combinations of pitches could be heard while viewing the camera feed
creating a kaleidoscope effect on the eyes and ears.

I thought the installation was very interesting. Though the
installation itself had little to do with video games, it still
maintained the interactive property of most video games. The only real
difference between a video game and the installation was the user had
no way of directly manipulating the environment in the installation.
Ben and Chen Hangfeng were controlling everything in the installation
except for who was walking by the installation at any specific moment.

During the interview, Ben also talked about how games create a sense
of a real environment for the gamer, and how he hates the term "video
game art". He believes that the term "video game art" makes it seem as
if the people who create video games on an ordinary basis are not
already creating art. He also believes that many conventional artists,
and even some contemporary artists, are not open to the idea of
including video games as a medium for art. Aaajiao agreed with this
notion in our e-mail correspondence and stated that some of the most
prevalent challenges he faces is how other artists try to control the
overall concept of what is art and what is not.

This ties in heavily to the idea of interdisciplinary and how distinct
categories in art really no longer apply in the present day and age.
Contemporary art in China, though sometimes ethically questionable
(like Zhu Yu's alleged fetus feast), is comprised of many different
mediums. Video games are just one example, but contemporary Chinese
artists have used many other mediums that some have a tough time
accepting as art such as food, culture, engineering, etc.

People say that Feng Mengbo is the grandfather of video game art, but
is he really? People have been creating video games for at least
twenty years, and none of them were considered to be artists? Video
games have always been an art, only it was not until recently that
someone (like Feng Mengbo) decided to classify it as art and inject it
into the art world. The only real difference between Feng Mengbo and
"regular" video game programmers and creators is Feng Mengbo had a
message to convey with his video game applications and he put his
video games in art exhibitions as opposed to on store shelves.

Artists working with video games also face challenges within their own
medium. Much of the limitations that artists have when working with
video games depend on the current technology and the team they may be
working with. Visually, video games depend a lot on the efficiency of
the platform and media they are played and stored on, respectively.
With increasingly more advancements in technology, machines are
becoming more and more efficient at storing more data in smaller
chips. This allows programmers more room to work with more high
quality video and audio to give a more realistic experience for the
gamer.

The team that the artist chooses to work with, if he needs one, also
limits the artist. Since the visual quality of the games depends on
the programmer's skill, the artist must choose his team wisely in
order to achieve the quality and precision that he desires. In
addition, going back to what Ben Houge had said, the artist himself
must have an understanding of the programming that goes into his video
game, so he can supervise his team and understand what they are doing.

Artists who use video games as a medium are considered
very innovative. I tend to disagree somewhat since I feel that video
games have always been an art, only now there is a deeper type of
creativity that goes on behind a video game designed by a self-
proclaimed artist. Video games that are made by commercial companies
tend to have straightforward goals in the games that do not mean much
in the context of society whereas artists who work with video games
try to express ideas through their games.

In my opinion, I think video games are a great medium for
art. I think if done right, a video game can allow a viewer to
understand the artist in a way that other mediums could not allow.
Instead of painting an autobiography, an artist can make a video game
based on his or her own life, so the viewer can virtually "walk" in
the artist's shoes. However, at the same time, I do not think that
video games should always strive to be realistic.

I believe that video games are better the further they are
from reality. I feel that that is the main point of creating a video
game, so that what would be considered fiction can still feel somewhat
real to the player or viewer of the game. The viewer can assume the
role of someone else for a little while and become absorbed into a
world they otherwise could not even dream of in some cases. In that
way, video games differ from other artistic mediums in that they can
make the unreal that much more real.

Works Cited

Carter, Curtis L. "On the Future of the Present: Art, Technology, and
Culture." Haggerty Museum: Current Exhibitions. 2 June 2009 <http://www.marquette.edu/haggerty/exhibitions/past/fengmengbo/feng2.html
>.

"E-mail with aaaJiao." E-mail to the author. 3 June 2009.

"Interview with Ben Houge." Personal interview.

"Interview with ZeeZee Zhong." Personal interview.

Murray, Timothy. "Thinking Electronic Art Via Cornell's Goldsen
Archive of New Media Art." Pacific Rim. 2 June 2009 <http://www.intelligentagent.com/archive/Vol6_No2_pacific_rim_murray.htm
>.

Tan, Joel. "MMORPG: The most favored game genre in China." Weblog
post. Every Joe.com. 6 Jan. 2009. 31 May 2009 <http://www.everyjoe.com/mmotaku/mmorpg-the-most-favored-game-genre-in-china/
>.

Letting Go by Drew Gibson

Drew Gibson

4 June 2009

Letting Go

Speed on Shanghai on Speed

Background

"I think we were invited [to Shanghai] because of the way we work in our projects, why doing and thinking at the same time is somehow linked to the Chinese way of urban planning, urban architectural planning, where they also try to be extremely fast and are also forced to think and to produce at the same time... more producing and less thinking. Just letting it go." Julian Friedauer, Speedism

Speed and dynamism propel the city of Shanghai like never before. The special status granted to the city in recent decades has unleashed massive amounts of international and intercontinental activity that have landed the city once again at the forefront of Asian and world metropolises. The startling pace of the city's renewal has spiraled the once-static city into complete cacophony as modern skyscrapers and infrastructure appear to sprout from the ground, shaking the very foundations of the place and rendering the landscape much more pointed and oblique. But the flurry of activity that has descended on the city is directly the result of a national dialogue now extended far beyond China's borders and engaging directly with Western countries. So with the resulting economic exchange has naturally come a great wave of multicultural inputs and influences that have exploded the boundaries of Shanghai's art world and blurred the lines between different media.

