A butterfly unleashes the cyclone…

Intervista a Andrea Nacciarriti di Cecilia Freschini

[Pechino, gennaio 2012]

“… Whether a butterfly in Beijing flaps its wings three times or only two can (in principle) alter totally the weather in San Francisco some days hence. “

David Campbell, Gottfried Mayer-Kress 1997

CF: Sei arrivato a Pechino da una settima, come sono stati questi primi giorni? Quale impatto positivo e negativo?

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[Andrea Nacciarriti in residenza a Pechino 8 gen - 31 mar 2012 // Col supporto di lab-Yit]

Conversazione con Giancarlo Norese

di Cecilia Freschini e Alessandro Rolandi

[Dicembre 2011]

CF: Fin dall’inizio ho ipotizzato che Pechino potesse diventare un posto idoneo per il tuo lavoro… ora che sei rientrato in Italia da un po’, probabilmente la confusione, che indubbiamente questo luogo evoca, si sarà sedimentata, schiarendo e ristabilendo alcuni equilibri messi in gioco durante questa tua esperienza cinese… come ti sei trovato? E cosa ne conservi?

GN: Ma sono molto più confuso in Italia, dove non capisco le regole del gioco. A Pechino mi sono trovato rispettivamente malissimo, indifferente, e benissimo. Molta libertà nella vita quotidiana, una specie di Italia degli anni 70, ma con il telefonino. Un giovane paese capitalista dove puoi fare di tutto, se te lo permettono e se ti dimentichi che prima di essere stato post-maoista è stato maoista… Ne conservo il ricordo di tanta gentilezza e sincerità nei rapporti umani, un po’ di mal di gola e la voglia di rivedere presto i miei nuovi amici.

CF: Il primo progetto in loco, se non sbaglio, è stato I like colonialism.

Ti sei sentito colonialista? O meglio qual è stata l’atmosfera che hai respirato, come hai percepito il confronto tra occidente e realtà locale? Indubbiamente, qui gli stranieri vivono in parallelo su un livello differente.  Le nostre vite scorrono su un binario che per quanto ben incastrato rimane ben distinto, non s’incontra e non porta alla stessa meta. (La Cina non si occidentalizzerà mai, piuttosto si sta modernizzando che son due cose ben distinte). Questa quotidianità a più livelli porta, in effetti, a pensare a una situazione coloniale… quello che non è chiaro è quale delle parti davvero predomini…

GN: “I like colonialism” era inizialmente una piccola muraglia di autodifesa personale per sentirmi a mio agio, ma il termine si riferisce soprattutto alla mia pratica quotidiana di appropriazione di paesaggi, di immagini, di oggetti abbandonati al pubblico dominio e riletti come “sculture concettuali”; un colonialismo sulle cose, non sulle persone, alimentato fotografando l’anonima bellezza autogenerata dal caso o dalla necessità.

CF: Guardando questi lavori fotografici Alessandro Rolandi ha commentato: “…ora che hai preso tutte queste immagini, comincia a pensare come mai molti di noi che sono qui da anni sono diventati “addicted” a tutto ciò”. Queste immagini che ritraggono la normale assurdità della quotidianità cinese… cosa significano per te?

GN: Rappresentano appunto quella bellezza povera, disequilibrata, fragile e vitale che sento che ci potrà proteggere in futuro.

CF: E tu Alessandro. Da che cosa sei veramente addicted?

AR: Sono diventato addicted al costante senso di trasformazione che ci circonda a Pechino, all'osservare un popolo e una civiltà che si sviluppano in modo disordinato, incoerente ma molto vitale. La qualità degli incontri umani e dell'esperienza con il popolo e con gli artisti cinesi è un altro fattore di addiction. Fino ad ora si è lavorato con entusiasmo e in maniera a volte spontanea e a volte programmata, ma senza mai smettere di "fare cose". Non ci si sente passivi come in Europa. Anche nelle difficoltà si trova uno spunto o magari un'occasione per qualcosa d'altro. Il dinamismo è notevole e finora anche la varietà e la qualità delle relazioni umane. Poi sembra di vivere in un paese laboratorio con esperimenti di tutti i tipi e in tutti i settori. Ci sono aspetti anche molto negativi, ma si possono trasformare velocemente, come anche quelli positivi possono mutare repentinamente. Ma è interessante sapere come Giancarlo sente questa situazione, all'inizio molto alienante, ma poi ricca di spunti, vero?

GN: Beh, la Cina sembra l’eccezione alla regola dell’entropia. Si produce tutto, in continuazione, ma non si butta via niente, nemmeno quello che non funziona più. L’energia dura per sempre e lo spazio è infinito. Non esistono una coscienza ambientale o un rispetto per il valore di testimonianza storica dell’architettura, ma solo costi e benefici immediati. Questa sorta di super-tempo presente (il “presentone” secondo Luigi Negro) che assorbe passato e futuro rende piacevole la vita di tutti i giorni, ma porta a dover delegare ad altri la responsabilità delle strategie a lungo termine. Ma forse è vero l’esatto contrario, è chi decide il futuro che riempie di presente il presente.

CF: Per me l'attrattiva è data dal fatto di vivere in un ambiente privo di un reale contesto, dove tutto assomiglia a un’installazione ad hoc, a un atto performativo… sembra di vivere in un parco giochi tematico dell’arte contemporanea dove tutto può essere tutto e i confini sono smussati e impercettibili… E il riscontrare che poi invece il tutto sia frutto di semplicità e genuinità ci attrae perché è un aspetto che da noi è in via d’estinzione. È un approccio che può far indispettire perché infantile e illogico, ma in fondo conserva quella vena romantica…

AR: Sì, anch'io amo molto vedere la precarietà degli interventi cinesi nella vita e nei lavori di tutti i giorni; c'è molta poesia in questo arrangiarsi, in questo improvvisarsi; ci sono anche tanta cialtroneria e ingiustizia, ma si guarda come negli occhi della gente, mista alla speranza, e all'entusiasmo. Credo che sia una sensazione un po' irrazionale e romantica, a volte non veritiera in generale ma riscontrabile nel rapporto visuale della vita in strada, anche molto simile per certi aspetti all'Italia descritta dai grandi registi del dopoguerra. Questa "nostalgia" mi sembra il sentimento che Giancarlo vuole descrivere con humour quando dice "Viva il colonialismo", a noi manca così tanto una forma di spontaneità che la ritroviamo qui, anche se poi per loro significa lavorare duro per poco e nulla, almeno sembrano provarci ancora, noi non ci proviamo più.

CF: È l’idea d’indefinito, il rimanere su una soglia d’indeterminatezza costante… noi qui viviamo estrapolati da ogni contesto e inseriti in una moltitudine di realtà frastagliate, una trama dove convergono e s’intersecano estremi culturali sociali politici…

CF: Come il rapporto con lo spazio pubblico… che qui trova una sua valenza precisa e da un senso appartenenza sociale anche quello da noi smarrito…

AR: e soprattutto si ha l'impressione che lo spazio pubblico esista ancora e che le persone lo facciano vivere in maniera non ancora solo funzionale ma comunitaria.

GN: È esattamente quello che intendevo quando parlavo di pubblico dominio: bisogna vivere all’esterno, non all’interno, e penso all’estrema privatizzazione dello spazio pubblico che avviene da noi, che svendiamo perfino il servizio pubblico universale, l’acqua, le frequenze radio…

CF: La Cina sembra pervasa da un’idea di non finito. In qualsiasi ambito d’indagine ci si ritrova impregnati e avvolti da questa sensazione precarietà che è insita nella cultura cinese, ma anche nella lingua stessa che non dà adito a certezze ma esita sempre nell’approssimazione…  Tutto è sempre teso all’attimo fuggente e mai a qualcosa di stabile che si conservi nel tempo. Tutto sembra destinato a evaporare, ma il segno è forte senza aver bisogno d’incidere.

AR: Sono d'accordo, la Cina ti colpisce in modo diretto, anche se non sembra. L'inatteso è sempre dietro l'angolo, dietro la monotonia apparente. Succede che mille piccoli problemi ti assalgono all'improvviso, e ti senti perduto, ma poi si risolvono così come sono venuti. Penso alle perdite dei rubinetti, internet che non funziona, il riscaldamento nemmeno, vero Giancarlo? 

GN: Essì… il mio primo open studio, due giorni dopo essere arrivato, l’ho preparato con le attrezzature non funzionanti trovate in dotazione nel mio spazio; con lo stesso rotolo di nastro adesivo ho riparato qualsiasi cosa, dal modem alle prese elettriche allo scivolo-scultura realizzato la notte in tutta fretta, per convogliare nel lavabo l’enorme massa d’acqua proveniente dalla rottura del tubo della caldaia…

AR: Cito la famosa frase dal Tao Te Ching: "La grande immagine non ha forma". Forse proprio perché tutto è "qualità" del momento… non indulgere troppo, penso al senso del passato, trasmesso nella tecnica di costruzione di un tempio, ma non necessariamente nel preservare il tempio antico.  Aldilà delle speculazioni e dell'insensatezza di ciò che accade, è evidente che tutto è transitorio. Quest’atteggiamento pragmatico e filosofico allo stesso tempo, riesce a convivere benissimo con un materialismo di cui è complice, ma da cui si difende rifugiandosi nella capacità di mollare tutto e ricominciare all'infinito. Questo tenere assieme i contrari è così cinese: ci affascina perché ci sfugge; speriamo che il tempo passato qui lo insegni. Un proverbio popolare dice "se ciò che è vecchio non se ne va, ciò che è nuovo non può arrivare".   

CF: Il tuo lavoro segue questa labile scia di leggerezza e minimalismo. C’è un grande contrasto tra questa cultura millenaria evanescente sofisticata e quello che viene proposto nelle gallerie d’arte contemporanea cinesi, che non è un reale indicatore della vera scena artistica locale, ma è, di fatto, quella che prevale e ha riscontro commerciale. Come si è inserito in questo contesto il tuo lavoro?

Sarà stato notato?

