za jia lab, Hong’En Daoist Temple, Doufuchi Hutong, Dongcheng District, Beijing

20 – 23 November, 2011

Not Only A Taoist Troublemaker! was a short-lived exhibition occupying a leaf-strewn room in a small arts space attached to a bar. A bar with a vegetable market behind; sharing a building that housed a screw factory during the Cultural Revolution. A screw factory built inside a Taoist temple, replacing the site’s original Buddhist temple. This overlapping of every kind of ideology provided an ideal backdrop for the six artists’ work in this show curated by forget art.

forget art is an organisation created by artist Ma Yongfeng, about whose “guerrilla” tactics I have written once before on ArtSlant. It has become well-known for the ironic nature of its exhibitions, interventions, and projects. These activities are knowingly aware of themselves and their contexts, and never take these or themselves too seriously.

Prior to the opening of this new show, Ma Yongfeng had already laid the conceptual and experiential groundwork by initiating a series of “naked” interviews with the artists and academics. Ma’s aims seem to be, on the one hand, to provide a forum for serious discussion that he feels is lacking in the art environment in China. On the other, by performing au naturel he is pushing the situation out of kilter. The participants’ exposure may lead to a more open discussion – at the very least it places the speakers in a new, less comfortable position.

This was also his reasoning behind collecting 20 bags of autumn leaves from a forest in Beijing’s outskirts and transporting them into the gallery. This literal groundwork had the benefit of pulling the whole space together with its softness underfoot and the earthy smell that it brought to the space. Ma explained to me that this was beyond simply an intervention – it was an effort to create an atmosphere or even some kind of aura.

Picking up on this, Liang Ban’s carved radishes rested on an open window-sill and Hu Xiaoxiao’s failed (in a good way) image made of vegetable matter hung in place of honour against a plush red velvet curtain at the back a small stage. The radishes were clumsily carved with figures, as if these were nascent within the vegetables, awaiting their revelation; and the backdrop hung where a Buddha figure or Christian cross would normally be situated, spot-lit on the raised stage, at the focal point of the room. Counteracting any particular readings, a smartly-dressed woman hired by artist Lu Zhengyuan performed as an unreliable guide to the show, providing background to the works with guesswork and rumours, creating an atmosphere of misunderstandings for her audience.

Hanging above the stage, Alessandro Rolandi’s red propaganda banner announced, “MAY YOUR MATTERS BE SAFE.” This statement is typical of the ambiguous situations in his work, subtly raising its issues with reality. These words overlooked and seemed to ironically relate to Wu Yuren’s large rock suspended from the ancient rafters. For the opening, Wu stood under this 200lb stone, forcing himself to remain in this precarious position. While perhaps not long enough to privilege this activity as “durational,” he was there long enough for a call of nature to be performed amongst the leaves – I have to recognise this as (some sort of) commitment to the (in)activity. In discussion with the curator and audience, he finished the piece by removing his clothes and standing naked under his stone – disrobing again appearing as a means of expression with its parallels to the online response to Ai Weiwei’s charges of pornography (although Ma Yongfeng’s original naked interviews antedated this particular meme).

However, I don’t want to sound dismissive of Wu Yuren’s activity, as it had a deeper rationale than its surface appearance might suggest. In 2010 Wu was jailed for ten months under questionable circumstances and since his release has intermittently been called in for “a cup of tea” by the authorities (as questioning is euphemistically referred to). This serious and continual pressure on him is expressed through this work.

Whether that makes it a “good” work, I am not sure; my immediate reaction was that I did not like it, even with the background, feeling it was too literal and unsubtle. But I have to respect the fact that it reflects Wu Yuren’s being on the blunt end of the system, aspects of his situation being more common than one might expect. He has more right than most to comment on this experience, and of course I do not know what it is like to live through his experience or what it is like to be under this continual pressure. The activity was all done in seemingly good spirits – one way to deal with such serious matters, perhaps.

This attitude was reflected in the original Chinese title of the show, “不是吃素的” or “not a vegetarian,” a euphemism for not being a push-over, which the curator described as presenting “a very simple, radical attitude.” The English title refers to the Bohemian reputation of Taoists, saying that this show is not “only” about that, in a typically open move.

Although it is obvious I had many reservations about this show, maybe because of those reservations I still felt this was a powerful show creating a strong impression on me by its scattershot nature.

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published 4 December, 2011 on ArtSlant.

Landgent Center, No.20 East Middle 3rd Ring Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing

17 November – 25 December, 2011

The many forms of site-specificity have a long history and can be the most complex of contexts for art. This idea of a productive connection with a setting, and by implication the users of that setting, is an attractive option for artists trying to boost their degree of “relevance.” However, the public realm outside of galleries is the critical realm par excellence – works existing in it are forced into competition with all sorts of other, “natural” activities in the spaces, and away from the focus afforded by more sympathetic, privileged spaces.

