Long March Project at Performa, 20072007.
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Introduction
Lu Jie, Qiu Zhijie, and Ingo Günther hosted Avant-Garde, a Long March Collective workshop at China Institute that introduced the Long March Project to the Performa audience, explained its aspirations for social significance, and grappled with questions of how and why to initiate an avant-garde movement in China. Among the subjects discussed was the traditional Chinese concept of time as non-progressive, wherein looking for moving forward and backward in time is bound together in a way that is radically different from Western linear thinking.
An hour into the workshop, the Long March Collective invited the audience to put this “backward” concept into practice by gathering outside in two lines and marching backward from China Institute on Sixty-fifth Street down bustling Park and Fifth Avenues, through the lobby of The Museum of Modern Art, to Times Square. Walking backward through the crowded streets of New York for three hours was disorienting, physically challenging, and, in the midst of so much foot and automobile traffic, at times even harrowing; each person held the shoulder of the marcher in front of them for guidance, It may have been confusing for those on the sidelines, but those marching backward while moving forward in time and space understood something of how the Long March Collective is attempting to create a new future past for Chinese contemporary art. ––Rachel Lois Clapham
Shown at:
China Institute
Nov 11, 2007 10 am – 4:30 pm
Curated by Lu Jie & David A. Ross
Associate Curator Defne Ayas (Curator of Performa)
Special Thanks to France Pepper (China Institute)
Co-presented by Performa, Long March Project and China Institute.
With thanks from Long March Project to Albion, London.
Introduction
At the Studio Museum in Harlem, international artists and scholars of African and Asian descent came together to discuss issues of political activism and revolutionary acts in both China and the United States and the broader global arena. For this event, participants gathered together for a provocative and performative dialogue to negotiate the possibility of a new dimension of social realism connected to the production of contemporary art today. Harlem School of New Social Realism was initiated by artist Zhao Gang in his home in Harlem during the summer of 2002. Its initial group of artists and writers including Watch Hoyt, Franklin Sirmans, Deborah Grant, Lilly Wei, Brett Cook-Dizney, and Jeff Sonhouse.
The expanded conversation during Performa 07 are joined by new members, artists Kalup Linzy, Coco Fusco, Hank Willis Thomas, Denenge Akpem, and Ken Lum, writers Andrew Maerkle, Stanford Carpenter, and Kao Chien-hui, with Long March Collective’s Lu Jie, Qiu Zhijie and David Tung. The cacophony of the broadcasted discussions from respective subgroups on the plaza has re-created the real scenarios for such diasporic condition, which is among the topical questions of Harlem School of New Social Realism.
Shown at:
The Studio Museum in Harlem
Nov 14, 2007 3 pm – 5 pm
Curated by Lu Jie & David A. Ross
Associate Curator Defne Ayas (Curator of Performa)
Special Thanks to Romi Crawford (The Studio Museum in Harlem)
Co-presented by Long March Project, Performa, and The Studio Museum of Harlem as part of Performa 07.
With thanks from Long March Project to Albion, London.
Introduction
In Just a Blink of an Eye, at first sight, this work by leading conceptual artist Xu Zhen seems to defy possibility. In an empty room at the gallery are people completely tilted, as if ready to topple, but frozen as if in time or in space. Although the optical illusion can be surmised to be accomplished through a metal frame upon which the model lays upon, the work nonetheless serves to create an anxiety within the viewer that is at once exhilarating, as if the viewer has been liberated from the constraints of time and physics, as well as debilitating, in the failure to see the action resolved. The work is performed by migrants recruited from Chinatown, and other communities within New York, pointing at their liminal status within an undefined space. Their migration has been frozen and trapped, at the same time, the relationship of the viewer is also called into question; their subjectivity both exercising the power to freeze and create a snap shot, as if in the blink of an eye, at the same time, filled with an anxiety with the need for resolution. Will the person stand up, or will they fall over––or will they remain stuck forever?
Shown at:
James Cohan Gallery
Nov 7 – Nov 10, 2007 12 pm – 6 pm
Curated by Lu Jie & David A. Ross
Associate Curator Defne Ayas (Curator of Performa)
Co-presented by Performa, Long March Project, and James Cohan Gallery as part of Performa 07
Introduction
The Thunderstorm is Slowly Approaching, by the artist Qiu Zhije, takes the traditional Chinese dragon dance as a starting point for investigating the pressures to hide national identity within a host culture, in a festive public gathering in Chinatown. The Thunderstorm is Slowly Approaching includes installation, performance, video, and a ceremonial ten-member dragon dance team wearing a costume made from camouflage.
Shown at:
The Museum of Chinese in the Americas
Nov 10, 2007 12 pm – 2 pm
ACAF NY
Nov 10, 2007 3 pm – 3:30 pm
Curated by Lu Jie & David A. Ross
Associate Curator Defne Ayas (Curator of Performa)
with special thanks to Barbara Pollack.
Co-presented by Long March Project, Performa, and Museum of Chinese in Americas as part of Performa 07, co-produced by Chambers Fine Art.
Special support for this program was provided by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation
In the second edition of Performa, Long March Project collaborated with four of its artists-comrades on the performance-based works that examine ideas of time and place in the trans-national context.