Refocusing on the Medium: The Rise of East Asia Video Art - Beijing MAM Brochure

Peili / 《焦距》

画面录像装置（

视频

饭村隆彦 Takahiko limura / 《电视对电视》 共用天线电视录像装置 / 1983 朴铉基 Park Hyunki / 《无题 ( 电视 & 石头 ) 》 单通道录像装置 / 1984-2022 7 10 饭村隆彦 Takahiko limura / 《这就是拍摄了这些 的摄影机》 / 闭路电视录像装置

RefocusingontheMedium:TheRiseof

East Asia Video Art is the first exhibition to assemble key protagonists that initiated experiments with the medium of video originating from Japan, Korea, China, Taipei and Hong Kong. The exhibition proposes a re-examination of the artists approach to the video medium rising from East Asia and contributes to the global history of video art as a transnational contemporary art medium.

Since the Sony Portapak portable video recorder was invented in Japan in 1965, artists on every continent gained access and have contributed to the development of this global medium. Exhibitions exploring the histories of video art have featured across Asia in the past decade. The cumulative results have enhanced detail and depth to specific national histories laudably expanding an existing world history of video art. The exhibitions and accompanying research expose scholarly accounts of experimental practice and international exchange that provokes a more radical review of the way video art is considered.

medium and can this change the way we might approach the history of video art?

Beginning with Nam June Paik’s entangled Korea, Japan, European and American global art networks, artists from East Asia took up the culturally non-specific medium to enter new points of exchange and equally complex trans-regional and transnational networks. In little more than twenty years the video medium was channelled by artists living in Japan commencing from 1968, Korea 1978, Taiwan 1983, Hong Kong 1985 and mainland China from 1988. Within this relatively brief period first hand experimentation was occurring across the industrialised and developing economies straddling continents and cultures, situating video art as arguably the first truly global contemporary art medium.

As a new technology and experimental artistic medium with distinct characteristics, video art arrived with no specific cultural traditions, no significant conventions or established history – a new global contemporary art tool.

This view of the medium gives reason for a recalibration of thinking and reassessment of the contribution that artists from East Asia have made to this still contested history. How did artists in East Asia take up the apparatus of video and experiment with this new global

In the first iteration of this exhibition at OCAT Shanghai, a partnership with the Nam June Paik Art Center in Korea enabled a streamed a live broadcast of the iconic Nam June Paik video installation TV Buddha, (1974-2002) that was projected in the entry foyer of the exhibition. The projection was a provocation to question the video medium within the context of the exhibition – the liveness of the medium, the distortion of time and space, the tension between illusion, reality and authentic experience, the conceptual strategies used to subvert the medium, and the dynamics connecting local and global aspirations.

The frontline title “Refocusing on the Medium” is intended to trigger thoughts about the way the video medium is used and how we might observe it. Once we begin to compare the

art works use of the video medium, we are activating our perception in different ways that extend beyond a narrative reasoning that is the basis of film and cinematic histories. The exhibition begins with art works engaging with CCTV in order to demonstrate the greatest contrast between video and the traditions of film and cinema thereby resetting audience expectations and assumptions about the video medium and how we experience it. The defining quality of CCTV is the liveness of the imagery. It is not a record of time past, but an experience of the present moment, electronically rendered, creating a gap between the actual and an altered experience in space. This was a conceptual ‘treasure chest’ for artists to consider and experiment with when the technology first became available along with the portability of the video recording apparatus and other characteristics unique to video such as in-camera editing, record-over, live monitor viewing, and durational recording.

MeterSpace (1995-2022), call to attention the viewer as an active participant with a spatial relationship to or within the artwork. This spatial awareness is something to consider in all the works, not just the CCTV artworks. Each of the works has an expanded context, in other words a spatial relationship that exceeds the individual screen, monitor or projection demonstrating physical and conceptual spatial strategies. Each work puts forward a different approach to the video medium prompting further questions about the mediums’ unique characteristics and the experimental contributions made by artists with their origins in East Asia.

Several artworks such as Takahiko Iimura’s This is a Camera that Shoots This, (1980), and Zhang Peili’s Focal Distance, 1996, deconstruct the camera apparatus, the experience of screen representation and space through subverting the expected use of the video camera and monitor.

We open this exhibition with what is credited as the first video artwork by Nam June Paik, ButtonHappening, 1965. Made on the first day the artist acquired his first access to a portable video recorder. This rarely seen video shows us Paik’s initial response and impulse to create a video artwork. Since that moment a prolific number of art works have been produced globally in an age where screen culture is ever present and dominant.

Entering the exhibition works using CCTV such as, Katsuhiro Yamaguchi’s installation Las Meninas (1974-1975), Yoko Ono’s SkyTV (1966-2022), and Wang Gongxin’s TwoSquare

The works in this exhibition are but a few select examples coming out of an enormous field of accomplished video experiments by artists rising from East Asia. Through these works I hope viewers will tune into a fresh way of thinking and seeing the video medium.

Kim Machan, Curator

Image: Portrait of Katsuhiro Yamaguchi, 2015 Image courtesy of Saitô

Sadamu

图：山口胜弘，2015

图片致谢 Saitô Sadamu

山口胜弘

Katsuhiro Yamaguchi

1928-2018，日本，东京

1928-2018, Tokyo, Japan

），荣获圣保罗 双年展大奖。山口胜弘的作品在日本和国际上被广泛 展出。

Born in Tokyo, Japan in 1928, Katsuhiro Yamaguchi created over 30 major video installations since 1974. A prolific artist and educator, he began his career establishing the pioneering art group Jikken Kôbô (Experimental Workshop) 19511958. Yamaguchi experimented in the field of ‘art and technology’ and ‘electronic arts’, and in 1971 founded the highly influential artist collective Video Hiroba. In 1977, he founded Sogô zôkei (Visual arts and mixed media) department in University of Tsukuba. He travelled to Europe and the United States for short tours, was a colleague of Yoko Ono and had contact with the fluxus art movement. His first sculptures in the 1950s, utilising transparent textured glass angled to provoke movement known as the ‘Vitrine’ series preceded his moving image experiments and installations. His interactive CCTV performances and installations experiments began in 1972 using the Sony Portapak in public places and galleries. In 1975 his work was awarded the leading prize at the San Paolo Biennale for his interactive CCTV video installation Las Meninas 1974-1975. Katsuhiro Yamaguchi exhibited extensively throughout his career both nationally and internationally.

