Performance | ArtConscious

Over the years, the future direction of contemporary Chinese art has been scrutinized; the country’s rampant development and overarching tendency towards western mimicry has challenged Chinese artists to establish a clear identity founded within their own cultural traditions and current, youth generation. Curated by CAFA’s chairman and linguistic installation artist, Xu Bing, along side the Guggenheim’s Asian art curator, Alexandra Munroe, CAFAM Future – Sub-Phenomena: Report on the State of Chinese Young Art seeks to explore six, modern phenomena that emerging Chinese artists must face and overcome for the stylistic and conceptual evolution of their work, and additionally dialogue in which their ideas takes place.

Sculptural Installation in Museum’s Atrium

These phenomena, namely, Rampant Growth, Self-Media, Micro-Resistance, Otaku Space, Shallow Life and Unknown, allow for a wide breadth of works that are representative of China’s youth. The exhibition’s large spectrum of media ranges, with works by the video artists Fang Lu, who explores both consumption and beauty in her film Rotten, to Ma Ke’s conceptual investigation of visual image through linguistic illustration, as he covers the surface of 10 large panels with handwritten descriptions of Mark’s Left Index Finger. Yet the incorporation of these six sub-themes renders the exhibition, which fills the museum in its entirety, challenging in phenomena navigation and overwhelming in both physical space and amount of works to process. It was as if the curators intended a seventh phenomenon, Mass Production, in which sustenance, information and that of a more material realm bombard the artists’ environment, rendering it difficult to organize and thus further develop logical thought.

Video Still from Fang Lu’s ‘Rotten’

Detail from Ma Ke’s ‘Mark’s Left Index Finger’

Regardless, this representative survey of young Chinese artists and notions that they encounter and incorporate into their personal dialogue has added a considerable dent into the continued conversation of the future of contemporary art in China.

‘Transforming Life into Art’ by Gao Xiang Fa

‘Crystal City No. 001’ by Wu Chi-Tsung

‘One Bed Room’ by Jiao Meng

‘The Elephant No. 1’ by Zhang YiFan

Another work from ‘The Elephant No. 1’ by Zhang YiFan

‘Four Kinds of Grey’ by Xie Molin, Oil on Silk

Detail of ‘Transparent Monument’ by Ni Youyu

Installation View, Including ‘Transparent Monument’ by Ni Youyu (Left)

Detail of Atrium Sculptural Installation

Thank god for vitamins, especially when living in a far off land that lacks sufficiently strong medication in the midst of flu season. There is another type of vitamin to be thankful for, this time it is a space, specifically, Vitamin Creative Space. The brainchild of Hu Fang and Zhang Wei, Vitamin has both a commercial gallery in Guangzhou and an alternative project space in Beijing called “The Pavilion.” With a slew of alternative + educational programming, ranging from artist lectures to live performances and from cooking demonstrations to paper making workshops, Vitamin is a rare find in Beijing’s uber-commercialized art world. Unbeknownst to me, I recently discovered that similarly to the mission of The Zandie Project, Vitamin believes that “In order to nourish life, The Pavilion might have to be a void with Yishi (where Yishi is a Chinese term, close to the meaning of “consciousness” but slightly different from consciousness; it’s more about the awareness of consciousness.)” 很有意思！

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to experience one of these interesting live performances, to be specific a sound performance. The aftermath of a workshop put on by electronic sound artists Nicholas Collins and Yan Jun from SubJam, an experimental art organization focused on publishing and curating music and sound projects. The basis of their workshop was to deconstruct conventional, yet “favorable” sound producing objects, such as a radio or speaker, and to reassemble them into an instrument of their own. The following evening, the orchestra of newly formed musicians tuned their instruments in the most unusual of ways. Connecting and reconnecting electrical lines to batteries and speakers, there was a consistant and rather unrelenting noise that filled the air.

However, as the evening progressed, this noise slowly dimmed and a rhythmic pattern could be deciphered amidst the static. A lanky fellow in glasses steadily pulsed at the silver knobs that protruded from a green soundboard. His instrument, a radio with the backing removed to show the inner-mechanical workings of the machine. Other instruments included a varied array of speakers attached to batteries or motherboard-looking components, all connected with a mis-match of wires.

I found there to be a comforting lull within the monotonus high frequencies, as perusing Vitamin’s Facade Library, an exchange of publications between the space and other arts organizations, or conversing with other attendees became more manageable since the commencement of the performance. There is a hidden beauty within the notion of disassembling these “favorable” noise producing devices in order to construct another yielding anything but a melodic tune, for it is the destruction of the perfected that allows an organic creativity to shine through.