  The artist-architecture collective called Speedism is a natural entryway into the newly multicultural realm of the Chinese art culture. The duo consists of Pieterjan Ginckels of Belgium and Julian Friedauer of Germany, and they have now participated in Chinese art events on multiple occasions. What they perform is a kind of spontaneous, live-action rendering--- Often set to music, their complex images come together in a way that connects architecture, urban design, music, choreography, and the visual arts. What defines their creative process is the notion of speed as a self-sustaining and life-giving force toward creativity, that speed and spontaneity in urbanism and design can allow for a kind of stream-of-consciousness unraveling of the self that gives rise to an architectural order. "In 2009", Ginckels explains, "peple take a bit of everything and they build their own person together out of stuff or superficial sides of stuff. I think that's what you see in our images and projects. There's more input and output than just urbanism or architecture". So Speedism's image-making process has a lot to do with the way real-world cities are built, albeit the spontaneous process is channeled through the individual rather than through the physical builders of an urban society.

Shanghai Urbanism and the Chinese Dream

"I think we're visual tourists, we're formal tourists. So we kind of get off on specific buildings and mistakes in buildings. They're probably not buildings people want to come see in China-- in Beijing, it's not really CCTV that we're looking at but the ugly Venturi-meets-Superstudio toilet pavilions in the park, that kind of stuff. Since we're always playing with fiction, these things all find their place in a story we have not really invented yet. Slowly, everything shapes together." -Pieterjan Ginckels

The architectural legacy of Shanghai has always been about some kind of dialogue with the West. Of course, such a dialogue wasn't always on such positive terms as it is today, as the origins of Shanghai are very much tied to the colonial settlements of the English, French and Americans. Even so, the European presence was seminal in building the city into a major port and commerce center, and brought the metropolis toward a form much closer to what we know today in terms not only of urban planning but in the extreme diversity of the structures that began to appear and shape Shanghai's identity on multicultural terms.

The imposition of the European powers on the city's urban fabric began to test the patience of the native Chinese, however, and many visionary ideas for the city began to brew from the lingering angst of their presence. The government in Nanjing granted the city its municipality status in 1927 which greatly expanded its political powers, although these powers did not extend to encompass the French and International settlements. Among the most famous and outlandish proposals, then was dreamt by Sun Yat-Sen, who envisioned a rerouting of the Huangpu River to the east of the city and the construction of a new Chinese Bund: the "Great Port Scheme", as it was called. The Europeans to the west would thus be left to languish in their increasingly obsolete settlements. "Cut off from their access to the sea, the foreign bund would literally be left high and dry"[1], says author Thomas J. Campanella.  Another plan involved building a wall of Chinese settlements extremely densely around the foreign concessions to effectively isolate the Europeans from the mainland. This kind of urban planning warfare did not actually come to fruition but it caused a definite anxiety for the foreign powers, who saw an increasingly strong will among the Chinese to build Shanghai on Chinese terms.

The plan that was actually acted upon was slightly more practical, though no less visionary: the plan called for the construction of a new Civic Center to the north of the established city on the Huangpu River, to eventually rival if not overshadow the foreign concessions. Among other structures a magnificent municipal building was built, but the plan was put to an agonizing halt by the Japanese invasion in 1937. The municipal building today houses the back offices for the Shanghai Museum of Sport.

The revitalization of Shanghai's dreams did not occur until decades later when the Shanghai municipality made the distinct choice to consult with French architectural groups in charge of the Paris metro area as they began the construction of Shanghai's sprawling Pudong New Area, which aside from the engineering feat it represents also serves the symbolic function of uniting the two landmasses on either side of the river, lending the cityscape on each side a much more dramatic flair as they look onto one another in a gesture of unity. And as the two sides are brought together we see the long-awaited influx of international inputs that has electrified the city with a new wave of spontaneous growth and activity. Shanghai is the kind of city that thrives on this energy, and the presence of artistic collectives like Speedism as well as high-profile construction projects from international architects is making the place that much more of a magnet for a renewed cosmopolitan discourse.

The New Landscape

"We [and the architects] are on two different sides of one big story, somehow. We think the Chinese kind of architectural visualization tries to help the Chinese Dream to come true, this somehow political dream of the perfect city, the perfect architecture, the perfect life in Chinese cities. It's somehow a dream but we say it's a sad dream, and our images are on the other side. What we do is somehow a "doom" version of it, which is not really "doom" as much as a happy doom." -Julian Friedauer

 If Speedism are not architects per se, they certainly operate like them: Ginckels on a loose napkin offers his description of the social mechanisms underlying the new China. Beginning with the revolution, he says---not the political revolution or politicized "Cultural Revolution" but rather the real cultural revolution that began with the economic reforms of 1979, China has been on a course to realize its own Dream, which Ginckels represents with a straight diagonal arrow, moving constantly upwards. We in 2009 are about on the halfway point of this arrow. At this same moment we intersect with an equal and opposite arrow moving downwards—the ever-present potential for Doom, for chaos, disarray. Two sides of one story, wherein one can transform into the other almost undetected. So Speedism images are a sort of parallel for the architectural renderings that give way to mammoth structures in the real world, exposing in rendering the potential for their opposite consequences.