讨了权力和监控的象征。 在山口胜弘的录像版本中，古典的巴洛克绘画与 电子媒介之相遇，通过录像这一媒介完成了其对 “再现”的革命性重组。当我们的身体在装置中 移动，我们将体验到观察与被观察、成为作品的 一部分或与之分离的多重转化。我们成为一个动 态的变化元素，继而在一件艺术作品中依次或同 时成为一个被动的观众、一个主动的参与者、一 个中心或去中心化的主体、抑或是一件艺术品本 身。对这幅 17 世纪的绘画的再现，与闭路电视对 我们自身形象的现场直播，这两者以一种虚拟的 表达方式联系起来，并构建出一个真实存在的当

medium, this prescient work by Yamaguchi can be counted to be among the first wave of interactive video installations globally. Yamaguchi constructed several video versions of the painting by Diego Velázquez Las Meninas (1656) using colour and black and white reproductions, CCTV and recorded video close ups of the painting. Through the medium of video, Yamaguchi expands the already complex relationship between the viewer and the sight lines within Velázquez’s self-portrait as the royal court painter. The Spanish artist’s deconstructive approach to representation, revealing power structures and the process of painting the painting, is one of the most disczussed elements of this famous work. Notably Yamaguchi’s Las Meninas replaces one of the King and Queen’s portrait with a CCTV camera contemporising the symbol of power and surveillance.

Katsuhiro Yamaguchi’s explicit intention in his earliest experiments with the video medium was to open up new ways to communicate with the viewer by incorporating the viewers’ presence into the mediated ‘liveness’ of CCTV technology. Demonstrating the international nature of the experiments with the video

In Yamaguchi’s video version, the meeting of classical baroque painting genre and electronic media embodies a revolutionary reorganisation of representation through the medium of video. By physically moving around Yamaguchi’s Las Meninas installation, we experience multiple thresholds between the act of observing and being observed; being part of the work and separate to it. Our role is a dynamic changing element, where we can sequentially or simultaneously consider being a passive spectator, an active participant, a central or decentralised subject of, or an object in, the art work. The reproduction of the 17th century painting and the CCTV live representation of our own image come together in a virtual expression, but also as an actual contemporary spatial moment.

(Text / Kim Machan)

Katsuhiro Yamaguchi

Katsuhiro Yamaguchi, Las Meninas, 1974-1975, CCTV video installation. Still from the 1995 compilation The Document Video of Video Installation & Video Sculpture by Katsahiro Yamaguchi shows the artist being interviewed. Image courtesy of Mr. Hiroyasu Yamaguchi.

Nam June Paik

1932-2006，韩国，首尔

1932-2006, Seoul, South Korea

Nam June Paik was born in Seoul, South Korea in 1932 and spent his middle school days in Seoul and Hong Kong, and his high-school days in Kamakura, Japan. He studied aesthetics in the University of Tokyo, with a graduation thesis on Arnold Schoenberg. Moving to Germany in 1956 and studying European philosophy and modern music, he came to work actively with contemporary avant-garde artists and began to carve out his artist-identity by doing radical performances which were completely different from artistic canons and conventions back then. Afterwards he pursued a novel path of art making by means of new media. His media art gained momentum by his first solo show Exposition of Music-Electronic Television in which he presented televisions with inner circuits modified and manipulated, as a work of art.

Paik is a pioneering media artist working with various technologies in creative and experimental ways. He saw the artist’s role as consisting in thinking about the future and sought for better ways of global communication through art. Regarded as “one of the forerunners of a new breed of artists who are scientists, philosophers and engineers at the same time” and as “ a very special and genuine genius and futurologist with foresight”, Paik still lives on with us right here as “the most contemporary artist” today.

ButtonHappening, (1965) is Nam June Paik's earliest extant videotape, and possibly his first tape ever. Recorded in 1965 on the day he acquired his first Sony Portapak camera, this previously unknown work has been rediscovered and restored. Recorded on computer tape, this technically fragile piece documents a single performance action — Paik buttoning and unbuttoning his jacket. A spirit of conceptual Fluxus humor underlies this seminal recording.

2015 ）。小野洋子在 2009 年威尼斯 双年展上荣获终生成就奖——金狮奖。

小野洋子

Yoko Ono

生于 1933，日本，东京 b. 1933, Tokyo, Japan

Born in Tokyo, Japan in 1933, Yoko Ono is a multidisciplinary artist making significant contributions over a sixty-year career as a visual artist, singer, songwriter and peace activist. She moved with her family to New York in 1953, later living in London, New York and Tokyo where she became a key figure in the international development of Fluxus and Conceptual art. Her early works were based on verbal or written instructions to the audience, for example Painting to Be Stepped On (1960–61). Such instructional approach also could be found in her performance Cut Piece (1964). In collaboration with her late husband, the Beatles legend John Lennon, BedIn (1969) performed her commitment to world peace. Ono has exhibited widely across the world, including her solo show of films and sculptural works in Whitney Museum of American Art (1989), Yes Yoko Ono at the Japan Society Gallery in New York City (2000) which toured around the world, and a recent retrospective of her early art at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City (2015). She received a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2009 Venice Biennale.

SKY TV (1966-2022) is a continuous twentyfour hours a day live CCTV feed from a camera positioned on the roof of the exhibition building. The camera pointed up to the open sky connects with a monitor placed on the floor in the subterranean gallery. This seemingly simple concept belies the extraordinary accomplishment the artwork made when it was first conceived in 1966 and the enduring relevance it has today. The idea of television as a conveyor of mass information-entertainment and as a surveillance technology is peacefully subverted and repurposed, enriching the medium with a new focus and possibilities. The exploitation of the medium specific qualities of video is accomplished through the artist’s astute understanding of video’s transgressive spatial potential in a minimalist gesture in order to manifest the sublime. SKY TV captures an incomprehensible quantity of sky because behind the flat actual surface of the monitor and the sky that represents, the sky the camera aims toward in fact continues beyond our vision. The speculative nature of infinite space is intrinsic in this conceptual video piece while also addressing the sky as a most elemental shared spatial phenomenon. The sky is a recurring theme in Yoko Ono’s works as an artist and musician and in this piece, the depth of the sky represented in the monitor is only limited by our imagination.

