Drama360/Ritual and Performance Art ***

INITIAL RESPONSE: HIBING WU

1.	Wilson, Martha. "History of Performance Art: According to Me." Baltic Library & Archive, 2005. [PART 1 - 3] (20:00) http://www.youtube.com/user/MarthaSWilson

2.	Singh, Victoria. "From Entrails to E-Mail: Introduction." Ritual in Contemporary Performance. Ed. Victoria Singh. Vancouver: Western Front Performance Art, 2005. [PAGES 5-12]

3.	ALTERED STATES: Art of Zhang Huan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szyZXfq8Z7A

In ‘History of Performance Art’, Ms. Wilson proposes that performance art maybe derive from futurism. She also discusses performance in the contexts of confrontation, the body as medium and site, and time-based practice. Artists mentioned in the video include Mel Gordon, Frank Moore and Peggy Petti. According to Ms. Wilson, performance artists are not the kind of people who wish to be discovered working in galaxy but rather hope to change the world. Therefore, in her view, performance art is the opposite of theatre tradition.

‘The Contemporary Ritual Series’ talks that performance art is a flaky form of ritual in its execution and aesthetic. The objects, symbols and actions used in the performance present collective society, critique human condition and purely autobiographical in origin. Actions and symbols maybe interpreted differently by viewers who have different knowledge and experience. Artists discussed included Reona Brass, Linda Montano, Sharon Alward, Lezli Rubin Kunda, and Julie Andree.

In the first part of the video, it talks about Zhang Huan’s performances in New York. He says that all his performances are taking from his internal, and original culture. Performances like ‘To Raise the Water Level in a Fish Pond’ and ‘To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain’ recreate his childhood. The second part of the video introduces his experiences and artworks in China. After the performance of ‘Pilgrimage’, he goes back to China where he gets his inspirations from traditional Chinese culture. At end of his interview, he tells people that “to be a good artist has to think illogically and also has to mess around, so that you can produce a good artwork.”

Huan's Interpretation of art is uplifting and innovative. His use of images and body are interesting. Most of the projects that are shown in the video are meant to recreate an instance in history or his life. He does this with an abstract representation of the situation. And example is the use of dogs in his performance piece "Wind Water in New York" are representative of the ethnic mosaic present in New York. He gets very excited when he goes to the Buddhist temple, which he connects with the cultural revolution, and sees all the ash from incenses. He uses all the ashes (symbolic of the devotion of the people attending the temple and also sacred in their own right) to create sculpture mixing destruction with creation. Very interesting.

Response: Nathan Hunt (Response to HIBING WU)

''"Returning art to its ritualistic platform, combined with recent technological developments, may create new possibilities for the spiritual imagination." '' This quote found in the article entitled 'From entrails to e-mail' I find to be very powerful. Throughout the article it is hinted at how the 'ritualistic' actions in our life, perhaps those we don't even consider ritual, can be used to showcase the deeply imbedded ideas and notions hidden within our culture. Through ritualistic oriented performance all of a sudden these imbedded notions can be pulled to the surface to be accessed by the audience. I find this medium to be amazingly powerful, all of a sudden a normal action becomes a 'representation of truth' that the audience themselves can admit they have played a part in maintaining. Through performance art it becomes possible to represent metaphorically or literally certain aspects of reality, this revelation intuitively leading us to alternative realizations of truth. Any format that allows the audience to not only reflect on their societies standards but as well reflect on their own is invaluable.

The author discusses how when an artist demonstrates behaviors related to pain, suffering or sacrifices, they are intentionally trying to reconnect us to our humanity. When self inflicted pain is demonstrated for artistic intent, is it used as a method of manipulation. An interesting choice of influential performance, many artists who use self-hurt believe that the injuries or discomfort is positive, as it creates original performances and new experiences every time the method is used. These methods can also be used when dealing with ritual art. Ritual performances are created to remind the audience of the vase distance between us and our primal roots. When an artist uses self inflicted methods of pain and suffering in a ritual performance, they may be feel as if they are receiving self-enlightenment or spiritual cleansing. The performance is not only successful in causing the audience to ask a large amount of questions, it also succeeds in giving the performer an honest experience unlike any other they have experienced.

Response: Yibin Wang

After watching the video, I want to discuss Zhang Huan' opinions about performances. He said all his performances were taking from his internal and original culture. I think that is true. In China, people always say art derives from life. If you want to create something, you should observe and think about life carefully because life is the source of everything. Also, culture is another important root. Your values and world view come from the culture you live. Your thoughts are influenced by your culture too. Therefore, your performances can reflect your culture completely. From his performances, I can see many aspects of Chinese culture. In addition, he said to be a good artist has to think illogically and also has to mess around, so that you can produce a good artwork. In our mind, artist is this kind of person.