GN: Come ho dichiarato qualche volta, cerco “una forma d’arte senza forma”…. Non sapevo di essere taoista.

AR: A me sembra che il lavoro di Giancarlo sia guidato proprio da questo senso poetico ed effimero, ma che aggiunga un elemento di humour più italiano. Non corrisponde forse a quello che si vede nelle gallerie, ma penso che sia più vicino di quanto possa apparire a un certo spirito della gente, anche quella comune, come i lavoratori che pranzavano accanto   all’occhio-video nascosto nel supermercato; magari uno di loro ha rubato lo schermo, ma ha anche apprezzato l'installazione…  in fondo questa è la Cina.   

CF: Che cos’hai colto della scena artistica locale?

AR: pensi che gli artisti italiani e occidentali dovrebbero passare di qui?

CF: T’immagino ancora “errante” per Pechino in cerca di un senso… cos’hai trovato? Sei riuscito a delineare questa realtà o a mettere in discussione tante appurate certezze? Confesso che io a distanza di tanti anni faccio ancora fatica comprenderla, a definirla. La capisco ma è talmente impregnata di paradosso… 

AR: Io invece ti chiederei come ti è sembrata l'Italia dopo questa esperienza cinese, e anche se ti ha fatto riflettere sull'occidente…

CF: Quando torni?

AR: Eh sì, quando torni?

GN: Oh ma quante domande… fate troppe domande. Ci vediamo presto.

[Giancarlo Norese in residenza a Pechino Set - Nov. 2011 // Col supporto di lab- Yit]

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Giancarlo Norese

Giancarlo Norese ~ I love colonialism

Since science, art and technology began to be connected each other, cooperating and starting to use electronic instruments to create art and a new way to perform it, it has been defining a new aesthetic with strong and deep visual innovations. The result is not a simple substitution of outdated media, but there is a huge innovative potential able to produce substantial modifications by changing not only the meaning but also the substance art itself. Our new visual thinking is, now, extraordinarily flexible, able to range within limits incredibly vast and to amplify the area of invention and creativity enormously. So, art, nowadays, is not an easily mappable condition, but it is an instable space that lies on proper transactions between the artist and his public. So, in order to keep undiminished the meaning of art in our lives we probably have to consider returning to the "public", both as reference but also as purpose. What I aim is to rediscover the original meaning of art connected with a sense of belonging to the our universe. As like to say an art more human confident, deeply present and integrate with the life’s texture. 

We are facing a huge cyberspace where the mind strays easily between past and future and draws on emotions and sensations never experienced before.  To become aware of these changes may mean going into unknown territories. It is now very important to elaborate a new map, which includes all these new aesthetic paths. We have to change lots of parameters and modify ours knowledge in order to rearranging most of accepted notions concerning contemporary art. New challenges are waiting in front of us able to have a strong impact on our future worldwide.

Actually, China seems to be the proper territory for experimentation and without any doubt, this seems to be very clear to Zhang Xiaotao. In fact, he shows to be aware about this peculiarity by directing his own researches into this way, since years, providing a new impetus to the artistic international practice. He has the ability to be in tune with our present time and being able to capture aspects that normally escape the normal understanding. Through the use of computers, Zhang opens new perspectives related with the near future, but also with the analysis and meaning of our past and present. In the process of human becoming, both artists and archaeologists are skilled mediators and translators of things. Today, artists and archaeologists are turning towards each other to exchange experiences, narratives and revelations about our shared world, which is a palimpsest of temporalities, both things from the past and phenomena of today, but also possibilities for the future.

Sakya is a cross-media visual cultural research project that had started in 2007. This work looks especially at the issue of the secularization of religion from the intersection of Tibetology, archaeology, anthropology, Tibetan Buddhism, regional politics and other fields as digital technology, science and biology.  Here, Zhang touches on new fields of study. Taking on the complex challenge, he focuses his attention on society through the practices of contemporary art: the technological capabilities are torn in their usual meaning and delivered to the sacred where there are rediscovering their own being. With Sakya animation, Zhang Xiaotao analyses the paradox between the transcendental matter and the materialized reality. He brings the vast religious state of Tibetan Buddhism to compare it with today’s materialism culture. The massive problem is that we really live capriciously enmeshed in a world of things, in a beautiful mirage of the materialism where our spirits lies in the wilderness. The important issue that Zhang Xiaotao deeply takes into consideration is the soul restoration. This mystic factor is present both in his daily life and in his art research. He looks for understanding of the phenomena that concern life, believing that the reconstruction of morals and faith-based values is an important remedy for society.

Art created under the power of great belief and spirit is timeless. Artists should have a place in their hearts for religion. Art is the artist’s personal religion, and the job of the artist is to follow the path of transcendence.” [Zhang Xiaotao]

《萨迦》是2007年张小涛与考古学家张建林先生开始长期合作的一个关于藏传佛教与考古学、藏学、数字艺术的跨学科视觉研究的项目，他与团队多次进入萨迦县进行实地拍摄纪录片和考察、收集素材，并进行整理，历时两年展开了对藏传佛教的历史和世俗化的思考与讨论 ，他在15分钟的《萨迦》动画电影中，用碎片化的历史记忆和考古残片进入了宗教的超然世界与现实的物质化世界的悖论空间中，他试图用游戏化的方式来展开艺术、宗教、世俗化、现世社会的矛盾和冲突的讨论，艺术家身份在这里暂时消失了，作品呈现了更为广阔的视觉和文化研究特点，我们在图像的时空转变中，体会到古往今来的时空流变，沧海桑田的静穆力量。

    《萨迦》的动画语言更加倾向于东方神秘主义和解构主义的语言特征，这与三年前张小涛的《迷雾》中强烈的史诗感、悲剧感有了明显的变化，在无边无际的时空流变中，我们能体会到他对动画语言和数字技术的突破，对设计语言的精准把握。这是艺术家对宗教、文化学、人类学、社会学、地缘政治的视觉化表达，他远离了高原风情、宣传教义的概念性思维，他在全球化、本土化、历史、现世、政治等多重纬度中展开了个人的追问和思考，他把这些关于生死、宗教的宏大问题置换于微小的事物之中，手印、坛城、线路板、地图、血管、考古学家、高僧、唐卡画师、游客在虚拟世界中相遇，尤其把它们置于游戏化的坛城中作为结尾，让《萨迦》变得未知，在一个迷宫和现世交错的多纬度世界中，这不只是梦和现世的相遇，在虚拟的数字化世界中，我们开始了关于视觉与心灵的旅行和历险。

Nel momento in cui le discipline artistiche, scientifiche e tecnologiche hanno iniziato a interagire fra loro, si è sviluppato un enorme potenziale innovativo in grado di produrre modifiche sostanziali non solo nel significato, ma anche nella sostanza stessa dell’arte. Il nuovo pensiero visivo è, ora più che mai, straordinariamente flessibile e capace di spaziare in limiti incredibilmente più vasti rispetto a quelli conosciuti prima. Confrontarsi con questo cyberspazio implica l’avventurarsi in territori sconosciuti e si rende necessario modificare e cambiare molti di quei parametri ormai dati per assodati. In questo particolare momento, la Cina sembra proprio essere il territorio più idoneo per ogni sorta di sperimentazione. Zhang Xiaotao, consapevole di queste dinamiche, da anni, incentra il suo percorso artistico sulla società e attraverso l’uso del digitale, apre nuove prospettive legate sia al futuro, ma soprattutto analizza e indaga il significato del nostro passato e presente.

Sakya è un progetto di ricerca, iniziato nel 2007, che si avvale di suggestioni provenienti da diverse discipline: tibetologia, archeologia, antropologia, buddhismo tibetano, politica regionale… ma anche tecnologia, scienza e biologia. Si tratta di una sfida complessa che ha portato Zhang a toccare nuovi campi di studio e sperimentazione. Qui, l’artista analizza il paradosso fra il trascendente e la realtà materiale, portando lo stato religioso tibetano a confrontarsi con la cultura attuale. Secondo l’artista il fulcro del problema è che viviamo invischiati capricciosamente in un mondo fatto di cose: un bel miraggio nel deserto in cui il nostro spirito vagabondeggia disorientato. Quindi la questione di massima urgenza per Zhang Xiaotao è quella di prendere profondamente in considerazione è il ripristino dell’anima. Egli ritiene, infatti, che la ricostruzione dei costumi e dei valori basati sulla fede sia il primo step da affrontare. “L’arte creata all’insegna di un forte credo e dello spirito è senza tempo. L’artista dovrebbe sempre conservare un posto nel suo cuore per la spiritualità, perché l’arte è la religione personale dell’artista e il suo lavoro è quello di seguire il cammino della trascendenza” [Zhang Xiaotao]

展览城市: 北京

主办机构: 白盒子艺术馆

策展人: Cecilia Freschini - 茜茜 (意大利)

展览地址: 北京朝阳区酒仙桥路2号798艺术区白盒子艺术馆

展览时间: 2011-8-20 ～ 2011-10-10

参展艺术家: 张小涛

~

Zhang Xiaotao's Solo Exhibition

curated by Cecilia Freschini

20.08.2011 – 10.10.2011

at WhiteBox Museum, Beijing

Progetto di Cecilia Freschini

Organizzato in collaborazione con ZA.project

Beijing 28.05.2011 – 19.06.2011

Artisti:  Gabriele Arruzzo, Stefano Avesani & Marcella Campa, Filippo Berta, Iginio De Luca, Salvatore Manzi, Girolamo Marri, Daniele Mattioli, Sabrina Muzi, Max Papeschi, Alessandro Rolandi, Michael Rotondi, Giuseppe Veneziano, Giacomo Verde

DANNO D’ IMMAGINE   

Testo di Cecilia Freschini

Qual è l'immagine che prevale all'estero del nostro Paese?

Girolamo Marri, How to make my Italian passport disappear, 2011, Video with sound, 2’23’’

E’ parere comune che l’immagine dell'Italia stia conoscendo, in questi ultimi anni, un degrado terribile. Un declino vertiginoso che mi ha sollecitato a indagare la questione, in termini artistici, attraverso questa mostra.

