‘MEGA MODERN’ Residency at 501 Contemporary Art Centre, Huang Je Ping, Chongqing

…Skype discussion part 2/3:

Benjamin: i think we can get to work on the invite and poster immidiatly. chris if i send you images of cool clouds and you work on placing the text when helen sends it to you

Christopher: I’m up for including The High Weiwei to Hell but what do you think about how it would translate into that context?

Christopher: Cool, Ben.

Benjamin: not sure about the essay, you can make that call

Christopher: Can I get off the line now because I need to do the Brazil proposal in a hurry?

Christopher: Bye bye. C.x

Helen: I’ll talk to people about weiwei text. I can write something too. I can write something about your work and perhaps also include a conceptual text if that’s okay?

Christopher: Yes, you writing would be good.

Benjamin: chris, for null and void print, lets do a print of space. hubble telescope. Nothings hipper than space

Helen: Is he still there?

Benjamin: propably not…

Helen: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://imagine…

Benjamin : haha, i was thinking of the photos that its taken, but thats pretty cool aswell

Helen: looks like really old-school graphics. also uber cool

Benjamin: definitely. old school graphics and space

Benjamin: retro futurist space age ruins

Helen: indeed

Benjamin: but these are so ultra hipp at the moment:

Helen: ruins- tick

Benjamin: http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/archive/besto…

Benjamin: society’s aspirations tick…fact meets fiction

Helen: love it

Benjamin: we could also do that for the background of the china poster and invite

Benjamin: chinas taking over space and nasas quitting

Helen: a-ha

Benjamin: might be more relevant than clouds and yet the same

Benjamin: plus it would show the new depths that weve emerged ourselves into after London

Benjamin: nr 14 is pretty cool on that page

Helen: okay, all sounds reet on point. I reckon space is a go-er

Helen: The eagle!! america!

Helen: what’s china? the crab?

Benjamin: Love it

Helen: I like mystic mountain too..

Benjamin: oh, also chinas flag and communism: star/stars

Helen: yeah, the flags are everywhere at the mo as communist party had it’s 90th birthday the other day

Benjamin: oh, how was the party? no pun intended…

Helen: The govt is forcing everyone to sing old communist songs so loads of parks you walk through have people practicing old commie musical theatre with wooden actions and salutes!

Helen: actually pretty scary, they have to enforce it and pay employers and teachers to inforce it on employees and studenst, even the prisoners are being coerced!

Benjamin: wow. how are people taking it?

Helen: It’s seen as a crackdown to re-establish PRC values and everyone is getting a little too capitalist for their liking

Helen: Many people believe capitalism is destroying eastern culture, not just the government but artists think the same

Helen: However most people I talk to say no-one believes in the government, especially the govt itself!

Benjamin: does it feel like its about to go through some sort of explosive change any second or is it still calm

Helen: there is an over-riding feeling that nothing ever changes in terms of govt, despite people’s beliefs changing. It’s interesting that alot of people say the country can only be run by dictatorship as it is so large, so they kind-of dont mind

Benjamin: i guess its understandable, like in Russia, where they want a harsh leadership

Helen: I think some countries it’s culturally built in to have this, the Chinese always had dynasties which were like dicatorships, and Russia has tsars

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Ceiling Space have accepted our proposal and so the logistics and ideas begin to swim.

Here’s a Skype discussion from today part 1/3:

Benjamin: so installation shots on the 6^th, setup finished on the 5th

Christopher: Rich Man’s spa on the 7th.

Benjamin: Yey, definitely rich mans spa

Benjamin: and how long would we stay there?

Helen: one night at the spa

Benjamin: ok

Christopher: Goodbye meeting with Ceiling Space late morning on the 8th?

Benjamin: ok. and when would we deliver the prints for them?

Christopher: Leave for Beijing after lunch on the 8th or early morning on the 9th?

Helen: then we were thinking of doing a small publication too. I think we work on this so it’s ready for the opening. I’m going to start writing now.

Benjamin: great

Helen: Have a think about the format and what you would like to include

Helen: It would also be good to get going on invite and poster now. Can you design this if I give you info in the next couple of days?

Christopher: We’d deliver prints for them before the show opens so that they know what they have available when people come for the opening. The prints should not be the installation shots.

Benjamin: yes, i think so

Helen: Do we print them in London or Chongqing?

Benjamin : chonqqing must be cheaper and easier

Christopher: Chongqing

Christopher: We’ll get advice on good printers once we’ve designed them.

Helen: Okay.

Christopher: And worked out the edition.

Benjamin: have you seen the thunderstorm in chile

Helen: ey?

