The series of sharing sessions is the first thematic event after the establishment of the archive, and will be a long-term project that will continue to be promoted. Starting from Chengdu and expanding to different parts of China, it is ultimately 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 past to speak, dialog and discuss with the audience, the project aims to look back at the past in order to envision the future in a more macroscopic way.
Since the launch of the project, new discoveries have been made in the process of collecting and combing the literature, which makes people sigh with regret and lament the passage of time and the heaviness of history, and the richness of information that constantly subverts people’s old perceptions and experiences. This reminds us again and again that, as a long-neglected segment in the field of Chinese contemporary art, the collection and combing of performance art literature is urgent and necessary. 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 can no longer be found.
On June 29th, 2022, the seventh session of Warm Up: “Tibetan Performance Art Archive” was held at the Archives at 3:00 p.m. The sharing session was hosted by the project coordinator Dong Kejun. Many artists who have created performance art in Tibet, such as Dai Guangyu, Dong Jie, Luo Hao, Li Jixiang, Liu Chengying, Xiong Wenyun, and Wang Yanxin, came to share their experiences and feelings about their work in Tibet. Although more artists couldn’t come, the video interviews made up for the regret of not being able to communicate with them up close. In the video, artist Wang Deren introduces the situation before and after the creation of performance art works in Tibet in 1986. 36 years later, the artist’s narration makes the listener have the feeling of time reversal; artist Luo Hao recalls the process of completing the works in 1988 by a group of them relying on youthful passion and fearlessness, the moment of life and death, with a strong hormonal flavor; and artist Xiong Wenyun mentions the female Artists Xiong Wenyun mentioned the topic of female artists in the reality of creation and life, aroused a positive discussion; artists Dai Guangyu, Li Jixiang, Liu Chengying In addition to the introduction of their own works, but also a large reminiscence of the 1996 “Defenders of the Water” activities, which revolves around the works of Datong Dazhang the story of the events that took place before and after the work, so that we deeply feel that the artists of the era, the degree of seriousness of art The stories surrounding Datong Dazhang’s works make us deeply feel the seriousness and seriousness that artists of that era had for art; the creations of younger artists like Dong Jie, Zhai Yitao, and Wang Yanxin in Tibet make us feel the differences in the understanding and cognition of artists at different stages of the process for local and regional culture, as well as the obvious changes in the combination of the artist’s own creations. The entire Tibetan performance art compendium ends in 2021 with the work of artist Li Jixiang’s “Ultraviolet Punch Card”, which can’t help but move and applaud the creative passion of the veteran artists. The artists’ introductions of their own works at the sharing session made the information about their works displayed on the site lively and vivid.
During the sharing session, Mr. Li Jixiang donated to the archive some precious documents of performance art (pictures of “Defenders of Water” in Tibet in 1996, manuscripts and poems of artist Datong Dazhang, etc.) that he had kept for many years. These materials will be categorized, filed and properly stored, and will become public assets for readers and researchers. It is with the selfless support and help of these colleagues that the archive will be full of possibilities and get better and better.