(Text / Kim Machan)

1966-2022, CCTV video installation.Installation view of

the Thing-in-Itself, Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York (2015), curated by Robert Hobbs. Photographer: Lance Brewer. Image courtesy of Andrea Rosen Gallery.

Ono Photo by Matthew Placek

Ono

Japan

Keigo Yamamoto

生于 1936，日本，福井 b. 1936, Fukui, Japan 山本圭吾在作品《手 No.2》 和《脚 No.3》中， 通过录像和闭路电视监视屏的即时回放功能，探 讨了监视屏的物理性和身体的延伸。这些作品记 录了孤立的身体部位（手和脚）与作为影像框架 的监视屏之间的互动。手和监视屏的第一次互动 被拍摄下来，然后在监视屏上进行播放，再对手 和之前的影像之间的互动进行再次拍摄。在《手 No.2》中，我们看到同一只手被记录和再记录， 使得手和手臂出现在相互分隔、又相互关联的表 现场域。同样的原理也被运用在《脚 No.3》中， 即在一台监视屏上表现一台监视屏中所表现的监视 屏上的内容。层层叠加的影像将监视屏内部的身体 延伸到我们面前基座上的监视屏之外的界域。在展 览中，观众可以直接触碰监视屏，从而直接反向连 接，成为艺术品的一部分；正是因为这种可能性， 监视屏和它所占据的空间才成为了“现场”。 （文 / 金曼）

(Text / Kim Machan)

山本圭吾，《脚 No.3》，1977，单通道录像，图片由艺术家和阿姆 斯特丹 LIAM 提供。 Keigo Yamamoto, Foot No.3 1977, single-channel video, image

Kim Kulim

生于 1936，韩国，尚州

b. 1936, Sangju, South Korea

Born in Sangju, South Korea in 1936, Kim Kulim lives and works in Seoul. Kim holds a significant status in Korean contemporary art history as a founder of Korean experimental art. Retaining a rebellious attitude towards existing values and customs, Kim has produced a wide scope of experimental works ranging from paintings, prints, sculptures, installations and performances to land art, video art and mail art. He has also been involved in experimental plays, films, music and dance. In 1969, he released Relics of Mass Media, considered Korea's first mail art and also produced TheMeaningof1/24Second, a seminal work in the history of Korean experimental film. Kim was a founding member of AG (Korean AvantGarde Association), through which he led avantgarde artistic practices that emphasized concept and process. In the 1970s, he founded The Fourth Group, an avant-garde art group consisting of young artists and intellectuals in various fields, pursuing intermedia art combining art, theatre, film, fashion and music. Later in the decade, he set off to Japan to begin experimentation with print and video art, and in the 1980s, he traveled to the United States to seek new ways of artistic practice.

and present are in flux and exchange. The work questions this collision or co-existence of the past and present, in other words – HwanWeon ( 환원 , 还原 ).

Kim Kulim’s first investigations into the video medium were directed toward the real and the virtual medium specific qualities of light and time. The 1:1 scaled video recording of a light bulb turning on and off in a casual 10 second rhythm is combined in the video installation with the actual light bulb suspended next to the monitor. The light bulb in the monitor alternates with the actual light bulb, shifting recorded time into harmony and conflict with perceptions of real time in a time lapse distortion. Philosophical and empirical questions about the nature of light - the speed of light that directly relates to concepts of time – are summoned in this work in the contemplation of the recorded time and the representation within this video installation of the light bulb that was originally recorded in 1975. The age of the light transferred to our eye from the monitor is light being transmitted now in the live moment, while existing with the contradiction that the light is a recording of a much older light, now over 45 years old.

/ Kim Machan)

Kim Kulim, Light Bulb 1975, singlechannel video installation, image courtesy of the artist.

Takahiko Iimura

生于 1937，日本，东京 b. 1937, Tokyo, Japan

Born in Tokyo, Japan in 1937, Takahiko Iimura is a pioneering artist known for his work with film, video, installation, performance, and digital technologies spanning more than 50 years. Iimura first began working with film in 1960 and was instrumental in the burgeoning Japanese experimental and independent film scene. Iimura moved to the US on a Fellowship from Harvard University in 1966 and soon immersed himself in the mid-60s New York experimental film and art community. Early videos were included in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art of New York and PS1 (1975), and Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, France (1977), while other performance based works and interactive installations were featured in the 1979 two-person exhibition New Video (with Shigeko Kubota) at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Iimura’s monitor installation TV for TV (1983), originally presented in Osaka and later exhibited in the 1994 Guggenheim Museum survey show JapaneseArtAfter1945:Scream

AgainsttheSky consists of two identical and untuned TV monitors facing each other with their broadcasts, playing infinitely for an audience solely of each other. The art work, originally designed to broadcast a different local television station on each monitor, animates the sculptural monitors as close relational communicators, albeit in a oneway stream of broadcast content. Because the monitors are tightly pushed up ‘facing’ against each other the video sculpture implies an embodied elemental animism, an electronic intimacy, and implied abstract communication.

饭村隆彦，《这就是拍摄了这些的摄影

机》，1980，闭路电视录像装置，图片由

Microscope 画廊（纽约，美国）提供。

Takahiko Iimura, This is A Camera Which Shoots This, 1980, CCTV video installation, image courtesy of Microscope Gallery (New York, USA).

(1980) is a

installation consisting of two video cameras and two monitors arranged in pairs opposite each other with the title sentence centered on the wall between them. In this work first exhibited in 1980 at Tokyo’s American Center, Iimura creates a vicious logic cycle by redirecting the signals of the cameras so that each appears to be recording itself,

emphasizing the instant playback possibilities of video that allow one to be simultaneously recording, recorded, and to watch the recording as it happens. Additionally, This is A Camera Which Shoots This continues and expands upon explorations of the semiotic differences between Japanese and Western cultures through the medium of video that Iimura began in the 1970s.