Often one of the stated aims of the work is to engage with the “everyday.” But the prosaic nature of these situations pricks at an artworks’ status, pointing up assumptions that may or may not coalesce with the world into which it is thrust. And, for me, this is when it gets interesting.

The group show Urban Play sees eleven artists and artist groups hosted by the Landgent Center, a large retail and office development south of Beijing’s Central Business District. This project, curated by Tang Zehui, has seen the artists on-site for the last few months developing a series of site-specific works in the public spaces.

Just inside one of the buildings in the Center, a figure in red was struggling to get up from the floor, his bag of presents scattered behind him. In a bizarre premonition of the coming trials of Christmas shopping, a life-like ageing Santa reached out to passers-by for help in his predicament. The piece No Country for Old Men by Xin Yunpeng seemed to be making a statement about our relationship to other people, perhaps reflecting on the issues surrounding “Good Samaritans” which have come to the fore in Chinese society recently.

Outside the entrances to the shopping malls, Wang Yiqiong has placed long boards of absorbent paper, provided for smokers banished from the “smoke-free” interiors. The piece develops as they blow onto the surface, leaving behind the tar smudges from their smoke, which—along with the wide format of the paper—somewhat remind me of traditional Chinese landscapes scrolls. The element of interaction and play, with serious health overtones, and its connection with an existent community works well in this location.

Sound can make the most invasive of works. Its contact with people is less controlled than object-based work, leaving it open to more problems given the multiple environments it impinges upon. Yan Jun’s Floating Clouds was presented over the mall’s PA system, and made up of the cracking sounds of sunflower seeds being eaten (another version of which I reviewed recently on this site < http://www.artslant.com/cn/articles/show/28588>). Here it was presented as a discrete effect on everyday activities – this strange noise in the background of the visitors’ travels through the malls, aiming to put them slightly off balance. This became its undoing, as I believe one of the shops complained that the sound was too upsetting during the opening. So in the end the sound was restricted to just one public area, and when I returned the following day, had apparently been turned off entirely.

The subtlest of interventions, and the most easily missed, were the changes to two seemingly innocuous doors by Giancarlo Norese. The metal doors to two utility rooms had been adjusted by, in one case, the addition of multiple keyholes, and in the other, by the division of the door into two separately hinged parts, the bottom part being maybe 30cm high. These seemed to allow for new relationships with the spaces to be formed – who or what were these changes for? It was as if this was the slight evidence of the presence of another community to whom these elements were addressed.

On the concourse nearby, several new structures had gone up for the show including the architectural intervention, A Floating Organism by the group CAA Core of Architecture & Art Association. This plastic opaque bubble-like form was suspended above an open dining area, visible from the street. The “organism” was lit from within in cycling colours. During the opening it provided a strange aerial presence above the performers Lian Guodong, Lei Yan, Amy Grubb-Han and Liu Zheng who were moving through the public spaces, interpreting their surroundings through dance. Next to the main road, the pyramidal structures of Beijing Obscura by Andrew Toland, created darkened spaces in which the surroundings were projected down through lenses in their apexes onto the outstretched palm of your hand.

In their different ways, all the pieces in the show touched on the sometimes-problematic issues of site-specificity: the ephemeral nature of some of the works, the practical difficulties they came up against, and (in some cases) the requirement of the presence of the artist, resulted in a rather random experience of the show.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing, nor against the meaning of site-specificity. As I said at the beginning, for me these difficulties are where site-specificity becomes interesting. Works which do not play nicely with the environment, that do not stay in place, leaking into surrounding areas, deliberately perform the limits of their work, with failure being as productive as success. In particular Yan Jun’s sound intervention and Wang Yiqiong’s smoker’s paper, were for me the most “successful” for what they revealed about the boundaries and limits of the various physical, institutional and psychological contexts found in these malls.

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published 28 November, 2011 on ArtSlant.

Today Art Museum, Building 4, Pingod Community, No.32 Baiziwan Road, Chaoyang District, 100022 Beijing

7–19 August, 2011

The sound of cracking coming from people’s mouths and underfoot was perhaps the first indication that there was something different about this opening. Today Art Museum’s galleries were filled with the great and good of the Chinese art world for the opening of The Second Academic Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Prints, subtitled: Print•Concept. But throughout, while chatting and viewing the artworks on the walls, many were distractedly clutching small handfuls of sunflower seeds, cracking them open with their front teeth with more or less proficiency, and spitting out or letting the husks fall to the floor in their wake.

