A Clear Cut Stand by Sean Poon

鮮明地反對 PERFORMANCE / UPRISING

A CLEAR CUT STAND

EUGENE LIM YE JUN FREDERIEKE CHARLOTTE MEIJER KATELYN MARIE MC CORMACK SEAN POON SHAO AN

鮮明地反對

PERFORMANCE / UPRISING

CHINESE AVANT GARDE / PHOTOGRAPHY OF JEFF WIDENER

A CLEAR CUT STAND

INTRODUCTION KATELYN MARIE MC CORMACK

FOUR MONTHS PRIOR TO THE EVENTS OF

of the press, and other ideological goals. The

Tiananmen Square, on the first day of the 1989

People’s Daily, previously sympathetic, reframed

China Avant-Garde Exhibition, Xiao Lu stood

the disturbances as the corruption of grief by

and fired two gunshots at her own installation

counter-revolutionaries, intent upon political

artwork. It was a performance which, by Lu’s own

upheaval. The April 26th Editorial seized varied

insistence, had no political context. However,

motivations of political ideology and economic

the gunshots were later called by outside parties

betterment to make the protestors, in effect,

the “first shots of Tiananmen Square,” and the

purely political figures.

exhibition itself “Little Tiananmen Square,” the correlation between performance and

No matter the artist’s intentions, once action

subsequent unrest, apparently, too pronounced

begins, meaning is placed in the hands of their

to be ignored. Against their will and intention,

audience. Similarly, when a protest begins—

the artists of the exhibition became part of the

when participants first raise voices, signs, or

timeline of Tiananmen Square.

arms—their ability to control their message is immediately lost. Temporality becomes

A parallel is seen when the demonstrations at

both a strength and a weakness, imbuing

Tiananmen Square escalated from mourning

power but sending that power out, towards

for Hu Yaobang to calls for democracy, freedom

recipients. In this way, the audience becomes

part of the performance; their actions become

American, and usually stationed outside of

a continuation of the performance, in the same

China, his perspective lends his photographs

way that the gunshot was an extension of the

greater secularity in an environment altered by

twitch of Xiao Lu’s finger.

interpretation. Photographs of these anonymous “artists” during their performances are presented

With this in mind, A Clear-Cut Stand was curated

in unity with such artists as Ai Wei Wei, Xu Bing,

with the intention of investigating China’s post-

and Song Dong. A Clear-Cut Stand asks, where

cultural revolution avant-garde movement and

do the underlying tensions felt by performance

Tiananmen Square protestors, not as separate

artists and protesting artists intersect? Is there

bodies in conversation, but as one social,

truly a fundamental difference in their aims,

ideological and artistic voice. Here, protestors

or do they diverge purely in a matter of artistic

are deliberately reframed as artists, not in an

sensibility? The diverse and clamoring voices

effort to diminish their political goals, but in

of artists and protesters alike swamp the

an attempt to reexamine those motivations

exhibition, daring the viewer to find within the

as extensions of a social-psychological

noise a unified meaning, or else, experience the

environment, and their actions as demonstrative

desperate chaos felt and demonstrated by those

performance art. Their photographs were taken

in the square.

from the galleries of Jeff Widener; being both

PERFORMANCE UPRISING WATER (STANDARD VERSION FROM THE CIHAI DICTIONARY)

1991 ZHANG PEILI

JUNE 1994

1994 AI WEIWEI

PROJECT FOR EXTRATERRESTRIALS NO.10:

PROJECT TO EXTEND THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA BY 10,000 METERS 1993 CAI GUO-QIANG

BREATHING, TIANANMEN/HOUHAI

1996 SONG DONG

STAMPING THE WATER

1996 SONG DONG

A BOOK FROM THE SKY

1987-1991 XU BING

DIALOGUE/SHOOTING AT DIALOGUE 1989 XIAO LU

SINGING POLICE WOMAN

CAPTURED WEAPONS

CHINA STRUGGLE

FIGHT FOR DEMOCRACY 7

OCCUPIED

SHOW THE WORLD

INSTALLATION OF CAPTURED WEAPONS

GODDESS OF DEMOCRACY

TANK MAN

UPRISING PERFORMANCE

WATER (STANDARD VERSION FROM CIHAI DICTIONARY) ZHANG PEILI (b. 1957) 1991 Single-channel video

Featuring Xing Zhibin - a well-known CCTV newscaster - reading out the numerous definitions 8

of water in the Cihai Dictionary seemingly prior to the June 4th Crackdown, Zhang Peili’s video forms part of a broader oeuvre of performance art that is highly critical of the Communist government (CCP). It provokes the audience to contend with implicit meanings of the performance; it is a demonstration of the absurd, where in which the newscaster monotonously recites common knowledge found in the encyclopaedic Cihai dictionary. Zhang employs ennui to foreground the fact that CCP mouthpieces often spew propaganda and “non-news”, formed from a repository of “government-approved” phrases and ideas, therein reminding its citizens (a people on the cusp of protests) of the absurdity of life controlled by the CCP. Propaganda, as Zhang suggests, is meaningless and absurd; as bland and ephemeral as water itself.