Park Hyunki

1942-2000，日本，大阪

1942-2000, Osaka, Japan

Born in Osaka, Japan in 1942, Park Hyunki is widely known as a precursor to video art in Korea for developing his own artistic vocabulary with the use of then a rare medium. Park’s approach to video and technology resembles the thriving interests of objects and materiality in Korean art of the 70s, which rejected a Western Modernism that concentrated on artistic expression and intervention. By juxtaposing found objects from nature with contemporary technologies, Park contrasted reality to fiction and nature to culture. Featuring organic elements, such as stones and water, Park rearranged and modified objects which are not commonly considered to be art. Denying the theatrical and narrative quality of video, Park mainly concentrated on the contemplation of materials and perception. His persistent and solitary effort to engage in video was indeed a revolutionary one in his time and the contribution he has made to Korean video art is truly immeasurable.

These two works by Park Hyunki are representative works from his Untitled series (1976-1979) that utilize monitors showing videos of stones places among actual stones. This juxtaposition of technology and nature is a motif repeatedly in these stone tower works. These works are imbued with Park’s desire to harmonize contrasting elements and to celebrate the beauty of simple phenomena imbued with spiritual almost metaphysical power.

In line with many of his contemporaries in Korean art during the 1970s, Park’s practice emphasized objects and materiality and their philosophical underpinnings. By juxtaposing found objects from nature, Park contrasted reality to fiction and nature to culture. Featuring organic elements, such as stones and water, Park rearranged and modified objects which are not commonly considered to be art. Denying the theatrical and narrative quality of video, Park mainly concentrated on the contemplation of materials and perception.

Park Hyunki, Untitled (TV Stone Tower), 1979-1982, single-channel video installation, image courtesy of Estate of Park Hyunki and Gallery Hyundai.

Soungui Kim

生于 1946，韩国，扶余 b. 1946, Buyeo, South Korea

Born in Buyeo, South Korea in 1946, Soungui Kim is a multimedia artist, one of the pioneers in multidisciplinary art of the early 70s. She has been living and working in France since 1971, actively teaching, creating, and establishing her career for the last 50 years. Kim is an artist with complex aspects that cannot be defined in a single way nor in the dichotomy of situations. Her interest in Eastern and Western philosophies and the experimentation with various artistic medium led Kim to incorporate situational, experiential and accidental processes into her practice.

Artist Soungui Kim lives a life that is not confined to formalities, but pioneers new roads of art ahead of her times, creating new paths in untrodden land. Kim has constantly blazed trails in new territories and has been introduced to the public as a case of convergence between disciplines and genres including those involving science and technology, and the arts. From the deconstruction of painting, to spectator-participatory events in public places, challenges in video and multimedia, and comparative studies in culture and philosophy of East and West, Soungui Kim's artistic journey has always been one step ahead.

round-trip journey from Paris to Seoul, then Seoul to Paris, simultaneously recorded and edited by the limited time of a sixty-minute videotape, created an artwork where its recorded time is equal to its edited time. In this work, wherein the directions of coming and going, and time are mixed-up and disarranged, she has created the time of another route that travels neither to Paris nor to Seoul, containing the eighteen-hour flight time, sixty-minute of videotape, and the eight-hour time difference of two countries.

The title Voie-VoixLactée is a play on words made by arranging voie (way) from Voie lactée (Milky Way) together with voix (voice), its homonym. Such an example can be frequently found in works by Kim, who is known to love ‘language games’. Passing beyond the limitations of Eastern and Western ideas and embracing even the conditions that cause confrontation and contradiction, VoieVoixLactée conceals the diverse weaves of interpretation.*

*Excerpts from Mun Hyejin, "Video-O Time-One's Place", Lazy Clouds: Soungui Kim (Seoul: National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, 2019)

Soungui Kim, Voie-Voix Lactée, 1988, single-channel video, image courtesy of the artist.

(1985) is shot in real time without editing to unify the fictitious time of video and the real time of the spectator. The image becomes visible and invisible as the artist repeatedly zooms in and out: a visual repetition of a repeated nonsensical narrative. The work physically embodies the state of “unity of self and things,” by synchronizing the breathing of the video and of the person filming. The act of repeatedly opening and closing the aperture of the lens according to the tempo of the artist’s inhalation and exhalation

is a natural experience of penetrating the medium called video with the body to become “One” with it. Soungui Kim, who sees body and mind, existence and non-existence, emptiness and form, knowing and not knowing, visibility and invisibility, as one, is embodied simply and clearly through the manipulation of video equipment.*

*Excerpts from Mun Hyejin, "Video-O Time-One's Place", Lazy Clouds: Soungui Kim (Seoul: National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, 2019)

Zhang Peili

生于 1963，中国，杭州

b. 1957, Hangzhou, China

Zhang Peili was born in Hangzhou, China and studied oil painting during the early 1980s at the China Academy of Art in the same city. Zhang is considered one of the seminal contemporary artists in China as a key member of the Pond Society – the contemporary art movement based in Hangzhou. In 1988 Zhang’s created his first video artwork 30 x 30, that is recognised as the first video artwork created in China. In the 1990s, Zhang continued to experiment with video and new media, shifting entirely from painting after 1994 to work across a variety of media including video installation and immersive multimedia installations since the early 2000s. In 2003, Zhang founded the New Media Department at the China Academy of Art, one of the first of its kind in the country. In 2010, Zhang was awarded the prestigious China Contemporary Art Award for lifetime contributions to the field. He is Associate Professor at the China Academy of Art, as well as being Executive Director of OCAT Shanghai, the first museum in China to specialise in new media arts and architecture.

(colour, sound), looping Courtesy of SPURS Gallery,1988

Single-channel video (projector),

Standard Version from Cihai Dictionary ,Single-channel video (monitor) 9 35’’ (colour, sound) looping, Courtesy of the artist,1991

Considered to be the first video artwork created in China, 30×30 accentuates characteristics only possible in the video medium. With initial access to video recording equipment Zhang had the opportunity to experiment and when faced with this open possibility, chose to utilise the exceptionally long tape duration of the video recorder. The standard 180-minute video cassette was filled entirely with the repetitive action of breaking a 30×30 cm mirror and gluing it back together. The two main characteristics of the work, repetition and endurance, shuck open concepts of reason and intention through absurdity. These experimental endurance works would never be made on film because of the expense and cinematic conventions already established.