If we were to translate this into physical terms, it might be useful to think of the "dream" as something like a modernist dream. So the modernist slabs at this point have thrust Shanghai into a transitional moment, where there is a bizarre interplay of gleaming highrises and small-scale lilongs below, an interplay of chaos and order that is threatened by the looming monotony and homogeneous scale of the modernist constructions.

In the art world there's been a kind of backlash against the perceived threat of homogeneity, and this can be seen in the widespread adoption of abandoned spaces for the purposes of the local arts scene. Both Beijing's 798 and Shanghai's 50 Moganshan Road arose from this backlash, proclaiming in their own way that the old and new need not stand in conflict with each other. Xue Song was the first artist to rent space from M50 in the year 2000, perhaps at the point when the new structures in the city really began to threaten the city's vibrant social spaces and traditional culture. So the artistic aims of the Shanghai arts scene are not very different from the aims of the city at large—namely, to carve out an identity for the city and the country at large that straddles the border between tradition and reinvention, between the national and international.

It's an alternative sort of development pattern that has taken hold only during the past decade and has seen outgrowths throughout the city, not only to preserve the old street life and city fabric but for commercial reasons as well—the Xintiandi development near People's Square has been criticized as a Disneyfication of the urban landscape, but at the same time grapples with the same East-meets-West architectural paradigm as M50, but this time deliberately caters to the wants and needs of foreign visitors. In the greater scheme these efforts look like small attempts to get a grasp on the vast mechanism of change that thrusts the city ever closer to the dream/doom it is apparently destined for.

On the other hand, if these counter-movements appear to hinder the speed of change in Shanghai, perhaps it's worth considering that they very well could be accelerating them. That is, the power to shape the city's creative identity is apparently undergoing another transformation, from something that exists solely in the hands of the municipal or Beijing governments to something that is already becoming more democratic and open to more voices within the city. Something inside more of an open forum that allows for greater internal spontaneity. If the productive forces in the city change hands, we are likely to see a reorientation of the Dream itself, from the utter singularity of the Modernist columns to a greater diversity and integration of edifices and alleyways.

 Media and Contemporary Arts

"So we propose a visual doom, a fictional doom-- because our projects are fiction-- that grows together with the dream. ...the opposite of what all the rendering offices are doing. But at the same time we play with the rendering and visualization to create something. As much as the render is real, our images also are real and have a kind of power." -Pieterjan Ginckels

Other artists like Allard van Hoorn have launched exhibitions like 2007's Platform for Urban Investigation[2], which bring together people as diverse as artists, architects, and photographers as they jointly contribute projects based on different elements of the urban experience, and particularly that of Shanghai. The projects range from Jian Jun's Household Objects (simply, objects plucked from the urban environment and placed in galleries) to something as abstract as Christian Leibenger's Tricycle House, a traditional Chinese home (in miniatore) built atop a tricycle, destroyed gradually in movement, and in a fashion meant to reflect creative destruction and urban change in Shanghai.

The overriding theme is that of the urban landscape as an aesthetic and intellectual experience, as a set of near-abstract spaces that we exist within that has more to do with the ideas that bring them together than with the physical properties of the places themselves. These kinds of excursions expand the boundaries of an arts scene already leaning on the interdisciplinary, elevating the arts and architecture to a place equally under the umbrella of "experience". 

 "I don't want to give away too much because if you have many inputs then you play it out on many levels, so you have to tell ten stories when you make the image. It's at once the power of the image that you can generate so much with it, but at the same it it's a bit of a hassle that it's always that much. Doom is a bit like that." –Pieterjan Ginckels

 What Speedism apparently does is offer a solution to what to make of this kind of multimedia convergence, and that is to take it to its natural limits. Because the images, as Pieterjan explains, draw liberally from all the elements of design, urbanism and art nearly indiscriminately, the best resulting approach is to continue to draw from them and avoid filtering our output with the natural impulse to categorize. "We Might Be Wrong" they proclaim in their website's Manifest, as if anticipating the natural backlash that might greet such unrestricted spontaneity. If Shanghai has loosened the filers on the kinds of influences that pour in from the Western powers it has always grappled with, then as we transition toward Dream or Doom we will naturally see other forms of expression follow it toward a place no longer hampered by categorization or the necessity of identity.

 

Works Cited

Campanella, Thomas J.

The Concrete Dragon: China's Urban Revolution and What it Means for the World

Princeton Architectural Press, 2008

 

Hoorn, Allard van.

Platform for Urban Investigation: Shanghai II (2007)

http://www.allardvanhoorn.com/biography_pui_shanghai_2.asp#Folding

 

Interview with Speedism: Partial Transcript

 

Drew: Do you view your work as a mirror of real-life urban processes?

