Alienated Body - Chinese Performance Art

Author: Lu Hong, Sun Zhenhua / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: Chinese performance art is an. When it rashly burst into the art world during the "85 Art Movement," people found it hard to identify its nature, unsure of its origins and intentions. This is understandable, as those who engaged in performance art as early as 1986 were also active participants in the "85 Art Movement." If we classify it according to the genealogy of modernist and postmodernist art, the "85 Movement" is an important part of China's modernist art movement. Its goals, methods, and stylistic approaches bear similarities to Western modernist art movements, as well as obvious dependence on them. As for performance art, which is a form of conceptual art, it only formally debuted in Western cultural logic in the 1960s and belongs to a type of postmodernist art. In China's "85" context, performance art seemed difficult to find a clear position within the then-existing art landscape. What was its specific target? What problems did it aim to solve? According to the cultural logic outlined above, the pioneers of Chinese performance art were essentially juggling two roles at the time, fighting on two fronts.
The linear logic of Western art culture may not adequately explain the reality of Chinese art in the 20th century. As the renowned British sociologist Anthony Giddens said, today's world is a "post-traditional" world, where countless traditions, beliefs, and customs are intertwined. In such a world, no single tradition can dominate, nor can any single customary way of life serve as the foundation for people to live in complex and ever-changing modern circumstances. Today, traditions and customs, beliefs and expectations, are all flexible resources—adjustable and adaptable—above the globalized, urbanized world shaped by a culturally and lifestyle-wise mélange.
This "coordinate-less" (Huang Zuan's term), premature, and entangled-with-the-"85 Movement" early Chinese performance art suddenly emerged at this time, giving Chinese performance art characteristics distinct from Western performance art. P2