Response: Xiaochao Ma

I think Zhang Huan is a great artist. He knows how to use his brain to work on his performance. When I see he is naked, and lying down the bed which is made by ice, I do not know how he felt about this, but I know I can not do that. I believe that tons of people can not do that neither. Zhang Huan loved his art performance so much. Those ideas were just amazing. His creativity, understanding about art was fantastic. He said: “ A good artist first of all, has to be illogical. Then you also have to mess around. Only then can one produce good art.” What he said really makes a lot of sense to me.

INITIAL RESPONSE: Meng Shi

1.	Wilson, Martha. "History of Performance Art: According to Me." Baltic Library & Archive, 2005. [PART 1 - 3] (20:00) http://www.youtube.com/user/MarthaSWilson

2.	Yang, Sue. "Performance Art and Live Art in China: Why Do 'Live Art' in China?" China Live. Ed. Daniel & Yang Brine, Sue. London: Chinese Arts Centre, Live Art UK, Live Art Development Agency, Shu Yang, 2005. [PAGES 17-39].

4.	ALTERED STATES: Art of Zhang Huan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szyZXfq8Z7A

In this article, Shu Yang minutely describes the transition process from “performance” to “live art” in China. He considers that performance art has not asquired the approval and support even though it already had been developing for twendy years, it not only because of misunderstanding by official art institutions and the media, but also exists some itself’s problem. The article divided into three parts as “from art actions to performance art”, “performance and live art as a platform for exchange” and “performance art and Asian golbalisation” to analyze Chinese performance. Firstly, the Hong Kong artist Menghao Guo’s work which named “Plastic Bag Happenings in China” and another famouse work “Stars Exhibition” are marks of the beginning of contemporary art in China. In February 1989, the exhibition China/Avant-grade collected a lot of populer works. In addition, it is an important mark of the contemporary Chinese art is develping to maturity. However, Chinese performance art finished its elementaty stage because of June Fourth Incident. Moreover, Shu Yang considers that because of some kind of ultra performance works, the official art organisations and media started to criticize performance,even attempt to eradicate Chinese performance. In the second part, due to the influence by the activity of “China-Japan Performance Art Exchange”, Shu Yang organised the “1st Open Art Platform-Performance Art Festival”. From the second live art festival in 2004, they started to use the new name “DaDao”. Shu Yang hopes that live art will become a way which can contain the different arts, and put people who has confidence in performance together. In the last part, Shu Yang mentions the problem bewteen performance art and Asian globalisation. He considers that in recent years, performance art is one of the most fast mode of art in developing in Asian, especially in Japan. In addition, there are so many important problems about globalisation in Asian, therefore, art becomes an indispensable way to commune. In conlusion, even though the developing process of performance in China is very hard and formidable because of especial culture and background, but there are many artists such as Shu Yang, they still strive to resolve any problems which Chinese performance already has.

Respond: Ping Yu

It is really easy to understand why Live Art faces difficulty to develop in Asian countries such as China. As a country which has thousand years history, China has really strong traditions itself. Chinese people are educated under this tradition which is different from the western education. However, this is not meant Live Art has no way to develop in China. It takes time for people to accept those performances which really shock them and bring them new concept and ideas which challenge their ingrained belief. Actually, some Live Arts get really successful in China. As the article mentioned the “Plastic Bag Happenings in China”, there are some similar performances showing recently such as the one happened in Hangzhou China in March 2008. There were five performers who used the plastic bags as tool to show how people use plastic bags and how harm the plastic bags to our environment and our world by wrapping themselves with plastic bags. It brought questions and made people consider the problems. These kinds of Live Arts seemed to be more acceptable and easy to understand. I agree your opinion in some part. There are many different rule of cultures in chinese culture. China has 56 nationality which are very different rule between them. It is very hard to handle every rule of culture in the performance. For example, some main point of south chinese rule may break the rule of the north part of china in a performance. Since south life model and process of society are very different, sometime are against. South chinese may understand the point of a performance, but north may not understand. Different Language is also an obstruct between south and north chinese people. There are many kind of languages in china. Body performance is good for these people who even speak different language. But if there is some language in a performance, maybe someone do not understand. There are lot of obstruct in developing art in china.

