Kieler Nachrichten vom 25.02.2005
Kieler Kunsthalle zeigt "Shanghai Modern"

[image] Ein Plakat der 30-er Jahre: "Eine wohlhabende Stadt, die niemals
schläft". Foto Molter
Eine siebenköpfige chinesische Delegation aus China war gestern zur
Pressekonferenz der Ausstellung "Shanghai Modern" in die Kieler
Kunsthalle gekommen. Allein die Präsenz von Museumsdirektoren und
Akademiepräsidenten aus Shanghai und Hangzhou machte den Stellenwert der
Ausstellung deutlich, die heute Abend in Anwesenheit von hiesiger
Politikprominenz und dem chinesischen Generalkonsul in Hamburg, Ma
Jinsheng, eröffnet wird. Shanghai 1930: "Fünftgrößte Stadt der Welt, ein
wilder Wirbel revolutionärer Ideen, widerstreitende nationale
Bestrebungen. Ungehemmte kommerzielle Expansion – eine glitzernde Fata
Morgana{hellip}."

Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, Dirktorin der Münchner Villa Stuck skizziert in
ihrem Katalogvorwort diese Stadt als Megalopolis mit allen Attributen
einer in die Moderne aufgebrochenen Stadt. Elektrische Beleuchtung,
Autos, Schuhe mit hohen Absätzen, die Pariser Mode auf den Straßen,
Schönheitssalons Tanzbars, Windhundrennen und türkische Bäder. 1933
werden 54 Prozent des chinesischen Außenhandels über Shanghai
abgewickelt. In der Stadt leben etwa 60000 Ausländer.

Die bereits 1920 gegründete private Kunstakademie pflegt lebhaften
Austausch mit Paris und anderen europäischen Metropolen. Das ist die
äußerst knappe Skizze einer Metropole, die das Ausstellungsprojekt
Shanghai Modern jetzt in der Kieler Kunsthalle auffächert. Jo-Anne
Birnie Danzker, aus Australien stammende Ausstellungsmacherin, hat die
Schau gemeinsam mit zwei Ko-Kuratoren erarbeitet, die heute beide in
Vancouver arbeiten: Zheng Shengtian war Professor an der Kunstakademie
Shanghai und lehrt nun in Vancouver; der Künstler Ken Lum zeigte seine
Arbeiten an der documenta 11 und den Biennalen von Shanghai, Sao Paulo
und Sydney.

Mit mehr als 200 Arbeiten wird versucht, die Aufbruchstimmung jener
Jahrzehnte anschaulich zu machen und den Blick auf Künstler zu lenken,
die sich wie Danzker es formuliert, aus der "westlichen Umklammerung
lösen wollten und sich ihres eigenen Erbes vergewissern wollten". Wie
neugierig die chinesische Kunst schon damals im Westen aufgenommen
wurde, belegt eine 1934 in Berlin eröffnete Ausstellung unter dem Titel
Chinesische Malerei der Gegenwart, die über Hamburg und Düsseldorf eine
ausgedehnte Europatournee antrat. Unter der Überschrift Kultureller
Austausch wird in der Kunsthalle anhand von Infotexten,
Ausstellungskatalogen und Material in Vitrinen die "Nähe" zwischen
Shanghai und Europa illustriert. Wie rasant damals dieser Austausch
tatsächlich funktionierte, erläutert Zjeng Shengtian am Beispiel eines
Artikels über eine Liebermann-Ausstellung, die 1930 in einem
französischen Magazin besprochen wurde. Schon kurz nach Erscheinen des
Artikels, so Shengtian, sei er von den Studenten der Akademie in
Shanghai diskutiert worden. Erstaunlich dann wieder ein Dokument, das
für ein waches politisches Verständnis der chinesischen
Avantgarde-Künstler steht: Schon 12 Wochen nach der Machtergreifung
durch die Nationalsozialisten überbrachte die Chinesische Liga für
Menschenrechte dem deutschen Gesandten in Shanghai eine Protestnote, die
von allen Zeitungen der Stadt gedruckt wurde.

