14/8/14 randian - Subtle Levels of Involvement: the 8th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale

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2014.06.13Fri,byZianChenTranslatedby:FeiWu
SubtleLevelsofInvolvement:the8thShenzhen
SculptureBiennale
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The 8th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale: We Have Never Participated
OCT Contemporary Art Terminal (OCAT Hall A, Hall B, and OCT Loft
B10, Enping Road, Overseas Chinese Town, Nanshan, ShenzhenMay
16Aug 31, 2014
Situated at the center of the exhibition venue of the Shenzhen Sculpture
Biennale, the Research Station is a comfortable reading space specially
designed by Sheila Pepe. You stand in the center of it, barefoot, flipping
through some literature on the exhibitions off-site projects; on the
adjacent bookshelf are some thirty books related to participatory art and
social art interventions. Of three indoor venues at the Shenzhen Sculpture
Biennale, the Research Station also houses documents related to Ahmet
t, Zheng Bo, and others. You could say this colorful woven textile
piece is the heart of the exhibition; it is more than a simple spatial
installation, symbolizing the nerve center of the entire biennale. Through
Pepes work, the curator emphasizes the essential connections binding
conceptually oriented political aesthetics with an aesthetics of materiality
based on artistry. Meanwhile, at the other end of the site, Chen
Shaoxiongs Ink Media has been installed at a vantage point high
enough to broadcast the artists video work throughout the entire
exhibition hall, underlining the political tenor of his piece. When you raise
your head to watch this animated work on street protests, you are
reminded that underlying Joseph Beuyss concept of social sculpture,
referred to in the exhibition, there is a layer that is linked to direct
democracy.
14/8/14 randian - Subtle Levels of Involvement: the 8th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale
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Sheila Pepe, For the People, installation, 2014
2014
Though previous curators for the Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale have expanded upon the definition of sculpture, in this
eighth Biennale, the curator Marko Daniel still symbolically chose to build his curatorial discourse around the term social
sculpture as a point of departure in exploring artistic creation in post-participatory art. The reason Daniels curatorial
gesture can be called symbolic is that the curator appears not to have restricted each piece into a dialogue with the theme.
Perhaps the piece that best fits the definition of participatory art at the biennale is Qiu Zhijie and Song Zhens The Society
Diankou, Villager Furniture, in which the artists invited students from China Academy of Art to be sent down to the
countryside. Fifteen wooden benches placed in front of the Research Station are the physical manifestations of this
undertaking; the table belongs to the village committee, while the benches themselves were provided by the villagers. The
crux of this project was the construction of a space for dialogue between the local officials and the villagers. In the two-way
communication organized by the art group between government officials and the villagers, the officials wrote downin
chalkon the table all the promises they made, while the villagers, with the artists, preserved the sentences as relief carvings
as evidence of the art event.
If the above piece is a model example of an art intervention into the realm of reality, then the works situated nearby do not
have such distinctive involvement or participation. The title of Meiro Koizumis video work Theatre Dreams of a Beautiful
Afternoon immediately labels the work as one founded outside o reality. The piece is a dual-channel video shot on the
subway; the male and female protagonists are seated on the left and right sides of the subway car. The way their gazes keep
glancing off each other is somewhat reminiscent of a Japanese television drama, while the audio track intermingles their
existential internal monologues. Only when the male protagonists quiet weeping gradually turns into an upheaval of loud
sobbing do we, on the other side of the screen, realize the extent to which these actors actions have taken over the entire
subway car. Nearby, Cheng Rans multi-channel video installation also emphasizes how artistic techniques can be deployed
to attract and then to involve the audience in the narrative of a piece. Worth mentioning is the way the curatorial statement
for the biennale makes a shift by replacing participation with the term involvement in its final paragraph; this subtle
distinction constitutes a liberal interpretation of the theme We Have Never Participatedwhen an audience is involved in
a piece, it is not just participating in or using the work on the surface.
14/8/14 randian - Subtle Levels of Involvement: the 8th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale
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Qiu Zhijie and Song Zhen with Diankou residents and Total Art Studio, The Society Diankou
Villager Furniture, installation, 15 carved tables and 60 chairs, 2012
1560
2012
Cheng Ran, Always I Trust, HD video, light boxes, installation, 2014
2014
As the viewer becomes more familiar with the layout of the exhibition, you get the sense that the pieces most in dialogue are
scattered throughout the venue. For example, the exhibitions most introspective piece appears at the end of the long and
narrow exhibition Hall B, where Chen Yufan and Chen Yujun have comprehensively laid out their own studio. Meanwhile, in
another exhibition space, Jia Chuns nearly all white narcissus installation also manifests the inclination towards total
individualization. To the artist, this space delineated by six panes of glass is completely independent from the outside world.
This internal perspective can perhaps find some connection to what lies outside in Youns Rahmouns installation wherein a
composite timber room is set apart by a set of automatic screen doors designed by Hctor Zamora; isolated and towering
above the ground, its dimensions are based on a room in Rahmouns own home, and the room serves as a reflection on
14/8/14 randian - Subtle Levels of Involvement: the 8th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale
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private spaces. The doors leading to the installation also open towards the holy city of Mecca, which recalls how the spiritual
connects the individual and the collective.
My impression of viewers vague consensus of the exhibition was that everyone was in search of the meaning of We Have
Never Participated in the various threads dispersed throughout. In this vein, the title of Li Mings piece provides a useful
cipher. Through various techniques marked with his personal style, the artist inserts Nothing Happened Today into a
coherent series of everyday milieux, forging a paradoxical space for reflection. The curator might be attempting to preserve
precisely this type of reflective space by giving the Biennale its earworm of a title. We Have Never Participated may not
directly relate to the pieces on show, nor is participation obviously present in every piece, and yet, as in Li Mings self-
contradictory pronouncement, juxtaposition happens to be one technique used to question existing systems. In a way, We
Have Never Participated relies on the audience to fill in the gaps in meaning.
[correction note: an editing error mentioned Pepe as the curator in one instance. This has now been correctedthe curator
is, of course, Marko Daniel]
Hctor Zamora, Opening Up, installation, moving automated barriers, custom electronics, political
slogans, 2014
2014