Through the medium of video Zhang Peili deconstructs the formats of television, information, and media authority by engaging an official media television announcer to read the standard dictionary definition of water. She does this with her normal and familiar professional news reader voice and behaviours. The work apprehends and destabilises our perceptions of television shifting it to a surprising new truth in the elemental information announced about the meaning and use of the word ‘water’.

before playing that back and re-recording until the image is obliterated. The ability to play the original and derivative images simultaneously on separate monitors at once fractures and uniformly repeats linear time. The CCTV surveillance type screen images contradict the logic of clarity through closer scrutiny as each monitor progressively approaches an aesthetic abstraction. As originally designed, the monitors are set on eight plinths with 80cm distance between each meaning the viewer can move in and around each piece.

In this arrangement the monitors are reconstructed onto one plinth, compressing the the sequence causing a more restricted view of the abstraction process.

Wang Gongxin

生于 1960，中国，北京 b. 1960, Beijing, China

Born in Beijing in 1960, Wang Gongxin was admitted to the Capital Normal University academy of Fine Arts in 1978, and took the teaching post after graduation in 1982. In 1987, he went to State University of New York as a visiting scholar for master degree studying. He was a visiting tutor at Central Academy of Fine Arts between 2002 and 2007. In 2013, Wang was nominated for XL video Award of Best set design in 2013 “Olivier Award”. In 2014, he received Honorary Doctoral degree in SUNY (State University of New York). He lives and works in Beijing and New York.

Wang's has exhibited in the San Paulo Biennale, Brasil; Taipei Biennial; Shanghai Biennial; EchigoTsumari Art Triennial in Japan; Tokyo Watari Museum of Contemporary Art; Mori Art Museum in Japan, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, MOMA PS1 in New York; Victoria and Albert Museum in UK; Queens Museum in New York; Museum for Contemporary Art ZKM in Germany; Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin; Tate Liverpool in UK; National Gallery of Victoria in Australia; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart in Berlin; White Cube Hong Kong; Fukuoka art Museum in Japan; Institute of Contemporary Arts in London; The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York; Power Station of Art in Shanghai; OCT Contemporary Art Terminal Shanghai; UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing and National Art Museum of China.

The Broken Bench (1995-2020) marries traditional Chinese hand-crafted piece of furniture with the culturally non-specific video technology manifest in a bench embedded with a small video monitor. The bench is cut and rejoined to incorporate the video monitor and recording of the repair joinery maintaining the old bench’s ‘original appearance’. Along this join an index finger dispassionately traces the cut line, the record of the interruption, recalling the absent section of the bench in time passed. Pitting contradictory time instances, before and after the monitor was embedded, the bench is resurrected in two distinct mediums and two distinct experiences of time. The demonstration of the past in the video recording makes the present moment more lucid and accentuated, heightening the sense of ‘liveness’. (Text / Kim Machan)

作品《两平方有效空间》(1995-2022) 第一次实现

的地点于 1995 年，在北京一个传统胡同，艺术家

的家中。外部的闭路监控摄像机拍摄了两平方米

的房屋外角的传统砖块墙面，部分外墙已磨损和

斑驳。当外角被投影到墙反面的内角时，原本的

外角空间图像“挤入”内角空间结构中。通过影

像媒介的独特可能性，外墙的监控画面被“约束”

在内角中。因直角结构在投影的画面中被消解了，

所以通过闭路监控所捕捉到的空间呈现出了一种

失真感。

作品标题中的“两平方”是一个模棱两可的事

实，唤起我们对所处的真实和虚拟现实的三重调

和——首先，砖块堆砌出现实中的两平方米空间；

其次，监控录像记录了两平方米的外观；最后，

现实中的两平方米被传输及投影到内部空间之中。

由此，两平方米成为一个不确定的命题。不止于此，

闭路监控的延时性打断、扰乱了途经外墙空间的 参与者和内角空角的窥探者对于监控系统的感知， 并激发了新的个人感受。( 文 / 金曼 )

TwoSquareMeterSpace was first fully realised as an installation in the artist’s home in a traditional Hutong in Beijing in 1995. The CCTV camera outside captured the two square meter section of the traditional brick, partially rendered and worn external walls. When this image was projected into the reverse inside section of the wall, the outside perspective was visually forced upon the opposite internal perspective. Through the unique possibility of the video medium, the representation of the exterior wall is disciplined into the internal space. The natural perspective distortion of space is captured through the CCTV camera because the right-angled corner walls recede.

The title “2 Square Meters” is an ambiguous fact that calls for a reconciliation of at least three instances of our lived real and virtual realities. Firstly the concrete measurable reality of two square meters, secondly the video recorded appearance of two square meters, and lastly the reinstated two square meters projected into the internal space. Two square meters becomes an uncertain proposition. In addition, the delay between experiencing the outside wall as a participant and consequently being the voyeur, disrupts, destabilises and brings to attention personal spatial surveillance experiences.

(Text / Kim Machan)

王功新，《两平方有效空间》，1995-2022，闭路电视录像装置，图

片由艺术家提供。

Wang Gongxin, Two Square Meter Space, 1995-2022, CCTV video installation, image courtesy of the artist.

员会成员至今。 鲍蔼伦是香港艺术界的开创性人物。她编织了一种既 引人入胜又突破技术界限的艺术实践，并时刻保持对 社会的反思。此外，在她的日常职业的医疗行为以及 发起、领导文化活动的工作而言，她都为社会做出了 重要贡献。由此，鲍氏通过多种途径和渠道，促使人 们探索自我，以及我们所处的不断更生发展的时代。

生于 1961，中国，香港

b. 1961, Hong Kong, China 鲍蔼伦，《循环影院（

Born in Hong Kong in 1961, Ellen Pau is a key figure in Hong Kong’s art scene. She raises our awareness of our own physical presence and ignites a contemplation of what it means to be, to exist, here, now, and beyond that, the space each of us occupy.