While big names in the visual arts such as Xu Bing and Fang Lijun took up the wall space, artist Yan Jun arranged a parallel experience as his own contribution to the show with his piece How To Eat Sunflower Seeds. Yan Jun is famous in the sound art community as a veteran performer and for being pivotal in the development of the Chinese experimental sound and music scene. For the last decade or so he has run the SubJam label, releasing material from a role call of experimental musicians and sound artists from China and beyond.

“I don’t really know why they asked me to take part!” Yan Jun chuckles in typically modest fashion. “When the curator first emailed me I had to reply saying: maybe you made a mistake, I’m not a visual artist! But it seems they wanted something a little ‘radical’ and conceptual to go with the prints.”

His use of sunflower seeds began in 2002, when he and artist Zhang Jian (of the group FM3, well known for their development of the Buddha Machine device) were invited to do an artists’ talk at Peking University. Zhang Jian bought a bag of the seeds with him and they sampled the students cracking them open with their teeth: “This is a really small, everyday thing. It’s just nothing – but nothing can be something!”

Cracking sunflower seeds is a very common activity in China – a notch in their front teeth being the give-away feature of those who indulge in this. Yan Jun says: “I’m addicted to this small action, it acts like a drug! It’s a very small action, very easy, and then you do it again, and again, and again – you can carry this process on forever!”

Wherever people congregate to crack seeds they leave behind a mass of spat out husks, one reason why this is becoming socially unacceptable. But Yan Jun sees this change as a sign of society becoming more restrictive: “Take drinking tea, for example. You used to be able to drink tea anywhere, but now you have to go to this place – this is the tea place, this is the tea-time, the tea-break: everything is perfectly managed.” The sound made by cracking the seeds with your teeth and the residue littering the floor act as a small refusal and reminder of this activity which used to be so natural.

In Today Art Museum’s gallery spaces the audience took the seeds and cracked them as part of their experience of the show, both in terms of the activity as well as the sound produced which bled into their appreciation of the spaces. This experience became unconscious, something which the audience did naturally and without thinking, at the same time as doing all the things which you normally do at an opening. Yan Jun explains: “I am using this exhibition, I use the other people’s work. Because without this activity of looking at the work while cracking the seeds the work would not be complete. Maybe the audience bring this tiny sound back home with them with everything they saw that evening.” He treats this sound as muzak, a background sound that accompanies other activities, without itself being the focus.

This idea has been extended with the recording of the cracking of the seeds in the empty gallery, which has just been released on SubJam’s Mini-Kwanyin imprint, entitled “Yesterday.” Mini-Kwanyin is a series of CDRs produced to reflect current sound activities. This format allows for short runs and rapid production, representing for Yan Jun a thing in progress, part of a “growing history,” which requires a different kind of attention and experience than a CD requires.

But this is not simply about reproducing the experience of the original performance. Yan Jun is quite clear about the change of experience: “People heard the sound at the opening, so they don’t need to hear it again. For the people who were not there – I don’t need to bring it to them and say ‘Hey! You missed something!’” The published recording was taken while the gallery was empty, which Yan describes as “like a dead space” with the reflected sounds of the cracking seeds adding a kind of life to it: “The space of the recording may be the same, but the situation is different.” This also goes for the experience of the CDR as muzak, a tiny background sound to each listener’s everyday experience.

Thinking back to the show at Today Art Museum, I have to wonder about the inclusion of this work in a show about contemporary printmaking. There didn’t seem to be any connection with the subject matter of the show itself. The inclusion may have been for credibility (as Yan suggests), or as pure entertainment (which would show little respect to the artist). In either case, Yan’s sunflower seeds were a successful intervention and live on in the CDRs. The piece is self-sufficient, adapting itself seamlessly to the context and in that way adding layers of experience to all the environments it encounters.

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published 7 November, 2011 on ArtSlant.

Galerie Urs Meile, Caochangdi, Beijing, China

3 September – 23 October, 2011

Presenting five solo shows at once in their Beijing spaces seems an odd approach by Galerie Urs Meile. They state that it provides a way to present a selection of new works by some of their less established artists, and I expect it avoids the difficulty of finding an overarching theme for a group show. But in this case it seems each artist gets short shrift, without the opportunity to present a sufficient body of work to allow for more than a very basic understanding of their practice. Christian Schoeler perhaps gets the best out of this arrangement, with a large room for his technically competent paintings. On the other hand, Cheng Ran is insufficiently represented with only a single video work. I understand this fascinating artist will be having a major solo show at this same gallery later in the year, which begs the question: why include him now in a way that does this him little justice?

Putting these questions aside, it’s fortunate that 5 Solo Shows gives the opportunity to see the work of another very strong artist, Yan Xing. Yan Xing is an interesting character. As an openly gay man he lives in a country (if not a world) that tends to frown upon (if not actively suppress) displays of sexuality that are deemed outside of the norm. He maintains a personal blog of articulate and up-front missives about his life and thoughts and has become something of a minor celebrity within the online universe in China. His outspoken comments have positioned him as something of an informal representative for gay life in this country.

