This article takes as its focus multimedia performance in Hong Kong in the 1980s, a period which saw high levels of collaboration across the visual arts, dance and theatre. The significance of these cross-media fertilizations to the development of contemporary Hong Kong art is drawn out in discussion of two artists, Josh Hon (b. 1954) and Choi Yan Chi (b. 1949), whose respective encounters with experimental dance and theatre subsequent to their return from higher education in Europe and North America made them newly sensitive to elements of time, space and movement. The subsequent appropriation of these materials of contingency into experiments with performance, installation and painting produced aesthetic strategies by which the artwork could be made porous to its local context. The significance of these exchanges is that they point to an alternative point of origin for processes of localization integral to the emergence of contemporary art in Hong Kong which typically has been bound to major political inflection points and a concomitant local cultural introspection. Attending to the substantive and diverse transnational connections of artists, these developments are instead indexed against international art historical and intellectual shifts beginning in the 1960s away from universalism and interiority and towards relativity, contingency, fragmentation and embodiment, thereby restaking Hong Kong’s claim to the global contemporary.
本文以20世纪80年代香港的多媒体表演为重点，这一时期视觉艺术、舞蹈和戏剧领域的高度合作。这些跨媒体融合对当代香港艺术发展的意义是在两位艺术家Josh Hon（生于1954年）和Choi Yan Chi（生于1949年）的讨论中得出的。他们从欧洲和北美的高等教育回来后，分别遇到了实验舞蹈和戏剧，这使他们对时间元素有了新的敏感，空间和运动。随后，这些偶然性材料被用于表演、装置和绘画的实验，产生了美学策略，通过这些策略，艺术品可以渗透到当地环境中。这些交流的意义在于，它们为香港当代艺术的出现提供了一个替代的本土化过程的起源点，而当代艺术通常与主要的政治转折点和随之而来的当地文化反思联系在一起。考虑到艺术家的实质性和多样性跨国联系，这些发展与20世纪60年代开始的国际艺术历史和知识的转变相关联，从普遍性和内在性转向相对性、偶然性、碎片化和具体化，从而重申香港对全球当代的主张。
{"title":"Visual arts, dance, theatre: Multimedia performance and contemporary Hong Kong art","authors":"Genevieve Trail","doi":"10.1386/jcca_00079_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jcca_00079_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article takes as its focus multimedia performance in Hong Kong in the 1980s, a period which saw high levels of collaboration across the visual arts, dance and theatre. The significance of these cross-media fertilizations to the development of contemporary Hong Kong art is drawn out in discussion of two artists, Josh Hon (b. 1954) and Choi Yan Chi (b. 1949), whose respective encounters with experimental dance and theatre subsequent to their return from higher education in Europe and North America made them newly sensitive to elements of time, space and movement. The subsequent appropriation of these materials of contingency into experiments with performance, installation and painting produced aesthetic strategies by which the artwork could be made porous to its local context. The significance of these exchanges is that they point to an alternative point of origin for processes of localization integral to the emergence of contemporary art in Hong Kong which typically has been bound to major political inflection points and a concomitant local cultural introspection. Attending to the substantive and diverse transnational connections of artists, these developments are instead indexed against international art historical and intellectual shifts beginning in the 1960s away from universalism and interiority and towards relativity, contingency, fragmentation and embodiment, thereby restaking Hong Kong’s claim to the global contemporary.","PeriodicalId":40969,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47305024","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Through public, intentional and interventionist displays of the queer body, queer Chinese artists have used performance art for identity expression, community building and social activism. This article focuses on some of these queer performance artworks, those that engage with the theme of weddings; that is, performance artworks that draw on and critique the social conventions of wedding ceremonies. Focusing on five case studies – the lesbian artist duo Shi Tou and Ming Ming’s photography and installation about queer women’s intimacy; queer filmmakers Fan Popo and David Zheng’s 2009 film New Beijing, New Marriage, a documentary based on a same-sex wedding performance in central Beijing; queer feminist filmmaker He Xiaopei’s performance artwork and films; the Young Feminist Activist Group’s 2012 public performance Bloody Brides to protest domestic violence against women, and the queer artist duo Cheng Yumo and Huang Ziwei’s Grand Gay Wedding performance in Zurich in 2022 – this article demonstrates that the wedding format has been used by Chinese queer artists, performers and activists in creative, innovative and critical ways; it gives new meanings to traditional wedding practices and helps rethink how queerness can relate to established social institutions and conventions in a global context. This article extends existing scholarship on performance art in the 1980s and 1990s which was predominantly male-dominated, heteronormative and elitist avant-garde art practice; it also highlights the role of performance art in contemporary China’s feminist and LGBTQ+ social movements and in articulating gender and sexual politics.
