by Daniel Aschwanden
Translation
The moment of language, the extreme difficulty on my/our side to talk chinese, to understand the whole knowledge of this language, the embedded knowledge of thousands of years of culture and its concepts, the time it took to even say „bu mien bai“( I don´t understand) and say it in a way „they“ would understand it.
The translation-problem started with the simple aim to find the studiospace of WEN HUI – living dance group. Somewhere near apparently, the taxidriver gave up and dropped us , pointing somewhere along the small street leading inside a kind of compound that was blocked by a construction site. Dust, sweating bodies, noisy presence of village live, something like a centre, we decided to just follow the road, followed by the astonished gazes of the villagers colliding with ours. Curiosity and insecurity. A child shitting on a pile of gravelled stones, a vegetable market and just besides stinking garbage, some kids playing billard on desperate tables under the open sky, many ways to go. And we went them as people kept sending us around pointing here pointing there. Construction work everywhere, urban developement area, work in progress, next time it might look totally different, what appeared as poorness to us wasn´t really, we were told later. The poorest ones the travelling workers, housing and sleeping in the dusty, humid rooms they were building. Next time we already might not see them around anymore.
The studio/space
was located with other spaces behind huge iron gates and grey brickwalls – no indications. Surprizingly Wen HUI living dance studio did not work in an old loft as expected – they worked in a highly elaborated architectural treasure. Inmidst of the dirty and particularly desperate surroundings of the village, located somewhere outside the 5th belt road near the highway to the airport in the urban developmental area of Chaoyang district it had been built kind of illegally (If you don´t ask, nobody will bother) very recently within incredible 4 months, designed by architect Ai Weiwei.
And again we had to question our gaze: remarking the closedness of the space , like a forteress separated from what was the outside. What does the closedness signify? Is it a comment on a situation or the product of tradition? How to read it?
Where there is bearly a privatness and no public space – ones own space bears the promise of potentiality.The radical architecture of Ai Weiwei – the missing of any decoration, the extreme pointedness of pure function, making cases for what they will be filled with, providing spaces of creation.
The collaboration between the users and the designer had been as functional as the buildings appeared: „they told me what they needed and I designed the spaces“ On the other hand it´s quit an understatement of AiWeiwei?, leaving out all the contexts he´was literally building on:
Using the classical material of brickstone that were used in the area, using a very classical shape of a farmers-and/ or workshopyard that he varied. Not mentioning his longlasting process of investigation and questioning of forms in art and architecture.
The outcome: something like a zen space, a carefully organized sum of cubes and one hall; could be a monastery as well as a workshoplocation , but also a space that left something open, undefined – to fill with thought, work or leasure.
Within the dirt and mysery of the surrounding still rather disparate looking village the esthetics of the hidden location could also be seen as a subversive act – but again its a question of viewpoint – may be it should „just“ be seen as the space it is – a case for producing art/work.
Economies
Would you know of any fringe group working in designed space like that? I cannot name a second one.
Could you name a commercial company in the west that would support a fringe group providing a rehearsel space ? I cannot.What are the economics behind this enterprise?
On the one hand hand there is the functioning concept to produce synergies between the producing architecture /interior and graphic designers ( who must make money in the booming city) and the danceperformance group, there are shared interests for example the production of movies- and there is friendship and a sharing of artistic ideas.
This allows a modell of support and production beyond statefunding – which could well serve as a structural model also for the west with the potentially fading away of the cultural budgets.
On the other hand it is very clear that living dance studio is not just depending on its partners – the group is very successfull touring its pieces and recent prices received from the Kampnagelfestival and the Zürich theatrespectacle garanty the coverage of the comparably low rent and the structural costs of maintaining the group.
A pivoting point of communication is by the way embedded in the architecture: the common kitchen and eating place located just besides the rehearsal space. 2 times a day there is a cheap menue available-freshly prepared in the best Yunnan –cookingstyle. This is concept and Wenguang calls this room the real artspace as it is the space for eating, drinking and talking.
work
„What do you think about the work?“, asked Wenguang after we had seen some rehearsals. It was a key moment : the discussion about the work, about what we saw
The hesitating on my side – being friendly –or really discussing art? And the decision to go for openness which in the end made up the quality of our exchange.
How to translate values? We immediately had started to question our gaze on what we saw.
Colonial gaze? Patronizing gaze? Clash of culture, deconstruction versus a vocabulary of dancetheatre kind of post Pina Bausch stile? The presence of difference, but exactly what difference? Difference of codes in use , or even more precisely, different understandings of the same codes? I started thinking that it wasn´t so much about the question of an evaluation of codes , or the codes themselves, but much more about differences within the contexts.