Nonostante l’esplicita componente sociopolitica, il progetto nasce dall’unione di tre semplici ingredienti: buon senso, responsabilità e dignità. Tali fattori sono stati poi accuratamente e consapevolmente adagiati su uno spesso strato di creatività.

Lungi dal voler incentrarsi unicamente su una persona (troppo facile!) o una situazione, questo progetto intende denunciare un concorso di colpa, di situazioni e di nomi, di cause e conseguenze che si ripercuotono a effetto domino su innumerevoli aspetti sociali: televisione e mediati cita', censura e ‘libertà’ di stampa, piuttosto che la preoccupante situazione sul piano educativo/culturale, etc etc etc …

Salvatore Manzi, Colori delicati, 2009, Documento fotografico

Stefano Avesani & Marcella Campa, “Ci metto la faccia solo se serve”, 2011, mix media, 25 x 25 cm (each) 

Iginio De Luca, Pastore a Montecitorio, Intervento video-sonoro in Piazza Colonna,

Roma, 11 dicembre 2010, ore 21.00, 1’18’’

Ho chiesto ad artisti italiani residenti in Cina di fornire una suggestione artistica in risposta a questa situazione, tramite un lavoro pensato appositamente per questo progetto. In un secondo momento, ho poi selezionato i lavori di altri artisti che vivono in Italia per avere una testimonianza ‘interna’. Alcuni di questi, da anni, dedicano una particolare attenzione a tematiche di stampo sociopolitico, a discapito di quanto emerge dall’osservazione del circuito artistico nazionale e alla presunta incapacità da parte degli artisti italiani di affrontare questo tipo d’istanze.

L’arte è un modo per riflettere sull’esistenza ed è anche un modo per creare la realtà, o per meglio dire, di suggerire un diverso punto di vista della stessa, confluendo l’attenzione dell’osservatore su alcuni dettagli, sfumature che nella quotidianità si perdono o vengono travisati. Per questo, ritengo che l’arte contemporanea non debba rappresentare una mera denuncia di una determinata situazione, ma debba stimolare e condurre il pubblico verso un’osservazione critica e soprattutto costruttiva. In modo particolare in un’Italia attuale dove gli artisti sembrano godere di una maggior libertà d’espressione e possibilità’ di riportare e denunciare i fatti rispetto ai giornalisti cui spesso viene impedito di fare il proprio lavoro.

Sabrina Muzi, Torture#1, 2001, video, 2’57’’

Filippo Berta, Territories, 2009, video-performance, 2’ 25’

Storicamente, una delle prime funzioni dell’arte è stata quella di essere un potente mezzo comunicativo in grado di trasmettere un messaggio forte e coinvolgente, capace, in fine, di apportare una trasformazione sociale. In sintonia con questo filone d’arte “impegnata”, ancora una volta, con questo progetto, intendo mettere in rilievo il ruolo formativo/educativo dell’arte che ritengo possa essere in grado di trasmettere una reale prospettiva. In questo senso, negli ultimi anni in Italia si stanno alzando diverse voci che rivelano sinergie vivaci e dinamiche che certamente meriterebbero più spazio.

L’intento di questa mostra è, inoltre, mettere in luce la mancanza di serietà dei troppi personaggi pubblici italiani che, senza vergogna, vanno a compromettere l’immagine del nostro Paese all’estero in virtù dei propri interessi personali. Il contributo e lo spessore delle opere, qui, proposte ci spinge e ci ricorda l’urgenza di una riflessione e la necessità di una presa di coscienza sull’attuale situazione italiana e sul crescente livello di scontento che diviene ogni giorno più esplicito e condiviso.

“Sono profondamente convinto che l’odierno quoziente di politicizzazione potrebbe essere maggiore se vi fosse in atto nel nostro paese un livello di conflittualità più elevato quantitativamente e qualitativamente, conflittualità che pure per molti versi non manca ma che rimane, a mio parere, ancora insufficiente rispetto alla gravità della situazione, che peraltro è di dimensione mondiale” Stefano Taccone (www.cominciaadessoblog.blogspot.com,

"Perché l'arte italiana sembra meno politica di quello che è. Una risposta a Pier Luigi Sacco, Fabio Cavallucci ed Italo Zuffi", pubblicato mercoledì 7 luglio 2010).

Max Papeschi, Banana Republic Project, 2011

形象损害之“丢人现眼”

意大利的对外形象是什么？

近几年意大利的形象衰退严重似乎已经形成了共识。由此我要通过这个展览从艺术角度来考虑这个问题。虽然有明确的社会政治元素， 但是项目是从三个简单的部分组成∶公正、责任、尊严，对于三者寻求深远的创新 。我以为艺术应该是具有公众评论性的、有助于思考问题的。

我请驻中国的一些意大利艺术家针对展览主题的提问，从艺术的角度提出建议，他们为本次展览进行专门的创作。另外我还选择意大利本地艺术家的作品参与进来，体现“内部”的角度。

Giacmo Verde, Incidente sul lavoro, acrilico su tela da elaborazione digitale, 100×100cm

Interview with Alessandro Rolandi

by Cecilia Freschini

Beijing, March 2011

CF: Somehow, you arrive here in Beijing about 7 years ago, this is a quite long period… I would love to know more can about your experience, especially I wonder how you have been changing, transforming yourself during this time both personally and professionally…

and what makes you feel that is still worthy staying in China longer?

AR: These 7 years in Beijing have been intense and unforgettable. I have lived on the energy of the Chinese artistic scene, but it has been an overall experience, involving a creative but also a personal evolution, which happened side by side with the evolution of this city and that of China. I matured as an artist but also as man. I found myself with a consistent amount of work I'd never thought I'd be able to create, but I'm also a father of two, a husband, and a person who was giving the chance to re-interpret and re-study the world from a totally different perspective, not as a student but as a active part of what was happening. The shift of momentum from the west to the east is the main force acting behind the curtain in the beginning of the 21st century: art and culture are just a part of a bigger economical, political and generational change. The energy pushing behind this is immense. Lately the global crisis and the change of focus on Middle East and South America have touched Beijing's art scene, yet this could be a good reason to stay longer. After the Olympic Games and the successful years of the first group of Chinese artists, a new, different and more down-to-earth generation of creative people is growing, and it faces with new issues .I see this situation as more authentic and consistent than the previous one, too much dependent on foreign power and a fascination for the exotic. The most important adventure of Chinese contemporary art starts now, with new people no more in search of legitimacy but entitled to manage and improve the unstable credibility gained by the previous artists. Art reflects and feeds on reality, and China's reality is going to be more dynamic and unpredictable than the one of Europe or the USA. Other places like Brazil and India are going through similar phases. These countries will define the world to come; missing the opportunity to be part of this would be a real pity.  

CF: Concerning the show “Memory Identity” this was your first experience as a curator? Can you describe others projects you made before?

AR: Memory_Identity was not my first experience as a curator. In 2005 I curated a group show in Art Channel, in Caochangdi, called Lost Borders, in which I put together foreign artists who lived for a while (not just few months) in China with Chinese artists who lived for a while abroad. There were several big names, but the purpose of the show was not to discover something new, but to respond to the trend of the time to hold exhibitions of Chinese and western artists systematically, without real purpose. I always thought art should be above and beyond nationalisms. Art speaks the language of individuals, who happen to be born in different countries and often travel and live in different ones from their own; the goal of art should be to create a universal dialogue of differences and not to separate. Later in 2006 and 2008 I curated/directed two cross-over works between performance art and experimental theatre. One is called Variations, a subtle and minimalist experience: three women performance-artists responding to an environment of 3 different spaces internal and external and to 3 different music variations arranged by two experimental musicians. It was a work on what Grotowsky called "disciplined spontaneity". The public attending could interact with it. The other one was called "The Blind leading the Blind" and it was a complex performance in the Beijing art fair CIGE, with 22 performers, each with a different background and coming from at least 10 different countries. They had chosen a card of the tarots and they gave their own free interpretation of the arcanes' symbology. We only had a sort of unofficial authorization to do this and we turned the dry, serious environment of the art fair into a 50-minutes happening. Various levels of energies were displayed, provocative and subversive, graceful and violent, ironical and informal …  they all coexisted and created an unusual tension and powerful visual images around the booths of the art fair. We were on the edge of rules, and risks, but we finished the performance without being stopped. Afterword the authorities forbid us to repeat it, of course it was never an option, but something very special had already happened. I don't think we would have been allow to do something like this in these terms, in Europe or America: freedom of expression would not have been a problem, but artworks insurance policies and general safety issues would have act as censorship. The grey-territory of China's rules, if well interpreted, allows unexpected flexibility. The interest of doing something like this in China was even greater. Then one year ago I started to think about memory_identity and here we are.

CF: How can you split your self into these apparently different tasks? Are they two distant points, or your curatorial projects becomes in the end a sort of huge complex art work for you?

AR: I don't feel split, in the sense that I do nothing differently from my personal way; I'm an eclectic person with an eclectic formation. My creativity works exactly in the same way if I'm making a sculpture, acting, writing, filming or curating a show. I tend to unify things with my personal approach, as if I was collecting random fragments which in the end make sense together. The more I diversify my range of actions, the more my work becomes recognizable under different forms. Yes, a curatorial process becomes a sort of huge art work. The elements to deal with are different, but the core of the process does not change: all the parts need to find a meaningful relationship; they need to be directed but not constricted. They say a symphonic orchestra's director need to know how to play all the instruments to direct and then he adds something else; I intuitively approach the curatorial experience in this way; I try to get to know all the works, the artists, their research and how this is expressed in their works. I like to establish a dialogue with them, I leave them room to create but they need to accept my interpretation and understanding of their work and my way to display it. When I make art I try to create relationships; they can be unexpected, unpredictable, but they are clear, and that can be felt and perceived by the viewers. Also when I'm working creatively, I never feel like things are coming from myself; it's more as if I become aware of certain tensions or possibilities which already exist but are not obvious; it is a lot about "seeing and testifying something" more than, actually, doing it.