{"title":"The wedding complex: Chinese queer performance art as social activism","authors":"Hongwei Bao","doi":"10.1386/jcca_00075_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jcca_00075_1","url":null,"abstract":"Through public, intentional and interventionist displays of the queer body, queer Chinese artists have used performance art for identity expression, community building and social activism. This article focuses on some of these queer performance artworks, those that engage with the theme of weddings; that is, performance artworks that draw on and critique the social conventions of wedding ceremonies. Focusing on five case studies – the lesbian artist duo Shi Tou and Ming Ming’s photography and installation about queer women’s intimacy; queer filmmakers Fan Popo and David Zheng’s 2009 film New Beijing, New Marriage, a documentary based on a same-sex wedding performance in central Beijing; queer feminist filmmaker He Xiaopei’s performance artwork and films; the Young Feminist Activist Group’s 2012 public performance Bloody Brides to protest domestic violence against women, and the queer artist duo Cheng Yumo and Huang Ziwei’s Grand Gay Wedding performance in Zurich in 2022 – this article demonstrates that the wedding format has been used by Chinese queer artists, performers and activists in creative, innovative and critical ways; it gives new meanings to traditional wedding practices and helps rethink how queerness can relate to established social institutions and conventions in a global context. This article extends existing scholarship on performance art in the 1980s and 1990s which was predominantly male-dominated, heteronormative and elitist avant-garde art practice; it also highlights the role of performance art in contemporary China’s feminist and LGBTQ+ social movements and in articulating gender and sexual politics.","PeriodicalId":40969,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48164922","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
From its emergence in the post-Mao era of gaige kaifang (Reform and Opening) the performing body in Chinese xingwei yishu (‘performance art’) was most often assumed to be male. The representation of performance practices in exhibitions, festivals – and in the art historical literature – has too often been dominated by male artists. This article turns the gaze onto three women artists, examining their work through lenses of gender, feminism and ‘Chineseness’: Performance artists Xiao Lu (b. 1962), Li Xinmo (b. 1976) and Xie Rong (b. 1983) explore aspects of embodied lived experience in often-encoded ways. Li Xinmo explores experiences of gendered violence through theatrical, immersive performances that have often used ink or pigmented fluids as metaphors for blood and trauma – and through a series of paintings made with actual menstrual blood. In The Death of the Xinkai River (2007) she first explicitly links an embodied feminism with her distress at the destruction of the natural environment. Xiao Lu’s post-menopausal performances move beyond her previously more literal explorations of gender. Works such as Ren (2016) and Suspension () employ ink and water in poetic reference to shufa (‘calligraphy’) and shuimo hua (‘ink-wash painting’). Inserting herself into the visual language of literati scholar painters, an artistic lineage from which she would have been excluded by virtue of her gender, Xiao’s liquid materiality becomes a feminist embodiment. Xie Rong (also known until recently by her English name, Echo Morgan) ‘writes’ ink painting using her hair as her brush in I Am a Brush (2011), Painting Until it Becomes Marble (2019) and Anatomy of . She paints her naked body with images of birds and flowers and blue-and-white porcelain motifs to perform lamentations of grief, loss and longing in works such as Be The Inside of the Vase (2012) and Echo of Posidonia (2022). Framed by Anne Anlin Cheng’s concept of ‘ornamentalism’, Ella Shohat’s notion of a non-western ‘subterranean’ feminism and early twentieth-century anarcho-feminist He-Yin Zhen’s gendering category of nannü, the artists’ embodied practices are understood as creating nannü spaces that reveal female subjectivities and reposition them within the discourses of Chinese performance practice. Emerging from encounters with the artists, in studio visits and (during the pandemic years) online conversations, analysis of their counter-patriarchal work reveals not merely the ghostly presences and absences of women in narratives of performance art in China that have tended to marginalize them, but also the significance of their contributions.