Which prejudices manifest themselves in a gaze? What is the negotiation about -the establishing of truth? Are we the missionaries of deconstruction aiming to produce consciousness as an essential truth /value of democracy?–
I had been the only one of our group that had seen work of WEN HUI before. And I had perceived it quit much as a patchwork of stiles, which was very interesting to me as I took it as a model of how stiles and esthetics travel in globalism. As a kind of embodyment of flows of information.
Even so they had their very own take within the combining of the many informations. And may be thats the crucial point anyway – because in that sense we don´t differe too much from „them“, having to adapt to new concepts, to the constantly changing input of information of all kind.
But what gave the kind of avantgarde kick to the work was the connection of the choreografic work with the concepts and practices of documentary work as wenguang brought it in from his professional background as a filmmaker.
rehearsal
a working space. It was cold. At first glance: work happening on different places, something like an 11x11 m2 wooden rectangular covered by the typical dancecarpet in black. On top of it dancers moving like dancers.
Just a little further back in the long hall a women sewing on an old footdriven sewing machine . In the very back two men operating bamboosticks in a very special way on what looked like a kind of weaving frame.
The simultanious presence of these codes – of the rhythms of working hands and of the bodies producing a meta language of expression that often appeared to me as an illustration of something, where as the workers were just doing and really doing their work and not illustrating to do it. ( Would the work of dancers be to create illustrations?)
The difference of the working codes consisted in a different presence of the people performing them. And this already pointed towards a question of choices and stile ; why would the dancers be obliged to produce a kind of overexpressive material? And why would the real-action of just doing work not be integrated – just the products coming out of it? And why was I sad about it?
At first it looked as if we were watching a quit authoritarian process – indicated and controlled by wenguang and wen hui . They were giving input and this input was worked on in longlasting improvisations. The dancers being „creative“ within this setting produced material that appeared like outdated in my eyes, referencing to styles of dancetheatre that nowadays maybe are only practiced in very conservative not to say oldfashionned statetheatres in germany.
But I have to admit that I saw similar approaches in the south of europe, also sometimes in the east as well as in southamerica. There must be a connection between the use of this material and the developement of society. The speed of modernisation and deconstruction? How do the traces lead back into history? The roots of this expressionism going back to the german expressionist dance that produced these forms between the time of the first and second world war. The motives then occupied by the Nazi regime and used to create statecontrolled art. It only reappeared as an impulse of dancetheatre by Pina Bausch where it was very much conotated by a kind of surrealist use which created tension and kind of multilayered possibilities to read the material... How to connect it to critical analysis of gestures, Agamben etc.? and how to understand a constant process of evaluation and re-evaluation in the emerging culture of contemporary china? Could bring me to a discourse comparing „open“ and „closed“ forms.
I was missing the active participation of the dancers as creators – giving their personal input and also their input in expressing their thoughts about the construction and placing of it. But that was simply speaking about my expectations – how to translate and negotiate criteria ?
The use of the props – for example plastic hands from design-exhibition puppets, a wheelchair or huge red plastic bags ( I immediately thought of flags) produced imagery that I was reading as a kind of pathetic kitsch at first hand. What does it mean here? Understanding that this group is the very first one to set out confronting itself with new tendencies in dance & performance, to leave behind the very strict models and codes practised in this country before. Understanding their process as a negotiation between history and the new informations flooding in from the west , a negotiation also with their audience and the conservative point of view that formed the picture of expression until the present time- with its underlying quest not to touch certain political issues.
It was an extraordinary event that the next day the group spent discussing their work. O f course crisis and the resulting need to question ones material make part of every process. Nevertheless could we observe a sincere openness to suggestions, questions and remarks that we had given as an input.
At the presentation of the work in progress during the dashanzi festival the connection to the topic „report on temperature“ at the present level was not easy to read, apart from the classical movement of diagnosis- putting the hands on ones forehand which appeared as a ritual and the work seemed to show more connections to the space and history of the factory and its workers. And I wondered if the choice to situate it on a variation of small wooden ministages –expressing decentralisation – which then again was being watched by the audience from rather centralized positions- didn´t reproduce the metaphorical relative to the political situation in the country- where paradoxically enough a certain decentralisation is monitored from a strictly centralized position.
And was it part of the same contradictory complex how the dancers then could answer the quest of their artistic directors „to show your own live, dance your own experience“ within a vocabulary that still remained strongly formalized? I tend to see it as an open question, as an open process of course opening further questions pointing towards the future of the group.
Who would they choose to develope their skills and methods ? and it is very obvious that they can choose. What will be the directions of the artistic developement? As an expression of which identity behind the stiles? How to address and shape the questioning and reformatting of forms and codes, the fitting them into the contexts of art and production in this country that establishes itself as the biggest market worldwide , as an emerging superpower ?-How to relate to the production of goods and all the enherent destruction that capitalism forwards – only that the means of control are fascist ones – and so internalized that they rule nearly out of the invisible?
