LEE WEN
  • ABOUT
    • Curricullum Vitae/bio
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    • Videos, Films, Moving Images
    • Bibliography
    • Interviews >
      • Huang Zhiming/Open Ends
      • Woon Tien Wei/Performance Researchwa
      • Iola Lenzi/Shifts
      • "Modern Art Reveries" Cheah Ui-Hoon
      • Artlink/Interview2014
      • BLOC TALK >
        • Beauty Is A Battle
  • Collectives
    • Artists Village/FOI/RITES
    • Independent Archive
    • Black Market International
    • Eternal Network international >
      • Call Of The Red
      • We Here Spend Time : Jason Wee & Lee Wen
      • A Clockwork Pisang
  • IDENTITY
    • Journey Artist's Statement >
      • "We are 'perfurbing' here" March 2008
      • "Will the real Singapore art please stand up?" Dec.1999
      • "If you see a performance artist, kill him", 1997
      • Lexicon Of Dissent
      • Sustaining Alterity in the Times of R(v)apid Changes.
      • How To Change The World Without Really Trying
      • Open Letter to the Nation of Josef Ng's
      • Letter to Alan Oei
      • Return to Daydreams >
        • Iola Lenzi/Shifts
    • Journey Of A Yellow Man >
      • Journey of a yellow man No.2
      • Journey of a yellow man No.3
      • Journey of a yellow man No.4
      • Journey of a Yellow Man No.5: Index to Freedom
      • Journey of a yellow man no.6
      • JYM No.9: Trees Resurrection
      • Journey No.11: multi-culturalism
      • Journey No.15: Touching China
    • More China Than You[我比你中国] >
      • More China, Manchester
      • More China, Rome
      • More China, Tokyo
      • More China, Cheng Du
      • More China, Suzhou
    • Ghosts Stories >
      • Ghosts Stories, Tokyo
      • Ghosts Stories, Kwang Ju
      • Ghosts Stories, Mexico
    • Stagger Lee >
      • Stagger Lee
    • Re-imagined Self >
      • Mirrors In The Dark
      • Picasso & Me
  • Interactive Art
    • Ping-Pong Go Round
    • World Class Society
    • AIM: Raffles
    • Chewing Gum Paintings
    • Give Peace A Chance Redux
    • Art vs. Art
    • Freedom, Service, Hope >
      • Freedom, Service, Hope #1
  • Revisits
    • Give Peace A Chance Redux
    • Anthropometries
    • Zen For Clay
    • Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps)
    • COSMOS: Currencies OfferingS Move Over Sky
  • Contexts & forms
    • Drawings (as Renewal) >
      • Drawings (as Endgame)
      • Songs Unsung
      • Portraits of Remarkable People and Tree
    • Strange Fruit
    • Unframed7
    • Nychthemer 1 & 2
    • Lifeboat
    • Dream Boat
    • One Stone, Three Forms
    • Paintings
  • Institutional Critique
    • I Am Not A Performance Artist >
      • I Am Not A Performance Artist/This Is Not A Work Of Art
    • Is Art Necessary? >
      • Is Art Necessary?
    • Anyhow Blues Project >
      • Diary of A Dead Artist >
        • Diary of A Dead Artist #1, Xi-An, China
        • Diary of A Dead Artist #2, Staglinec, Koprivnica, Croatia
    • Dog Man Domesticate
    • "Room For Nothing To Do" >
      • "Room For Nothing To Do #1
      • "Room For Nothing To Do #2"
      • COSMOS: Currencies OfferingS Move Over Sky
  • Texts
    • Lucy Davis/“Insects as Others”
    • Adele Tan/Art & the Iterative
    • Lee Weng Choy/Critical Response
    • Mitsu Salmon/Daydreamer
    • "Inside an Outsider's Dream" Huang LiJie
    • "A Performative State of Indefinite Duration" Bruce Quek
    • Chinese texts: 中文 >
      • Chng Seok Tin/黄人之旅--李文与行为艺术
      • 已死艺术家的日记 1 – 070513 : 英汉翻译:朱爱伦
Dream Boat

Werkleitz Biennale
Tornitz & Werkleitz, Germany, 1998


An Lee Wen´s Performance ist ein Faktor in der Performance Art hervorgetreten, der in anderen Künsten fast als sträflich zu gelten hat. Was die Situation sein wird, die dann die Performance an das Licht des Tages brechen läßt, wird vor Ort und ziemlich kurz vor der Veranstaltung entschieden. So gesehen hat er etwas anderes gemacht als es in der Ankündigung stand. Das Problem, das viele PerformerInnen haben, daß die Anwesenheit in dem Ort des Geschehens die Form der Performance bestimmt, außer die Performance erstellt den Ort des Geschehens und dies in jedem beliebigen Raum.

 Er zitterte vor Kälte.

