ArtSpace China

So Long, Farewell

Christen Cornell — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 23:48:08 +0000

After more than two and a half years of discussion with Chinese artists, musicians, writers, bloggers, performers, filmmakers and arts professionals, about everything from yaogun to blogging to queer film, Artspace China is wrapping up the conversation here. Thanks to all those who’ve been involved as readers, guest authors and interviewees. It's been great talking to you! The website will remain as is until the beginning of 2014, so all archives will be available until then. Artspace China's Facebook page will keep chugging as well, keeping our presence online with regular posts of contemporary Chinese film, art, literature and music news. Any further iterations of the Artspace China project (yes, there are possibilities) will be announced at the Facebook site as well, so keep your eyes peeled. Until such time, happy travels, take care, and ... 慢走!

DIY Beijing 2013: Interview with Josh Feola

Christen Cornell — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 23:59:22 +0000

In April 2011, I posted an interview with Josh Feola, co-founder of Beijing’s Pangbianr and central engine of Beijing’s DIY music community. Pangbianr, which translates loosely as ‘fringe’, was a wee one year old at the time, and was only beginning to feel its way, coalescing a sense of energy and self-sufficiency in the city’s underground music scene. Almost two years later, Beijing DIY still feels like a nascent phenomenon, ever-morphing and ever on the brink of becoming (as any good DIY scene should). It’s more international than ever, hosting an increasing number of overseas acts, from punk to experimental to noise. At the same time, though, there are more mid to top-level labels in town, more of a push to ‘discover’ and promote Chinese rock – and an urge to become a ‘real’ band. Contemporary China has a habit of building industries, or art complexes, for the sake of economy and reputation, overlooking the value in grassroots cultural communities. In this catch up interview, Josh gives an update on the scene, pointing to the value in the DIY ethos, and the dangers of commercialising too early.

Constancy and Change: some new approaches to ink painting in contemporary Chinese art

Luise Guest — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 23:59:32 +0000

I sat in the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane last week, resting my weary art gallery feet after many hours traversing the Asia Pacific Triennial, and watched a charming Chinese animation for children, called Where is Mama?. Created in 1960 at Shanghai Film Studios under the guidance of the legendary animator Te Wei, it tells the story of a group of tadpoles searching for their mother. They plaintively question goldfish, shrimp, turtles and other creatures on their journey through a watery landscape. Each frame is rendered in deft, minimal brushstrokes with ink and wash, influenced by the watercolour paintings of Qi Baishi. In these digital days its artistry and simplicity were a revelation. Art historian Lin Ci speaks of the ways in which scholar painting techniques which vividly evoke, not an exact likeness, but a “spiritual resemblance” to aspects of nature such as plum blossom, birds, bamboo, stone, withered trees and orchids allowed the artists to “play the game of inks” better. For scholar officials trying to distance themselves from the realpolitik of the imperial court, these freehand ink paintings of birds and flowers could “bring comforts to their hearts” he says, evoking an endearing image of the lonely scholar contemplating his garden and disregarding the painting conventions of his imperial masters. (Lin Ci, ‘Chinese Painting: Capturing the Spirit of Nature with Brushes’) Watching this little film certainly brought “comforts to my hearts” after a somewhat disappointing APT experience. It may seem a long distance between a sweet animated film and the great masters of the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, however, the adherence to the beauty and discipline of calligraphy and ink painting so evident in every frame of Where is Mama? is the very thing that so often joins past and present in Chinese art. In a catalogue essay for Ink – the Art of China at the Saatchi Gallery in London in June 2012, Dominique Narhas had this to say: “Ink painting brings us into contact with an immersive intimacy in which humanistic themes of man’s relation to himself, to nature and to the other are played out against the great backdrop of constancy and change.” It is precisely this notion of constancy and change, the intertwining of past and present, which distinguishes contemporary Chinese art in the global marketplace and results in works which are able to reference tradition and convention yet speak to the contemporary world and an international audience.