水 | 辞海标准版

SINGING POLICE WOMAN JEFF WIDENER (b. 1956) 1989 Photograph of performance, performer unknown

11 In an example of what Jeff Widener called Tiananmen Square’s “carnival atmosphere,” the main figure of the photo is singing expressively with flung-up hands--a gesture reminiscent of the universal “unarmed” signal--while an audience of protesters laughs around her. It is their presence, not hers, which provides the tension of the scene; the protesters are dominantly positioned, even though the viewer know them to be in imminent danger from the state that the policewoman represents. Meanwhile, the police woman’s song and animated movements place her, not in the role of oppressor, but as a friend in a costume. This subversion, intermingling with the viewer’s knowledge of the looming massacre, points out the absurdity inherent in the relationship between the arm of the state and the people.

JUNE 1994 AI WEIWEI (b. 1957) 1994 Photograph

In front of a white-washed crowd in Tiananmen 14

Square, artist Lu Qing flashes the camera with a lift of her skirt, a cocked knee, and a steady stare. Behind her floats Mao Zedong’s “Helmsman” portrait, his painted watchfulness contradicted by the pair of oblivious guards, patrolling only a few meters away. The composition parodies Sun Zixi’s In front of Tiananmen, whose provincial peasant family enforces proper glorification of Mao Zedong’s portrait, while Ai Wei Wei and Lu Qing present casual mockery. The title, as well as the location, references the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square tragedy. The piece is important not only as a performance, but as a documentation of artists’ responses to the tragedy. Ai Wei Wei and Lu Qing’s small, seemingly flippant rebellion reflects the struggle of the people to process their anger, while the state takes every possible step to erase the incident from public memory.

1 9 9 4 年六月

为万外里星长人城作延的长计一划万第 : 十号

PROJECT FOR EXTRATERRESTRIALS NO.10: PROJECT TO EXTEND THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA BY 10,000 METERS CAI GUO-QIANG (b. 1957) Despite their monumentality, Cai Guo-Qiang’s incendiary artworks operate within an ostensibly subtle sphere of interpretation. Shown here in both plan and execution, Project to Extend engaged with the myth that the Great Wall is the only man made

1990 Accordion album of twenty-four leaves; Ink and gunpowder burn marks on paper Photograph of pyrotechnic Display

structure visible from space. The eastern end of the wall was “extended” by a trail of gunpowder lacing out into the Gobi Desert, which was ignited against descending dusk. In extending a purely functional structure with a temporal, aesthetic media, Cai confronts perpetuity with transience, and melds the two into a single body of grace. Although Cai’s pieces are generally not political, if we understand the Great Wall as a product of China’s emperors--and by extent, of Chinese autocracy--Cai’s extension also becomes a meditation on the nature of the individual, and how the individual can interact with history. Stationed next to Project to Extend is a series of photos of Tiananmen Square; the viewer is prompted to contemplate the resonance between Cai’s work and the action of those in the square as they fight to contextualize themselves within China’s political landscape.

六四事件

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEFF WIDENER

Captured Weapons

China Struggle

Fight for Democracy

04 Occupied 05

Show the World

呼吸

BREATHING, (SET OF TWO) SONG DONG (b. 1966) 1996 Photograph Audio cassette tape

21 Song Dong’s piece was a dual performance, taking place in Tiananmen Square and Houhai Lake in Beijing. In both locations, in sub-freezing temperatures, Song Dong laid down and breathed onto the surfaces for forty minutes. In Tiananmen Square, a small disk of ice formed where he breathed, but it dissolved by sunrise. On the frozen Houhai Lake, no change was visible. Both results illustrated the futility of attempting to alter what is beyond one’s power—a theme Song Dong explores often in his art. However, in portraying that ineffectuality, Song Dong placed himself inside of the struggle. Breathing demonstrates the artist’s respect for the action of the struggle, despite and because of its fruitlessness. By Song Dong’s own declaration, “That done in vain must still be done.”

