ANAT, The Australian Network for Art and Technology have just published the July-October issue of Filter devoted to sound. One of the articles is by Iain Mott of Reverberant, who travelled to the 大山子艺术节 Dashanzi Yishu Jie – Dashanzi Art Festival at 798 Group Factories in March to show his work Close.
There were many people with an interest in the festival – Government groups, police, artists, factory owners, funding bodies – all wanting a say on the proceedings and with motives ranging from benevolent support to bloody-minded obstruction. The director of the festival, Huang Rui and his team stood firm, weathering endless meetings with stakeholders and ultimately the festival realised most of its goals. There were many concessions however, not least the forced removal of the word “festival” from publications two days prior to the opening. A large public notice to that effect was erected by authorities at the entrance to the exhibition and hundreds of posters were modified, the tops removed to obliterate the term. The “festival” was thus run as “a series of events”. At the press conference at the opening of the festival when questioned about the ban, Huang Rui gave the terse one-sentence response, “We are not yet developed enough to call ourselves a festival”, a tacit allusion to the machinations beneath the surface. Perhaps the most besieged component of the festival was performance art. Performance art has long been viewed with suspicion by Chinese authorities due to its radical approach to politics and social mores. A number of performances were cancelled, oly to reappear at less-publicised times and with a good deal of self-censorship.
The article goes on to talk about a number of artists works and artists’ studios. The whole article is worth a read for an insight into the wild world of contemporary Chinese art and performance, Filter is free when you become a member of ANAT.
ANAT are funding me to travel to Taiwan later this year for a residency at Taipei Artist Village, to work with local dancers and computer artists on a gaming environment-based performance over 3-G phones.
Iain Mott – Close – Dashanzi Arts Festival