Born in Hong Kong and a graduate from Hong Kong Polytechnic University with a diploma in Diagnostic Radiography in 1985 and received an MA in Visual Culture Studies from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2008. Pau has worked as a radiographer in the public hospital in Hong Kong ever since. Pau was plunged into the Hong Kong art scene by her intense interest in video art, new media art, as well as other art forms such as music, poems and performances. Beyond artistic creation, Pau has also been a leader in the promotion, curation and education of art and culture in Hong Kong through founding several important initiatives such as Videotage, the Microwave International New Media Arts Festival and Wikitopia Mini Festival. In 2014, Pau was appointed by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council as a representative of the Art Form Group in Film and Media Arts until end of 2019, and in the same year, she also served on the interim acquisition committee of M+ in West Kowloon Cultural District till present.

Pau is a seminal figure in the Hong Kong art scene, weaving a practice that engages as well as pushes the boundaries of technology, while reflecting on society. Moreover, Pau has been a key contributor to society, through her medical activity as well as initiation and leading of cultural activities. As such, through multiple avenues and outlets, Pau prompts an exploration of the self and the times we are living in, ever shifting and evolving.

Ellen Pau

Ellen Pau, RecyclingCinema(ViewingRoom),

single-channel video installation, image courtesy of the artist and Edouard Malingue Gallery.

Ellen Pau

Photo by Martin Cheung ©Ellen Pau and Edouard Malingue Gallery

Martin Cheung 拍摄，

在全球公共建筑中都很常见的闭路电视监视屏， 观察着无剧本的公众互动，客观地记录了这个一 成不变的环境中的任何变化。《循环影院（Viewing Room）》利用摄影机的平移运镜，跟踪驶过桥梁 的车辆，直到镜头锁定从另一侧进入画面的下一 辆车辆，从而连续跟踪了一连串的穿梭的匿名车 辆。当规则出现，结构也就相应显现。投影机前 的两张扶手椅为观众提供了一个固定的位置，作 为装置的一部分，令我们联想到在最初拍摄中摄

Ellen Pau’s work is preoccupied with the everyday, focusing on present and accessible real-life phenomena to extract the pulse and tone of our contemporary human condition. In keeping with the transnational character of the video medium, the two works in this exhibition OperationTheatre(1995)and RecyclingCinema(ViewingRoom) (2000) could have been recorded in any city of the world. The backdrop of modern architecture, cityscape, bridges and cars are common globally while the Asian ethnicity of the figures in OperationTheatre could also be found in any number of locations in the East and West. Each work seeks out an everyday concrete experience such as contemplating a hospital and the people moving through it, or pondering traffic flows and the transit of drivers and passengers. Drawing attention to a distilled experience of mainstream cultural concepts, in this case theatre and cinema, the two works subvert the expectation of theatrical and cinematic conventions. This is achieved through the exploration of medium of video that enabled the artist to access, record, consider, deconstruct and reinstate these everyday situations. In OperationTheatre, a single camera point-of-view CCTV footage capturing people moving through a busy hospital corridor is the source material for the work. The CCTV monitoring, commonplace in public buildings globally, observes unscripted public interactions objectively recording any change in an unchanging setting. Recycling Cinema uses the horizontal pan of the video camera to track a vehicle crossing a bridge before the camera locks onto the next vehicle entering the frame from the opposing side, consequently tracking serial anonymous crossings. The rule emerges and structure is mechanically followed. Two arm chairs in front of the projection offer a committed position for the viewer as part of the installation and what we could imagine as the roost from where the video was originally filmed. (Text/ Kim Machan)

Chen Shaoxiong

1962-2016，中国，汕头

1962-2016, Shantou, China

Born in Shantou, Guangdong province in 1962, Chen Shaoxiong was educated in the printmaking department of the Guangzhou Fine Art Academy, is a founding member of the Big Tail Elephant Collective, one of the most important artistic collectives in Chinese contemporary art history.

The artist’s conceptual work employs a variety of media, including photography, video, installation and ink painting, to investigate the dynamics of China’s rapidly changing cityscapes. Often set against the background of an imaginative or imaginary skyline, the artist records the hectic pace and absurdity of everyday existence: fragments from family life, political issues, rumors from the entertainment industry, restaurants, nightlife, and prostitution.

Chen Shaoxiong begins with the directness of media such as traditional ink painting and transforms it into technical media such as video; it is a combination of this and the uncomplicated manner in which the everyday confront more extraordinary issues of modern life that gives the work added import. Thematically, his work often deals with the rapidly urbanizing and constantly changing environments of his home province in southern China, the nature of the crowd, the dominance of the image, the aesthetics of globalization, and public or collective memory.

SightAdjuster3 (1996), adopts two visual channels to separate the viewer's vision into two objects (televisions). The content of these two TV screens are both related and paradoxical, they are ‘connected’ at times, and ‘separate’, or even be in conflicting positions with each other. The information received to both eyes force the brain to process these images together in order to find establish their logical relationships. In the course of processing these information, the eyes and the brain experienced the trouble of "looking", by which the artwork achieves to "adjust the sight" of the viewers. The design of this installation is tailored to the physiological requirements of medical equipment, its height and distant are both fitted to contain a person receiving ‘sight-adjustments’. The artist wishes to improve one's adjustability to the constantly changing and complex social environment through ‘sight-adjustments’.