In den zu Kabinetten umgebauten Wechselausstellungsräumen versucht die
Ausstellung mit thematischen Obertiteln Schneisen in einen Kunstkosmos
zu schlagen, der hierzulande den meisten verwirrend fremd erscheint: Da
sind Künstlergruppen wie die "Storm Society" oder die "Modernen
Literatenmaler", da ist Lu Xun und die "Bewegung des Neuen
Holzschnitts". Nicht nur der "Western Style", den aus Europa
zurückgekehrte Künstler pflegten, hätte stellenweise Erklärungen nötig
gemacht: Hilfreich wären Bildzitate oder Fotoverweise gewesen, die den
Blick für west-östliche Berührungen schärfen – ein Schwachpunkt
übrigens, den sich die Ausstellungsmacher schon in München gefallen
lassen mussten, der aber, wie sich in Kiel zeigt, durchaus berechtigt ist.

Interessant sind die kulturhistorischen Exkurse in Mode, Film und
Fotografie. Shanghais Bedeutung als Filmstadt erklärt sich allein schon
durch den Output: In den zwanziger bis in die vierziger Jahre wurden
etwa die Hälfte der chinesischen Filme in Shanghai gedreht. Von den
insgesamt 175 chinesischen Filmgesellschaften hatten in Shanghai 141
ihren Sitz. Eine ihrer Ikonen war Hu Die, der erste chinesische
Filmstar, der in offizieller Mission ins Ausland geschickt wurde und in
einer Fotografie in der Ausstellung mit Charlie Chaplin posiert. Am
Schlusspunkt der Schau stehen dann einige Künstler der Gegenwart. Der
renommierteste von ihnen mit Sicherheit Yang Fudong, der mit seinem
poetischen Schwarzweiß-Video Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest einen
wunderbaren Bogen zwischen chinesischer Tradition und Gegenwart schlägt.

Von Maren Kruse

http://www.kn-online.de/news/archiv/?id=1596918

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FT, February 24 2005
Sleepless in Singapore
By Ken Smith

In many ways, the theatre director Ong Keng Sen feels uneasy
representing his native Singapore. Few of his productions appear at home
now, he admits, and when they do they seldom star Singaporean
performers. He realises that the famously restrictive city state prefers
productions that focus on surface beauty rather than societal
controversies and contradictions, but as an artist he just cannot help
himself.

"Europe and America look at Asia like a Chinese box, where everything
fits together smoothly," says the 41-year-old director. "When you live
here, however, you realise that one layer doesn't always fit in the
next. I have to represent the world I live in, with all the jagged edges."

This is why his multifaceted show Insomnia, a contextual look at
Singapore and south-east Asia, focuses heavily on young artists working
in alternative (and less censored) media such as internet and digital
arts - and delves into such controversies as the "pink dollar", a look
at Singapore's "pragmatic capitalism" in recognising the spending power
of gay culture despite its illegal status.

Ong may be apprehensive about flying the national flag where art is
concerned, but his highly personalised, pan-Asian, multidisciplinary
works have put Singapore on the international map. So strongly has he
codified a distinctively Singaporean stage aesthetic that even local
productions with no connection to Ong or his company TheatreWorks are
often summed up during interval chatter as "good Keng Sen" or "bad Keng
Sen".

Ong was the youngest of six children born to Chinese immigrants and
found himself constantly walking a line between his Chinese-speaking
parents and his English-language education. Even as he discovered the
theatre through his primary school drama club and local British
expatriate productions, his most visceral experiences came from Chinese
street opera.

"What attracted me to theatre was the ability to tell my own narrative,"
he says. "What I first started looking at was my own alienation from my
parent culture, and the idea of negotiating the east and west in my own
life."