Where his flamboyance could have led to an art that was mawkish or provocative for its own sake, Yan Xing displays an intelligence and sensitivity to the issues and a depth of thinking that belies his sometimes-aggressive persona. Much in evidence is a serious and forthright approach to his life’s relationship with artwork (and vice versa). And Yan Xing’s life has been full of drama that he treats as a resource to draw upon, his approach always to look beyond his own experiences to a fuller understanding of their causes and consequences. His development as a gay man has been hard for him and for the people around him – his own understanding of himself is forever present in his work.

The two works on display at Galerie Urs Meile present Yan Xing at his most thoughtful. They are not here from 2010, is a video and photographic series documenting a performance that took place in a rented hotel room as part of a group show which encouraged the artists to investigate alternative spaces to the gallery. In this small room he locked seven identically dressed men in white shirts and black trousers. These men were not allowed to communicate with each other while they were in the room, however the artist provided scripts for each to work through over the hours they were together. Inside the room Yan filmed the result, while on the door to the room he attached a sign saying, “They are not here.” This sign was the only visible evidence at the time that a performance was taking place. The actions of the men seem pretty innocuous as they perform their solitary actions amongst each other, but managing to convey a palpable sense of expectation throughout their collection as a group and disconnection from themselves and the audience.

In Realism, the major new piece created for 5 Solo Shows, similar identically dressed men reappear, gathered in small groups around a large plaster figure, taking its overall form from Renaissance sculptures of the idealised human body, paralleled with Soviet Socialist Realist idealised forms of the worker. A large monochrome photograph of its reverse accompanies the figure, as if it was a mirror on the wall. The actors once again use a script provided by the artist—in this case a translation of André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto, with annotations by the artist—but this time they are able to read and discuss it together, as well as draw the audience into their discussions. Yan Xing appears as the figure of the artist in their midst, also drawing out members of the audience to stand with him discussing the figure towering above them.

At regular intervals Yan broke into an old-style love song, stilling the discussions for a moment. The semi-hermetic groups of actors around the room, the opportunities for discussion that opened up, and the song that cut through everything as an (almost) emotional outburst, created a tightly controlled affective environment for the artist and audience.

Open displays of emotion and revelations of traumatic personal histories in artworks tend to make me uncomfortable, but Yan Xing’s work demands respect for its sensitive and subtle presentations of the difficulty of communication for someone in his position. Realism left questions about the exact nature of the message being put across, and the actors’ scripted conversations perhaps lost the sincerity the artist himself brought to the role, but the acts of communication themselves became hopeful (and possibly fruitful) in the artists attempts to connect his thoughts and feelings with the audience through this charged environment.

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published 25 September, 2011 on ArtSlant.

Shan Studio, 3-2-302# Sweetness Home, No.29 Huayuan Hutong Dongxiang, Andingmennei, Dongcheng District, Beijing, China

It’s midnight, Beijing-time, and in the darkened living room of a small apartment near the city’s second ring road, two figures quietly attend to their bank of equipment. The performers, Taurin Barrera and gogoj, appear not entirely there, in a world of their own, working away in an environment with few sounds filling the room aside from the rustles of their movements. Projected on the wall beside them are gogoj’s wave form lightening strikes, reacting to some unheard input, building from simple shaped waves through to complex smears and many-dimensional structures as the feeds become ever more complex. The silence in the room contrasts starkly with the sounds and visuals each performer is producing within the walls of the equipment and immediately dispersed away online to a small audience which has gathered from around the world to experience False SIP, Shan Studio’s first Gigonline.

Sheng Jie, also known as gogoj, is a Chinese video and audio artist, who established Shan Studio in 2010 in an apartment amongst the hutongs in central Beijing. Sheng began Shan Studio as away to extend her own practice, as “like every artist there are times when you close the door and do your work, but at the same time I wanted to open the door to receive people.”

For such a small space, Shan Studio is adaptable to many purposes: as a residency space, it has living, working and sleeping areas; as a teaching workshop it provides facilities for creating and demonstrating audio and video production techniques; the living room can be repurposed for small performances, as well as used as a lecture space.

The various types of events produced and hosted here reflect Sheng’s set of interests in working with sound and visuals. Her background was originally in music, her father being a famous concert violinist, but Sheng was also drawn to the visual arts with a focus on video. Her work and her aims for the Studio cross these two areas: “those two parts are a very important part of my background: that I could study music and then drawing – the sound and the visual.”

While working as a guest teacher at The Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, she came into contact with many students who wanted to learn about these links between video and audio. But the professors were unable to devote their time to just this subject, so the students were often left to their own devices, which is where the initiative for Shan Studio arose.