The Day After Tomorrow, Shen Shaomin

Christen Cornell — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 22:49:32 +0000

As a species with the power to imagine, we have a complicated relationship with the idea of disaster – of the apocalypse, of Armageddon. Of course we do not wish our own destruction, but we find it impossible not to envisage the event, to construct narratives around the end of the world: the skies turning black and the waters rising. Despite ourselves, we are drawn to images that visualise our inner fears and, more recently, our sense of guilt at the damage we know that we do to the planet. Chinese-Australian installation artist, Shen Shaomin, works precisely within this psychological repertoire, his visions of a warped natural world tapping into anxieties about civilisation’s ghastly effects. His Unknown Creatures (2003) and Experimental Studio (2004) series consisted of sculptures made out of bone – bizarre and unsettling collections of fantastic animals created through errant biological mutation; while later his Bonsai Series (2007), exhibited at the Sydney Biennale in 2012, comprised of a range of miniature trees, tortured into shape with bolts and wire. The Day After Tomorrow, Shen Shaomin’s first solo show in Australia in ten years, continued with this eerie aesthetic, expanding further on the themes of human brutality and its impact on a fragile environment. Showing at Gallery 4A between 15 November – 10 December 2011, the exhibition transformed the greater part of the gallery into a white crystalline world twinkling in darkness, evoking a vision of an unnatural reality hovering somewhere between the near future and present.

What in the World is 798 Art Zone? Part Two

Christen Cornell — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 02:18:24 +0000

‘Art is a Thinking to Enlightens the Future’: art as a brand, art as aspiration Since the district’s official classification as a Creative Industries Precinct in 2006, 798 has spawned a range of cultural enterprises, many of which have taken on the idea of ‘art’ with which to brand their businesses. Walking around 798 today, the word ‘art’ is constantly flashing up before you, on billboards advertising galleries or design consultancies, on signs for gift shops, hotels, bars and cafes. Artopal, Artside, 798 Art Hotel, such and such Art Centre or Artspace … Visitors are repeatedly running into odd composite bi-products of the word ‘art’ – uses that suggest the term’s ability to ‘value-add’ to all kinds of entrepreneurial pursuits. In both English and Chinese, the word often looks raw and partial, slapped onto ventures and slipped into business titles in a way that suggests its newness – or even more so, its novelty – as a Chinese marketing category. At 798, the term ‘art’ has a faddish quality to it, a kind of hype and artificial freshness reminiscent of the thousands of so-called ‘Twenty-first Century’ housing developments, or many SoHos, under construction across the country. To the extent that art is a brand at today’s 798, it is one that conflates notions of the global and the contemporary, and one that is consonant (or you could say ‘harmonious’) with national discourses of China’s economic development. At 798, the word ‘art’ occurs frequently alongside the terms ‘new age’ (xin shidai), international (guoji) or ‘contemporary’ (dangdai). Billboards advertising Coca Cola or Vitamin Water do so by situating 798 within a perceived pantheon of global and cultural cities (‘Available in New York, Paris, Japan, and now Beijing!’). In signs, advertisements and art-branded objects at 798, ‘art’ generally represents a component in a contemporary urban lifestyle, the latest in fashion and, by virtue, a hallmark of a Chinese cosmopolitanism.

What in the World is 798 Art Zone? Part One

Christen Cornell — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 22:30:54 +0000

‘Only Products, No Art’: honesty and irony in the new market In the Beijing autumn of 2011, I saw the above billboard at 798, in which two images are accompanied by the slightly odd English: ‘Only Products, No Art.’ In Chinese, the sign is only slightly less mysterious, announcing that ‘Li Qing’s Products Are Not Art’, and then giving an email address, presumably as a contact for curious customers. At first glance it wasn’t clear whether the sign was supposed to be ironic or not. If it was it would contain an extra meaning, translatable to a certain audience; it would be a comment that cut both ways, both telling it like it is yet critiquing its own message in a coded language. If it wasn’t, however, it was simply a straightforward statement, upfront about its products’ social function and declaring plainly its lack of pretensions. The context was what made it confusing. 798 is a collection of both local and international high-end galleries – a so-called ‘international art district’ – but it’s also a bustling commercial market selling contemporary art, furniture, homewares, art souvenirs and other dinky design objects. It’s already difficult at 798 to tell exactly where the art ends and the retail begins, the galleries blurring into shops and each often resembling the other. Was this a clever and Warhol-esque comment on 798 and its relationship with consumer culture – ala Chinese artist, Zhao Bandi, or American artists, Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holtzer, all of whom have rented advertising space with which to exhibit similarly ambiguous works – or simply the advertisement of a local entrepreneur? In other words, was the sign deliberately ambiguous, or only so because of its situation at a crossroads of expectations of contemporary art, and of market and avant-garde definitions?