 

JF: We don't know if it's that in general but we can say it's definitely a link to Chinese urban life, real life. We've been already to Beijing for five weeks in December and I think we were invited because of the way we work in our projects, why doing and thinking at the same time is somehow linked to the Chinese way of urban planning, urban architectural planning, where they also try to be extremely fast and are also forced to think and to produce at the same time... more producing and less thinking--- just letting it go. That's also somehow.. we work together----

 

PG: Yeah I think it's what Julian says, but also, and that's where we're actually somehow far from the architects, that in the first place it also interests us, or it's not only in urbanism that you find this kind of random... throwing everything in together, superficial network-- you build your identity with stuff. It's a kind of collage, and I think maybe in Shanghai the most or in China, people don't really care if they copy the whole thing or if they copy something or they just copy the formal part of it, like extermal or... but in general you can see that in 2009 people take a bit of everything and they build their own person together out of stuff or superficial sides of stuff.. I think that's where you also see in our images and our projects... There's more input and output than just urbanism or architecture.

 

Sometimes some things fit together and they're not from the same domain, they're not both from architecture, but we can have a song, like the piece with the black mirror had, and we combine it with architecture--- more randomly, less specific than we're talking now.

 

Drew: Is the modern Chinese city in particular an important part of your work, and if so, do you find yourselves thinking about it in terms of its "Chienseness" or what otherwise sets it apart from European or Western Cities?

 

PG: I think one point we have to make clear is that we're not really hardcore researchers. The things you think of when you think of the Chineseness of the Chinese city are not things that we really grasp or that we tend to use when we think of the Chinese city in our projects. So again, as much as people construct complex things on a superficial level, we also kind of superficially understand or quote the Chineseness of the city. I guess there's lots of formal input we take from the Chinese city, and we kind of recognize the way that the city is built up here, and the way that we build up our images, but I don't know if you take a very specific input like Chinese cities are, they have this graph of population, this graph of investment and all of this... I don't think we ever try to look at such levels of understanding.

 

JF: I think it's the way you explained it: We're not so much researchers, we are much more like travelers, or tourists. We pick only things we like, and they don't have to be Chinese. So it can be like, in our last project, can be something to do with feng shui, it also can be something like the cheap dvd copy of the cool film we found on the street, which has nothing to do with China. The content of that film can be anything.

 

PG: I think we're visual tourists, we're formal tourists. So we kind of get off on specific buildings and mistakes in buildings. They're probably not buildings people want to come see in China-- in Beijing, it's not really CCTV that we're looking at but the ugly Venturi-meets-Superstudio toilet pavilions in the park, that kind of stuff. Since we're always playing with ficiton, these things all find their place in a story we have not really invented yet. Slowly, everything shapes together.

 

Drew: Since you're working with the medium of rendering, do you think there's a reltation between what you do and the officlial architectural renderings that anticipate physical structures?

 

JF: We're on two different sides of one big story, somehow. We think the Chinese kind of architectural visualization tries to help the Chinese dream to come true, this somehow political dream of the perfect city, the perfect architecture, the perfect life in Chinese cities. It's somehow a dream but we say it's a sad dream, and our images are on the other side. What we do is somehow a "doom" version of it, which is not really "doom" as much as a happy doom.

 

PG: It's got a short intro text, like everything I don't want to give away too much because if you have many inputs then you play it out on many levels, so you have to tell ten stories when you make the image. It's at once the power of the image that you can generate so much with it, but at the same it it's a bit of a hassle that it's always that much. Doom is a bit like that.

 

So we propose a visual doom, a fictional doom-- because our projects are fiction-- that grows together with the dream. ...the opposite of what all the rendering offices are doing. But at the same time we play with the rendering and visualization to create something. As much as the render is real, our images also are real and have a kind of power.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

[1] Campanella, Thomas J. The Concrete Dragon, 2008

[2] http://www.allardvanhoorn.com/biography_pui_shanghai_2.asp#Folding

Shanghai Map—Yang Ban Xi

Shanghai Map—Yang Ban Xi

Yedda (Guan Ye)

In May 14 class, when Alison came to visit our class and gave us a
amazing speech, we saw several pictures of The Red Detachment of Women—
one of the eight model operas—in which the actresses dress in military
uniform but dance ballet. It's totally mixed and in some way it looks
silly, however, it's still a bold attempt which enhance the
development of Chinese opera apart from Peking Opera.

Alison suggested that our Chinese art should add more Chinese element,
and pointed out that Peking Opera is not the only represtation of
Chinese element. Just like our Chinese audience always get tired of
Director Zhang Yi Mou's piece which frequnently add Peking Opera in
it. Just like the his piece of work— "Chines eight minites"—at the
closing ceremonies of the Athens Olympics. That means Chinese cultural
and spirit have mant contents and intentions and Peking Opera is a
small part of them. When referring to the eight model operas the
Cultural Revolution are definitly brought to people's mind, However,
it's unfair to say so.

She also mentioned that the ways of training in recent Chinese art
college sre not quite suitable to cultivate people's creation and
creative thinking because colleges attach much attention to the basic
skills of art and not enough attention are paid to the creative
thinking and innovation. It's impossible to yhinking about the real
situation that the 800 million Chinese people just watch eight model
operas and Yang Ban Xi is a very clear evidence of conservative
artistic creation. In spite of the negative part of Yang Ban Xi, there
are still some advantages of it which I will mention in the following
interview with Professor Li.