Eventually, dissatisfaction with the university environment convinced Sheng to stop working there and concentrate on the Studio as a platform for knowledge and exchange. The money to support such an endeavour comes from her commercial work, and the fees paid for the artists’ residency, teaching and workshops. Aside from that, the other events are free: “they are simply ways to help people who want to learn something.”

Since opening, the Studio has hosted 4 international residencies and laid on some 17 events. These include workshops that teach software and hardware skills, and what Sheng calls Freetalks which provide more relaxed presentations of artists’ work, emphasising a two-way flow of conversation between the artists and audience.

The events at Shan Studio are open to all, and often include students from CAFA but also many students from other university departments, including cinema, fashion and industrial design. This mixture of backgrounds creates a conversation that is important for Sheng: “they meet each other because they want to learn the same things. They can also exchange the information between them and also with the artists.”

The Studio presentation room is very small and usually fits about 15 or 20 people, a number that Sheng feels encourages connections between the people more easily. The biggest audience was a standing room only event with around 30 people for a performance and discussion with Yan Jun, a well-known Chinese noise artist.

Many events at the Studio have dealt with software technologies, such as Max/MSP a popular tool for the creation of sound, visual and interactive work. But Sheng is adamant that there is not only one way to work, saying that any software is just a tool: “Young Chinese people often focus too much on these tools. A question all the time is what software they should use. But I create these events to show people you have many ways to do things, maybe not with Max at all. You can do things without software, just with hardware.”

American electronic musician and sound artist Taurin Barrera was resident at the Studio just prior to the False SIP performance, conducting a three day workshop demonstrating his Max/MSP patches: “Taurin can only speak a little Chinese, so trying to explain his patches was very complicated. He finally gave up and spoke only in English with participants volunteering to translate for the others who didn’t understand. It was a very interesting ambience, because all the people are trying to guess what he was saying!”

Gigonline is the latest development at Shan Studio, developed in collaboration with Taurin: “I have a neighbour who is very sensitive to any sounds. Gigonline is a way to perform without disturbing them, and I can open the showplace to many people, and they don’t need to move from their own rooms.”

Technical limitations are accepted and deliberately incorporated into the broadcast. This first Gigonline: False SIP with Taurin incorporated “webcams, DIY synthesizers, medical equipment, projectors, busted radios, and many unconventional instruments.” For a broadcast event, the reality is that the internet can be very slow in China, but this becomes a feature and not a bug for the performance. Sheng revels in these restrictions, describing the internet as: “the best distortion box ever created.”

gogoj: http://sgogoj.com/

Shan Studio: http://shan-studio.com/?lang=en

gigonline: http://www.livestream.com/gigonline

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published 22 August, 2011 on ArtSlant.

Minsheng Art Museum, Bldg F, No.570 West Huaihai Road, Shanghai

16 July – 14 August, 2011

In amongst the videos and installations by Zhang Peili at the Minsheng Art Museum (which I reviewed here last week), I also had a surprise encounter with the work of Tino Sehgal, whose works of performed discussions as institutional critique added an unusual perspective to the display of new media work.

Under the collective title “Taking the Stage Over,” curator Biljana Ciric has organised a year-long series of events for Shanghai. From July to September she has arranged for Sehgal to present pieces at MOCA Shanghai, then the Minsheng Art Museum, and finally the Rockbund Art Museum. On my visit to the Minsheng, “This is New” and “This is Exchange” had been “installed” in the reception area and in one of the galleries.

Prior to entering the Museum, I had no idea that these pieces were present. While paying for my ticket, the staff member quoted a headline from the day’s newspaper in heavily accented English to me. This completely baffled me at first, and after a few minutes of her repeating the sentence and my trying to make sense of its relevance, a colleague let drop that it was a work by Sehgal. At which point I had a bit of a eureka moment, and felt that I understood – which, looking back, perhaps was a shame as it marked the end of my unmediated experience of the piece. Before this realisation, there were a few, rare moments of complete incomprehension, while knowing that something was trying to be communicated – it was actually a nice feeling. During the act, there really was no meaning and nothing to communicate other than the act of communication (something which Sehgal talks about himself).

The second piece by Sehgal was embedded within the Zhang Peili show itself. On entering the gallery space in which it was present I could tell something was not quite right. At the far end of the room a young man was examining the works in a way that suggested he was merely killing time. This made me question whether I really wanted to move to that end of the room for the inevitable encounter.

Nevertheless, I didn’t want to miss the other works on display, and so eventually I was approached by the performer. I don’t remember the details of our conversation, but I think we talked about the market economy in China and its consequences for the art world. I do remember that our context amongst these institutionalised conceptual and new media works became a part of my response to the performer. I talked for about half an hour with Zhang Yuan, my affable interlocutor, with only one other visitor to the gallery during that time – who refused to join us in the conversation.