{"title":"Gendered bodies: Feminism and Chineseness in the work of Li Xinmo, Xiao Lu and Xie Rong","authors":"Luise Guest","doi":"10.1386/jcca_00077_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jcca_00077_1","url":null,"abstract":"From its emergence in the post-Mao era of gaige kaifang (Reform and Opening) the performing body in Chinese xingwei yishu (‘performance art’) was most often assumed to be male. The representation of performance practices in exhibitions, festivals – and in the art historical literature – has too often been dominated by male artists. This article turns the gaze onto three women artists, examining their work through lenses of gender, feminism and ‘Chineseness’: Performance artists Xiao Lu (b. 1962), Li Xinmo (b. 1976) and Xie Rong (b. 1983) explore aspects of embodied lived experience in often-encoded ways. Li Xinmo explores experiences of gendered violence through theatrical, immersive performances that have often used ink or pigmented fluids as metaphors for blood and trauma – and through a series of paintings made with actual menstrual blood. In The Death of the Xinkai River (2007) she first explicitly links an embodied feminism with her distress at the destruction of the natural environment. Xiao Lu’s post-menopausal performances move beyond her previously more literal explorations of gender. Works such as Ren (2016) and Suspension () employ ink and water in poetic reference to shufa (‘calligraphy’) and shuimo hua (‘ink-wash painting’). Inserting herself into the visual language of literati scholar painters, an artistic lineage from which she would have been excluded by virtue of her gender, Xiao’s liquid materiality becomes a feminist embodiment. Xie Rong (also known until recently by her English name, Echo Morgan) ‘writes’ ink painting using her hair as her brush in I Am a Brush (2011), Painting Until it Becomes Marble (2019) and Anatomy of . She paints her naked body with images of birds and flowers and blue-and-white porcelain motifs to perform lamentations of grief, loss and longing in works such as Be The Inside of the Vase (2012) and Echo of Posidonia (2022). Framed by Anne Anlin Cheng’s concept of ‘ornamentalism’, Ella Shohat’s notion of a non-western ‘subterranean’ feminism and early twentieth-century anarcho-feminist He-Yin Zhen’s gendering category of nannü, the artists’ embodied practices are understood as creating nannü spaces that reveal female subjectivities and reposition them within the discourses of Chinese performance practice. Emerging from encounters with the artists, in studio visits and (during the pandemic years) online conversations, analysis of their counter-patriarchal work reveals not merely the ghostly presences and absences of women in narratives of performance art in China that have tended to marginalize them, but also the significance of their contributions.","PeriodicalId":40969,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45913577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article explores the work of He Yunchang (Yunnan, 1967), an artist who brings together lived and artistic experience to reflect on the conflicts of contemporary society. He makes use of his body to transcend physical and psychic boundaries, and by embodying structural violence he pushes sociopolitical frameworks to imagine and project a better future. Focusing on a selection of his performances, undertaken between 1999 and the present day, this article explores He Yunchang’s desire to open a utopian path by means of artistic creation. I suggest that his work demonstrates that nothing is impossible. He Yunchang undertakes titanic ritualistic performances, both metaphorical and physical. These evoke ancient myths, legends and ascetic practices and show the potential of all individuals and communities to improve our world. He Yunchang explores the butterfly effect and situates art in a sociopolitical context, making manifest its capacity to beam light into the future. This article analyses the artist’s exploration of subject’s capacities to change a dystopic reality.
