The first three sessions of Warming Up were devoted to a review of the performance art that took place in Chengdu before 2003. In the fourth session, we moved away from Chengdu and invited Mr. Zeng Qunkai to share the history of performance art in Xinjiang. In the fifth session, we invited Gao Yuan, an artist and founder of Xining Contemporary, to the archive to share the history of performance art in Qinghai.
Introduction of the sharing session by Dong Kejun, project leader of “Warm Up” program
During the preparation for the sharing session, it was discussed what color to use for the poster: “Qinghai Lake”! Gao Yuan blurted it out almost without thinking. The poster was printed out in a crisp, bright blue color that was pleasing to the eye. It was a great contrast to the sharp, isolated, sentimental and coarse works of Qinghai artists displayed at the sharing session. In the process of combing through the literature before the sharing session, we contacted artists such as Shao Yinong and Black Moon (Ji Shengli), who lived and created in Qinghai in the early days, and verified some of the vaguely remembered literature, and made a number of new discoveries that made people sigh with emotion. For example, Shao Yinong’s series of photographic works, “The Mountains and Rivers are So Beautiful”, created in Mutual Aid Township, Qinghai in 2003, has a strong action art character in its creation concept and implementation process, and can be categorized in the literature section of behavioral art, whereas the artist had previously categorized it only as a photographic work. And before sending a piece of performance art created at the Tal Temple in Qinghai to the creator himself, Black Moon (Ji Shengli), he was very sure that he had not created any performance art works in Qinghai. These anecdotes also confirm the necessity and urgency of combing history.
Mr. Gao Yuan spent more than two hours in the narrative part of the sharing session, introducing the history of performance art in Qinghai in two clues. First, he took the performance art activities that took place in Qinghai as a clue, such as the “Micro Body Words Body Art Festival” and the “Possibility Body Art Workshop”, etc. These activities took place at a time when the art ecosystem could be considered poor. These activities have continued to take place in Qinghai, which can be considered barren in terms of art ecology, and the organizers have constructed and promoted the improvement and growth of the regional contemporary art ecology with their continuous efforts, and their gesture of forging ahead is touching; the other clue consists of the works created by the artists. The overall impression is that all the works have a common regional temperament, but their language and theme concepts are full of strong individualism.
Guest speaker Mr. Gao Yuan
This sharing session, after the guest speaker’s narration, was enhanced with a live discussion and interactive session, which was so exciting and enthusiastic that it took everyone by surprise. Firstly, every audience member had questions or observations to make, and secondly, the cognitive depth, breadth and sharpness of the discussion was refreshing and enjoyable. For some reason, it was simply a matter of shutting down the live broadcast and going into a closed-door discussion. The project team was heartened and encouraged by the trend of improving and refining the Warming Up sharing sessions as they were done since their inception.
The focus of the series of sharing sessions is to explore the history of the development of performance art in different regions of the world, and to discover and organize the clues and features of the development of performance art in the region from as comprehensive and holistic a perspective as possible. The aim is to systematically collect as much information and documentation on performance art as possible through the sharing sessions. These materials will then be categorized and filed, properly stored, and become public assets for readers and researchers to use.
Here, we would like to thank Mr. Gao Yuan once again for donating a large amount of collected literature on performance art in Qinghai to the archive.