Wuhan Graffiti Ray

Christen Cornell — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 03:04:34 +0000

About a month ago I posted an interview with the American, yet Shanghai-based, graffiti artist Mels from Beast Mode Crew. Mels gave an excellent overview of the contemporary Chinese graffiti scene and the way it’s growing in the grey zones of China’s municipal consciousness. China might have some of the world’s biggest cities, but these cities are all pretty much in flux, and the laws that state what you can do with them are not always clear or policed. I thought it would be good to follow this up with a feature on a local artist, and even better one who is from the city of Wuhan – one of the Chinese cities best known for street and general counter-cultural activity, from hip hop to art to rock. Ray was one of the first to start spray-painting the Wuhan streets in the early to mid-2000s, and speaks confidently about why he hasn’t moved to Beijing or Shanghai yet. Ray’s work is like rock and roll sherbet for the eyes, dazzling with bright colours and industrial graphics. Check out the pictures below, or Ray’s blog for stacks more examples. Of course it would be best to see these pieces in situ, jazzing up a wall with the high gloss appearance of 3D animation. My guess is they would light up a back alley, both gritty and slick all at once.

Ai Weiwei, Gangnam style

Christen Cornell — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 00:55:48 +0000

I was late to learning about Gangnam Style. One night I was at a café and was socially garish enough to ask my companions what it was. ‘You don’t know about Gangnam style?,’ they gasped, half impressed, half horrified. ‘She doesn't know about Gangnam style. Everybody knows about Gangnam style ...' I went home with the sticky sounding words in my head, trying to figure out how to pronounce them. Of course, from that point on I started to see it everywhere. It kept popping up online, it was playing in the background in taxis. Even my four year old knew about it from kindergarten, and gave her own rendition of the South Korean rap with her own wonky dancing. I soon realised that more than the song itself, the point of the craze was its use for parody – originally of Seoul’s wannabe fashionistas, and later of all kinds of people and social phenomena. At this point, there are literally hundreds of adaptations of the dance uploaded to Youtube, each one a spin off from the original with its nonsensical horse-riding dance moves. I suppose it’s because of the jig’s horsey characteristics that Ai Weiwei has now picked it up and turned it to his own light-hearted music video critique. Ai’s clip is a clear reference to the Grass Mud Horse – China’s own popular and virally transmitted parody – and so is also an oblique reference to China’s Internet censorship. (Grass Mud Horse sounds like F*** Your Mother, but is written differently, and now references a whole lexicon of other such homonyms that allow people to skirt censorship online).

Shanghai Cosmopolitan: Interview with Liu Dao Art Collective

Joanna Bayndrian — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 23:21:14 +0000

In the first half of the twentieth century, Shanghai was a city that attracted performers, writers, artists and designers from around the world. A breeding-ground for new art forms, such as oil painting, cinema and poster art, this ‘high time’ of Shanghai’s past has long been considered the city’s cultural and artistic zenith. Today, Shanghai’s cosmopolitan heritage is under restoration. Over the past five years in particular, a growing number of international artists have made Shanghai their base. Since its establishment in 2006, the new media art collective, Liu Dao (aka island6), has become something of a stalwart of the Shanghai art scene and beyond. The collective’s creative and operational centre is its production studio and exhibition space in Shanghai’s m50, also known as Moganshan arts district, where individuals from different backgrounds come together to engage with and comment on contemporary life in Shanghai. The collective’s signature LED art, interactive art and sculptures makeup only a fraction of Liu Dao’s ever-expanding repertoire. Meanwhile the tone of the work is often humorous, delivering social commentary in unexpected ways — see the LED display, Puxi Fluffer (2012), pictured above, which references the city's dependence on an army of 'ayis', or domestic cleaners, for a cheeky example. With its international member-base and technically and conceptually experimental practice, Liu Dao embodies the vision of cosmopolitan Shanghai. Liu Dao’s collaborative structure, valuing communication over egocentrism (their approach has been likened to film production), provides a model for cross-cultural and collectivist approaches to art making, curation and arts management in China. In the spirit of Liu Dao’s uncompromising collectivist ethos, the following interview responses were submitted anonymously by its members.

Call for Poetry Translators for Pathlight #4

Christen Cornell — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 21:53:30 +0000

Chinese content for Paper Republic's next edition of Pathlight: New Chinese Writing has been set in soap, and is set to include far more poetry than previous issues. Faced with an abundance of work and a dearth of talented contacts, the editors are calling for motivated, experienced translators of Chinese poetry to establish a relationship with the magazine. To be featured are Zhu Ling (朱零), Ou Ning (欧宁), Yao Feng (姚风), Wang Yin (王寅), Wang Xiaolong (王小龙), Yang Zi (杨子), Huang Jinming (黄金明), Liao Weitang (廖伟棠) and Yang Xiaobin (杨小滨). The editors will do their best to assign poems based on their relationship with the translator, and first drafts will be due in mid-September. Compensation is - the editors say - exceptional for poetry. Those interested should write to canaan@paper-republic.org or westrunningbrook@mac.com.