Alessandro Rolandi, One Harmonious Afternoon, video (different length) 2010, Beijing

CF: As you said before when you start calling artists for this show the response was very enthusiastic.. perhaps also because Chinese artists love to be analyzed from western curator? Since they provide a different prospective…

AR: What you say is possible, but actually the enthusiasm came form both Chinese and western artists, so I'd like to think about this more in terms of artistic respect and trust. My work as an artist has gained me respect and credibility, then artists know that in dealing with me, they have maybe more chances to be understood, as we can connect and communicate. It is a bit like belonging to the same species. In one sense it is easier but in another one, then, a dialogue starts and needs to be handled with intensity to reach mutual understanding. In the case of a normal curator, the professional distance can be bigger, then maybe it is easier to accept a decision no matter if you like it or not, but the level of commitment in the rest of the process is also more distant. There are different risks and different rewards involved. After memory_identity I don't mind this artist-curator status, it was hard, but I never had the impression to be tested for the sake of it. Discussions were about how to make the best choices. I feel that, reducing the professional distance brought more debate, but also more responsibility and honesty when it comes to criticism. I felt supported by the artists and helped in different ways. Definitely the positive energy was always higher than the negative one.

CF: What is the difference, in your opinion, between Chinese critics' approach to art and the foreign one?

AR: I think the Chinese are after their own original approach to art critic, but so far they seem confused. From my understanding, the American references are quite strong and most Chinese critics and curators have studied in America. Contemporary and modern art are mainly a western product, so it is hard to think of a fast way for Chinese critical approach to be part of this system and be completely new. Chinese avant guard has been defined by western critical paradigms. With the next generation of Chinese artists, something more connected with Chinese culture will be developed and there will be enough material and enough historical references to compare and propose a different point of view. It would be important if the Chinese help to develop and change the international critical approach, instead of being on the antagonist position to create an alternative one. The West needs fresh thinking and China needs to learn to discuss western thoughts not with a strategic mind, but with a will to integrate what is absent from its tradition. The idea of Eurasian culture put forward by Joseph Beuys is definitely possible and interesting. Again, cooperation and mutual efforts are the keys. 

CF: For this show you collected together 27 artists! It is a huge number for a group gallery show, but the space is so good and big that visiting the exhibition actually you don't really perceive it as a confused or chaotic assembling. How could you manage that?

AR: This was one of my personal challenges: having 27 artists displayed and people ask "where are the 27 artists? ". The viewers move around, into a large database of fragments, images, and information; each of these fragment is readable as a single work and as a part of the whole at the same time. The show is not a "cabinet de curiositèes”, but a Mnemonich Station, virtual and organic at the same time. The viewer establishes a dialogue with each piece and senses a precise connection between all of them. It is not about the importance of memory in itself; it is about the importance to exercise memory and use it to understand and compare. I wanted people to interact comfortably with the works of this show. A confusion of too many works would have been only an illustration, not an experience. The works do not describe what memory and identity are, it focuses on how they work. People should be able to perceive how important is to link space, time, history and experience. For this reason there are no special effects. We want to engage the viewer from the beginning into a deeper, more consistent level, then the one of visual shock.

CF: "memory identity" is a very challenging theme to discuss with. How did it come to your mind, why did you choose this?  I guess you could notice a quite different approach between Western and Asian artists on this same subject … for sure we had a very distinctive concept of identity that has evolved together with a specific socio-cultural contingency, but is not just this, we also need to deal with a different way to look back to our own past and, furthermore to talk about it..

AR: I chose Memory_Identity because when I was reading again Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, I realized that the book describes exactly our current situation, a book written more than 50 years ago. It talks about people becoming narcissistic and passive, manipulated by media, mass culture and consumerist ideology; and they surrender because they are lazy. The contemporary worldwide scenario is frightening similar. The historical avant guards wanted to break with a heavy past that made changes impossible, but now it's almost 50 years that we refuse the past and focus only on what is new without this past being a threat at all. Almost 50 years of Mannerist avant guard … I'm not even sure the message makes any sense at all anymore. I asked myself "why they insist so much on dismissing a past that has no real power anymore?…" and I realized this is suspicious, because forgetting the past and delegate our memory's efforts to data bases could be the strategy the current power uses to make us all deft, blind, empty; the advertised life-style is so much about take it easy, be light, don't mind, be cool, buy things, enjoy all the services … forget the past, express yourself, but if we stop and consider what all this means … it is about becoming idiotic. Dismissing values in art and culture, turning down conflict and changing it into bland politically correctness, providing surrogates for everything … all this is frightening. Somebody said once "Technology arranges the world so that you do not have to experience it anymore"; I do not believe technology is evil, but we need to have enough critical distance from it, to treat it for what is, a wonderful tool, and to use it for its potential, instead of being manipulated. The past, that once was a heavy burden, now seems weak and fragile and at risk of disappearing. The importance of the mnemonic process lies exactly here: memory allows us to protect the weakness and the fragility of a past which is  exposed to a couple of incredibly radical cultural revolutions, the one that brings global virtual communication and the one that imposes global consumerism. To be able to deal with these two big changes we need to keep our intellectual life and critical spirit as sharp as ever and constantly redefine nowadays' liquid identity not as a mere consumerist choice, but as visionary experiment to be handled with great responsibility. Getting rid of the past is too easy and too dangerous; already many young artists and creative people only read what they think they need and, in their opinion, forgetting the past is a dogma. They conceive Art not as a way of life, but as having a plan, a strategy. Then their ideas are pretentious, derivative and superficial because it is all they are left with; in a time of perfect interchangeability of everything, you can get away with it, but this indulgence has slowly undermined the ultimate sense of making art. A truly creative person is curious about everything and even more curious about what he does not know or he doesn't like, more than about what he strategically needs. I might be easily attacked about this, but I take the risk: could you imagine Arthur Rimbaud waiting to have a publisher to write "Le bateau ivre"? As for the differences between, Asian and Western artists when it comes to the memory_Identity theme, it is difficult to tell: all artists seem aware of the dangers of our time and use their own experience and their own concerns to create. Something interesting to notice is the different approach of the different generations; younger artists tend to look for the sense of Memory and Identity outside their own personal experiences, in a larger social context with references to internet and specific socio-political scenarios, while the older ones hold on to something more intimate, individualistic and melancholic. It makes sense: the younger try and understand their place into the complexity of today's world, they want to find something to hold on to, the older ones protect and defend what has remained of sacred and untouched inside of them.  

CF: taking as a true science evolution what you predicted in your critical text about codifying memory's genes and be able to create human-brain backups, something that honestly makes me wince, I wonder: are we made from real memories or better from the ideas of it that we choose to keep with us and that are able to evolve due to our inner changing? If we backup them, we stop them and we will face a lack of personality, creativity and meaning of our memories and so also of ourselves…

AR: Human backups will be available faster than we think, and so other incredibly sophisticated mechanisms and ground-breaking scientific possibilities, but this is not the point … the world will change but it won't be "The Matrix" and it won't be "Through a scanner darkly", it would be something else we cannot predict although we will find elements of our present in it. What is important is what you say, the risk to get lost. Memory often cheats on us, it is not objective, and it is illogic, but its process is vital to build and develop our intellectual faculties and to maintain them sharp. Memory and identity are constantly engaged into a dynamic tension, an unstable balance. These conflicts make us aware of how thin is the line between what we call normality and what we call madness and allow us to be accept the fact that we are constantly walking on a wire. Everything meaningful and important needs to be kept alive, discussed, fed every day; democracy and freedom of expression, for instance, have been taking for granted for such a long time in the west, that we are now just looking at their shadows in an enormous Plato's cave called Consumerist Culture; in China, where censorship is so powerful and nobody pretends it does not exist, we can see how the battle is on everyday, and how people who try to oppose it need to constantly find new resources and new courage to keep fighting. Everywhere a direct form or oppression is exercised there are people who resist, who do not give up, and remain vigilant; but where the forms of oppression are indirect, subtle, soft and manipulative it is more difficult to stay awake. There are no clear enemies, no clear positions to occupy; conflict is dissimulated and alarming feelings are dismissed as paranoia. In this no-man's land more than ever it is important to keep our mind clear, and establish enough distance, physical and mental from the information flux, to be able to process it. The exercise of memory and the practice of art can help building this gap, this empty space where we can retire and gain enough time and distance to protect ourselves.

Alessandro Rolandi, "Breaking Glasses I", video, 2010, Kim Whan Ki Art Festival TRACE, South Korea

CF: In the show there were also some Italian artists. What are your impressions about Italian contemporary art? Can you recognize a trend in it?

AR: Italian contemporary art is suffering not of lack of good artists, but of lack of structures and support. When I was in Milano for my last solo show in Sept. 2010, I met and talk with several local artists. Their knowledge is high, their skills and ideas are good, but they are all depressed and feel trapped. Italy has very good platforms for highly established artists and makes a point in showing constantly foreign masters, but there is hardly a city where the situation can create a vital artistic scene. Everyone is on his own; Italian artists go abroad sometime, or remain and struggle, but what they fight against is slowly eating up all their enthusiasm and their resources. There are more and more provincial realities, new biennales, new art spaces, but there is not an international mentality, and there is no will to really create something. Ultimately it is just to be part of the art world or to do one's own art world; the thinking is always small. There is no space to breath, or to have a vision without feeling crashed by the confrontation with the few big giants of the art world that gets all the cake, while the other ones quarrel and compete for the leftovers. Fear to remain without the leftovers is a sad kind of fear. Artists have to survive and this cuts their legs straight away and their moral strength too, but, without the energy and the will to change, nothing will ever move on. Years of media propaganda and consumerist logic have turned everybody into couch potato; they complain but they remain on the couch. When people are giving opportunities they quickly wake up and find their spirit again. There is no easy-way-out, but for example, it is possible and necessary to go and find vitality in those corners of the world where it is growing, and then, build bridges, create connections … thinking in terms of communicant vases., but it is not simple. In this show I exhibit the works of Michele Mazzanti, Stefano Lupatini and Nicola Vinci. Mazzanti has been many times in Japan and once in China: he uses immaterial architecture and post-minimalist interventions with a touch of zen and humor; memory is always present as a invisible trace, an elegant atmosphere, an absence. Lupatini's art is political and straightforward; the world's battlefields are his source of inspiration: former Yugoslavia, Arabic countries … and the tensions rising form social struggle provide him the territory to release his provocative artistic statements. Memory for him is the mark of injustice, of wrongdoing; it stands there to remind us what went wrong and what we need to change. Nicola Vinci's art is sensitive and respectful. In his photographic works, children and aged people alternate themselves, bringing delicate but also uncomfortable feelings of loss, melancholy and existentialist atmospheres. Memory is seized in old  portraits collected and projected into the future in the delicate and fragile glances of the kids.  

