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Experiencing political repression as such, there emerged some artists 'communities' in the 1990s, such as the Yuanmingyuan Artists village (late 1980s-mid 1990s), Beijing 'East Village' (early 1990s-mid 1990s), and the SongZhuang Village (mid 1990-now). All these villages were located in the suburbs of Beijing, in which many novel and experimental forms of art emerged, such as early Chinese performance.Contrasted with the national political movements generated by the artists in the 1980s, the formation of these villages shows a tendency by artists in the 1990s as distancing themselves from Beijing's city center, where the political and cultural climate was the most closely monitored by authorities.

Rui Tang, “Between Three Spheres, the Shifting and Expanding Notion of Jia In the Work of Song Dong.” 

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Zhanghuan’s performance, “To Raise the Water Level in a Fishpond,” 1997, Performance, Beijing China. 

The artist invited recent migrants to the city who were all from the bottom of society. The participants were standing or walking while the artist was moving in the pond, attempted to “raise up” the water level.

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Artist Ma Liuming’s performance, “Fen-Ma Liuming’s Lunch II,” 1995, Beijing East Village. 

The artist was naked cooking dinner in public.The authority came to stop the “lunch making” while Ma Liuming was performing. 

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Not only were artists prevented from making and showing works of contemporary art by official bans on all unauthorized public activities, they were also returned to a heightened state of uncertainty with regard to the political longer-term consequences of their actions. As a result artists found their activities constricted both by active political suppression [...].

Paul Gladston describes the political environment for Chinese art in the 1990s in his book Contemporary Chinese Art: A Critical History 

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A Kettle of Boiling Water (1995). In this work, Song Dong held the boiling water walking or running along the Ban Shan Hu Tong in 1995 winter, Beijing. As art historian Paul Galdston comments, this work shows a clandestine way of art making and showing by Chinese artists in the 1990s, due authoritative control after the crackdown of Tiannamen Square incident in Beijing.  

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Xu Bing, Book from the Sky, c. 1987-91

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Yin Xiuzhen, “Yin Xiuzhen”(1998). The work is a set of portraits of the artist from 1964-1998. 

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Artist Zhang Huan performing Pilgrimage: Wind and Water for “Inside Out: New Chinese Art,” at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, 1998.  

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Hu Tong is a narrow alley or lane that is formed by rows of Siheyuan, a traditional courtyard residence, with one of the historical architectures in Beijing, which represents the history of Beijing and is associated with local or common life. In the 1990s, artist Song Dong often created works around Ban Shang Hu Tong in Beijing. .

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Secret Divulging (1995) is an work Song Dong presented a dozen, white, skill pouches with ice hanging on a wall.In the form of an installation, Song Dong hung these bags on an exterior wall next to the door of his home in Ban Shang Hu Tong of Beijing, where he lived during the 1990s. A dozen pouches lined up on the wall filled the entire space. As time went on the ice in the bags melted, and water would drip from the pouches, leaving a strip of water stains on the wall. Eventually, all the ice would completely melt down, leaving the pouches looking shriveled and empty on the wall.  

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Writing Diary (1995-On-going) is one of Song Dong’s most important early works, consists of a diary he has written on stone with a calligraphic brush that he dips into water. The artist has used the same stone since 1995 on which he layers new layers new entires on top of old one. His writing here is only temporary, ultimately vanishing into the stone and leaving no trace behind.

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Apartment Art within the History of the Avant-Garde Art Movement Apartment Art, a term coined by Gao Minglu, included a subset of practices by conceptual artists during the ’85 New Wave Movement. Due to many of its particularities, Apartment Art does not follow all the patterns identified by historians regarding avant-garde collectives in China at the time, but one might argue that its development serves an indicator of sociopolitical change during the 1980s. According to Gao, Apartment Art comprised “a low-key avant-garde that involved a retreat from the public sphere” beginning in the late 1980s. Sharing the same philosophy and approach with another group known as Maximalism, Apartment Artists focused on the expression of an “idea.” Both of these groups were not interested in revolutionizing art but focused instead on “changing close relationships between themselves and their environment.”  Apartment art is different from western conceptual art, due to its exploration of the “significance of a specific object in a specific environmental context, rather than its significance in relation to artists’ historical and aesthetic references,"  and the use of medium, material, and space, as apartment art artists would adopt inexpensive objects from everyday life.

Rui Tang Between Three Spheres: The Expanding and Shifting Notion of Jia in the Work of Song Dong

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Song Dong’s first collaboration with his father, a video installation entitled Touching My Father (1997). Touching My Father was an on-going project that began in 1997 when the artist went to Germany, generated by the artists’s wish of “touching father.” The artist videotaped his hand touching air in the dark and then projected it on his father’s body. 

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Song Dong - Printing on Water, 1996  Performance in the Lhasa River, Tibet

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Opens Jan 17, 6-8p: “Doing Nothing”  Song Dong Pace Gallery, 510 and 534 W25th  St., NYC (two locations) A two-venue exhibition of the acclaimed Chinese conceptual artist Song Dong, known for his works that combine aspects of performance, video, photography, painting, installation, and sculpture. The gallery at 534 W25th Street will present eighteen of Song’s works, spanning from 1994 to the present. The gallery at 510 W25th Street will center on a new installation by the artist, expanding on his project for Documenta 13.  – thru Feb 23

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Song Dong’s “Printing on Water” (1996), a performance in the Lhasa River in Tibet, in which he repeatedly stamped the water with a large wood seal carved with the Chinese character for water (水) for an hour. As Song has said, “I exerted great force [in stamping the seal on the water], but in the end left no trace.”

Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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ymutate:

Song Dong:  Slapping, video projection with sound, 10 minute loop,  1997

source: walsh gallery