The archive is warming up with a series of sharing sessions called “The Past”, which is intended to look back at the past in order to envision the future in a more macroscopic way. Warming Up will also be an ongoing long-term project, starting with a focus on the history of performance art in the Chengdu area, gradually expanding to other parts of China, and ultimately, a compilation of the history of performance art in various regions of the world.
The UP-ON Performance Art Archive is the first thematic event after the establishment of UP-ON, and will continue to be a long-term project. Starting from Chengdu, it will expand to different parts of China, and ultimately, it is a collection of the history of performance art in different regions on an international scale. By inviting experts and people who have lived through the history of performance art to engage in narratives, dialogues and discussions with the audience, “ Looking back ” intends to look back at the past in order to envision the future in a more macroscopic way.
The first five sessions of “Looking back” reviewed the history of performance art in Chengdu, Xinjiang and Qinghai respectively. Chengdu’s performance art history is more familiar to everyone, so it is more like revisiting memories, sighing and lamenting the passage of time and the thickness of history. The sharing sessions in Xinjiang and Qinghai, on the other hand, surprised everyone with a wealth of information that overturned many people’s old perceptions and experiences. Even the moderators of the sharing sessions, Zeng Qunkai (Xinjiang) and Gao Yuan (Qinghai), had made a lot of new discoveries in the process of collecting and combing the literature before the sharing sessions. This reminds us once again that as a long-neglected segment of China’s contemporary art scene, it is urgent and necessary to collect and sort out the archives of performance art literature. After all, most of the first generation of artists engaged in the exploration of performance art in the 1980s in mainland China are now old, and some of them have already passed away quietly, so a lot of first-hand information is nowhere to be found.
For the sixth session of Looking back, we moved our focus to Inner Mongolia. Due to the large number of Mongolian and Chinese artists active in Inner Mongolia for a long time, and the variety of media forms, Inner Mongolia’s unique humanistic and natural environment has attracted many foreign artists to go to create art works for many years, especially the “Hot Snow Performance Art Season” and the “First Honggeer Earth Art Season”, both of which have been held for seven years and were founded by Mr. Yang Dezhong. Earth Art Season”, but also gathered a large number of international artists in Inner Mongolia to create a considerable number of behavioral art works, all the above reasons make the collection of information is very heavy workload. In addition to the fact that many of the works were created over a long period of time, documentation was lacking or even lost, and the historical facts had to be cross-checked from multiple sources before they could be gradually uncovered. The fact that the collection was completed within the scheduled time is undoubtedly due to the understanding and support of the many artists and curators involved! Friends such as Idel, Wurigen, Qin Ga, Zheng Tianze, Gao Yang, Yang Dezhong, Wang Che, and so on, all provided us with a large amount of historical documents on performance art in Inner Mongolia and patiently participated in verifying the information, their academic attitudes and chivalry are admirable and touching.
At 8:00 pm on June 8, 2022, Mr. Yang Dezhong came to the archive and spent nearly two hours combing through the nodal art activities and works in the history of Inner Mongolian performance art from 1998 to the present, following the clues of time. The opening play was Mr. Idel’s work “Tengri Tara”, and when the music started, all those present were infected by the strong regional atmosphere. The rich and wonderful documentation shared next completely refreshed everyone’s old experience and knowledge of performance art in Inner Mongolia.
The topic of the communication phase of the sharing session was: the definition and classification of performance art works. This was also a response to the questions encountered in the process of collecting performance works by artists in Inner Mongolia. The artists and critics who participated in the discussion included Chen Mo, Dong Jie, Huang Xiaorong, Li Rui, Li Aishao, Tian Meng, Wang Ximan, Ye Caibao, Yang Dezhong, and Zeng Qunkai, as well as some members of the audience. Although it was not possible to come up with a universally recognized standard answer on this topic, the intensity of the discussion was greatly unexpected. There were many divergent views on the topic, and even tit-for-tat opinions. This is a very encouraging situation, and it is only through the expression of different views and frank discussion that we can truly deepen and enrich our knowledge of this topic.
The Archives hopes to collect as systematically as possible a rich and detailed documentation of performance art materials from different geographical regions through the project “Warming Up”. These materials will then be categorized and filed, properly stored, and become public assets for readers and researchers.
Here, we would like to thank Mr. Yang Dezhong once again for donating to the archive a large amount of literature on performance art in Inner Mongolia that he had collected and organized! We would also like to thank the many other artists and curators who have sent their works and event materials to the archive! Everyone’s support and help is the guarantee for the continued growth of the Archive!