It appears there needs to be some sort of legitimate reason for performance art/live art to occur in China without being censored or forbidden by the Chinese government. The wide range of performance, which also has a large scope for going beyond what Western Civilization would consider moral, can cause lots of debate about whether or not it should be performed. As noted in the article, 'Why do live art in China?', it says there was an increase of art events in 2000 including the involvement of maltreatment and killing of animals. However the article does not explain why this would occur, it doesn't give a real legitimate reason as to why this should be shown. This type of 'performance' or sick excuse to abuse animals by calling it 'art' shouldn't ever be allowed. If its going to be that weird, at least make it for a reason, like the plastic bag example, which could perhaps be looked upon as a way to reduce waste (although it probably wasn't created for that reason, but its a lot easier to come up with a motive for that kind of art than the 'killing animals' kind of art!)

Respond: Siliang Li

Personally, I enjoy the pathos expressed in the performance art, but not for the extreme ones. The author of the article is very objective in a way that she always complains the Chinese officials have demonized the performance art in China. For example, she mentioned the work “To Add One Meter to an Unknown Mountain” of “East Village” artist community, and emphasized that two of the members of “East Village” were arrested after their performance. At the first glance, Chinese official was unreasonable. However, my opinion has totally been changed after I know the fact that their work was about four naked people piped up together, which I could hardly accept as an art, and what they were doing is also against the law. Their work reminds me the eight people arrested in Todd’s “No pants! Subways” performance in NYC. The point is that the law is reformed to achieve the willingness of the majority of people in our society.

Respond:

"For only love can create hate" - Ke Chai

“Too radical, too unreasonable” are the four words I would describe the development of Chinese performance art. Unlike the majority of western societies, all Asian societies especially Japan and China as the representatives, shares one common tradition, which is the ideology of propriety and control; which strictly forbids any nudity as well violence. Performance artists in China keep forgetting the fact that China only opened itself to the outside world since 1979, yet in 1989 Xiao Lu fired two shots into her own installation during the exhibition China Avant-garde, and Zhu Yu ate a real baby (dead) from surgical abortion in 2000 (which I totally do not believe eating baby is acceptable anywhere). Maybe just like Sue Yang said: “Zhu Yu’s ‘Eating People and Offering’ signals the end of a phase in which Chinese performance artists competed with each other in the field of visual art”. In merely 20 years, the Chinese performance artists has done what the western Avant-gardes couldn’t even try to start understand for a hundred year of development (since Dadaism). I would call the Chinese performance art development as the darkest and bloodiest of all. Unlike the ideology base of performance art in western countries are probably early Avant-gardes such as Dadaism, Surrealism, Fluxus, Happenings and so on, which promotes peace, humanity, self and love; I would say the ideology base for Chinese performance art are hate, revenge and struggle.

For a nation that has been keeping its’ conservative traditions for over 5000 years, the development of Avant-garde in Asia must not be the same as the western societies. Asian societies like China needs longer time to gradually as well less radically adopt the appropriate understanding of Avant-garde such like performance art. It would be just like another “Great Leap Forward Movement” *(note 1) to just radically rebel against the traditional arts forms in China, way too much collateral damage and unnecessary losses. This is not a theory, the history of China had proved it as a fact over and over again.

For the sake of development and survival of Avant-garde in China, I can only wish the artists in China to be more patient and rational, at least I wish they try to read and study more about: first, what is really Avant-garde; second, the history of China.

Finally, as a huge believer of Avant-garde, I am too disappointed and disgusted by both the ignorant & incompetent artists in China, and as well how the conservative government treats art. I guess only great love can create great hate.

Note 1: Great Leap Forward Movement: which was a radical economic movement promoted by Chairman Mao ZeDong which concluded in millions of hungry corpses in China, for more please read “Hungry ghost” by Jasper Becker.

Response: Jingyi Chen

In my opinion, most artists are great people. They are good at observing and capture little details in our usual life. Most of these details are ignored and though to be common by us. They capture, magnify them and give them different meaning from their minds. Someone think artists are crazy. But I cannot agree with that. The reason why we think they are crazy is they are different from us. They do something which we won’t do at all. On the contrary, we may be ridiculous to them. However, considering Chinese culture and political atmosphere, Chinese people do not give enough attention to performance art. Therefore, performance art artists may want to attract attentions through extreme performance. Otherwise, I would like to say Chinese performance art is developing towards an unhealthy and extreme path.

INITIAL RESPONSE: Jiachen wu (ben)

1.	Wilson, Martha. "History of Performance Art: According to Me." Baltic Library & Archive, 2005. [PART 1 - 3] (20:00) http://www.youtube.com/user/MarthaSWilson

2.	Yang, Sue. "Performance Art and Live Art in China: Why Do 'Live Art' in China?" China Live. Ed. Daniel & Yang Brine, Sue. London: Chinese Arts Centre, Live Art UK, Live Art Development Agency, Shu Yang, 2005. [PAGES 17-39].