Benjamin: the volcano thunderstorm

Christopher: No

Benjamin: i was thinking that we could keep going with the clowdy sky background and text thing we did for the london show

Benjamin: but this time the sky would be stormy and with lightning bolts. hang on, ill find the image

Christopher: Yes, cool, Ben. I need to get off the line soon. Helen, can I leave you with Finnish CNN, here?

Helen: I showed them the multi-colour object design and they liked this…would this not be exhibition poster?

Benjamin: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://img.dai…

Helen: hokay, adeui chris

Benjamin: oh yes

Christopher: Yes, that could be the poster. Does it make any sense with the show? Maybe.

Benjamin: that one is good as well. i was just thinkiing that clouds seem to be our thing as an ongoing theme

Benjamin: clouds smoke etc

Helen: I’m confused, which one is the edition and which one the poster

Benjamin: the clouds for the invite?

Christopher: That last text from me was about the little crystal poster we did. Ben, the lightning clouds are fucking amazing! I’m definitely up for that!

Benjamin: cool

Helen: yes. clouds are v.cooool

Benjamin: i think thats more coherrent with our poster/invite look

Benjamin: the sky that is

Helen: Yes, I like crystals as edition

Benjamin: yes. perfect

Helen: I like that the crystal image is stolen, so the edition becomes a copy of a copy.

Benjamin: than we can play around more with the prints

Benjamin: exactly

Benjamin: i also like the idea of having high quality prints of the installationshots sold as editions

Christopher: Really? Installation shots?

Benjamin: yes, signed, framed

Helen: can you work on the invite and poster soon if i give you info, then also think about what we include in publication, do you think the weiwei to hell text would be part of this, or something new?

WHO WILL SHOW MY PSYCHOANALYSL WEIWEI, WHIMSY, SUPER-HIP, CENSORSHIP ARTWORK?

I’ve been busy looking at spaces, working on the fabrication of psychoanalYSL’s work and in the process of course learning about the massive differences between my usual way and the Chongqing way.

The invitation to me from 501 Contemporary Art Centre in Chongqing stated I would get a venue within the centre in which to undertake the residency exhibition. Due to various complications concerning local politics which I’m mostly in the dark about I have been left to find my own venue. Two days ago, with panic setting in I went to visit the British Council to ask them for assistance. They were very reassuring and interested in the project but understandably cannot fund the rent for a space that was agreed as support-in-kind from 501. Since yesterday Yanyan, the organiser of the residency has realised the urgency of the situation and took me to see three spaces. They are all very different.

· Ceiling Space is a recently established commercial gallery in the beautiful traditionally landscaped Erling Park, near the commercial centre of Chongqing (similar idea to Serpentine Gallery in London). The space is suitable for my exhibition, about 150 sqm with a cafe and bookshop. They have a space in their program during August for a two week show. I made a presentation to the Curator Tianmeng. Tianmeng loved the response of psychoanalYSL to the censorship and fanfare surrounding Ai Weiwei’s detention. He runs a critical conceptual program and we both felt the work fits into the focus of their gallery. Tianmeng needs to propose my exhibition to the Director, so they will give me their decision this week. Tianmeng studied at the Sichuan Fine Art Institute and many of the artists he shows are also graduates from there. Many times I experience problems with translation, there are no words to describe the subtle meanings of language; the Chinese character which his current series of exhibitions is based upon translates as “ideology, patronage and poetics”. What an amazing combination of meanings! We had a really engaged discussion concerning modernism, post modernism, trends within Chinese contemporary art and his ambitions of his young gallery.

· 108, 2nd floor of Sichuan Fine Art Instiutute is in my local area Huangjueping, (or the Shorditch of Chongqing as I describe it to Londoners). This is a clean and suitable university space of about 300sqm. They have an opening in their programme but we would need to pay for rental which is not ideal. The gallery was showing very traditional oil paintings when I visited. They have a fairly conservative programme as they are part of the academy system, which does not approve of performance and is only just accommodating installation within it’s study program.

· H2 is a 150sqm space in the basement of 501 art centre in Huangjueping. It was previously used for exhibition and is now an artist’s studio. The artist is happy to support the project and has agreed with Yanyan that it could be cleared out for exhibition.

I feel much more relaxed now these options are on the table, but it has taken a long time to get here. After giving the artists different options we are thinking it would be good to do a discussion at one of the spaces in Huangjueping, local to many artists studios I have visited, if the exhibition takes place at Ceiling space which is a distance from my local area.

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PSYCHOANALYSL FACE THE WEIWEI OF CHINESE CENSORSHIP.

Now in my second week, psychoanalYSL collective have begun to concretize their vision for the exhibition, and so we come to a face myriad of hurdles standing in our way.