CF: Italian culture and the Chinese one share some similarities … can you find this connection even in the art field? How this dialogue can be based on?

AR: First of all the dialogue is in terms of memory and identity, both very important in both countries. The cultural and artistic tradition of China and Italy alone makes up probably more than half of the Cultural Heritage of humanity. Although China needs to cast a bridge between the present, the Cultural Revolution and the past, there are 3000 years of tradition behind. A trauma can keep this distant for a while, but cannot erase it. Being Chinese is a cultural identity, more than just a physical and territorial one; in the same way being Italian is of course linked to our country, but even to something more complex that goes back to the Romans, the Greeks and the middle eastern culture. Italian and Chinese are identities characterized by intelligence, curiosity and flexibility more than on the will to impose and export a model. Everywhere in the world, next to a Chinatown there is a Little Italy. Sociologically speaking, both societies are structured around family and family ties which grow into bigger and bigger networks that administrate power and decisions. Often family ties are stronger than political ones, more difficult to trace and more effective. In the art field the first important connection is the fact that we both need to deal with thousands years of history and culture, with the weight of this baggage which is at the same time, a heavy burden and an endless resource. We can find philosophical connections studying the similarities between Confucian doctrine and Humanism, or between Taoism and Greek pre-Socratic philosophy which was  widely developed in Sicily where Pytagoras, Heraclitus and Euclides lived. Another important text that I saw in several Chinese homes is  "Marcus Aurelius's thoughts", definitely a milestone not only of Italian but of the whole western culture.

CF: Living in China we can easily note that there is a constant movement  in the local contemporary art market, so energetic compared with the world wide scene. There is, without any doubt, a lot of enthusiasm and interest, but in terms of quality (not just the art works, but concerning events set up and art platforms in general) seems to be not enough developed.. 

AR: I think this goes together with the vitality, the open situation and the fact that contemporary art is new here and all that's happening has not enough experience yet. For the past 10 years it was ok, but lately the risk is that Chinese pragmatism takes over the creative energy, and the market and the economic issues become the only reference for any decision. Some shows have been predictable, and efforts to keep the quality high are left behind to keep budgets low and focus mainly on sales. Few years ago if a show was lacking quality it was because it was young and enthusiastic, and that can be accepted, but lately the lack of quality it's just about speculation and money, and this is more dangerous. Another vital point for Chinese art scene is to try and build an international art scene and avoid to become local and protectionist. Foreign artists and foreign galleries have been invited to Chinese Art Fairs and then they have often been ostracized and prevented from meeting Chinese collectors or institutions. International is a word that stands out when it comes to the presentation of an art event, but is not necessarily an authentic sign of multiculturalism yet.  

CF: According to researches published in these days Chinese market seems to have overtaken the U.K. to become the world’s second-largest art market after the U.S. (some source also post it as the first one)… do you think that this pole-position will affect the local market in a positive way?

AR: The information you give me needs to be treated carefully; it is probably true that in the future China will become the first market for Art, but this late leadership is due to the fact that Chinese wealthy people are buying back their antiques previously spread all around the world. This kind of purchase makes most of the market and of the business; contemporary Chinese art makes another bit, but it is not correct to compare complex and diversified art markets such as London, Paris and New York, with the Chinese one. It will come but it is not there yet.

Interview with the artist Chen Hangfeng by Cecilia Freschini

Beijing, March 2011

•  Fascinated by folk art, you have decided to innovate paper-cutting and turned that to a visual artwork over mere decoration. Traditional Chinese paper cutting are composed of auspicious elements such as flowers or animals, which you have replaced with various symbols and brand logos from modern twenty-first century life. Many of yours works resemble the traditional folk art in pattern, but a closer look would reveal a little more about the idea behind them. International art field is trying hardly to reach and present something original. Something very new that perhaps can comes out thought new media or sophisticated installations… In the meanwhile, Chinese artist seems still too much bounded to the same concept of political and social issue very boring from a local point of view but perhaps fancy from the western one…Where is your position? You do contemporary art looking back to the tradition of over one thousand years history, that has survived famine, war and countless dynasty changes, why?

I felt more and more attached to the value of traditional Chinese culture, though I studied oil painting in the college, I often kept asking this question to myself: why do I need to do oil painting as a Chinese?

I think it’s very hard for me to talk about my position in Chinese contemporary art field. What I can say is that I like most of the traditional folk art, I think there are lots of interesting elements that can be explored and continued these days. But, I don’t want to limit myself only by those traditional mediums, I am also interested with new media like video, photo, interactive installation and new materials as plastic, acrylic and digital interface. 

• Chinese tradition is of course your culture, but why you are trying to represent that, why you feel to go on with that, why is so important to you?

I was born after the culture revolution, but I felt there is something leftover from until I watched the Michelangelo Antonioni’s documentary [Cina] when I was in University, it recalls my childhood memory. Everything is pale color: the building beside street, the cloth people wear… Red is the one of only thing in vivid color – revolutions signs on the wall, book covers, and the red paper-cut during the Chinese new year and neighbor’s wedding…

I don’t think I grow up in a strong traditional cultural background – Instead, the western influence was quite strong. Especially when I was a teenager, at least 50% of the music I listened, the movies I watched, the books I red that were originally from Europe and America. I majored oil painting and studied western art history, but I had a chance to get to know better about traditional Chinese art from the university library – I felt more and more attached to them from the bottom of my heart! These days I even search for anything related to traditional Chinese culture. For example – I am reading a series of book called The science and civilization of China by British author Joseph Needham, it talks about Chinese invention in all fields of science and technology, how early those were discovered by people in ancient China and how important in terms of contributions for the rest of the world. There are so many great things from the traditional culture, why we dumped them? I don’t think the world is moving on a good direction, maybe there is something we can learn from the past.

….. Is perhaps something related with the fast social changes and the economic boom… they brings Chinese away from their own origin, looking forward to be more western? Is also something related with the gap of the cultural revolutions?

I felt there is a big lost from the traditional culture, the value, the aesthetics. Apart from the historical reason such as the loss of the Opium war, the communist took over the country after civil war, great leaping-forward… The culture revolution cuts everything off, then the gate suddenly reopened again – people seemed forget everything – only focus on modernization. I don’t think the country has recovered from so many disasters, in particular for the traditional culture, it just feels like pour some salt on the wound. it’s a bad version of modernization. Now it even leaves a big problem for the environment.

Beautiful new world

• What do you want to communicate by connecting folk and contemporary art?

I see Chinese traditional folk art is something grass-root, free of expression and vibrant. Which is dying because of the impact of modern life style, ignorance of the government and western influence in a bad way… I think it’s such a pity if the folk art disappears.

•  Why this series of yours is not just an update of a traditional technique?

To be honest, my technique is pretty poor compare to some paper-cut masters I have seen. I think what is different is that I used this form to express my views, and my graphic design background also really helps, I can use computer and design software to play around. I am hoping I can develop something new base on the traditional technique.

Double Happiness

• What makes your paper cuts a visual artwork instead of a contemporary folk art?

Maybe the content of my work is something that reflects the problem of the society, but I don’t mind if people think it’s contemporary folk art.

• Probably yours unique paper-cuts is one of yours most popular artwork. What do you aspect us too see in these works? And which is the different point of view between Chinese audience and foreign one?

Maybe something is both normal and strange, something should not be certain place but it seems appeared. To put this way is these logos almost became invasive species! (which is the theme of my last project, it also became the topic I am very interested at the moment) 

•  How much this work is related to a social-political critic?

It depends on audience’s point of view. My intention is trying to recreate a scenery looks pretty but controversial; at the same time, I am trying to give audience a playful message. 

•  You depicts the landscape of the contemporary society, which is full of images and ideas that big global companies put into ours heads and dominated by a blind consumer “culture” that tells people to spend even if they cannot effort it.  The world has gone mad, with logos and adverts screaming into our face what we should do and what we should think. You are questioning about the role of this multinational company’s logos invasion while at the same time you are also a graphic designer who designed lots of logos for commercial use. Can you clarify your position and how can you deal with this controversial issue?

There is nothing wrong with designing of logo itself, and advertising is also a form of art, however, what the big companies do are worth questioning and criticising. Lot’s of examples but I think only to blame on these big companies is not fair, the desire of human being is what these companies are taking advantage of. I felt people are easier to get bored from something, so the company has becoming smarter and smarter in terms of marketing strategy, it’s just like an evolution, nobody knows what will happen later… Marx said, “Religion is the opiate of the masses” more than 150 years ago. I like to ask, whether the new opiate of the masses is the consume?

In term of there is nothing wrong with designing of logo itself. It just like freedom of speech, even the company is paying me, but I still want to say what I think. 

You Can Get Them

• Logomania series aims to sensitize us about the influence of this brands in our life… However we cannot deny that these logos also represent something familiar in our mind, something able to reassure us, as for example (maybe is just an Italian custom) McDonald may be an icon of clean public toilet that people search for when abroad without any reference points eh! eh! Therefore, logos also can represent a generation or a group of people, in this case could be something very positive…

Interesting point, but this is the least thing they can do, I am not sure I will agree with the toilet example after I read the book Fast Food Nation. 

