The China Project

121 Three Decades: The Contemporary Chinese Collection HE Yunchang In the mid to late 1990s, a number of artists in China began working with performance, ‘placing emphasis on the body in action, on physical endurance and transcendence of the body . . . and the body in relation to its environment’. 1 He Yunchang’s seminal performances, such as Dialogue with water 1999, have made him one of the best known of these artists. Although he lived in Beijing from 1998, many of He’s early performances took place in Yunnan Province, his birthplace, and in remote and unpopulated areas. The performances involve the artist’s body pitted against external forces — often naturally occurring (such as water, earth, fire) but also human. He comments: ‘My work is very ordinary looking. I always use the simplest materials in order to create the largest imaginary space. Even with simple, everyday gestures and materials you can make work of a great magnitude and get the essence of something important’. 2 In each work, the act itself — the process of the performance — is important, rather than a clearly visible outcome. He also prefers to perform naked or stripped to the waist, emphasising the immediacy of the body and the self. Dialogue with water occurred on 14 February 1999 at Lianghe River, in Yunnan Province. Suspending himself upside down from a crane, He was lowered towards the fast-flowing river. An account of the performance records the bare facts: Ar Chang 3 was hoisted upside down above a river and he kept stabbing a knife into the water for 30 minutes. At the speed of 150 meters per minute, 4500 meters of the river was ‘cut’ while Ar Chang’s arms had a 1cm open cut each. The blood flowed along his arms into the ‘wound’ of the river. 4 Photographs and video of the performance show the artist to be a slight yet indomitable figure against the force of the water. The documentation highlights what appears to be the futility of his action, and the extremes of physical and psychological endurance required. As friend and artist Ai Weiwei writes: Ar Chang, knife, river and blood made up the condition for the dialogue with water. There was no audience, no lighting, no music. But the work itself provides sufficient experience and speaks unbelievable facts, which stab into our spiritual reality like a sharpened weapon. This omnipresent idealistic reality is our history, current condition and future one that hasn’t happened yet. 5 Water is often symbolic of the destabilisation of time and place; the inexorable flow of history. He may have intended to comment on the political and social changes sweeping across China; persistence and endurance in the face of external hardship are the common themes in his work. More importantly, through his acts of futile heroism, focused on and through the body, He Yunchang makes sense of his immediate environment and his relation to it. endnotes 1 Thomas J Berghuis, Performance Art in China , Timezone 8, Hong Kong, 2006, p.113. 2 He Yunchang, quoted in ‘Interview between He Yun Chang and Rachel Lois Clapham’, Live Art UK , <http:// www.liveartuk.org/writingfromliveart/indexf92e.html >, viewed July 2008. 3 Ai Weiwei, quoted in ‘Ar Chang’s persistence’, in Tang Xin and He Yunchang (eds), Ar Chang’s Persistence: An Exhibition of He Yunchang’s Works [exhibition catalogue], Beijing Tokyo Art Projects (BTAP), Beijing, 2004, p.6. As Ai notes, He Yunchang’s heroism and tenacity earned him the affectionate nickname ‘Ar Chang’ among his friends in the art world. 4 Ai Weiwei, p.6. 5 Ai Weiwei, p.6. Dialogue with water (stills) 1999 Beta video, DVD, 15 minutes, colour, stereo, ed. 1/9 / Purchased 2008. The Queensland Government’s Gallery of Modern Art Acquisitions Fund