Ong studied law at the National University of Singapore, but there he
also kept up his work with the stage, and near his graduation discovered
TheatreWorks, a troupe founded by lawyers who had returned from London
set on creating a distinctly Singaporean theatre.

At their invitation, Ong directed the "Singlish nostalgia musical"
Beauty World, combining Chinese opera and pop music. He was soon
artistic director.

Two factors shaped Ong's contribution to Singapore's late-1980s
postcolonial theatre movement. The first was the knowledge that his
father's family had been scattered throughout south-east Asia. The
second was formal theatre studies at New York University, where he first
encountered the works of experimenters such as Robert Wilson, Meredith
Monk and Philip Glass.

"What really impressed me about those artists was how much they borrowed
from Asia and yet found their individual stamp," says Ong.

The director's view of art as cultural exploration hit new heights with
Lear, his 1997 postmodern deconstruction of Shakespeare commissioned by
The Japan Foundation and developed by Ong's Flying Circus Project, the
theatrical "research and development laboratory" he founded as an
exchange programme for Asian performers of different traditions. Through
a mixture of Peking Opera, Noh Theatre, Thai court dancing and a handful
of Asian musical styles, Lear juxtaposed performers each working in
their native language and stage technique.

Since that production, Ong has been particularly aggressive in
transcending borders. "Is this Singaporean art?" he asks. "I think it
reflects Singapore's hybridity, and I don't think I could do it if I had
been born anywhere else."

For some viewers, however, Ong's approach smacks of emotional detachment
and self-conscious manipulation. At Berlin's House of World Culture,
where he was first invited to curate a festival in 2002, audiences asked
him directly: "You're involved in cultural exchange, but is it art?"

"They felt that art was something in a different realm that had nothing
to do with life," he says. "They agreed that the performers were
wonderful, but argued that they were 'ethnic' artists, as if you
couldn't be contemporary if you were ethnic. In Europe, people rarely
examine their own context or ethnicity, and if you do it's supposed to
be seen as embarrassing, unlike New York, where it's a strength."

Still, Ong admits that his experiences in Berlin have made him speak
more as an individual artist than a cultural negotiator. At times, he
says, he even sides with his critics. "Sometimes I cringe when I see
things I've done before," he laughs. "But then there are times like Lear
where some images still take my breath away. As a creator, you have
these moments when you think, I could never do that any more."

Ong's new directions are visible in The Global Soul the Buddha Project,
a production loosely inspired by Buddhist writings and the essays of the
travel writer Pico Iyer, which premiered at the 2003 Singapore Arts
festival.

"I still believe art must be seen in its cultural context, but I'm no
longer at the confrontational stage," says Ong, "Singapore has always
been multicultural, and has all the signs of being a 'global soul'. But
I'm confident that the feelings in this show permeate our own foundation
so deeply that I don't even have to explain anything."

'Insomnia' is at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts from February
25 to March 12.

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/71fb8b8e-8608-11d9-9d02-00000e2511c8.html

*************************

Stanford Report, February 23, 2005
Chinese art exhibit is highly political
BY BARBARA PALMER

Wang Du's sculpture Youth with Slingshot, modeled on a news photograph
of a Chinese protester outside the American Embassy in Beijing reacting
against the 1999 NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, has a
prominent place near the entrance of On the Edge: Contemporary Chinese
Artists Encounter the West at the Cantor Arts Center. Like the figure in
Wang's sculpture, many of the dozen artists who contributed works to the
exhibit take precise aim at their subjects.

One target is particularly close to home. Huang Yong Ping's 1/4 Hoover
Tower is a wooden representation of the campus landmark installed in the
center's lobby. Huang, a founding member of a Chinese Dadaist group who
now lives in Paris, used a staple gun to cover the nearly 19-foot-high
structure with red, white and blue-striped plastic, a material widely
used by the construction industry in China. Cut-out openings allow
visitors to look inside the installation, empty except for two sentences
on the inside walls: "A ton of food for a pound of history? Or a pound
of explosives in exchange for a ton of history?"