I red the book Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser almost 8 years ago, I forgot lots of details. Most of the book talks about how evil / bad those fast food product were made, in terms of the food quality and the worker’s working conditions. One part I roughly remember is he visited a butcher factory somewhere is US, which provide meat for fast food company, most of the workers were illegal immigrants from country like Mexico, the amount of the cows they had to slaughter everyday were over the limit that they had to do it in a very fast speed. So the rate of accident was so high that almost everyday someone got injured, some lost their arms or legs, or even lost their life… The other part I remember is most of the fast food are artificial flavoured – they use physical and chemical process to get rid of the original taste of the food, then add chemical flavour into them – so the food can have the same taste and last for a long time. 

I even contacted the author after I red it, I wanted to translate this book into Chinese, of course I didn’t get a reply from him and publishing company – fast food are so popular in China, not only makes people getting fatter and fatter, but also hurts the business of traditional Chinese food industry. Looking at Shanghai, there is less and less street food and small restaurant compare to 20 years ago. Once I with a friend were looking for some place to have lunch in downtown Shanghai, he pointed out either a McDonald or KFC, but I wanted to go to some small Chinese restaurant. He thinks McDonald or KFC is much cleaner than the small restaurant near by, but I told him: “what you have seen were all lies, it looked ‘clean’ maybe in the surface level, but the food might be so ‘dirty’ that you don’t even know where they came from and how they were made!” But he still insisted to go, so we had to have lunch separately… 

At that time, I was working as graphic designer for magazine, but this makes me think and it became part of reason that I started Logomania series. 

• When I was teenager I’ve suffer a little about genre stereotypic and brand. My hometown was really closed-minded. I didn’t feel free to express my self because of there were so many borders. You had to belong to a kind of “brand”.  You should make choices. A choice separate your self from a group of people but you were accept to an other one… that’s why I said that brand can also be positive can make you feel confident and accepted from  others…It can represent a generation… “the generation of…” a particular brand is in fact able to unite a particular kind of friends with common interests .When you are kid you really need to feel accepted right? You also asked your dad to buy a particular brand of shoes…

I did asked my dad to buy a pair of Adidas when I was in the first year of high school, at the time his salary was around 300 RMB – I remember the shoe cost around 150 RMB, and it was not made in China (it’s made in US as I could remember). I could not believe what I did every time I think of this… I didn’t even see any advertising of Adidas back then, the only thing I know is through word of mouth by the classmate, which is very cool to wear, and how good the quality was, blar, blar… I was a basketball player back then, but I will change into a pair of much cheaper shoes to play in the team. Even that, this pair of Adidas didn’t last too long – a little bit more than one year! Can you imagine that someone in somewhere made this pair of shoes for sports, but it was used for something else at the other side of the world. I always felt there is something wrong about this! 

Something even worse: one of my classmates in the high school, we always wonder how he can afforded the expansive branded clothes. Then his friend released the secrets one day: he found a shop when he bought the tags of lots of brand logos, and he sew them onto the cheap clothes.

•  This is the first time that your series Logomania reach the Italian audience… talian brands are worldwide well-known and well appreciated, so this exhibition it can be seen as an important challenge for you….

Oh! I didn’t realise that the brand consciousness was so strong in Italy, that’s good point to show there!

•   During a previous interview when asking what his ambition as an artist is, you said “to make some contributions to the society by doing something I like.”  In my opinion this is very important, I do think that art is not just something about aesthetic but also and ethic matter… Would you like to underline what is behind Logomania series from this point of view? Also, can you introduce to us some others social connected projects that you have done in these years?

I am trying to raise the question: are we really can’t help to stop consuming or at least consuming less? I am looking at the consuming as a big picture, such as resource, nature environment against human needs and desire. Maybe it won’t help but I will still do it.

I would like to mentioned couple projects here: 

“Santa’s Little Helpers” (2007), I went to a village in southern Zhejiang province, which produces 50% of the world’s Christmas ornaments. The family workshops were doing the ornaments all year along and the landscape had been littered with garbage. I made a short film, and screened it inside a small wooden box wrapped like a Christmas present, people only can see the secret from a small peep whole on the box.

“The Last Supper: Fast Food” (2008, UK), I used rice to draw the icon of Colonel Sanders (the KFC logo) on the ground, which became fodder for a hungry group of free-range chickens. 

“From 0℃ to 37℃” (2009), I made a big ice-cream glacier shaped sculpture and invited people to eat it during the exhibition opening, 75% of 180 KG ice-cream was eaten by more than 500 people, the rest was melted, in 4 hours.

“You Can Get Them” (2009, Luxembourg), I imitated the Chinese god Thousand-armed Guanyin by borrowing 8 people arms that were holding toys and tools were made in china, which I brought from a supermarket, the price of these products were 10 times of what would cost in China. 

The Last Supper: Fast Food

• You just back from your art residency in Sapporo, in South of Japan… How your work was perceived over there? What did you get from this experience in Japan? How your researches on consume have been infected by your staying there?

Japan is a place that old and new things seem mixed well: kimono vs gothic-lolita; hundreds year old temple building vs high tech robot; traditional social manner vs otaku culture (things like Hatsune Miku). I accidentally found Dr. Ukichiro Nakaya’s restored laboratory inside Hokkaido University, who invented the first artificial snowflake (snow crystal) in Sapporo in 1936. I think the idea behind it is extremely interesting. 

The overwhelming advertising culture here is shocking, every places has some free flyers, pamphlets and magazine… I feel it's such a waste of those promotional materials, so I start to collect them and make collage from the cut-out product images. (I always wanted to do something with it, even back in Shanghai I collect some of the junk mails). After the collage arranged into a triangle pattern that is almost symmetrical, I put two mirrors set as 60 degrees besides them, it’s almost like those consumption products were worship themselves according to the Japanese Shinto goddess Amaterasu. Furthermore, the collage repeated, which almost look like snowflakes pattern. 

It seems the audience like the show, most of them were interested with images from the collages, wondering where they came from. Since almost no one pay attention to these promotional materials too much. They also interested by the way I arranged the mirrors beside the collage, which confuse the reality and delusion, and it creates an imaginable snowflakes. Most of them didn’t realise the metaphor of the mirrors, they also wonder why I want to create the imaginable snowflakes, so I explained that I think the over consuming has a strong impact of global warming, which effects the amount of snow Sapporo gets every year – less and less. Also the discovery of Dr. Ukichiro Nakaya’s artificial snowflake, but not everybody knows about him. 

Snowscape Moere 6

• "Chen Hangfeng" Solo Exhibition, Verona, Italy # 2011/02/11 – 03/26

          Curated by Cecilia Freschini @ Kn-Studio – www.kn-studio.it

• "Snowscape Moere 6" Project, Sapporo, Japan # 2011/01/15 – 03/15

          ICC + S-Air Exchange Residency Programme – www.s-air.org

记忆 自我 

策展人：李山

2011年3月5日—4月16日
MK2艺术空间

“在这次展览中，我的想法是要关注记忆以及身份的概念。不是以怀旧的角度，而是通过记忆的行为和其涉及的编辑过程的复杂性来建立意识与批判精神的连接桥梁。”——李山

记忆 身份

我们生活在一个充满怀疑的时代。21世纪初，毫无节制的经济增长对于政治与日常生活产生着越来越大的影响。与此同时，一种自我陶醉心理应运而生，这种心理使得人类仅将世界视为自我恐惧与欲望的投影。

我们所处的环境变得越来越复杂，这也使得人们感到无比的无力。作为独立个体和消费者，人们正倒退回要依靠占卜来感知世界的阶段。同时，通过人们与外界的互动，我们看到的是人类如同婴儿从母亲乳房依赖中所获得的挫折感或满足感。

与其说身份的概念已经演变成为一种“创造性选择”，其具有解放及启发人的潜能的可能性，不如说现在这个概念事实上更为接近刻意的自我形象控制，而非有远见的实验。而选择的概念也是如此，演变成为了乏味的生活方式问题。

许多人相信“只要我愿意，就可以做到”，然而，就像前诺贝尔经济奖得主阿马蒂亚_森（Amartya Sen ）在《身份与暴力》一书中指出的那样，决定谁能够成功谁不能存在着一种内在力量，这种力量比一般人对待成功这一诱人的景象时所能想到的更残酷、更加具有歧视性、更为无情。

如果选择并不意味着可能做出一番成绩，那么选择这个概念就是对本身的否定。在这场争论中，似乎没有人注意到，选择的真正含义其实并没有任何长远的影响：这是对于民主概念本身的亵渎，即民主已经沦为了简单的消费者选择。

中国（文化大革命已经斩断了现代中国与其历史的联系）正面临着一系列复杂而危险的境况，直接的集权和日渐抬头的消费主义对大众的洗脑相互交织；而在西方的权力模式下，决策职能早已经从“党”转换到企业官僚的手中，而教育职能则已落入大众媒体和大众文化的手中。

史无前例的，视觉在影响和诠释世界方面从来没有今天这样重要的作用。因此，从理论上说，这对于艺术在社会中发挥更重要作用也是个千载难逢的机会，然而这个机会有时仿佛在自我否定后淹没、消失在投机性的市场大潮中。

这背后的原因之一可能是对于“新鲜”和“年轻”的追求与迷恋，这强大的压力迫使年轻的一代竭尽创作能力，为了更大层面上的宏观思考而遏制了他们年龄中玩世不恭的一面。

Fortune Noel

当艺术家的社交和思辨技巧有大幅改善时，那么他们的作品本身往往薄弱，缺乏能够为艺术带来意义的“颠覆性力量”。

在这次展览中，我的想法是要关注记忆以及身份的概念。不是以怀旧的角度，而是通过记忆的行为和其涉及的编辑过程的复杂性来建立意识与批判精神的连接桥梁。

在后现代环境的众多副作用中，我发觉对待遗忘的这种刻意的态度不仅仅是对过去的告别，更多的是要变得更加强悍。

从一定意义上说，人类有一种遗忘现的意愿。由于计算机技术和数据库开发，记忆及其相关功能似乎注定是仅限于这些和其他技术设备，而牺牲了生活中收集、诠释以及组织记忆的过程，使记忆变成实际、高效的存储服务。