I think that while the question itself is obviously meaningful, what is interesting about these works are their effects on the audience, in that maybe they could effect a change in patterns of thought and activity. The artist makes no concrete claims for the results of his pieces; he sets the scene, and lets the actors (on both sides) complete the work.

But ultimately the question must be: where do these piece go? I’ve always struggled with the deliberate limits set on the communicability of Sehgal’s works – the artist stresses no documentation is allowed (leaving word of mouth testimony as their means of dispersal). Thus their existence is an uncertain state, the performer and the specific audience present experience one aspect of that existence, and beyond that the pieces take on a slightly mythical aspect due to their being present through anecdote. I am also uncertain about the breadth of this dissemination, as I would expect the people that go to museums to be a very small group in China – especially in this Museum tucked away off the main road, with little opportunity for the random encounter with the work.

Another issue arises when the work “succeeds,” particularly pertinent in the Chinese context. Free talk as an aim of the work uncomfortably points out its restrictions within society. I was told that one visitor who did not normally go to museums became quite enthralled with the piece, returning more than once, and engaging with other visitors on his own behalf. This sounds great, but how does the artist, the curator, or the Museum deal with the very real risks involved in this freedom of expression, when it crosses certain boundaries?

But speaking of my own experience, I can say that I witnessed something between the performers and myself that confirmed my interest in the works of Tino Sehgal as subtle, at times humorous, but certainly powerful ways reminding us of our relationship with the institutions and realities of society.

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published 22 August, 2011 on ArtSlant.

The Journey West Travel Office, 43 Zhonglouwan Hutong, Dongcheng District, Beijing, 100007 China

21 May – 10 July, 2011

As an agent of Spectacle, tourism fulfils manufactured desires, and you can’t get more manufactured—or at least programmed—than guided tours. Tailor-made to your requirements? Maybe so, but within your tightly regimented schedule (value-for-money!) you’ll see only what you want to see, and the tendency to cede control and the experience to the tour company itself becomes part of a demonstration of social and economic affluence. But maybe those restrictions can be put to use to provide a frame within which to re-view our understanding of the sites that we visit, through a critical engagement with the process and assumptions of tourism.

Setting up shop for the last two months in a tiny street front space in the historic Drum and Bell Tower area (once home to Beijing’s time-keeping apparatus), American artists Stephanie Rothenberg and Dan S. Wang have been running their Journey West Travel Office. The Office has been developed as a serious business, from their initial location scouting in this strategic area which sees plenty of foot traffic from potential clients, to the process of interviewing and engaging salespeople, whose subsequent travails as arbiters of the various package tours to passers-by become documentary material adding to the content of the piece as a performative intervention in the area.

The four available tours are to purposefully non-mainstream locations, and include The Majesty of Parking Lots (led by Ryan Griffis, “a leading expert on the history, economics, and aesthetics of America’s parking lots”) and The Great American Test Range Tour (led by author and expert on black-ops secret bases, Trevor Paglen). The tours serve as examples of what has become known as Critical Tourism, the seeds of which were laid in the ‘90s with the writings of Lucy Lippard and the actions of groups such as Critical Art Ensemble and REPOHistory. It serves as an exposure and antidote to the exercises in power relationships and the normalisation of historical and social meaning which tourism can embody. Critical Tourism was partly about avoiding the monumental and iconic sites that we all “know” before we even get to them, in favour of locations and methods of tourism which dug a little deeper into the sites, the tourists’ presence in those places, and the meanings and uses of tourism itself.

Although this is the first time they have worked together, Rothenberg and Wang have a shared interest in art practices that investigate modes of production and consumption. Tourism is one such process whose intricacies bear attention and critique for its tendency to homogenize our views and experiences of the places around us, what gets written into history and the hierarchies of it. As Rothenberg puts it, it’s in the nature of tourism to be an act of “social engineering”; its accoutrements and systems working with a type of “consumer propaganda” of its promised utopian experience:

“It’s interesting to question what makes something a significant landmark, what gets on the tourist map and what doesn’t. You move beyond what is iconic and start to understand more about a ‘localism.’”

Based on their experience of China, the inspiration for the Travel Office came from the artists’ awareness of the decontextualization of many cultural factors in this place.

“…it was the whole appropriation of Western iconography or cultural signifiers that then get really disconnected, decontextualized … I wanted to open up some kind of travel agency that could bring it back to where it came from.”

The result became what they describe as a “discursive platform,” a way to engage with the passers-by and investigate these utopian visions of travel versus the reality and its actual real-world impact.

The events organized in conjunction with the Travel Office served to expand its reach into the surrounding spaces and audiences. These situations garnered attention and also changed the nature of the spaces to one that perhaps reflected the ethos of the Office itself, by positioning it as an active participant in the community.