STAMPING THE WATER SONG DONG (b. 1966) 1996 Single-channel video Photography

“I exerted great force [in stamping the seal on the water], but in the end left no trace.”

The quote accompanying Song Dong’s performance insinuates a supposed futility in his performance, one seemingly distinct from other more-politicised works in this exhibition. Yet rather than assuming a complete emptiness; Song Dong’s place in the exhibition instead touches upon temporality’s effect on impact and meaning. Featuring Song ritualistically stamping a body of water with a carved wooden seal (one that features the Chinese character for water), the piece poetically explores the the origins of meaning, in a world shaped by propaganda and conflicting viewpoints. As Song raises the seal, and marks the river Lhasa with it, meaning is seemingly created, impact is imbued. Yet this effort is ephemeral, the ripples he creates are insignificant in the vast expanse of water, their continued value questionable.

印水

天书

A BOOK FROM THE SKY XU BING (b. 1955) 1987 - 1991 Installation of hand-printed books,

First exhibited at Beijing’s China Art Gallery in 1988, Xu Bing’s work features a book of 4

ceiling and wall scrolls printed from wood letterpress type Ink on paper

volumes containing 604 pages of meaningless pseudo-Chinese characters, each formed from real Chinese radicals. While the work’s title carries connotations of sacredness, not unlike texts like the Koran or the Bible (divinely-inspired “Words of God”), its iconicity in contemporary Chinese consciousness has led to its title, “Book from the Sky” or 天书, to be shorthand for “nonsense”. It has been condemned by the Communist State as “ghosts building walls” (i.e. obfuscation for the sake of obfuscation), and eagerly claimed by rebel artists as a condensation of the liberal atmosphere among artistic circles in the years before the Tiananmen massacre. Xu however considers his work simply as an expression of the tedium 讨厌 of Chinese literary culture, where unreadable glyphs reflects Xu’s opinion on the abstrusely-written work of Chinese literary greats - their meanings often misconstrued. Xu’s work thus raises the question over the legitimacy of in retrospectively-imposed interpretations upon performance artworks; how much creative freedom can an audience take in interpreting art before it the piece is “hijacked” by projected and imposed meaning, therein questioning the very act of “reading” artworks itself.

GODDESS OF DEMOCRACY UNKNOWN ARTISTS FROM BEIJING CENTRAL ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS 1989 Metal armature, foam and papier-mâché

Under the light of dusk on the 30th of May, 1989; the ten-meter tall sculpture of The Goddess of Democracy was assembled in front of Mao Zedong’s iconic portrait. By the time the sun had risen over the Tiananmen square; all 300.000 28

spectators were able to witness both the gradual fabrication and final completion of the statue. Whilst it functioned clearly as a political symbol of freedom and democratic values; its public creation furthermore made the whole process seem like a collective performance. Did the art students realize they were performing? Or did their actions solely embody political ideas and intentions? In any case, it was only allowed a temporal physical existence as the government responded promptly with a complete demolishment of the statue. Yet whilst short-lived; the Goddess’ spirit and ideals have been materialized in various copies all over the world; re-contextualizing the original values of the Tiananmen protesters. Its diaspora thus prompts questions on the impact of protests; and furthers an investigation into the performative character of these protests.

自由女神

对话

DIALOGUE/ SHOOTING AT DIALOGUE XIAO LU (b. 1962) 1989 Performance, photography and video

The serene space of the art gallery is perhaps the last place one would expect a gunshot to be fired. Yet at the first contemporary art gallery in China; China Avant-Garde in 1989; Xiao Lu completely disrupted the already chaotic art-show by performing this austere act. Although she might not have intended to end the entire art exhibition; Chinese authorities did suspect her of wanting to start uproar and disorder beyond her installation. Hence, she and her husband were arrested by the state whilst the exhibition immediately shut down. This governmental measure sheds light on the assumption that such performances could and do encompass political motives in their execution. Through this rationale, performance has the ability to transcend the arena of art and engage with the political sphere. As a performanceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s impact exceeds the control of the artist; the question arises whether accountability dissociates as well.

TANK MAN JEFF WIDENER (b. 1956) 1989 Photograph, individual unknown

As four tanks were rolling down Tiananmen square, one man appeared in this procession of military action and governmental control and single-handedly stopped their advancement. This seemingly simple act carried enormous political and societal gravitas, overturning established ideas and behaviours. Displayed as a still rather than a course of action, its significance as a protest is reframed into a photographic documentation of performance art. Therewith, Jeff Widenerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s photograph serves as a platform, in which we seek the Tank manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s position in social, political and cultural context with our other featured works.