And she played some short videos for us which records the performance
of modern dance by some amatuers. Is it necessary for the artists to
receive nomal classes? Last time, Mr. Zhao Chuan led us to the
warehouse and we watched an amazing short drama named the Small
Society. This play is also performanced by the amatuers. In one place,
the profesional perfomers have great skills; In the other place, the
amatuers have passiona and ture emotion. You can't have yopur cake and
eat it and skilled and stylized are sometime brother and sister.

When one watch the eight model operas, it's easily for the audience to
tell good people apart from the bad people and there is no need for
you to guess the results of the story because Ithe triumph of the good
over evil are applied to all these operas, which sometimes don't
correspond to reality. The main roles in the opera are always caveed
as those who embodies all the fine quailities of an communist. In
Chinese, we just call it "nobly, great, omnipotent. I t's impossible
to find the real people in life even in that period. Character
profiling is a phenomenon that does not bode well for the development
of Yang Ban Xi. Interestingly, foe the reason that Jiang Qing, Mao's
wife and the main supervisor of Yang Ban Xi, is a female that many of
the main character in the opera are female too. For example, Lie Tie
Mei in the Red Lantern and the Red Detachment of Women.

Genarally speaking, in recent China most critics agree that the
Cutural Revolution is a mistake as well as the eight model operas. And
I decided to interview with Professor LI, one of those rare shcolars
holding an positive attitude toward Yang Ban Xi or at least in part.
He told me two good aspects of those models and express his suggestion
of the future development of those operas.

At first place, the eight model operas were creatived by the first
class playwriter and acted by famous actor or actress. They were all
experienced a strict training of operas. For example, Wang Zeng Qi,
the author of "Shajiabnag"—one of the eight model operas. He is also
a famous modern Chinese writer. Chinese government of that time
devoted a lot of manpower and materials to the creation and staging of
Yang Ban Xi. Certainly, the government had a clear objective of
polital goals which should be blamed by the critics. .

Arts definitly should learn from each other and borrow the essential
or new parts. And the western classic ballet can express the women's
gentle and soft.quite welll, so the idea of blending ballet into
Chinese opera is not bad though the details should pay more attention
to. For example, another piece of the eight model operas—Taking Tiger
Mountain—take the symphoy into the work as an introduction of the
environment.

Interestingly, during my interview with Professor Li, who is
specialized in Yang Ban Xi, he said he still remember the tune of the
symphoy and can help himself humming a tune. He argued that the
symphoy fits the whole environment of northeast of China wheree the
story happened, and this cannot be express only through the Chinese
tradition instrument, Ching-hu. He also mentioned that the Ching-hu
only has tow strings which lead to a relative low range, on the
contrary the western instrument like piano and violin has a wide range.

Frankly speaking, it is undeniable that the Model Operas have
influenced the musical taste of the greater part of China's population
in the period since the Cultural Revolution. During the heights of the
Cultural Revolution, each one of them would have been watched by every
Chinese man, woman and child more than twice a year on average. They
are an element in Chinese cultural history that cannot be –-but often
is— overlooked.

In a word, the eight model operas were based in great parts on
traditional Chinese as well as "Western" musical-dramatic heritage,
fashioned in a way prescribing certain fixed meanings by multiplying
them on all possible levels of the work, performing, musical and so
on. Today, we would take it something queer. In song-and-dance
extravaganzas with revolutionary messages, while the graceful dance
moves of these shows drew from ballets, the actresses wore earthy
peasant garb which reinforced communism's image of a noble proletariat.

Yang Ban Xi dates back to the 1940s. Already in the 1940s, and
especially since Mao's Yan'an Talks in 1942, our Chinese traditional
artists had been adapted to fit new ideological contexts, and all the
important theoretical principles underlying the eight model operas had
already been formulated, as Mao gave out a directive to adhere to
"revolutionary realism and romanticism", to present life realistically
but model-like and "on a higher plane". At the time when the new China
has recently been buil, it's a trend to adapt the Chinese traditon
opera into a new one. raditional works were revised, mainly in plot,
and new operas with contemporary, revolutionary themes were written,
but not enough to Mao's liking. In the early 1960s, he complained that
China's stage was still dominated by "emperors, kings, general,
chancellors, literati and beauties".

The former leader of China fonud this and wanted to use this trend to
compose several new operas and rich the spare time of people, the
result proved it incorrect, however. Since the 1960s Yang Ban Xi
boomed because of the Cultural Revolution. In the unforgetable ten
years Chinese artists had creative eight model operas.

Most important, all these were trying to describe the real society and
contemporary life of Chinese people, and is definitly unlike the
tradition ones which talks about gifted scholars and beautiful
landies. There is an old saying that art originate from the real life
but is not equal to it. In some extent, we can say that it's a great
advance of opera creation. Nevertheless, Professor Li said that most
of the work are talking about class conflict which is taken as the
main content of our life, such as strugglling with the Japanese army.
It is obviously that our life are much more than class society, and
this kind of simplification can not represent the issues in our society.

