The first performance here in Beijing went OK. I now know that there is a performance there, which is quite a relief but I also see how much more I will have to do. This is going to be a very complex piece if it is to rise to the challenges that it proposes. On the first level however I was happy that I managed to hold it together in Chinese, that was the challenge for Thursday. Now, looking back at it I see how what I did had many similarities to the first performances of previous works of mine: rough, semi improvised and working with the space and people present. That is fine for a first performance, for a try out but now the serious work begins on the surface of the performance. I see how the actions need to modify one another rather than erase one another as they presently do to a greater extent. This erasure creates repetition rather than evolution which what I want to achieve. I also see how there are many missed opportunities in the text-action interaction which I will have to do something about. There will have to be some re-writing and some alteration to the actions but only as much as I will be able to incorporate in time for the next performance, a week today in Xiamen.
Here in Beijing I am staying at the Yoyo hotel and I met over breakfast a golf-course designer named Ron from North Dakota. I now know more about constructing golf courses in China than ever imagined I would ever get to know.
I saw a concert of Irish musicians last night in a rather formal concert hall. It was odd for me to observe a culture I am familiar with from bars in Kentish Town and Kilburn presented on a large stage in China as world music. Of course something is lost in this relocation but I also saw how it represents far more than it did previously. They become the face of Ireland and polish up their act to make it presentable on the large stage. This made me wonder if it was possible to present almost anything on a large stage if you find the right way to package and stage it. I had to think of early Fluxus concerts in Germany which were, on occasion, presented in proper concert halls and wonder if such a framing were possible today. I think there are some limitations but I also think that there are more possibilities than I generally assume there are. When things travel a distance they often end up in more formal spaces out of the necessities of production so I should perhaps try to see if there are ways to imagine making these crossovers more successfully as I tend to resist them at present as I have nothing to do with such spaces in the UK.
Today I will do some work on the performance then head out to an opening of a friend’s exhibition at C-Space in the Cao Changdi art district.
The last day or two have been spent doing mostly the same as the previous days: forcing a Chinese text into my head. I have had help from my translator Sophie who has also been adjusting the text so that it works from an action point of view, and from my language partner Charlotte.
I did have time to make the English translation which will be read by a friend He Fan in Beijing during the performance. It is a Chinglish translation and I rather like the way it robs any semblance of subtlety from the original text which I speak. It offers such advice as:
Air France do not fly!
On the subject of them I have heard back from their customer service department and they have rejected my claim though curiously did not mention the fact that they had earlier accepted it. I don’t know what that means. Anyway I’m now going on the offensive starting with the performance tomorrow and stepping it up with a TV interview the following day. I know for a fact that it will cost them a lot more money to hold their current line than it would to just refund me so it will be interesting to see if they take a pragmatic line and refund me or whether they will stick to their script. In either case I now win as this is good material to work with and if they do pay me back then I both get my money and a way of rounding off that part of the performance. If they don’t I can enjoy the David and Goliath situation as that plays into the performance rather well too.
I’m now in Xiamen airport ready to fly to Beijing. I have plenty of extra clothing as I see it is still around 0 degrees at night. I have become spoilt and will be returning to familiar climes.
I have been spending most of the last day or two at home learning the Chinese text (in pinyin) and predictably enough it takes about 5 times longer to learn something in Chinese rather than something in English. Still, it does actually stick more or less which is encouraging. I have to have this ready for the show in Beijing on Thursday and simply don’t have time to make it perfect and polished so this will be more of an experiment than a finished performance. I have not even seriously tried integrating the many actions yet or the translation pauses. I think there will be a lot discover in the actual doing of the performance!
So the KLM/Air France plot thickens! I forgot to mention that when I was in Guangzhou last week I met a man working for KLM at a drinks reception in the Dutch consulate. He was quite an affable sort of guy and I mentioned my ongoing battle with KLM/AF over the flight here. He thought I probably would get my money back but it was not certain. I recently wrote to him and explained the situation in a friendly sort of way that I will basically be a pain in the ass unless and until I get my refund. He offered to now take up the matter and forward my woes onto some other people so fingers crossed there will be some movement here.
I have been neglecting the blog slightly as I was away on a trip to Shenzhen and Guangzhou with the other CEAC artists and recently returned. It is a bit hard to understand how the spaces function for me as they are supported in a different way, it seems they are supported by one of two sources: public money or property developers. The latter is something I am completely unused to, in the UK I don’t see anything like that at all. Barrett Homes funding a contemporary Art Museum? Never. What was even more surprising is that they were probably the places more relevant for my work to be presented in, at least that was the impression I got but like always, I may have got the wrong end of the stick so we’ll see what comes of these contacts. One way or another it was encouraging to see genuine contemporary art spaces are getting established and are thinking ambitiously.
Now I am very busy putting the performance together. I have the sense of not having enough time.