Chen Shaoxiong, Sight Adjuster 3, 1996, dual-channel video installation, Courtesy of the Chen Siyu and SPURS Gallery

的金属框架及其顶端的电视机对新娘身体进行了

一次建构。作品中的电视机被自然而然地看作为

这具新娘身体中的头部。通过对实时电视频道的

画面切换，作品激发了电视画面和具有象征意味

的新娘形象之间的动态互动。除了涉及官方电视

频道下实时转播所连带的社会、政治语义，及新

娘形象所潜藏的象征隐喻，艺术家对录像这种媒

介的处理方式也是一次对不断变化的当下的提议

和思考。（文 / 金曼）

The installation assembles the figure of a bride through a wedding dress suspended on a clothes hanger underneath a metal framework that is topped with a television set. The television is consequently interpreted as the head of the bridal dress body. By employing the real time content of any broadcast television programming on this monitor, the work ignites a dynamic interaction between the TV content and the symbolic persona of the bride. Putting aside the social and political content that streams through the real-time official broadcasts and the highly symbolic metaphor of the bride, the artist’s approach to the medium of video has constructed an everchanging-real-time proposal to consider. (Text/ Kim Machan)

Geng Jianyi

1962-2017，中国，郑州

1962-2017, Zhengzhou, China

Born in Zhengzhou, Henan province in 1962, passed away in 2017, Geng Jianyi graduated from the Department of Oil Painting in Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (today named as China Academy of Art, Hangzhou). The work of the artist Geng Jianyi is characterized by an uncompromising resistance to any categorical form of representation. Since the mid 1980s, when he first came to prominence within China as a seminal member of the ‘avantgarde’ movement known as the ‘85 New Wave’, Geng has sought to foment this resistance through the use of a wide range of techniques-including various forms of painterly transcription, staining, frottage, photographic and filmic transfer, chemical transformation and textual juxtaposition whose conspicuously disjunctive effects constantly undermine any attempt to arrive at definitive meaning. To date, Geng’s work has been exhibited in over 140 exhibitions in China and abroad, mainly including the China/Avant-gardeArt Exhibition, National Art Museum of China, 1989; China Avant-garde touring exhibition to venues including Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, the Kunsthall Rotterdam, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford in 1993; Cardinal Points of the Arts, the 45th Venice Biennale, 1993; the Cities on the Move exhibition series (1, 2, 3, 4&5) in museums in Vienna, Bordeaux, New York, Copenhagen and London, 1997-1999; Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1950s-1980s, Queens Museum of Art, New York, 1999; Reinterpretation: A Decade of ExperimentalChineseArt(1990-2000), the First Guangzhou Trienniale, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, 2002; The Real Thing, Contemporary Art from China, Tate, Liverpool, 2007; Moving Image in China: 1988-2011, Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, 2011; Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, Korea, 2014; Stubborn Image, OCAT Shanghai, 2016; Viva Arte Viva, the 57th Venice Biennale 2017; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim’s survey Art and China After 1989: Theater of the World, 2017-2018.

Dimension of Vision (1996), as a three-channel CRT monitor installation was exhibited in PhenomenonandImage, in Hangzhou in 1996 - considered to be the first video art exhibition organized in China. The work is dominated by a repeated singular image, the eye of a duck anchored in the center in the screen. The single spare image shifts sequentially to each screen while the other two monitors cut to show black void. The only movement in the image is that of the drowsy eyelid lowering and jerking open. The close-up video recording of the duck’s eye produces its own black void in the expanded pupil. The work exploits the portability and intimacy of the recording equipment allowing the artist to record the mesmerizing situation. The extended exposure to the central black void of the duck’s eye creates an apprehensive tension between recognizing a captured or disabled animal, the recognition of the eye as belonging to a consciousness being, and the sensation of an overwhelming sublime within the central black void of the duck’s eye. Because of the dominant black content within the work, the monitor’s reflective glass surface acts a mirror implicating the viewer through their own and others reflection. (Text / Kim Machan)

生于 1963，中国，北京

b. 1963, Beijing, China 《与环境有关》

Born in Beijing in 1963, Zhu Jia graduated from China Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1988 and now lives and works in Beijing and London. He is a pioneer of video art in China developing his first works in Beijing in 1991. Zhu Jia explored the medium of video using it as a tool to consider familiar interior and exterior spaces in unfamiliar ways. His early works engaged with intimate interior domestic spaces such as the inside of a wardrobe, a refrigerator, and small rooms. He sees the ordinary in extraordinary ways, for example, attaching a camera to a tricycle wheel and riding through the streets of Beijing. Originally trained in oil painting, video became part of the artist’s expanded practice that has employed spatial approaches to projection and installation. Zhu Jia has been included in exhibitions in China and internationally including Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York in 2017 and Bilbao, Spain in 2018; LANDSEASKY: revisiting spatiality in video art, OCAT Shanghai, 2014; Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai Art Museum, 2008; the Venice Biennale, Italy, and Alors la Chine?, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France in 2003; Tempo, The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York, 2002; the Biennale of Sydney, Australia, 1998; and the Cities on the Move series of five unique exhibitions in 1997 and 1999 that were situated in museums in Vienna, Bordeaux, New York, Copenhagen and London.

Jia, Related to Environment, 1997, single-channel video, image courtesy of the artist and ShanghART Gallery.

Related to Environment

video imagery captures a goldfish, jumping, breathing, flipping and struggling out of water. The video is edited without a beginning or end, pointing to the cyclical nature of life.

Armoire

replaces the hand

1992, single-channel video, image courtesy of the artist and ShanghART Gallery.

Zhu Jia

RepeatonPurpose

Forever

A high-8 video camera was

to the left wheel of a tricycle on a self-made bracket. The lens oriented outward recorded city scenes as the artist rode the tricycle through Beijing streets, cycling naturally and adjusting speed according to traffic conditions. The video imagery documented city scenes while simultaneously recording the movement of the tricycle wheel.

high-8 video camera is placed inside a refrigerator with the lens pointing outwards. As if in a state of auto-recording or surveillance, the camera records a series of casual actions of an item being placed into or removed from the refrigerator. When the refrigerator is open (and the light inside illuminated), the camera records an image. When the refrigerator door is closed, the screen appears black. The video imagery is subjected to the physical attributes of the inside chamber of the refrigerator with alternating conditions of light and dark. The removal of the audio emphasizes the inherent subjectivity in the image.

1963，中国，北京 b. 1963, Beijing, China

Born in 1963 in Beijing, Li Yongbin began his career in Video Art field in 1995. He insists observing the pass of the time from a third-person perspective. In face of life changes, he can always remain placid and keep his own belief —— waiting. Through his unique visual language, in which fuzziness and lucidness coexist with each other, audiences can easily capture a series of contradictory spiritual characteristics that are hidden under the surface: flow and stillness, waiting and giveup, negativeness and sadness. Li Yongbin believes that art is a way of waiting, while the truth can only emerge in waiting.