{"title":"He Yunchang’s artistic practice: A beam of light into the future","authors":"Laia Manonelles Moner","doi":"10.1386/jcca_00083_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jcca_00083_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the work of He Yunchang (Yunnan, 1967), an artist who brings together lived and artistic experience to reflect on the conflicts of contemporary society. He makes use of his body to transcend physical and psychic boundaries, and by embodying structural violence he pushes sociopolitical frameworks to imagine and project a better future. Focusing on a selection of his performances, undertaken between 1999 and the present day, this article explores He Yunchang’s desire to open a utopian path by means of artistic creation. I suggest that his work demonstrates that nothing is impossible. He Yunchang undertakes titanic ritualistic performances, both metaphorical and physical. These evoke ancient myths, legends and ascetic practices and show the potential of all individuals and communities to improve our world. He Yunchang explores the butterfly effect and situates art in a sociopolitical context, making manifest its capacity to beam light into the future. This article analyses the artist’s exploration of subject’s capacities to change a dystopic reality.","PeriodicalId":40969,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44100348","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article focuses on the intersectionality of feminist interventions and social activism in the works by Hong Kong artist Jaffa Lam (b. 1973). Using the dialogical aesthetics approach, Lam engages with people of disenfranchised groups and collaborates with them to produce installations and public participatory works. While the works aim to build relations between art and local communities, they also consider the profound social-cultural changes in Hong Kong and reflect on the city’s identity through exploring the notions of gender, class, migration and language. Through interacting with collaborators and audience participants of various regions, generations and social-economic backgrounds, Lam creates space for dialogues, enacting care, building valuable relations and questioning the hierarchies of value attributions in neo-liberal society.
{"title":"Enacting care: Feminist interventions and social activism in the work of Hong Kong artist Jaffa Lam","authors":"Doris Sung","doi":"10.1386/jcca_00078_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jcca_00078_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on the intersectionality of feminist interventions and social activism in the works by Hong Kong artist Jaffa Lam (b. 1973). Using the dialogical aesthetics approach, Lam engages with people of disenfranchised groups and collaborates with them to produce installations and public participatory works. While the works aim to build relations between art and local communities, they also consider the profound social-cultural changes in Hong Kong and reflect on the city’s identity through exploring the notions of gender, class, migration and language. Through interacting with collaborators and audience participants of various regions, generations and social-economic backgrounds, Lam creates space for dialogues, enacting care, building valuable relations and questioning the hierarchies of value attributions in neo-liberal society.","PeriodicalId":40969,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42931921","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article investigates the origins of performance art in China. Early forms of performance art showed a rebellious attitude against authority in the context of social and cultural change in the 1980s. This article examines the social and art historical contexts of xingwei yishu in China and its development as an art form. Through analysing early performance practices, particularly the art group Concept 21, it discusses how performance art was used as a practical approach to reform artistic creation and reception and subvert dominant cultural norms. Given China’s hierarchical art system, this article also addresses the factors that created spaces for radical performances under the art bureaucracy, including administrative reform, ambiguous guidelines, art education reform and exhibition policy.
{"title":"Against authority: Performance art in 1980s China","authors":"Jianan Qi","doi":"10.1386/jcca_00074_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jcca_00074_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates the origins of performance art in China. Early forms of performance art showed a rebellious attitude against authority in the context of social and cultural change in the 1980s. This article examines the social and art historical contexts of xingwei yishu in China and its development as an art form. Through analysing early performance practices, particularly the art group Concept 21, it discusses how performance art was used as a practical approach to reform artistic creation and reception and subvert dominant cultural norms. Given China’s hierarchical art system, this article also addresses the factors that created spaces for radical performances under the art bureaucracy, including administrative reform, ambiguous guidelines, art education reform and exhibition policy.","PeriodicalId":40969,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45159017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article investigates the interrelations of public art, performance art and environmental activism in contemporary Taiwan through a case study of Tseng Chi-ming and his ecologically conscious public art. With a professional background in fine arts and theatre, Tseng adopted performance art as his primary medium of expression in 2011, very much prompted by his concern of Taiwan’s continuous ecosystem deterioration despite waves of environmental movement. Since then, he has become a key member of the island’s grassroots environmental artivism with his consistent performance works in the public space to advocate the cause of ecology and sustainability. Taking issues with environmental problems and related social injustices, Tseng uses his very own body as the ground, the material and the vehicle to carry out his artivism. Often performed on the street, in the public square or next to endangered ecological sites, his art becomes eco-public art. Methodologically, Tseng tends to incorporate natural materials such as earth, water, stones and plants or direct elements of nature such as rivers, beaches, wind and sunlight as his props. This is very much inspired by his Hakka ethnic background, particularly the deeply rooted Hakka agrarian tradition of ‘worship of nature’ and ‘reverence to heaven and earth’. Aiming to inform, engage and activate the public for environmental protection and ecological literacy, Tseng’s work is an example of the eco-public art in the island that is part and parcel of the ongoing environmental artivism that strives to advance the discourse of ecosystem diversity and foster non-exploitative human–nature relationship.