Workshops
Due to the tight schedule of the groupmembers with them we concentrated more on working on „presence of the performer“. So it was more the workshopframe (with interested people associated to the group )that allowed us to bring in and develope „our“ content: the research on food. This went along with exercises designt to deal with the „presence“ of the performer. I really appreciated this setting as we got a broader idea about people in Beijing. Within the first weekendworkshop we extended a structure that very much stressed the connectedness of a group of people and their actions via visual consciousness first into the site specifity of the studiocomplex, the strong architecture of Ai Weiwei , and secondly out into the streets and foodshops of the surrounding little village.
The second workshop, together with a lecture located in the big hall of dashanzi 798 raised some interesting questions. Through the being public of the workshop it was not only a workshop but also a performance , within the strech of 2 hours several hundred people watched. Interesting how the fact of „simply“ some persons getting a body massage by several others became such a point of attention . The display offered also to relate to the watchers by suddenly approaching them and return the gaze. In the end the whole hall was used to strech a row of people in a huge diagonal line through the space being a human performanceinstallation, creating suspension and a compression of time through being there in concentration doing a maximum of fife steps in 20 minutes.
Dogmas:
What ´s the points we share(ed) .... I meant to recognize a pattern in something like an ecclecticist approach within WEN HUI . A sincerety in opening for new information and trying to apply it. Forming constant recombinations of old and new material , developing an intuition for what is needed for ones developement. Following a process that is very radical in its transcending approach towards forms, as there is not anymore a singular ideology to follow but to re-question every step and also questioning and observing the contexts and the change within them, as everything is moving, and what could have been a right choice today might be a wrongone tomorrow. Approaches that ask for transmedial steps across the boarders of the form of dance , or filmmaking, or drawing, or cooking ... and yet ask not to forget history and tradition as a point of reference and root of cultural heritage.
A process of inititation. In that sense I felt very much at home – within all obvious differences and misunderstandings, that where not even yet revealed. I felt at home in a setting of mind , feeling warm and familiar.
About colonial gazes... the situation is quit interesting because with the economical rise of China there comes along a rise of consciousness. And if economy is the colonial power in the world we might soon face a change of paradigms and need to get acquainted to the thought of becoming colonialized ourselves. A collision of gazes anyway is programmed – and happening.
The stay forced me to question my values that met the values that were relevant there. The meeting between reality and our presets ; the clichés of how to experience it, how to read it- that shape what we see.
A Vibrating experience that now is echoing through the body and the mind – and I´m sitting, trying to find words...
A short glimpse in a society in change, a strong game of powers, offering the writing of new texts where older ones are fading away .
What I´m going to do next
Digesting the exitement of my stay in Beijing. The experience also of an incredible synergy between us, the visitors. How to deal with the material, hours of video, undeveloped ideas? It is clear to me that I want to come back to Beijing and I beleave to share this idea with my collegues. The conceptualization of our foodproject towards a performative representation will be an aim as well as to find a mode for the future collaboration with WEN HUI-living dance studio, included in our food project or as a seperate one.
Then I´m aiming at realizing a mobile performance installation- a one man company as a performance enterprize –It´s the one man shareholdercompany that society now is asking for; the productive human unit for maximum exploitation without having to take social responsability for it anymore. Which results in working relations of precariousness without social security – which is the end of a paradigm of socialdemocratic policy that aimed at garantying also to artists somehow decent salaries and the benefits of the social system...)
The developement and maintaining of a socialsecurity system you might say has been a value and to a certain extent is a value that european societies have grown and can bring into account within the international community of nations
context: the decline of funding that does not allow anymore to run a company by statesfunding –
It also means dealing with a redefinition of my work including more of the ecclecticist structures : playing with codes of all kind of media reconnecting them in a multylayerd art piece departing from the body of the performer ;the piece should have social layers, formal layers, interactive layers...which have to be connected conceptually , forming a rhizome of several artistic –disciplines.
The relaunch of my homepage is something to start as well as the final editing of a documentary that i was shooting with some other people last sommer.
I´m in a process of developing a new interfacetechnology using mobilephones for streaming quicktimemovies which should be possible from summer on. New code H264 for dealing with video in all kinds of resolutions makes it more easy. This will provide a base for a new series of interventions in public spaces being able to stream live and then put the datafiles directly on the homepage, where they will document the performance.
Then there is the project of curating and developing a concept for research and production connecting the resources of the media- festival ars electronica in Linz and Tanzquartier in Vienna to develope new work embracing danceperformance and new media art. This is already conceptualized but needs some attention to let it happen and realize it .
There will be a 24 hours solo performance within Tanzquartiers factory season within the topic of radical-local in the begiining of july.
From september on I will be artist in residence at the Viennese Tanzquartier.