4.	ALTERED STATES: Art of Zhang Huan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szyZXfq8Z7A

Performance art and live art in China. Why do ‘live art ‘ in China? was a descriptive article to give us a brief history of how live art in China came up and why performance art reach into a dead end. Shu Yang comments that performance art in China was being in a terrible situation. First, Chinese performance art was not admitted by Chinese official institution. Second, it was not accepted by public citizens and media because some of Chinese performance used extreme and violent methods to express. For example, according to Shu Yang’s article, MeiShu and Wenyibao (Journal of Literature and Art) both are art journals which basically represents government’s cultural policy. Chief editor of Meishu Wang Zhong criticized Chinese performance art in the rest of his speaking: ‘ this so-called ‘performance art’ is not art at all, it’s just action, and repulsive actions at that, repulsive actions that flaunt that banner of art. Since ‘performance art’ is not art, it is therefore impossible for us to discuss the question of whether ot not it is neutral from the angle of ‘art’. Consequently, the question of whether or not there is any ‘good performance art’ doesn’t exist.’ Furthermore, performance art in China is demonised by both official art institution and public media. It caused performance art was being in a situation which was between illegal and underground state. Consequently, financial support is impossible to get from public institution and private media and organization. It can be imaged that it was very difficult for performance art to survive in China. This is the reason why Shu yang decided to switch ‘performance art’ to ‘live art’ because he found the basic principles of both performance art and live art are the same. He believes that live art will have a bright future in China.

I had never realized the impact and accounts for live performance in China prior to reading this article. Now that I think about it, it has been a rarely expressed form of art in my home country. In fact, I was not aware of such performances prior to leaving China to study abroad, or it may be due to my lack of concern for this form of art. This could also be a mistreated matter by the Chinese Official Art Institution. To an extent due to conservatism, live performance was suppressed and demonized. I think live performance is not easily understood or accepted, and may simply be a strange concept. Since my introduction to the other cultures, I have begun developing open-mindedness about everything. This has allowed me to understand, learn and even try to engage in new concepts or performances. Even though it is not the easiest step to adopt new ideas, it would still be beneficial to the public by acknowledge its existence. More people may start to enjoy live performance in due time; thus, legitimizing live performance art in the future.

Response: Sijin Chen

China is a traditional country which has long history in all aspects of human life. As well as, Chinese art, which has a long history including drawing, dancing, and singing, has a great effect on the development of the world art. Performance art, which is a new form of art for Chinese, originally comes from Europe and America. Since Chinese has affected by the traditional art for a long time, it is difficult for them to accept this kind of art. Even some Chinese artists boycott and criticize performance art. For example, on January 2003, the chief editor of Meishu Wang Zhong said: “this so-called performance art is not art at all, it’s just actions, and repulsive actions at that, repulsive actions that flaunt the banner of art. Since performance art is not art, it is therefore impossible for us to discuss the question of whether or not it is neutral from the angle of art. Consequently, the question of whether or not there is a good performance art doesn’t exist”. However, modern artists dare to explore and accept new art, they organize art festival and modern art activities, publicize performance art on newspaper and magazine, and hold art gallery. Even though Chinese people still have the historical burden of ideology, I believe that we are becoming more and more integrated the big family of the world, and Chinese artists will create new performance art which has Chinese characteristics.

Response: Chao Jiang

Chinese has very ancient history and most of traditional concepts are still stamped in most chinese’s mind. Because of this nature, it is difficult for Chinese to accept new concepts of art like live art or performance art, especially for the performances that relate to political or sexual. This is one thing that I don’t like about Communist Party who has control of Media, as well as make morality about what is acceptable to the society. Furthermore, most of educated Chinese are putting most of their efforts on their job and family instead of entertainment like art or performance, and uneducated Chinese are not likely to understand surrealism and avant-guard performance. These are the reasons that create difficulty to the spreading of performance art and live art.

Response:

Zhang Huan, who is Chinese performance artist, traveled between China and America. Faced the different culture between two countries, China and America, he used total different forms to create his performances. For the performance of Pilgrimage, this was about Wind Water in New York. He used some dogs represent different culture and the different human species, due to the specific history of America. However, in his motherland, China, he created his large group work, which the idea was from the old Chinese book “Tui Bei Tu”. Its concept was expressed very abstractly by taking two completely different things and put them together, due to there was profound of Chinese history. However, there was closely related to Fengshui, astrology. As Zhang Huan said, his brain was his studio, when he traveled between China and America, he create his internal and orginal culture to create his works.