intro, day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4, day 5, last word
The conference here has been divided into debates entitled 'Future City' - the first part of which I reported on yesterday - and 'Culture in Fusion', the second session of which I caught this afternoon. The debate concerned globalization, and, more specifically, whether in its rush to become a global city Shanghai would find valuable local elements trodden underfoot.
The session began, rather bizarrely, with a showing of Matthew Barney's brilliant film Cremaster 4. Perhaps this was intended to rouse the rather exhausted looking audience, some of whom slept until woken by one of the myriad cell phones that blighted the event. But finally, accompanied by a kind of electronic birdsong, the presentations got underway. Jin Supangkat, from Indonesia, immediately made the point that whenever the term 'global' is used, it invariably refers to industrial capitalism, while 'local' generally means a tradition seen through colonial eyes. That is, 'local' means someone else's tradition, which is rarely understood. For example, imagine being a world leader where, in every country you visit, they put on a 'traditional' show for you, with the performers dressed in 'national costume' - what a distorted view of life in that country you would have!
The first really negative criticism of the biennale came from Wang Nan Ming, who argued that the Western artworld was forcing Chinese art to fit its own image, and that so-called contemporary Chinese art was nothing but entertainment for tourists and the Western art market. He finished with the bold statement that the new Shanghai Art Museum (in which he was standing) should 'first of all be concerned with Chinese art and not the Western marketplace.' His brave speech was met with loud applause.
Sarkis, the Turkish artist (and now a French national), followed this with a short anecdote about the birdcages you find in some Shanghai streets. He worried about what will happen when someone decides to build tower blocks on those streets, and pointedly suggested that the old folks with the singing birds should be housed in the museum for the next biennale. Cue laughter and more applause.
One felt for Manray Hsu, who had to follow these two speakers. This young curator has organized the current Taipai Biennale; I guess this makes him a representative for the international artworld, which had been coming in for a bashing. To show that he wasn't forcing his ideas onto anyone, and that the biennale conference was an open event, he opened his talk by offering to give away his conference slot to anyone who wanted to take it. He said he'd happily email his paper to everyone if somebody else wanted to speak. There were no takers. Hsu went on to defend the international art scene, claiming that there are now more non-Western artists participating in international art exhibitions, and a truly global set of biennales to encourage this. This is undoubtedly true, but it would have taken him more than the five minutes he was allotted to convince some members of the audience.
The conference closed with two papers that really talked very little about art directly, but more about globalization in general. Yu Yeon Kim from Korea used the internet as an example of future globalization. She pointed out that, although the internet allows a certain freedom of information, we shouldn't forget that it is supported by Euro-American capitalism which, in turn, is driving other countries to adopt Western hi-tech globalism. This idea of encroaching capitalism was further examined in an eloquent paper, entitled 'Welcome to the Monoculture', by the American art critic Richard Vine.
Vine asked a simple question that really hit the nail on the head: does cultural fusion foster diversity or global uniformity? He argued that if this fusion is market led, then it brings with it mass-market consumerism and effectively flattens diversity. On this note the conference ended, with the afternoon tending towards pessimism - in keen contrast to the optimism with which many had come to the event. The message of the conference was undoubtedly this: Shanghai ought to be careful about which future it speeds towards.
This question of a monoculture is an interesting one. Certainly there are Starbucks, McDonald's' and KFC's in Shanghai, and one of the biennale's sponsors is Coca-Cola, but could art ever become quite so simplistic as the one-size-fits-all products that these companies ship? In his diatribe against the biennale, Wang Nan Ming singled out as an example the artist Cai Guoqiang - who studied in Shanghai but now lives in the US - suggesting his work was simply exploiting Chinese traditional imagery for the international market.
However, Cai Guoqiang's work is one of the highlights of the biennale, and every time I have passed it there has been a diverse crowd of people gathered around. One of his pieces here involves dozens of traditional information boards placed outside the museum. These boards are covered with examples of the artist's previous works, and so can be seen as a celebration of individual creativity over state decrees. What's interesting is that, because the museum is on the edge of a park, the people who come to view it are not necessarily there to see the rest of the exhibition - yet still they patiently look at all the images, so the work must hold some interest for Shanghai locals.
Inside the museum Cai Guoqiang shows a video compilation of his performances, which involve the elaborate use of fireworks. In a video shot in Vienna, for example, we see a trail of explosives running along the arm of a huge crane, leaping across onto another crane, and so on. It is not a funny idea, but viewers invariably laugh when they see it. It is a joy to see this playful use of such prosaic industrial objects as cranes - which seem to have become permanent street furniture in many cities around the world.
While some may argue that these works are pure spectacle, as any firework display is, they are produced with a sophisticated understanding of their location and their materials. It is obvious that the artist is deliberately playing on the fact that he is using traditional Chinese items - fireworks - and is no doubt aware of the subtle implications such an action can bring. For example, in one photograph he poses, mimicking the Statue of Liberty, holding the firework like the statue's torch while it emits a small puff of smoke. What's poignant about the performance is that it takes place in the Nevada desert, where the US tested its nuclear devices. This suggests to me an artist who is not just blindly exploiting traditional materials to pander to a Western taste for the exotic. I think this is an artist who understands exactly what it means to be using Chinese fireworks, especially within a place that has local traditions like Nevada's...
So now the conference is over, and tomorrow I'll have time to visit some of the projects organized by local artists and galleries. These should give a different insight into the Shanghai art scene, as none of the artists involved in these satellite exhibitions are showing in the biennale. Perhaps this will put the so-called 'glocal' argument into perspective.
intro, day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4, day 5, last word— End —