According to the artist, the inscription is based on a statement former
university president Ray Lyman Wilbur made about Herbert Hoover, who, as
head of the American Relief Organization, organized shipments of food to
be sent to Europe and Soviet Russia after World War I. "Hoover is the
greatest packrat of all times because, whenever he leaves a ton of food,
he picks up a pound of history," Wilbur said.

"Of course, he was talking about the 1920s. As everyone knows, today in
Afghanistan and Iraq, after bombs, they airdrop food," Huang said in his
proposal for the work. "There is never innocent food, and there is never
a 'pure' or innocent collection of historical documents. My interest in
the American think tank has to do with thinking about the relationship
between so-called pure, disinterested academic organization and
contemporary political reality."

For Chinese artists who came of age during the Cultural Revolution and
many of those who followed, art and politics are inseparable, said
Britta Erickson, guest curator of the exhibit. Erickson, who earned
degrees from Stanford in art history and East Asian studies and has
lectured in the Art Department, is a leading authority on contemporary
Chinese art.

Artists who were adolescents during Mao Zedong's decade-long Cultural
Revolution inherited a "singular outlook on life and the role of art,"
Erickson wrote in an essay for the catalog she authored to accompany the
exhibit. Traditional brush-and-ink painting, unless used to depict
revolutionary subject matter, and "art for art's sake" were
unacceptable. At the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, the only
way for artists to make a living was in a government-run institution.
Artists found ways to be innovative both within and outside the official
art system, she said. China's post-Cultural Revolution artists "are
politically savvy on many levels."

Contemporary Chinese artists have had to fight for a toehold in the
international art market, dominated by the West, Erickson said. "China's
avant-garde artists are doubly marginal," the curator said. "They are
marginalized in their own country, and China's art is considered
marginal by the international art community." That status is changing
rapidly, however, Erickson added; she gauges interest by the number of
requests for information about individual artists she receives. In the
last few months there has been an incredible amount of interest in
contemporary Chinese art, particularly by collectors, she said.

Chinese views of the West

One of the biggest problems with exhibitions of Chinese art in the West
is that they cater to Western expectations, presenting Chinese art as
tied to past traditions or as an outgrowth of Western art, Erickson
said. (Paintings by Zhang Hongtu in the exhibit simultaneously address
both expectations: In Wang Shen—Monet, Zhang repaints a 12th-century
landscape, originally created on a scroll, in the style of Impressionist
painter Claude Monet.)

Other work in On the Edge cuts to the heart of China's interaction with
the West. Bat Project I, II, III Memorandum documents Huang's "Bat"
projects, which created replicas of parts of the American spy plane that
was forced to land at a military airport on Hainan Island after
colliding with a Chinese military plane. Three installations were halted
or removed from exhibitions in China.

In My New York, photographs and a video show performance artist Zhang
Huan in a post-9/11 work commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American
Art. For the performance, Zhang wore a muscular body-builder costume
made from raw strips of meat, symbolizing U.S. power, and walked through
New York streets releasing white doves into the air and into the hands
of (sometimes tentative) New Yorkers.

The West, an interactive computer-based exhibit by Qiu Zhijie, is an
ongoing project, which uses video clips, interviews and photographs to
present Chinese views of the West. (Among the mix of images drawn from
popular and high culture is Minnie Mouse clad in Tang-dynasty court
dress.) And Xu Bing, a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation award, has
created a classroom in the exhibition, where visitors can practice
"Square Word Calligraphy," which converts the English alphabet into a
character system.

Erickson set out to choose the strongest work by contemporary Chinese
artists that she had seen, and the result of her efforts brings together
the work of some of the most prominent artists working today, she said.
"It's not a huge show, but it includes very important works of art. I
think it will appeal to all kinds of people, from children to prickly
art connoisseurs to intellectuals who can excavate the deeper meanings."