Selected exhibitions include: Alors la Chine?, Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou, Paris (2003); Compounds Eyes, Earl Lu Gallery, Lasalle-Sia College of the Arts, Singapour (2001); Cross Pressures, Oulu Art Museum and Finnish, Museum of Photography, Finlande (2001); Clues of the Future, Red Tate Gallery, Pékin (2001); It’s me, DDM Warehouse, Shanghai (2001); L’œuvre VidéographiquedeLiYongbin, Palais des BeauxArts de Bruxelles, Belgique (2000); Supermarché, Shanghai (1999); Sign of Life, Biennale de Melbourne, Melbourne (1999); Beyond the Future, Third Asia-Pacific Triennal of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art gallery, Brisbane (1999).

“What I do is to specify what is in my mind as fast as I can. It has to be quick because I want to keep my inspiration pure and unpolluted. And that means the color, sound, smell, taste and touch. When using materials, equipment or technology, I try to keep technical attributes to a minimum. For instance, cameras can be used in a simple way. The simplicity helps me achieve what I want in a timely and pure fashion. It can help me avoid being disturbed from outside, thus I can assure the continuity of every piece of work, which means every work is a sequel of last one. What I experience most is it has a beginning but never an ending.The point of doing this is I can possess the pleasure of getting rid of certain burdens. The enjoyment is like weight-loss: the key lies in reducing and getting rid of, until there is nothing to lose,and then all returns to peace.” Li Yongbin.

Li Yongbin

绕着“战争的日常化”与“日常的战争”为主轴，呈 现当代的生存状态及不安。

Yuan Goang-Ming

Born in Taipei, Taiwan in 1965, Yuan Goang-Ming obtained a master’s degree in media art from the Academy of Design in Karlsruhe, Germany, and now teaches as a professor at the Department of New Media Art of Taipei National University of Arts. He is considered one of the most active and internationally acclaimed Taiwanese media artists.

Yuan began making video art in 1984. Combining symbolic metaphors with technological media, his work expresses the state of contemporary existence, and explores the human mind and consciousness with the use of poetic expressions. He was awarded First Prize for the Taipei County Arts Award, and his City Disqualified created in 2002 further solidified his unwavering position in the history of Taiwanese contemporary media art.

In 2007 Yuan began to use elements derived from ‘everyday domesticity’ and ‘ruins’ to develop fascinating ‘theatricaleverydayness’ in his work. After 2011, he began exploring diverse formats, creating large-scale creations based on the themes of ‘time and memory’ and ‘body and perception’. His 2014 solo exhibition, An Uncanny Tomorrow, extended from the subject of ‘home’ and explored regional living conditions under the current phenomenon of globalization, with art used to reflect on modern people’s conundrums and worries. His solo exhibition, Tomorrowland, presented in 2018 showed the concept of ‘home’ will no longer be a stable concept in the future. The presented artworks focused on the theme of ‘war in everyday’, or ‘everyday during war’, with the living conditions and the unrest in today’s world shown.

video installation exhibited at Yuan's first solo exhibition, Fish on Dish (1992) was the artist's first work conjoining objects and video projection. A projector mounted overhead casts an image of a goldfish on a 42-centimetre white dish placed on the floor and creates a virtual image of a fish swimming in a pool. The work relies on the circle, porcelain dish and a goldfish, all prominent symbols in the East, to suggest the reality of existence and its difficulties. The fish leisurely swims around the dish, but can never escape its confines.

Yuan Goang-Ming, Fish on Dish 1992, single-channel video installation, image courtesy of the artist and TKG+ (Taipei).

生于 1968，中国，杭州

b. 1968, Hangzhou, China

Born in 1968 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, Yang Zhenzhong has been living and working in Shanghai for more than 20 years with a career closely related to the development of new media art around the area. Since the end of 1990s, he has been curating and organizing numerous highly influential contemporary art exhibitions with artists including Xu Zhen and Yang Fudong etc. They have not only enlivened the atmosphere of the new media art industry in Shanghai, but also promoted the artist himself to stage on an international platform. The key themes of YANG’s works are to strengthen the contradictions and disorders existed in the society with a cynical attitude on one hand, to utilise the perception of the space in political and psychological levels on the other hand. Now mainly focuses on the creation of new media like video, photograph, installation work and interaction etc., and curating as well.

Selected solo exhibitions include: Eternal Return | Вечное возвращение |, Moscow Manege Museum and Exhibition Association, Russia (2014); Background, No.12 DRC, Beijing (2018); Trespassing, YANG Zhenzhong Solo Exhibition, OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, Shanghai (2013); Don't Move, Yang Zhengzhong Solo Exhibition, ShanghART, Beijing (2011); YANG ZHENZHONG, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, U.K. (2006); Light As Fuck!, BizArt, Shanghai (2002); Selected group exhibitions include: Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, U.S.A. (2017); Our Bright Future: Cybernetics Fantasy, Nam June Paik Art Center, Yongin-si, Korea (2017); Consumer, Salon 1.618, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2009); Global Cities, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London, U.K. (2007), etc. The artist’s works have previously been exhibited in numerous prominent exhibitions including Venice Biennale, Shanghai Biennale, Gwangju Biennial, Asia Pacific Triennale of Contemporary Art, Lyon Biennale, and so forth. His works can also be found in the collection of significant public and private institutes such as MoMA New York, Ikon Gallery (U.K.), Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Musée National d’Art Moderne, and the UBS Collection.

Fish Bowl (1996) is the first work in which Yang addresses contradiction between performers’ acts and utterances. In this video installation, three TV monitors are stacked vertically, and the bottom one is placed inside a fish tank with a couple of small water pumps. On each monitor, a close-up image of a mouth (the artist’s) utters the words “We are not fish” in Chinese. At first glance, the shape and color of the mouths suggest that of goldfish, so that the act performed resembles the act of a fish. This visual resemblance reflects and extends the installation context of water tank and bubbling sounds. Not only does the mouth resemble a fish, the exhibited environment also suggests water and sea life. On the other hand, the utterance (”we are not fish”) of the “mouths” belies what these mouths appear to express.

Yang Zhenzhong

Yang Zhenzhong, Fish Bowl, Video installation (Three monitors, a video machine, a concave glass

bowl, iron), 30 00 (colour, sound), looping, 1996, Courtesy of the artist