不久之后，生物遗传学家将能够破译有关记忆的基因，在人体之外创造属于人类大脑备份，这样的服务将使得人类更轻便、更灵活和更不具个性。人类朝着离克隆、长生不老和其他的乌托邦谎言又迈进一步。就如同法国作家胡艾勒贝克（Michel Huayllbaeck）在《一个岛的可能性》（The Possibility of an Island）一书中预言的那样，我们将以一种执着和重复的形式存在。

其实这些在很久以前的两本书中就有提及，我在其中发现一些有趣的观点：一本是雷@布莱伯利（Ray Bradbury）的《华氏451度》（Farenheit 451），另一本则是阿尔多斯·赫胥黎（Aldous Huxley）的《勇敢新世界》（Brave New World）。

两本书都描述一个旧时“环形监狱式”的社会，表面上与环形监狱类似，但从机制上与我们说的完全相反（在现实中所设计的环形监狱，控制更多的是如何不让外人进入，从而保持里面人的安全，让其能够享受生活，而不是将所有人整合到一个泯灭个性的均质体社会中），然而，有趣的是在两本书中，让世界成为有序的“被高度监控社会”的并非是权利或限制。相反，真正的原因是人们已经逐渐“忘记”，变得物化和冷漠。他们接受了娱乐的生活风格，在视觉上咄咄逼人的大众文化，盲目的相信人类任何经历都可以通过科学来提供。

       一旦知识和记忆之间的联系已被切断，大众的批判能力就会消失，统治力量就能重新书写历史。

Megumi Shimizu

        记忆是建立我们的知识和批判能力的重要工具。它常常以一种微妙而自相矛盾的形式与身份相连接。他们之间利害攸关的张力非常有趣，能够产生新的创意能量。在痛苦和困难时，记忆会成为宽慰的来源和抵抗痛苦的武器。有个感人的故事来自于普里莫·列维（Primo Levi），在集中营的一次令人筋疲力尽的劳作中，他开始大声朗读但丁《神曲》中的《炼狱》以及《尤利西斯》里的诗章。他说，“曾经一度，我忘了我是谁，我在哪里，我们为什么在这里“。亚里士多德自己在著作《论灵魂》中强调了记忆过程中的精神特质，称记忆和灵魂有着相同的特质，而苏格拉底前的启蒙传统中，哲学家们和智者们都致力于保存“记忆的艺术“，“记忆”也被认为是文明发展与维持的不可或缺的一部分。

         同样，本次展览的艺术家非常具有时代精神，他们参与了一项研究，并不局限于当代艺术领域，而是追求在更为广义的人类境况方面进行探索。由于他们的怀疑精神，他们不可避免地成为了后现代环境的一部分，但同时这也没让他们理所当然的认为后现代是不可逆的。他们的艺术作品既不是对现有机制的歌功颂德，也不是被动地断言现有机制的失败或不足。相反，他们在不同的群体间切换，观察现实、个人或集体的经验，以求找到心理和身体可能的替代空间。

从他们抒发主张的艺术中，你能感受到有一种干预的力量。所有的作品创作优先使用的都是简单，平价材料和技术。面对意义和价值的全然相对化，这些艺术家用充满诗意而且与环境无关的形象和语言来应对，建立一个新的平衡，一个新的出发点，起到如同原始文化中魔法仪式一样的作用。

吉奥乔·阿甘本（Giorgio Agamben）最近写道“当代精神，就是那个时代光鲜的背后本身的黑暗………..当代的独立个体就是能直面自己时代黑暗面的人 。”

Frank Gerlitzki

这句话让我们想起圣约翰的启示之一“…透过玻璃看到黑暗”，这正好呼应了法国作家安托南·阿尔铎(Antonin Artaud) 具有前瞻性“重影”的概念，他关注于一个如同有机体般的文化，而非纯粹的吞噬性的和消费主义的文化。

在生理上，当我们缺少光源的时候，在位于视网膜外围的抑制细胞就会被激活，产生着一种我们称之为黑暗的视觉。这意味着，“看到黑暗”既不是毫无意义的，也不是一个被动的举动，而是人体产生的积极的认知。

作为文化的“抑制细胞”，这些艺术作品帮助我们看到了光鲜表面下的黑暗。我们每天的生活都充满着“展示”，或“炫耀”的态度。由此，在这里我想玩个文字游戏，我希望艺术要避免成为“一个大型演出中的点缀小节目”，相反，它应该穿着更为有趣而低调的外衣带领我们通往认知自己与他人的道路。

 李山（Alessandro Rolandi）于北京 

 2010年3月10日

Wolfgang Stille, Matchstickmen, wood, polyurethane, acrylic paint, 220 cm x 20 x 20 cm each, 2007 ©The Artist

记忆_自我 | Memory_Identity

策展人：李山 (Alessandro Rolandi) 

艺术家：李山 (Alessandro Rolandi), Anouchka Van Driel, Daniel Ruanova, Fortune Noel, Frank Gerlitzky, 郭工, 王一囡 , 蓝妍, 李洁, 林菁菁, 李新路 , 马永峰, Marianne Daquet, Megumi Shimizu,  Michele Mazzanti, Milla-KariiIna Oja, Mireille Gros, 郝楠, Nicola Vinci, Olivier Modr, 乔星月, 任波, 荣光荣, Stefano Lupatini / NoiSeGrUp, Wolfgang Stiller, 吴小军, Yoko Taketani & Riichi Yamaguchi

开幕式：2011年03月05日 星期六 下午3点 

时间：2011年03月05日－2011年04月16日

地点： MK2 艺术空间

北京市朝阳区机场辅路，草场地255号， 100015

主办：MK2 艺术空间

协办：北京凯捷国际食品有限公司，

媒体协办：意大利驻华大使馆文化处

2010年，独立策展人张冰前后三次带领艺术家前往中国广西、云南和山西的农村，和当代的艾滋病感染者生活劳动在一起。这种近距离接触艾滋病感染者的方式，在中国的当代艺术领域还是首次。该方式不仅是为了消除对于艾滋病的误解和对于艾滋病感染者的歧视，也借此对于自我展开追问。在当代艺术在商业、学术、语境、身份和话语权等问题中胶着与纠结的时候，离开狭小的空间，面对一个典型而特殊的疾病，面对都市生活和网络空间之外的中国农村，艺术与艺术世界的相互关系发生微妙的变化。作为这次活动的一种呈现，展览《绝对距离》通过探寻人与艾滋病的相互关系，引申出人在各种突发事件、利益冲突、价值变化和文化差异等社会现实面前的心理与行为反应。没有对错好坏的评判，没有真实虚像的结论，因为绝对是相对的绝对，相对是绝对的相对，距离是一个绝对具有相对性的词语，在不断对于距离相对性的探求中，我们只能无限可能地接近绝对。

李山于1971年出生于意大利的帕维亚，在中国工作和生活多年，曾参加在中国和国外的许多个展和群展。

[Nicola Vinci, WhatIsGoodToOurMemories, 2011, Installation, phography + mix media, 33x44 cm]

MEMORY_IDENTITY

text by Alessandro Rolandi

with English-language advise by Peter Fend

We live in suspict times. The beginning of the 21st century is marked by the uncontrolled growth of  economic forces  that have increasing influence  on politics and daily life, side by side with a form of narcissism which sees the world only as a projection of one's own fears and desires.

As individuals, and consumers, human beings experience a form of regression to a pre-cognitive stage where the growing complexity of the surrounding mechanisms creates overwhelming feelings of powerlessness while the interaction with the world mirrors the alternating total frustration and satisfaction of the child-motherbreast dependence.   

If the concept of identity has evolved to that of a potentially  liberating and inspiring "creative choice"as a matter of fact, nowadays, it seems closer to a deliberate control of self-image, than to a visionary experiment; the same can be told for the idea of choice, turned into a matter of  bland life-style.

"We can be everything we want" is the motto; yet ,like the former Noble Prize for economics winner Amartya Sen points out well  in his book "Identity and violence", the hidden forces that choose who is elegible and who's not to enter the kingdom of self-accomplishment are more brutal, discriminatory and ruthless than the average person can figure out when dealing with such teasing promise. 

Alessandro Rolandi

If choice does not imply the possibility of making a difference, the mere idea of choosing itself is denied, and, inside this debate, nobody seems to pay attention to the real meaning of choices without any lasting consequence: the vilification of the concept of democracy itself, which is reduced to a mere exercise of consumerist choices.

If China (already cut off from its past by the gap of the cultural revolution) faces  a complex and dangerous mix of direct authority and consumerist brainwashing on the rise, in the West, power has for a long while, switched  to a model where the decisional function once belonging to the "party", is now handled by the corporate burocracy and the educational one is in the hands of mass-media and mass culture. 

Never before has the world been as visually determined and interpreted as today. As a consequence, art, in theory, never had a bigger chance to play an important role in society, yet sometimes it's as if this opportunity has fallen into self-denial, absorbed and exausted by speculative marketing drives.

One of the reasons behind this might be the obsessive quest for the "new" and the "young", which has put strong pressure on younger generations squeezing their creative energies and suffocating the playfull anarchy of their age to the service of strategic thinking.

If artists'social and dialectical skills have improved drastically, it is often the artworks themselves that are weak and lack that "subversive force" which makes art meaningful. 

Asking artists to focus on the concept of memory and the one of identity, I perceive this, not in a nostalgic way, but in the  larger sense of  building a path of awareness and critical spirit through the complexity of the act of remembering and the editing process involved in it. 

Among the side-effects of our current post-modern condition, I noticed that  a deliberate attitude towards forgetting, not only the faraway past, but also the closer one is getting stronger. 

There is a will to forget the present itself, and since computer technology and databases have been developed, memory and its related functions seem doomed to be confined only to these and other technological devices, sacrifing the living process of collecting, interpreting and organising what we remember to a mere practical and efficient storage service.