{"title":"Performing eco-public art: Tseng Chi-ming and his embodied environmental artivism","authors":"Meiqin Wang","doi":"10.1386/jcca_00080_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jcca_00080_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates the interrelations of public art, performance art and environmental activism in contemporary Taiwan through a case study of Tseng Chi-ming and his ecologically conscious public art. With a professional background in fine arts and theatre, Tseng adopted performance art as his primary medium of expression in 2011, very much prompted by his concern of Taiwan’s continuous ecosystem deterioration despite waves of environmental movement. Since then, he has become a key member of the island’s grassroots environmental artivism with his consistent performance works in the public space to advocate the cause of ecology and sustainability. Taking issues with environmental problems and related social injustices, Tseng uses his very own body as the ground, the material and the vehicle to carry out his artivism. Often performed on the street, in the public square or next to endangered ecological sites, his art becomes eco-public art. Methodologically, Tseng tends to incorporate natural materials such as earth, water, stones and plants or direct elements of nature such as rivers, beaches, wind and sunlight as his props. This is very much inspired by his Hakka ethnic background, particularly the deeply rooted Hakka agrarian tradition of ‘worship of nature’ and ‘reverence to heaven and earth’. Aiming to inform, engage and activate the public for environmental protection and ecological literacy, Tseng’s work is an example of the eco-public art in the island that is part and parcel of the ongoing environmental artivism that strives to advance the discourse of ecosystem diversity and foster non-exploitative human–nature relationship.","PeriodicalId":40969,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44402720","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Since the beginning of the post-reform era (1978–present), China has witnessed dramatic changes to its society such as falling birth rates, rising divorce rates and changing attitudes towards patrilineal values – trends that suggest a move away from the Confucian family. Yet, it remains the normative family model in China today. In this article, I examine a range of performance artworks that depict queer subjects and familial relationships to uncover the ways that these performances subvert current understandings of the Confucian family and (re)imagine families where queerness can emerge. First, I turn to Fan Popo and David Zheng’s documentary New Beijing, New Marriage (2009) to examine how it expands the definition of Confucian marriages to include same-sex couples. Second, I examine how He Chengyao’s Mama and Me (2001) and 99 Needles (2001) provide representation and reparations for the relationships and individuals that are rendered marginal in Confucian teachings – namely, the relationship between mother and daughter and individuals who suffer from mental health issues. Lastly, I study the Beijing East Village (Dongcun) as a form of chosen family to see how the relationships and collaborations between the different members expand the definition of Confucian family model to include non-biogenetic kinships such as family-like friendships.
