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.

walks without walls or works

works without walls or walks

CPU:798 is delighted to welcome Michael Yuen to our roster1 of artists. Michael’s work encompasses a plurality2 of media3, and he is already well-known4 in his native Australia for a body of exceptional works making use of light5, sound6 and performance7. With Michael joining CPU:798, we are building on our mission8 to present the most interesting new media9 artists from both inside and outside of China today10.

Over the past few years Michael has divided his time equally between Australia11 and China12, and in both environments13 his works have investigated the nature of public spaces14 and how small events and interventions15 can have large-scale effects16 on those spaces and the people in them.

1. What would be the appropriate collective noun for this?
2. Plurality: perhaps plenitude. Or plethora.
3. ‘New’ media as opposed to ‘traditional’ media.
4. see his biography
5. e.g. Flash. Also includes sound as part of the piece.
6. e.g. Pulse. Also includes light as part of the piece.
7. e.g. Follow. Developed because of the specific difficulties creating a sound or light piece in an urban environment where the ambient noises and visual clutter would mask the elements of the work.
8. see statement on website
9. see note 3
10. expanding the gallery’s focus out from photography per se
11. Adelaide
12. Beijing
13. How different are they, and how does this manifest itself to the artist and through his work?
14. Particularly differences in the nature of public spaces. I have never lived in Australia (I visited Sydney once for 3 days), but from my experience from living in China, comparing this to the UK and Europe, the Chinese use their spaces in very particular ways. The spaces may be the same, or in many ways comparable, or completely different, but people here in China occupy them in a very characteristic way. It is a confluence of character (habit, tradition), architecture (in the sense of a human planned external controlling affect on the occupants), environment (a ‘natural’ external affect), and immediate practicality (an internal affect) which all go to suggest what happens there.
15. sound and light work in this way – materially discrete
16. an effect is that we experience them as an artwork (something removed from everyday life;or, something like everyday life which makes everyday life suddenly seem strange?). They assert themselves, make themselves known. Distract or attract attention. Trip up, disturb, unsettle.

His accumulation of practical, everyday-life objects all are representatives of the tangible in our life. However, he experiments with the double-dimensions of those materials by creating also an intangible effect, namely sounds.

Wait, perhaps that’s a bit disingenuous. I know what my immediate reaction was. What’s taken time has been trying to put that reaction into words and work out it’s relevance.

On the one hand, I’m not good with blood, so inevitably I found the video of I Miss You! quite difficult to watch. On the other, I get a vicarious thrill from the whole practice of cutting and blood-letting, in the same way that I find many types of body modification attractive.

While watching this video I couldn’t help thinking about the beauty of the way the video was distorted by the compression – when it’s viewed full-screen especially it created abstract washes of golden colour, with regions of smooth colour gradients merging into more detailed, pixelated areas.

I was considering capturing some of the footage and isolating those parts as a work of art in itself. I thought that this would serve as a new piece of work to show my reaction to Franko-b’s work. But then I thought, hold on, why would I want to do this? Is this just me avoiding my real issues with the piece?

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (Gertrude, III.ii)

My reaction to the footage, and my subsequent ways of dealing with it, gives me away. Blood-letting causes a visceral reaction on my part, I would go so far as to say a revulsion, and my coping strategy is to transfer my attention away from that aspect of what is being shown to an aspect of the video that I am comfortable with, in this case the aesthetic of the semi-random pixel effects. This sounds like trauma to me, but I am not well versed in its extensive history, so wouldn’t like to trivialise the subject. The following comes from a text that I happen to have just read, but I should go back to the primary sources, whatever they may be:

…trauma can be experienced in at least two ways: as a memory that one cannot integrate into one’s own experience, and as a catastrophic knowledge that one cannot communicate to others.

Avital Ronell, “Haunted TV” Artforum, 31, 1 (September 1992), pp. 70–3.

And here I am being completely distracted from the work itself by my own reactions to it. Have I nothing to say about the piece or the artist in themselves? I should consider whether this an intended effect of the work*. Can I judge the work separately from it’s effect on me? Can I/Should I be objective about it?

The work asserted the body as a site for the representation of pain and fear, intrinsic to the human condition.

* This point reminds me of another of Franko-b’s works Why Are You Here (Aktion 893)