For the tenth performance of Warm Up, we move our focus to Yunnan. Regarding performance art in Yunnan, we often joke that Yunnan is the largest province of performance art in China. We often joke that Yunnan is the largest province of performance art in China. We say this because, firstly, Yunnan has produced a number of important performance artists, such as Zhu Fadong and He Yunchang; secondly, from the 1990s to the present day, the creation of performance art in Yunnan has been continuous, and a large number of works of performance art have been created by artists from different regions both at home and abroad, making Yunnan one of China’s few ecologically sound areas for performance art, which is dependent on the long-term physical and active promotion by the artist and his partners, and by Liping and his partners. In 2009, an important point in the development of performance art in Yunnan, He Libin founded the International Live Art Festival on the Clouds in Kunming, and held two sessions of the event, which was suspended in the following years due to a lack of funding, and then re-launched in 2015, and was held annually from 2015-2021, attracting and inviting many artists from home and abroad to Yunnan for exchange and creation, and establishing an international performance art festival. The festival has attracted and invited many artists from home and abroad to Yunnan for exchanges and creations, built an international platform for performance art exchanges, and greatly enhanced the vitality of performance art in Yunnan.
In the tenth session of “Looking back ”, the Archives invited Ms. He Libin to be responsible for collecting and arranging the performance art archives in Yunnan. Although Ms. He is familiar with the history of performance art in Yunnan, after all, Yunnan has a long history of performance art, and a lot of data and information need to be collected and verified by various parties, coupled with the huge amount of art activities and works, the work of organizing is very time-consuming and laborious. We are grateful to Mr. He for generating electricity with great love and trying to overcome the characteristic idle and leisurely style of the Yunnanese people, and completing the collection and sorting out of data and literature within the scheduled time. Thanks are also due to many others for their understanding and support! Friends such as Luo Fei, Zhu Fadong, He Yunchang, and Xin Wangjun, who either patiently participated in verifying and sorting out information or provided historical documents for the performance art, were touching in their empathy and solidarity.
Zhu Fadong’s work, “The Search for a Person”, 1993, Kunming
Untitled by He Libin, 1997, Kunming
He Yunchang’s Reservation for Tomorrow, Yunnan, 1998
Xin Wangjun’s “Money & Power”, 2007, Kunming
Poster for the first edition of the On the Clouds Festival
Group photo of “On the Clouds–La Shi Hai International Performance Art Festival” 2017
On September 27th, 2022, at 8:00pm, the 10th session of “Looking back ”: “Yunnan Performance Art Archive” was held at the Archives, hosted by artist and curator He Libin. Regarding performance art in Yunnan, we often joke that Yunnan is the largest province of performance art in China. We often joke that Yunnan is the biggest province of performance art in China. We say this because Yunnan has produced many important performance artists, such as Zhu Fadong and He Yunchang, etc. From the 1990s to the present, performance art creations in Yunnan have continued, and artists from different regions at home and abroad have created a large number of performance art works in Yunnan, which can be regarded as one of China’s few ecologically sound areas for performance art, which is dependent on the active promotion of the long-term physical efforts by the artist and curator, Mr. He Libin, as well as his partners.
In 2009, an important point in the development of performance art in Yunnan, He Libin founded the International Live Art Festival on the Cloud in Kunming. The festival attracted and invited many artists from home and abroad to Yunnan to exchange and create, and set up an international performance art exchange platform, which greatly enhanced the vitality of performance art in Yunnan. Although Mr. He Libin is familiar with the history of performance art in Yunnan, after all, Yunnan has a long history of performance art, and much information needs to be collected and verified from various sources, plus the amount of art activities and works is huge, so the work of organizing is very time-consuming and exhausting. Thanks to friends such as Luo Fei, Zhu Fadong, He Yunchang, and Xin Wangjun, who either patiently participated in verifying and sorting out the information, or provided us with historical materials and documents on performance art, we were able to complete the collection and sorting out of materials and documents within the scheduled time, which made it possible for the sharing session to be held smoothly.