{"title":"It does not run in the family: Chinese performance art and the queering of the Confucian family","authors":"Wei Hao Goh","doi":"10.1386/jcca_00076_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jcca_00076_1","url":null,"abstract":"Since the beginning of the post-reform era (1978–present), China has witnessed dramatic changes to its society such as falling birth rates, rising divorce rates and changing attitudes towards patrilineal values – trends that suggest a move away from the Confucian family. Yet, it remains the normative family model in China today. In this article, I examine a range of performance artworks that depict queer subjects and familial relationships to uncover the ways that these performances subvert current understandings of the Confucian family and (re)imagine families where queerness can emerge. First, I turn to Fan Popo and David Zheng’s documentary New Beijing, New Marriage (2009) to examine how it expands the definition of Confucian marriages to include same-sex couples. Second, I examine how He Chengyao’s Mama and Me (2001) and 99 Needles (2001) provide representation and reparations for the relationships and individuals that are rendered marginal in Confucian teachings – namely, the relationship between mother and daughter and individuals who suffer from mental health issues. Lastly, I study the Beijing East Village (Dongcun) as a form of chosen family to see how the relationships and collaborations between the different members expand the definition of Confucian family model to include non-biogenetic kinships such as family-like friendships.","PeriodicalId":40969,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46266353","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines the presentation of visible and invisible bodies in performance art, exemplified by Praying for Blue Skies and Winter Solstice, which were responses to Beijing’s air pollution in the 2010s when the city was frequently enshrouded in severe smog. The former was staged in Beijing’s Temple of Heaven in 2014 by a group of 23 anonymous artists and the latter was created by Liu Bolin in December 2015 when seven camouflaged models danced in a withered grove on the eastern outskirts of Beijing. These two works took place during the period when Chai Jing’s Under the Dome, a 2015 multimedia documentary that investigated the causes of China’s air pollution, was censored; the (in)visibility of the bodies in both performances enabled the artists to voice their critical opinions. This article argues that visible and invisible bodies became a means of engaging in protest against the ineffectiveness of authoritarian environmentalism and performative governance in tackling air pollution. I start by explaining the concepts of authoritarian environmentalism and performative governance in China. I then discuss visible bodies, as presented in Praying for Blue Skies, in relation to Stephen Duncombe’s notion of activist art’s affect and effect. In contrast, invisible bodies, as performed in Winter Solstice, are examined within the context of Judith Butler’s theory of performativity. Finally, I explore Anthony Orum and Zachary Neal’s investigations into public spaces as sites of resistance for exposing the gaps between the government’s air pollution prevention plan and the reality of the lack of law enforcement.
{"title":"(In)visible bodies: Air pollution, performance art and China’s environmental governance","authors":"Xinrui Zhang","doi":"10.1386/jcca_00081_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jcca_00081_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the presentation of visible and invisible bodies in performance art, exemplified by Praying for Blue Skies and Winter Solstice, which were responses to Beijing’s air pollution in the 2010s when the city was frequently enshrouded in severe smog. The former was staged in Beijing’s Temple of Heaven in 2014 by a group of 23 anonymous artists and the latter was created by Liu Bolin in December 2015 when seven camouflaged models danced in a withered grove on the eastern outskirts of Beijing. These two works took place during the period when Chai Jing’s Under the Dome, a 2015 multimedia documentary that investigated the causes of China’s air pollution, was censored; the (in)visibility of the bodies in both performances enabled the artists to voice their critical opinions. This article argues that visible and invisible bodies became a means of engaging in protest against the ineffectiveness of authoritarian environmentalism and performative governance in tackling air pollution. I start by explaining the concepts of authoritarian environmentalism and performative governance in China. I then discuss visible bodies, as presented in Praying for Blue Skies, in relation to Stephen Duncombe’s notion of activist art’s affect and effect. In contrast, invisible bodies, as performed in Winter Solstice, are examined within the context of Judith Butler’s theory of performativity. Finally, I explore Anthony Orum and Zachary Neal’s investigations into public spaces as sites of resistance for exposing the gaps between the government’s air pollution prevention plan and the reality of the lack of law enforcement.","PeriodicalId":40969,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48732532","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This preface sets a brief background to introduce transcultural dialogues, or the flow, between Chinese contemporary art and the international world. This flow has been interrupted significantly by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, whilst new strategies and art diplomacies are to be developed.
{"title":"The flow interrupted: A preface","authors":"Jiehong Jiang","doi":"10.1386/jcca_00065_2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jcca_00065_2","url":null,"abstract":"This preface sets a brief background to introduce transcultural dialogues, or the flow, between Chinese contemporary art and the international world. This flow has been interrupted significantly by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, whilst new strategies and art diplomacies are to be developed.","PeriodicalId":40969,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48251999","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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