The China Project

36 Over the years, contemporary Chinese art has been praised internationally by the apparition of the ‘Chinese Avant-garde’; a term that is capable of translating some of the groundbreaking facets in the expansion of new art in China after 1978. At the same time, the term has become too restricted in its proliferation of a universal avant-garde movement. The proliferation of a Chinese avant-garde also became too dependent on the provision of a radical counterculture that is capable of demarcating the binary opposition between unofficial and official art. Instead, the development of Chinese contemporary art over the past 30 years needs to be understood in terms of continuous ‘experimentalism’, which better encapsulates the development of an unremitting anthology of groundbreaking, contemporaneous visual and conceptual styles, techniques and discourses. ‘Chinese experimental art’ ( shiyan yishu ) proves a more suitable term; particularly as Chinese artists and critics regularly use this term to describe their work. 2 Experimentalism plays an important role in the overall development of modern art and contemporary art in China over the past 30 years. Chinese experimental art is characterised by complex interactions and discourses of artistic, social and cultural transformation. Rather than producing ‘art for art’s sake’, much of the expansion of Chinese modern and contemporary art during the past 30 years is tied to the development of a new critical mindset; of exhibiting an attitude; and of creating an embodied practice that is based on personal experience but which exceeds modernist thoughts about self-expression. Chinese experimental art is marked by the production of an intricate range of new artistic styles, techniques and discourses of art; generating a new ‘artistic language’ ( yishu yuyan ) that is tied to a new social consciousness, as well as to the conditions of existence in a rapidly changing social–political environment. Performance art plays a key role in the overall development of Chinese experimental art, and provides the basis of many of the most important transformations of modern and contemporary art in China over the past 30 years. Culture, action and performance The development of performance art in China coincides with the gradual disintegration of the national bureaucratic system governing art and cultural production, which led artistic production to become used as a tool for class struggle between 1949 and 1976. Performance art challenges the handling of art as an allegorical device for political and ideological justification under Mao’s rule. The historical discourse of Chinese art after the Cultural Revolution is often linked to two distinct periods, separating the 1980s from the 1990s. The decade between 1979 and 1989 is best described in terms of the development of a ‘new wave’ of modern art, marked by a growing number of artists who sought new ways to challenge the ideological ramification of cultural production in China. The pioneers of new art production are part of the ’85 New Wave movement ( ’85 xinchao yishu yundong ). This movement links a large number of artist groups that emerged during the course of the 1980s, who challenged the conventional discourse of modern art in China. 3 The 1980s was a time when artists and intellectuals came together in the construction of a new modern culture. They were inspired by the New Culture Movement of the mid 1910s and the 1920s, which grew from the disillusionment with traditional Chinese culture and also called for the formation of a new culture, based on international standards. At the same time, these artists and intellectuals who established themselves during the 1980s had witnessed the violent destruction of traditional culture during the Cultural Revolution. In their common interest to ‘seek truth from facts’, they became drawn to the idea of reconstituting a national modern culture that would unite traditional Chinese cultural standards with new Western styles, techniques, and discourses of art and culture. The result was the rise of a ‘high culture fever’ — the rapid renewal and rebirth of a new modern Chinese culture where ‘intellectuals rather than average citizens appeared to be the unequivocal spokespeople for the Chinese modern’. 4 Artists occupy a crucial role in the advent of ‘high culture fever’ in China. Initial reforms of the art system in the late 1970s were accompanied by tremendous challenges to the legitimising structure of the historical discourse of modern art and culture. The reopening of major institutions of tertiary education in the late 1970s fostered new alliances between artists, writers, poets, musicians, filmmakers and public intellectuals. During the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s many artists deliberately staged their works in the public domain. The way in which these artists forged new alliances can be related to the notion of the Gesamt , whereby individual artists formed collective gatherings to manifest their ideas in direct contact with society. During the late 1970s and throughout the first half of the 1980s, several groups of artists in China staged open- air exhibitions to present their works to a wider audience. Amid these public events, a historical discourse of performance art emerges.