Artists Huang, Yan Lei, Yang Jiechang, Yin Xiuzhen and Zhan Wang are
participating in short campus residencies and creating new works for the
show, which is on display through May 1. (Yin will create an
installation, Fashion Terrorism, in the Thomas Welton Stanford Art
Gallery, beginning March 14.)

On March 9, Erickson will guide a tour of the exhibit hosted by the
Asian Staff Forum. Participants will meet in front of the Cantor Arts
Center at noon. More information about the show is available online at
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/ccva/ or by calling 723-4177.

[image] 1/4 Hoover Tower was installed at the Cantor Arts Center as part
of an exhibit of contemporary Chinese art.
[image] Zhang Huan's My New York: #4 (2002), which is on view at the
Cantor Arts Center through May 1 as part of the exhibit “On the Edge:
Contemporary Chinese Artists Encounter the West.”
[image] Yan Lei, second from right, worked with helpers on painting West
of the West, Stanford Project: Christmas Party as part of his artist
residency on campus.

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/february23/china-022305.html

**************************

People's Daily, February 21, 2005
Donated relics to help revive image of old Beijing

Suo Daming is a 16th-generation descendant of a Beijing family which has
lived in the city since the beginning of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

Now he has finally found an ideal place for a treasured collection of
items handed down by his relatives over the past 360 years.

That place is the Capital Museum, expected to open a new building
displaying collections from Beijing residents to the public this year.

The collection Suo presented to the museum includes everyday articles
from 100 years ago and coupons to buy rationed oil, food and other goods
during the planned economy period between the 1950s and the late 1970s.

He also handed over evidence of the old layout of Beijing that has
gradually disappeared in recent years with all the new construction.

One of the most eye-catching pieces is an old icebox - literally a box
containing ice - made of coloured glaze.

Suo Yibo, Suo Daming's 85-year-old grandfather, said it was used when he
was a boy.

"An icebox kept food cool. I remember Beijing had several ice storage
centres then and special workers would send blocks of ice to different
households everyday. The ice my family used came from a storage place by
the Shichahai Lake," said Suo Yibo.

Another interesting article is an old plate from Jinxiu Alley, one of
the numerous traditional alleys that have disappeared because of massive
construction.

Suo Daming said his family had lived in a traditional courtyard building
in Jinxiu Alley for many years before it was demolished to give way to a
road expansion in 1997.

"My family cherished a deep affection for the alley and our old house;
we had a plaque made to mark the alley and have kept it as a memento,"
said Suo Daming.

He added: " If I did not keep these items properly, I would be an
unworthy heir to my ancestors. My grandfather, my father and I all think
the museum is the perfect place to hold these treasures."

Wang Chuncheng, a museum official in charge of collecting historical
relics from the public, said the museum has collected more than 22,000
sets of ancient treasures in the past four years for the new building at
the Capital Museum.

Wang said the collections from ordinary people in Beijing, most of which
date from between 1840 and 1950, reflect how times have changed.

The articles will be displayed in prominent places in the new building
on Chang'an Boulevard.

Wang said the articles relate to many subjects including Beijing's
politics, economy, military, culture and religion.

"These articles can tell us about the lives and work of people from more
than one century ago, as well as how the city looked in the past.

"For instance, a 92-year-old woman surnamed Feng gave goods she used
when she was young such as silver hairpins, embroidered shoes and a
hand-warmer decorated with patterns of Chinese plum flowers. With these,
people may visualize the image of a young woman from a family of good
social standing in the past, just like a lady described in the classic
novel 'A Dream of the Red Mansions,'" said Wang.

"Behind each of the collections is an interesting story about a person,
a family, and a story of art or industry," Wang added.

He said he is still looking for more relics. Anyone who might be able to
help him should telephone 6403-1357.

Source: China Daily

http://english1.peopledaily.com.cn/200502/21/eng20050221_174157.html

____________________

with kind regards,

Matthias Arnold

http://www.chinaresource.org
http://www.fluktor.de

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