“Finding the store, setting it up, doing the worker interviews, coming up with the worker chant – it becomes about the production of a travel agency, an exposure of the system … It was really important to have our own “Journey West motivational exercise and chant”! The performances were a great way to activate the space around the Office.”

I reviewed one such event on ArtSlant a few weeks ago, Something on the Way by Alessandro Rolandi and Megumi Shimizu. For American Independence Day Rothenberg and Wang organized a celebration in the public square in front of the Office. On that balmy evening the square was packed with locals and tourists, with the ubiquitous rickshaws scooting through the narrow alleys showing people the sights. The celebration began with a dance routine prepared by members of the HomeShop community (a nearby artist collective) designed to mimic the pre-shift motivational chants and exercises workers are required to do. The HomeShop crew took on the role of “workers” dressed in “The Journey West” uniform of cowboy hat, red bandana necktie and company shirt. The event created a party-like atmosphere with drinks, pie and a small charcoal barbecue finding its place in amongst the evening life of the hutong. The dancers staked out their performance space, but had a tough time competing with the locals’ own line-dance groups that form every night in open spaces in China. Towards the end the locals began to edge the interlopers out a little, re-asserting their own space and imposing their own “normality” against the oddity of the Travel Office’s activities: “It was interesting in terms of East meets West: here comes the artist with her ironic performance of Chinese dances, and then it totally merged with the real, local thing.”

In the end, no sales were made, but success in these terms was, if not irrelevant, then would have been simply a side benefit of the project. During the interviews for potential sales-people, Rothenberg was advised by an MBA from the Yemen that their location may have actually worked against them in this respect, and Beijing’s business districts might be more suitable. Rothenberg came to reflect on the role of tourism in global business presence: “…big group tours nowadays are organized through companies, where they are sending their employees overseas so that they can experience and get to know other cultures – on those trips they’re interfacing with their potential clients.”

I think this investigation and response to the audiences in the area served as a point of clarification for the project as a whole. The hutong store sat within a hub of tourist activity, but tourists who were in consumption mode rather than research mode – would they want to buy another tour when they were already on holiday? For the local residents and workers the tours were usually too expensive for them to consider. But that provocation of out-of-reach realities had the productive potential to give some kind of interruption, encouraging a consideration of how could one be in a position to take part in these tours; what is the value of these tours to me; and, who are they really addressing? The process of weighing up your position in relation to the “utopian visions” of the Travel Office can perhaps open up a greater awareness and reassessment of one’s own wishes and possibilities.

Perhaps coming into contact with the Travel Office while on your vacation, visiting one of Beijing’s major tourist pit-stops, you may become painfully aware of your position herded with your fellow tourists and intimately disconnected with the local hutong residents that give the area their “character.” This layering of the surreal elements of the whole situation, may just give the audience pause to consider their own situation as part of the global tourist class.

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published 25 July, 2011 on ArtSlant.

The Journey West Travel Office, 43 Zhonglouwan Hutong, Beijing, China

19 June, 2011

Last weekend in the hutongs around the historic Drum and Bell Tower area in Beijing, Alessandro Rolandi from Italy and Megumi Shimizu from Japan staged the performance Something on the Way. This was included as part of Stephanie Rothenberg and Dan S. Wang’s Journey West Travel Office (a “performative installation that casts a critical eye on global tourism”). Something on the Way drew upon a mixture of traditions from Epic Theatre to Japanese Butoh performance to impose something of a delay into the everyday life around these narrow hutong alleyways.

In simple terms Something on the Way was a walk that they undertook from the Travel Office to Zajia, a bar and performance space a few streets away. Even though only 300m separates the two sites, the artists massively extended their walk in both time and concentration as they slowed their pace down to a crawl, drawing out every step of the way into a hyper-controlled set of movements. Starting at 3pm, they didn’t arrive at their destination until 7.30 that evening.

Despite its historic status, the area in which they were walking still holds a sizeable population of ‘locals’ who call the hutong alleyways home, so the artists’ actions took place amongst many different constituencies of people: tourists snapping shots of the picturesque architecture and ‘authentic’ local color; locals popping in and out of their homes; street hawkers setting up their trailers next to banks of parked bicycles; and, in amongst all this, drivers trying to negotiate the straitened spaces in between.

When I try and put Rolandi and Shimizu’s action into some kind of perspective, its successes and failures highlight for me the tricky position of art and artists in society, especially when they deliberately go out of their way to create a provocation.