The Cultural Revolution seems like such a long time ago, however,
nobody could actually forget it even our teenagers in the twenty-first
century. It seems like our Chinese attitude toward it is ambioguous,
since some one criticize it oppress the intellectuals while others
think the whole society is in "good" order. Under the leadership of
Deng Xiao Ping, our government decided that the Cultural Revolution is
a whole mistake and denied everything relating to it, including the
eight model opera and others. It is still an opening question that
whether Yang Ban Xi is a mistake too. The Wikipedia notes that
"Although these works bear unmistakable political overtones of the
time when they were created, they nonetheless had significant artistic
values, and for this reason, some of the works remain popular even
today, over thirty years after the Cultural Revolution."

Maybe we can call it a try of modern Chinese opera. At present, the
eight model operas have come back to our sight again as some theater
plan to replay them and our audience actively response to it.
Additionally, the eight model operas are still alive today. Songbooks
and audiovisual products of the Model Operas are readily available and
popular with consumers. Their songs are sometimes sung in karaoke bars
and at parties, as a recall of the past and nostalgia elicited.
Professor Li mentions that it's a pity we do not go on in the road of
revise the traditon opera and blenging the western art style into our
opera creations. Maybe keep chasing this pavement and continuously
making new try in art field is a relatively good choice.

Yang Ban Xi grew in China at a very special time and we definitly
should recognize it's improvements in some cases though it looksa sort
of silly in nowadays. Maybe we can just learn from the way that
blending different art forms into the traditon arts. And I am very
fond of modern dance, especially after Defny played the shorting video
shouting Jin Xing—who received transsexual operation in the 1990s.
Excluding the political elements and the influence of the Cultural
Revolution, modern dance and Yang Ban Xi still some similarities
between them.

Another thought post-Futurism lecture...

After hearing the Chinese university student’s question about for whom and for what the city’s development serves I began to think about what constitutes a city. There are many different venues for culture here: galleries, nightclubs, bars, restaurants, too name a few, but these things all seems to be western approximations of what city life is “supposed” to be like. Being a student living here from abroad, I am most often exposed to these kinds of foreign-designed activities. Most often, these activities are, as I said before, merely approximations and therefore are most often destined to be mediocre and lacking in quality. For example, many western musical acts that come to Shanghai to perform have only a small following from their home countries, but upon arrival in China they are immediately put into the spotlight and interviewed by all of major foreign media sources. It seems that China, and specifically Shanghai, is being bogged down with such tremendous expectations about its growing arts industry that it is struggling to catch up. They can do as the Futurists promote- create things in lightening speed leaving no room for the past- but who does this benefit? Who is creating these venues of culture and where are the profits going? As of right now, it seems that are the arts are so intertwined with foreign money that any form of culture that exists outside this money cannot sustain itself. If these approximations of Western culture in China are so inherent to the makeup of a city, we need to ask who is telling us so and for what reasons. From my point of view, they (at least for now) predominantly serve those who created them: foreigners working in Shanghai. The final question that comes to my mind is how can venues that exist outside of the foreign money mechanism be created and sustained?

Speedism, A Celebration of Futurism

The 3rd lecture of the Futurism series, Futurist Visions in Architecture for Shanghai (featuring Dutch Pavilion designer and artist John Körmeling; visual artist Alicia Framis; artist-architect collective Speedism; and architect Koon Wee) opened up a new way for me to think about the use of Photoshop. Previously, I would do as I have always done: shoot a photograph, scan the negative, and then let Photoshop work its magic, but after yesterday’s talk I began to think about Photoshop as performance art.
This was all thanks to Speedism, a European duo doing incredible things with Photoshop. At the lecture, Speedism told a story of Shanghai’s development using a Photoshop created model city, a gray, bleak, and dark landscape of construction and smoke stacks. The story goes like this: Shanghai grows in power, wealth, prestige…, the world focuses its attention on her (they decided Shanghai was a female), the audience then finds out that Futurist Andre Marinetti is controlling the city with a version of his brain that sits on the roof of the tallest building, the brain then develops a tumor that begins to infect the whole city, and Shanghai begins to deconstruct. As one of the artists brings us through the plot, the other moves us through this virtual city, letting us feast our eyes on a city that is constantly being broken down and built up. Simultaneously, a loud heavy base beat is playing in the background. The cursor (instead of an arrow, it was a watch- appropriately enough) moves to the beat, stopping and starting as the music falls in and out.
Although I did not necessarily appreciate the content of their story, I really enjoyed watching them twist the parameters of Photoshop. They were able to take something that is only seen as means to making a finishing product and turn it into a constantly changing and never finished product, or a performance.

Does a Future Lie in Typography?

“In the long run, China will endure the turbulent and unprecedented upheavals of urbanization and internationalization. Art inspired by these times is consequently sure to be especially engaging and dazzling”

-       Speech given at An International Discourse on New Chinese Video and Photography, 31 January 2004, San Diego Museum of Art Curator, Betti-Sue Hertz

 

            A current running through the discussion on the impact of new media on contemporary art has been a question of how art can engage in the issues and problems that pervade society in an age of desensitization, disconnection and image overload. For Chinese contemporary art, this question is especially important.

            How can Chinese artists address what is going on around them in China and in the world, while trying to maintain a regional identity? How can their work engage with the issues that face contemporary Chinese society? Not only must their work respond to the simultaneous launch of China into the international scene and rapid domestic development, it must also grapple with the issue of how to do so in a world ruled by techonology.