Soon biogenetics will be able to codify memory's genes and create human-brain backups outside our bodies, providing another service to make us lighter, more flexible and undefined. Clonation, immortality and other utopias lie one step ahead, in the ultimately obsessive and repetitive forms predicted by Michel Houellebecq in his "The possibility of an island". 

But it's in two books written long ago, that I find some interesting points: Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

Both books describe a dated "panoptycon-like" society, superficially similar but ultimately opposite in mechanism to our own (in which control is focused more on how to keep the outsiders out and leave the insiders safe to enjoy, instead of integrating everyone into an homogeneous body); yet, and this is the interesting point, in both of them, what has taken the world to be organized as a "controlled society" is not an act of power or constriction, but , instead, the fact that people have slowly "forgotten", become alienated and passive. They have accepted the entertaining-life-style provided by a visually aggressive mass-culture and blindly trusted scientifical progress as a provider of substitutes and surrogates of any kind of experience. 

Once the link between knowledge and memory has been cut off, critical capacity disappears and history can be  written again the by the ruling power.

Wu Xiaojun

Memory is a key instrument to build our intellectual and critical capacities. and it is  linked to identity in a subtle and often contradictory way. The tensions at stake between them can be interesting and raise new creative energies. Even in dealing with suffering  and hardship , the exercise of memory becomes a source of relief and a weapon of resistence. A touching example about this liberating power can be found  in Primo Levi , when, during an exausting working shift in the concentration camp, he started to declaim  loudly the rhymes of Dante's inferno, Ulysses's canto and, in his words, "for a while I forgot who I was and where I was, perhaps seizing in one single moment, why we are here". Aristotle himself ,in his De Anima, underlines the spiritual quality of the mnemonic process, asserting that memory and soul share the same nature, and from the pre-socratic tradition to the Enlightenment, philosophers and intellectual have been engaged to preserve the" art of memory" or "Mnemonich"considered essential to the development and  care of civilization.

Similarly the artists in this exhibition  engage today's zeitgeist with a research that does not limit itself to the realm of contemporary art but pursues a broader investigation of the human condition. If their scepticism make them aware to be inevitably part of the post-modern condition, it also prevents them from taking its irreversibility  for granted. Their artworks are neither celebrating the system nor passively asserting defeat and loss; they are instead switching between different registers and borrowing from reality, personal and collective experience to keep searching for  possible alternative mental and physical spaces.

Second floor view

Their art has the quality of an intervention, an action delivering a statement.     All the works are conceived to privilege the use of simple, unexpensive materials  and technologies. Facing the absolute relativization of meaning and values, these artists react with poetic, non-contextual use of images and language, to establish a new balance and a new departure point, functioning as the magic ritual in primitive cultures.

Giorgio Agamben recently wrote "to be contemporary  is to be able to see the darkness behind the light of one's own times………..the contemporary individual is the one who receives in the face the darkness of his own time".

This sentence recalls the one from St John's Apocalypse "…see through a glass darkly", and echoes the idea of the "double" in the visionary writings of Antonin Artaud, who was particularly concerned with the possibility of  a living culture instead of a purely digestive and consumerist one.

In physiology, when we experience a lack of light, specific cells called off-cells, located in the peripherical part of  the retina, are activated and generate the kind of vision we call darkness. This means that "seeing the darkness" is neither  a non-sense, nor a passive action, but ultimately an active one that generates awareness.  

Functioning as cultural off-cells these artworks help us to see the darkness beyond the shiny surface. Our daily life is marked by the attitude of "showing" , and showing off " ; for this reason, playing a semantic game, I'd like art to avoid being just "another show within the big show", and wear, instead, the more interesting and anonymous clothes of a journey towards ourselves and towards the other.

Wu Junyong made his first impressions on the art world through his quirky animations, which depicted dystopian social rituals. The artist presents the fodder for his imaginary characters and surreal stories through paintings and drawings. These rich symbolic images tell of a world controlled by the powers of ideology and desire. Animals spew out of the neck of a well dressed figure, a group wearing dunce caps ponder a dead deer, a woman wearing a dress reveals not one but several pairs of broken legs, another painting references Gericault’s The Raft of Medusa. These enigmatic illustrations are elements in the artist’s grand narrative whose never ending story leaves us stupefied by an overwhelming sense of psycho-political angst. — Mathieu Borysevicz

Born in 1978, Fujian Province, Wu Junyong studied at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. He is one of the young chinese artists like Xu Zhen, Li Jikai, Yang Yong, Wang Guangle, Chen Ke, Li Hui and Wei Jia that are breaking new grounds not only in China, but all over the world.
 

This new generation of artists are developing such a fresh, unique and so consistent work that it’s a pleasure and a duty to present them to the you.
The work of Wu Junyong is not only about social criticism, the sexed vision of our lives, the Kafkian atmosphere of reality. It’s about all that and much more.
Wu Junyong animations are aesthetically brilliant. He chooses the forms and the colour patterns in a perfect way that will leave you amazed.

The characters forms and functions are intentionally created to give truthness about the reflexions we all have about society and mankind.
Maybe the secret of Wu Junyong’s fantastic work lies on the fact that he tells us what we know but are afraid to talk about. 

The most commented work of Wu Junyong to date is ‘Wait Us Rich’. It’s as satyrical as funny, what make it so interesting to watch. It’s about the nouveaux riche movement that is growing and can be easily detected on chinese society nowadays. Still, this wild capitalism rush that is making new rich people across China is the same one you can find in any part of the world. And the human response to it is universal.
 

Wu Junyong catches it in a cool and bold way. As much provocative that one can be, the freedom of artistic expression must never be touched. The world will not become a worse place to live if we all have different opinions. History tells us that darkness falls upon us when people tend to think alike.

Maybe the secret of Wu Junyong’s fantastic work lies on the fact that he tells us what we know but are afraid to talk about. And he’s argument is so strong that we are not able to resist.

“Wu Junyong has been enthusiastically expanding his lexicon of imagery and the number of images continues to multiply. It consists of performances by hundreds of petty and foolish people. Images of ambiguous identities are placed amidst an absurd and somewhat obscene world. They conduct themselves in a most presumptuous way, resembling self-righteous puppets. For approximately ten seconds they flash on the screen and occupy your retina, just as Alice’s experience of the many strange creatures she encountered when she fell down the rabbit hole in the book.” Gao Shiming

“When we sleep deeply, everything becomes history.”  Sun Xun

Juxtaposing the traditional techniques of hand-drawn animation with new media, Xun Sun, a Chinese arrtist born in 1980 in Liaoning Province, along the northeast coast of China, has gained a growing reputation as a leading member of China's new generation of interdisciplinary artists.

After studying printmaking at the Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou, Sun founded the animation studio Pi in 2006. To make his meticulous animations, Sun uses traditional calligraphy techniques to produce drawings on canvas, silk and printed matter; these are then hand-copied frame by frame to create flickering effects and complex, multilayered textures. Sun’s films have been shown in festivals in China, France, Germany and at New York’s Anthology Film Archives. His original drawings, meanwhile, have been exhibited in galleries and museums in China, Europe and the U.S. A.

Eight years of Cultural Revolution after Nixon’s historic visit [to China in 1972], Sun Xun was born in Liaoning Province, along the northeast coast of China. While most of the country was once again in the throes of reinventing itself – this time along the tenets of Deng Xiaoping’s economic reform and opening-up policies, which declared, “to get rich is glorious” – the new country that Sun grew up in was essentially the same old country. The effects of China’s momentous shift from socialism to capitalism were slow in coming to this peripheral mining county, and so Sun was raised in the folds of a historical lapse. Propaganda still blared from loudspeakers every morning, bringing the factory complex where he grew up to attention, just as it had done for the past few decades. Uniformed workers shuffling against chimney stacks and fluttering flags colored the environment of Sun’s childhood, as did reams of newspapers that disseminated the same good word of an altogether “New China” still in its infancy.

Sun Xun’s work plies the uncontested surface of politicized truth. By tying together the tenets of academic drawing with political cartoons and projecting them into the realms of installation and film, he manifests his multifaceted imagistic world as improvisational theater. His broken narratives, peopled with pedagogues as magicians and infectious insects that plague the world, work on the viewer’s emotional response to fear – fear of the unknown, of the undiscovered country that Shakespeare, Nixon, and each of us cower before. But it is the ambiguous era in which he sets his stories that further mystifies the viewer. Sun’s world lies suspended in anonymous twentieth-century eternity, a past riddled with legacies of modernity at its most extreme, a film noir testimony to absolutism. His flickering images crystallize into a gritty, dystopic urban overture to revolution; it is the industrial revolution as much as it is the Cultural Revolution. But Sun’s work, muddled in this overlapping and obsolete modernity, idles at the brink of revolution without spilling over. His aim is to scratch the surface of political history, a history continuously conflated into myth, in order to expose the past as being in a state of constant becoming. His vision is the pregnant pause of mythology in the making….

Perhaps Sun’s suspicion of mediated truth comes with the territory. The China that he grew up in was in a constant state of reinvention and denial…. When Sun was still in grade school, the “East Is Red” changed its tune to “Balls Under the Red Flag" [a hugely popular song and album by Cui Jian, China’s “father of rock and roll”] as the end of the 1980s saw the shock of yet another China. Taking the seventy-year anniversary of the May Fourth Movement (instigators of the twentieth-century’s original “New China”) as their cue, students occupied Tiananmen Square in an effort to reform what they saw as a government out of step with the current needs of society. The outcome of this standoff was yet another New China, which violently crushed individual liberties while simultaneously promoting individual wealth and unbridled consumerism. Today China is intoxicated with its newfound prosperity but has yet to confront its recent past, revise its politics, or fulfill the spiritual needs of its people. In the wake of this erratic social transformation, a sense of collective historical amnesia has begun to set in. Sun’s work is an expression of this amnesia. – Mathieu Borysevicz, Shanghai correspondent for Artforum