Any work that aims to “make strange” and confront the audience with an everyday gesture (such as walking), raises issues that usually prefer to stay in the background. By inserting themselves into a situation to change it and demand a response, although the response was generally good natured, the artists potentially exposed themselves to the full range of reactions, positive through negative. In this case, this was usually a physical accommodation to their presence, a change of route, a delay while the artists slowly got out of the way – a minor annoyance. But if the action works to produce some permanent change in life or attitude, as I believe it aims to do, this can be very uncomfortable for people to accommodate as they go about their daily business.

The nature of this intervention almost suggests something of a ‘violent’ relationship with the world around it. As I followed Rolandi and Shimizu and became part of the walk’s pace and being in the world, the artists’ disconnection seemed to present an attitude of passive-aggression. By occupying that public space, the performance demanded a reaction. Through the artists’ inability to become absorbed into the environment (given the rules they had set themselves), they created an aura of being separate from the rest of the life that went on around them.

Towards the end of the walk two events took place that brought to the fore for me the potential of this event and also its problematic. Many of their audience had taken up station waiting on the steps outside Zajia and as the performers turned the final corner and came within view, the audience spontaneously began clapping the artists on. However this gesture of support became slightly farcical, as those last few meters took about 30 minutes to complete, the clapping becoming somewhat forced as time wore on. This difference between audience-time and performer-time was an interesting, amusing effect of the piece, drawing clear attention to the strictures of its methodology.

Also on this final stretch, the performers were required to cross the road to reach Zajia. Up to that point they had been able to walk on either side of the road, more or less avoiding the passing cyclists and cars. But their progress across this road put them directly into conflict with the cars – and Beijing drivers are not known for their patience.

In their work, the artists bring up connections with Brechtian Epic Theatre and the ‘Distancing Effect’ it relies upon. Something on the Way did have this effect, but I wonder whether it was too aggressive given the context? Did it become less effective because of that? Are subtler, less overt means better suited to the task? Of course, subtlety holds its own risks.

In the end I do question the results and benefits of this piece. It seemed too easy for it to have a negative effect, in terms of aggravating the communities it comes into contact with and risking reinforcing stereotypical divisions of “us” versus “them” – artists (or even ‘foreigners’) as somehow separate from the society in this place. I’m not convinced it’s enough for artists insert their actions into the environment and then leave it up to the audience to deal with them, without more of a give-and-take in the process.

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published 27 June, 2011 on ArtSlant.

Last year DICA was showing a selection of artists’ videos on the screens attached to the donkey, but this time around Michael Yuen and Yam Lau have created custom-built shelves for the cart which display a library of artists books.

After being moved on by the police from their original spot, DICA ended up on the corner of Fangyuan Xilu 芳园西路 and Jiangtai Lu 将台路 near the Lido Hotel, a busy intersection. There was a good turnout of locals on their way home from work and art-people, and many people took the time find out what was going on and thumb through the books:

This project is provisionally organised along a division between what I am characterising as hand-crafted or hands-on and hands-off material. I’ve been explaining it as follows:

Hands-on: those people producing material using primarily hands-on methods. I’m thinking here of things like live-coding, circuit-bending, etc.

Hands-off: those producing material with self-running systems with only minimal human intervention beyond the initial setting up of the system.

I see this as the work being split into two types, one for “knob twiddlers,” and the other for the more minimally-inclined worker. In both cases a particular focus could be generative software like Supercollider, which allows for both types of activity.

Hands-on/hands-off is obviously something of an artificial distinction – people don’t really restrict themselves to one or the other, but this event is designed to investigate the various options around these different types of work, and to see what kind of productive exchanges you can get when you focus on and contrast these particular aspects of production.

I’m also trying to avoid any forcing of the material into categories like music, noise, sound, visual art, architecture, etc. The principles being dealt with here cross over many disciplines and forms, so I want to leave this as open as possible and let the artists create the distinction with their work.

Returning to the Player Pianos, and Rex’s distinction that the rolls for Pianolas are edited versions of the original musical scores, while rolls for Recording Pianos are created by a machine translating the key presses of a particular pianist into slots on the paper. So, in former case, you have this abstraction which is the musical score, being translated into a new medium of the roll, but essentially they are unchanged in their content. From thence the Pianolist (the player of the Pianola) interprets the playing of the roll using the various means available on the Pianola (speed, tone, strength, etc.). In the latter case, you have the reality of the player’s movements being the players’ realisation of the abstraction of the score, translated into slots on the roll, the idea being that these rolls are then played as-is, without intervention on the part of a Pianolist. In this case at the time of performance you have what aims to be a reproduction, whereas in the former you have an entirely original performance.

In terms of my project, I want to pay attention to this interesting slippage through the roll of the human hand in the process, and more importantly at what stage in the process the hand enters and leaves. For the hands-on work the hand is ever-present to a greater extent, by definition; for the hands-off work, the hand has done it’s work beforehand (as it were) in the preparation, which then almost has a life of its own once it is performed (or performs itself, you could say I suppose).