            The 2004 Shanghai Biennale, which opened on September 28^th 2004, focused on this question and, more specifically, the influence of new media on Chinese art and international art. It was entitled Techniques of the Visible in English and yingxiang shengcun (Media Existence) in Chinese. This title was meant to show the complexity of the issues by illustrating the parallel between the two phrases and the shared interest in both the east and west. The show centers on two main questions: how does contemporary art reflect and evaluate the influence of technology on humanity? How may art use technology to enrich human experience?

            In order to answer these questions the Biennale utilizes the Chinese concept of “ying” which encompasses all phenomena related to sight. Here “ying” can be used to mean the way in which artists can create work that engages and connects with its viewer, instead of only providing the viewer with something to see. “Ying” is where artwork can be transformed from merely an image (among so many others) to something truly “visible.” It is here where the visible and the invisible meet. The concept of “ying” is particularly useful in relation to an essay written by art critic John Berger entitled Small Steps Towards a Theory of the Visible. In the essay, Berger argues that as the world becomes more and more image saturated “appearances have become volatile” (Berger). Art does not provoke, it entertains. How can artists create work that puts “ying” into practice by engaging its viewer and bringing him or her on a journey with the artist through the work.

            The Shanghai Biennale aimed to show that with the increasing relevance of this concern, attention is directed away from the “east/west dichotomy” and more towards “the relationship between technology and human existence” (Course Reader, Ying, Xu Jiang) As new media’s role in contemporary art becomes increasingly important, the conceptual understanding of art (What constitutes art? How can art be distinguished from other forms of expression?) is becoming more and more global. In an article entitled Ying by Xu Jiang, the President of China Academy of Art, a more in depth discussion of the role “ying” in Chinese contemporary art takes place. He writes that the 2004 Biennale also aimed to emphasize that for Chinese artists, this global issue must be addressed in the context of maintaining a regional identity. They suggest that perhaps the use of the concept “ying” can be the vehicle by which Chinese contemporary art can develop domestically and internationally.

            When looking at contemporary Chinese art, especially in the past 10 years, we can see the rapid rise of a number of artists on the international scene. Particularly, we can look at Xu Bing who has exhibited in numerous museums and galleries all around the world. In an interview with Xu, he discusses the role of globalization in Chinese art. He states that “contemporary art” in China has become boring. Instead of creating what Berger would call the “visible,” it is wrought with themes and images that have become somewhat trite. To him, artists working within the contemporary Chinese art scene have taken on the idea that “you are an artist, so whatever you do is valuable.” In doing so, they forget the “ultimate goal of art,” which is to create something involving “creative superiority” (Course Reader, Interview with Xu Bing).  In using the word “artist” in reference to themselves, they have allowed themselves to create “substandard work.”     

According to Xu, artists today have become too narrow and have “increasingly lost touch with the times and the social context.” As art becomes more and more global, it has become easier and easier for artists to see what kind of art is valuable on the international market and create something to that effect. Young artists see the successes of older artists like Xu and try to mold themselves into a similar model. Thus, the scene is dominated by a huge influx of the same kinds of art work, much without any of what Xu would call “creative superiority.” Xu Bing sees the future of Chinese art, not in “contemporary art,” but in the world of “practical or commercial art” such as graphic design and typography. In this way, the use of new media can be looked at as a place for Chinese artists to create something fresh or something that is able to more genuinely connect with the current social context China is facing.

            The idea that contemporary art in China has become “boring” echoes with many Chinese artists. Another such artist is Lu Jie, who has also risen to stardom in the contemporary art scene. Like Xu Bing, Lu Jie has become internationally recognized. Lu Jie and Xu Bing share similar views, although Lu Jie seems to be much more critical of the contemporary art scene in China. In 1999 he and Qiu Zhijie curated the Long March Project: A Walking Visual Exhibition, which was a five-month traveling art show that followed the route of the original long march. In the description of the Long March Project written by Lu Jie and Qui Zhijie, many concerns and grievances with the direction Chinese art has moved are expressed. They write that contemporary art has moved from 1. masses to elite 2.  private studios to hierarchal structures (such as the biennale and blockbuster exhibitions) and  3. China to the international world.  They also express apprehension about the future of the contemporary art scene in China, a scene that exists in an increasingly global spotlight. The aim of the project was to address these concerns by bringing contemporary art to the people or “peripheral population” of China through a moving exhibit.

            In an interview with Lu Jie, he explains the aim of the project and his thoughts on the development of contemporary art. He blames the international market for inserting western intellectual jargon (issues like post colonialism and globalization) into Chinese contemporary artwork, standardizing a set of topics that all “Chinese contemporary art work” must deal with, but that most actually fail to truly engage with. Like Xu Bing, Lu also feels that contemporary art has lost a sense of “creative superiority.” Although it might have attained elite status on the international scene, its ability to engage with Chinese history and society has become “shallower and shallower.” He argues that a deeper understanding of the local context is necessary for the future of the art scene. He calls for subtle exploration of this “period’s traces, rescuing it from canonized discourse” (Course Reader, Interview with Lu Jie).

            Perhaps Lu Jie would agree with Xu Bing in his conviction that the future lies in commercial art. After attending the typography lecture during the Shanghai Literary Festival, I have to agree that art forms such as graphic design have momentous potential. Maybe it will be in such art forms that the concept of “ying” can be utilized, creating art work that is able to maintain a cultural and regional identity, while still acting within a global context.