The London based collective, as I’ve mentioned previously, watched with fascination the media circus surrounding the detention of Ai Weiwei. The art super-star was rendered a martyr by the right-on pr machines at Lisson and Somerset House where his marble CCTV camera and Zodiac Heads became ever more prescient symbols through which British audiences could muse on the political activism which foregrounds the reading of his work. PsychoanalYSL planned to produce an installation in Chongqing which would present to Chinese audiences the figure of Weiwei which has been capitalised in the west; an image of a saint undergoing torture delivered in the current London uber-trendy material: wet clay.

If exhibited in Chongqing, this work I was told would result in investigation by the Chinese authorities. The director of the project, Yanyan would be questioned. Of course it would be the Chinese, not the foreign affiliates of the project who would be sanctioned, encouraging myself as the curator to have the artists retract their sensitive proposed artwork.

Meg Maggio from Pekin Fine Art (Beijing) shook her head when I told her about the concept for the show. She told me about a work by artist Li Songsong at the exhibition ‘Love and Hope’, (a fundraiser for the victims the Japanese earthquake) at 798 which took place during the time of Weiwei’s detention. For the fundraiser Li Songdong produced a modest sized ink on paper with a silhouette of Ai Weiwei and the words ‘I miss you’. Art info reported: “It was no surprise that this was one of the first works sold last night.” This event in its self demonstrates the monetization of activism, conscience cleansing and ego stroking going on here, but Maggio’s point was that Songsong’s work was considered very daring, and it was a far less bold statement than that which psychoanalYSL plan. So, we have the first layer of censorship. I tell psychoanalYSL to come up with a plan B.

PsychoanalYSL (two members of the collective; Christopher Thomas and Benjamin Orlow are in their second of a three year part-time MFA at Goldsmiths) have produced a maquette of the censored artwork for their end of year show which happened last week.

The censorship which takes place here gives one the feeling of entering a country brimming with politics, having left behind the consensual political void of the UK. Watching the dialogue between Assange and Zizek for ‘democracy now!’ yesterday I found myself agreeing with Assange over the situation here in China. He claims that in the west we self censor, which is far more scary in some ways:

“we should always see censorship actually as a very positive sign that a society is not completely sewn up…not completely fiscalised but still has some political dimension to it…what people believe and think and feel and the words that they listen to actually matters” (frontline club)

In another interview he talks about the flip side in the UK:

“The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be ‘free’ because a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments.” (itproportal)

References:

http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/37645/chinas-biggest-art-stars-band-together-to-raise-money-for-japans-tsunami-victims/

http://www.frontlineclub.com/blogs/WikiLeaks/2011/07/live-assange-zizek-and-goodman-in-conversation.html

http://www.itproportal.com/2010/12/04/assange-claims-west-has-fiscalised-power-base/

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In response to Rachel Marsden’s comments I’ve been looking at Carol Yinghua Lu. In her e-flux article ‘Accidental Conceptualism’ she talks of exactly the issue psychoanalYSL pick up on, namely;

“Collectors, foreign and Chinese, buy Chinese artworks out of fascination with either China’s revolutionary past and sensational present, or for their profit prospect. “

But perhaps this is a particularly western perspective and now I’m in China I have a responsibility to look at the unspectacular, as well as the spectacular that Weiwei and Huang Yong Ping represent. Since arriving I’ve been doing studio visits (so far mostly in 102, the block where my own studio is) and what I’ve found, far from the spectacular orientalism of western curation is a completely banal preponderance of oil paintings of the mega structures of Chongqing; tower blocks, factories and the iconic power station chimneys which preside over the Huang Je Ping art community. One assumes that surely these paintings have little commercial viability, but the artists tell me they sell in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Chengdu (Beijing has been mentioned mostly as a place where these artists go to work as assistants to more successful artists, only occasionally have the oil painters in these studios mentioned having shows there).

There are a few installation artists, they’re work is considered more ‘experimental’. Lastly there are the performance artists; totally political and daring I’m told. The formal strategies appear stacked in a triangle where painting represents the most common practice, an economic base for the market, then installation in the middle and performance at the top.

Before arriving in Chongqing I spent a few days in Beijing staying with performance artist Chengyao he in her 798 studio. She talked about performance as almost entirely unconnected to economy. The performance artist cannot sell work (save a photo here and there) is not accepted by the academies in China therefore cannot teach (Chengyao teaches abroad every now and then) and obviously cannot get funding from the government for her radical and immaterial labour, therefore gets funding from foreign foundations and initiatives. Was this the state of play in the west 50 years ago or more? I find myself constantly asking if such indicators point towards China undergoing the processes of modernism. Some say China has skipped forward beyond modernism altogether because of the Cultural Revolution but what then is this combination of industrialism and hierarchy?

References:

Carol Yinghua Lu, Accidental Conceptualism, e-flux journal #1 december 2008

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