The Study Room
I managed to get my train down to London with no cancellations or delays, which I was pleased about. I used the study room at the Live Art Development Agency to research video documentation of artists who have made live art/performance work in China (www.thisisliveart.co.uk). In the study room there are a series of study guides to help users find relevant references. I used ‘A small map piece of performance art in China’ by Adele Tan, 2008 which was really helpful as it listed lots of video documentation. I know that documentation can never replace seeing the real thing/performance/event however I do believe that work can have a second life in other forms and is a good resource to have to reflect upon as a way of learning.
Even though I mostly looked at video documentation the work which is burnt into my memory is an image of MA Yanling holding a gun to her head in a public space, no one is looking at her, they just look at the camera taking a snapshot. This work was made for an exhibition called Internal Injuries 2 at the Morella gallery in Beijing, 06. Liang Tao, Madhouse in Paradise was a performance where she lived in the gallery, which was set-up like a cell and she was dressed in an institutional uniform. This personal display and blurring of public and private behaviour is something I am interested in developing in my work.
I watched the video documentation of a performance called Speech a collaboration between Clare Charnley & Shu Yang for the Dashanzui International Art Festival in Beijing, 2005 (www.clarecharnley.com). Clare appears to be in a courtyard, she takes to the stage and speaks into a mic as if she knows fluent Mandarin, however she is wired up to Shu Yang who is watching her on a live feed and relaying the story to her. I did not know what she was saying as there were no subtitles which I liked although on Clares website you can see a video clip with translation on. I think she is reading a news story about a pregnant woman who was beaten by her husband, which seems to have happened in the local area.
Clare performed Speech during 2002 – 2007 in collaboration with various artists in many different countries. She comments in her statement about the background questions to the project, “How can the foreign artist make work for a context they have a superficial understanding of? Can an audience in the host country engage with the incoming artist without viewing him/her as exotic, patronizing, didactic or irrelevant?”
As I left the Study room all I kept thinking about was, what can I offer? So I left a slightly bruised banana at a crossing in Old Street.