 

 

Syllabus tweak

Dear All,

Please note the slight change to the schedule on the syllabus.

Week 05/ 14
A Close Look at Performing Arts in China Continued. DA
Guest: Alison Friedman

A Close Look at Photography and Documentation Practices I
Guest: Mathieu Borysevicz

Week 05/ 21
A Close Look at Photography and Documentation Practices Continued. DA

Week 05/ 28
Quiz

A Close Look at Video and New Media in China
DA
Reading:
The Future: In Whose Hands?
Guests: Qiu Anxiong and Aaajiao

Week 06/14
FINALS/ MINI-CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS

Contemporary Ink Painting at Doland

Keeping the tradition of Chinese ink painting alive was the aptly titled Contemporary Ink Painting show at the Duolun Museum of Modern Art, which opened on Tuesday. Featuring an array of artists from different countries using a variety of mediums and techniques, each artist used Chinese ink in some way. Some chose video, others sculpture, with most just worked on a canvas or paper. To be frank, the traditional two-dimensional ink paintings, while sometimes possessing interesting content, mostly bored me and came off as very decorative (in the bad way, not the good one). What I found myself drawn to most were the large scale, abstract pieces which were all quite minimal, and said more about the process rather than the product. The strength of the exhibition, I suppose, was the meeting of the traditional form and the modern artist. Observing what an artist of this time does with a medium with milllenia of history and techniques. With a common medium, each artists' individual aescthetic preference became the focus In the end some failed, but most succeeded. For me, the ones that succeeded seemed to reject the traditional use of the ink, and instead used it to create the content-less works I mentioned earlier. In addition, the artists themselves were an interesting bunch, ranging from young to old, and foreign to native. The names that stick out in my mind are Li Huasheng, Barbara Edelstein (wife of JJ, the Art in Translation teacher) and even yu Youhan had two pieces, both very much in his black and white abstract style.

I'm torn when I think of the future of ink painting in China, at least based on the show at Duolun. The least interesting seemed to be the artists who relied on formerly established traditions, while the more contemporary pieces that seemed to not even acknowledge the medium stood above. Is the future of Chinese Ink painting a move away from traditional forms and techniques? Go to Duolun and see for yourself.

Duolun Museum of Modern Art

Li Huasheng's piece (the title escapes me)

Last Friday's Performace

I thoroughly enjoyed last week's performance. It was great to finally get to see something similar to what ewe have been watching on a projector for the past few weeks with my own eyes. 

What I thought was the best part about the performance was how it made use of a few simple props and transformed their meaning from scene to scene without going through drastic set and costume changes. One example of this is the use of the chairs. At one point they were acting a kitchen countertop, another simply places to sit, and in another weights that had to be carried without the use of the floor.  I also liked the use of the red handkerchief. When I first saw it (coming out of the man's pocket) my mind jumped to a magician's act. When I saw it for the second time (draped over the performer's head) my mind immediately jumped to torture (likely because of all the recent news). And then, for the third time (when the covered woman was placed next to a man) my mind jumped to arranged marriage. I thought this use of props was incredibly well done. 

Also, I liked that I was able to watch the performers come from the same seats as the audience was sitting in and walk on to stage. Again, we saw transformation. I was able to watch him or her transform from an audience member to a performer and back again many times throughout the show. 

More on...

POLY ART. 

After some fairly easy digging I came across an article on one Mrs. Gisele Croes, a Belgian woman with an incredibly interesting story.  

Currently, Mrs. Croes works as a sort of relic hunter, tracking down old Chinese relics to sell to the Chinese government for lofty sums. Officially, she works as an "art appraiser and dealer" but in fact her job is much more complex than this title suggests. 

The PLA, the world's largest standing army, is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to bring back Chinese art treasures. Additionally, the PLA strategy over the next five years is to dip further into China'sforeign-currency reserves (which are dwindling post- financial crisis, despite their recent purchase of US bonds) to buy celebrated Western masterpieces, often at prices above their auction-market value. Now, with the opening of the Beijing Olympics and the coming Shanghai Expo, the PLA is on a fervent mission to acquire more and more relics and subsequently open more and more museums.

Mrs. Croes plays an interesting role in this acquisition. Her job is to locate such works and deliver and she is often successful. (This success has something to do with her ties with the Mao era Chinese government. In 1965, she worked as one of the few Communist foreigners in Chinese government doing propaganda art). In the industry Croes is known as "The Empress" because she is able to find so many rare pieces. 

The PLA's mad rush to buy such pieces has actually caused a problem for many auction houses. The more the PLA buys these pieces at a above market value, the more the value of the pieces gets artificially inflated. There are many auction houses that are now scrambling to isolate the works from the PLA before they have a chance to buy them.

Also, doing a bit of research also turned up another interesting story which involves speculation as to what money the PLA is using to buy the relics. James Mulvenon, deputy director of the Defense Group at the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis says "Poly's use of arms sales to fund the operation is probable". The PLA's commercial arm in North America, PTK International, between 1987 and 1994 sold $200 million in light semi-automatic weapons to gun dealers in the U.S. The question is how much of this money is going towards the acquisition of Chinese relics?