- Venue
- Centre for Chinese Conetemporary Art
- Location
- North West England
Vital '07 has been important for presenting not just Chinese live art but for bringing artists and audiences together to investigate the current state of live art as a genre. A showcase of non-European artists brings to our attention different practices, different concerns and different approaches that are otherwise unknown to the artistic community in the UK and is a valuable tool for understanding our native values and practices. Seeing what live art is achieving elsewhere has also been an important part of the cultural exchange and much can be taken from the two days of performances and the subsequent two days' conference for critical and artistic development.
Performance style has tended to be physically challenging with many artists opting to risk their own safety and well-being: Hao Lang (China) performed his terrifying exercise regime on a broken mirror and posed a serious health hazard to himself and eventually to the audience. Other artists chose to test their endurance and stoicism in prolonged and difficult tasks: Zhou Bin (China) repeated “I am a terrorist” until he retched and vomited without pausing his recitation, a particularly gruesome example of the lengths artists went to. Becky Ip (Canada) performed her altogether more gentle chalk stencils on the pavement outside the Chinese Arts Centre, which was still an incredible test of strength, starting at 11.00am and not finishing until 5.00pm on a cold, damp day in northern England. This emerging stylistic theme created connections within an otherwise very diverse group of artists and was only apparent because of the festival format. This format imposed a fairly artificial label of 'Chinese' on a programme comprising artists of Chinese origin but some of whom practice in Singapore, America, Germany, Hong Kong and Belgium. Nonetheless, the potentially overwhelming schedule drew out connections and similarities that a looser or less regulated schedule would not have managed, and unexpected, somewhat troubling patterns in form and presentation became apparent.
It is tempting to identify the control and discipline in all the performances as a 'Chinese' practice as every piece had a methodical, systematic approach. Identifying this approach to live art performance as 'Chinese' could be seen as transferring the existing stereotype of the inscrutable, hard-working Chinese businessman to the inscrutable, hard-working Chinese live artist. This is a not entirely desirable shift of Chinese stereotypes between the professional fields of business and live art as it is more desirable to hope that live art challenges stereotypes rather than perpetuates them – and yet the stoicism, determination and commitment to the tasks set in Jason Lim's determination to catch the smallest drops of water in his glass, Rosa Mei's repeated fortune telling process with audience members and Becky Ip's pavement marking were about effort, control and labour. It may only be coincidence that the artists contributing to Vital '07 all happen to have methodical, systematic approaches to their work, but it is a coincidence that nonetheless suggests and perpetuates a stereotype. This has happened because artists have been brought together in a festival programme with a remit of unspecified 'Chinese' distinction. We have therefore witnessed Chinese performances, Chinese artists and inadvertently, a form of Chinese practice – but was this intended? And now we have these made these distinctions, what do we do with them?
Anxieties and urges around documentation also took many forms in this festival, preoccupying a surprising amount of time in discussions and in actual performances themselves. Much comment was made about the proliferation of cameras and recording equipment attending each performance; some of the documentation was carried out by other Vital '07 artists so the status of the records themselves is ambiguous – are they artworks in themselves or just documentary evidence? Brendan Fan's contribution to the programme was documentation with no perceivable live element made accessible or available. This raised more questions about the line between art and documentary, keeping the topic very much at the forefront of the festival's themes and the importance of bearing witness never abated throughout the two days.
The practical and logistical reasons for exhaustive documentation of Chinese live art are fairly simple: artists are scattered globally, performances are hard to access across different time zones and continents, documentation makes witnessing the performances possible. The anxiety around documenting the performances at Vital '07 is understandable as the transience of live art is one aspect that perpetuates the difficulty of the genre. Removing the stigma of 'difficulty' by providing extensive reference material is an admirable though extremely daunting task. The value of documentary evidence on the scale of that collected at Vital '07 will be seen as time passes; with the changes China is undergoing and the subsequent shifts in perceptions of Chinese culture and Chinese people, it is likely the value – financial, cultural and artistic – can only increase.
Bearing witness carries a lot of weight when considering the legacy of Chinese cultural history. With frequent news stories about restrictions on freedom of expression in China, in particular around the internet and oppressed media state, witnessing and documenting Chinese art and culture has never been more important, guaranteeing the legacy of artists' work never more urgent. The whole festival and subsequent conference seems to have been held in anticipation of change as the 2008 Olympics in Beijing creep ever closer and more economic progress transforms China's global relations. The essence of what is deemed Chinese will be altered and with that the essence of Chinese art will change too. Vital '07 has been a chance to bear witness to Chinese live art as it is, to testify what it has been and most importantly to ensure it has a rich and continuously evolving future: this is absolutely vital.