 Das Flüßchen Saale, windig, fliehende Wolken mit kurzen Sonnendurchbrüchen.

 Durchgängig das Zittern.

 Verschiedene kurze Anfänge aus dem Publikum heraus und dann wieder in ihm eingetaucht. Dann stand er am Rande des Dammes in einer aufrecht stehenden Zinkwanne (sie ist schon bekannt). Er hatte ein Stück Fleisch im Mund, eine überdimensionierte Zunge, die da heraushing, begann sie zu schütteln, immer fester, bis sie hinwegflog. Die Wanne bekam etwas von einem Sarkopharg. Wie er darin stand, und die Zunge hing ihm aus dem Halse, der vorgestreckte Kopf, vogelartig, ägyptisch, jede Sekunde konnte die Wanne hinterüber kippen. Er trat aus dem Haus, mit den Seiten einer Zeitung den Kopf zugedeckt, schweres Atmen, Löcher hineingerissen für die Augen und den Mund, holte sich einen Holzlöffel, nahm ihn mit dem Stiel in den Mund, steckte eine Kerze an, die er auf dem Löffel befestigte, stand wieder in seiner Wanne, die Silhouette, ein Teil des Gesichts, der Rand der Wanne und der Löffel mit der Kerze, die Zeitung sich vom Kopfe gezogen, dies mit der Ruhe, die der Archaik innewohnt.

 Daß die Kerze trotz des Windes nicht ausging, ob auf dem Löffel, beim Herumgehen, im Grase stehend.

 Sich ausgezogen, vollstän

 Den Leib mit gelber Farbe eingerieben, aufgestrichen, sich wieder in den Sarkophag gestellt, dann die Wanne wie das Schild einer Schildkröte genommen, gelbe zitternde Beine, und vom Damm an das Ufer des Flusses gewechselt. Die Wanne in den Fluß getaucht, mehr liegend als sitzend, treibend, drehend, mit den Händen rudernd, Ursprungsmythos mit gelbem Mann.

 Was archaisch-poetische Bilder haben, sie bewegen schweigend.

Boris Nieslony
http://www.werkleitz.de/events/biennale1998/text/cat/wen.html

Dream Boat
Werkleitz Biennale
Tornitz & Werkleitz, Germany, 1998

 Lee Wen´s performance had an emerging factor of performance art which is considered almost criminal in other arts. What the situation is going to be, which is then brought to the light of day, and decided on the location just before the event. In this way, he did something else than what had been announced. The problem many performance artists are having is, that the presence in the place of the event determines the form of the performance, except if the performance creates the place of the event and that in any space.
He is shivering.
The small river Saale, windy, fleeing clouds with short breakthroughs of sun.
 Continiously shivering.
Various short beginnings out of the audience, then diving back into it. Then he was standing at the edge of the dyke in an upright positioned zinc bath tub (which we already know). He had a piece of meat in his mouth, an oversized tongue, hanging out, started to shake it, stronger and stronger until it fell out. The bath tub had something of a sarcophagus. The way he stood in it, the tongue hanging around his neck, the head strechted out, bird-like, Egyptian, any second the tub could tip back over. He stepped out of the house, his head covered with pages of a newspaper, breathing heavily, holes torn out for the eyes and the mouth, taking a wooden spoon, putting the handle in his mouth, lighting a candle, attaching it to the spoon, standing in the tub again, the silhouette, a part of the face, the edge of the tub and the spoon with the candle, removed the newspaper from his head, with the calmness immanent to the archaic.
 The candle did not go out despite the wind, on the spoon, standing on the grass.
 Undressed, completely.
 Yellow paint rubbed on, spread over the body, standing in the sarcophagus again, then taking the tub like the shell of a turtle, yellow shaking legs, and moving from the dyke to the banks of the river. The tub put into the river, more lying than sitting, drifting, spinning, rowing with the hands, myth of origin with yellow man.

 What archaic-poetic images have, they touch quietly.

 Boris Nieslony

http://www.werkleitz.de/events/biennale1998/text/cat/wen2E.html
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  • ABOUT
    • Curricullum Vitae/bio
    • Downloads
    • Links
    • Videos, Films, Moving Images
    • Bibliography
    • Interviews >
      • Huang Zhiming/Open Ends
      • Woon Tien Wei/Performance Researchwa
      • Iola Lenzi/Shifts
      • "Modern Art Reveries" Cheah Ui-Hoon
      • Artlink/Interview2014
      • BLOC TALK >
        • Beauty Is A Battle
  • Collectives
    • Artists Village/FOI/RITES
    • Independent Archive
    • Black Market International
    • Eternal Network international >
      • Call Of The Red
      • We Here Spend Time : Jason Wee & Lee Wen
      • A Clockwork Pisang
  • IDENTITY
    • Journey Artist's Statement >
      • "We are 'perfurbing' here" March 2008
      • "Will the real Singapore art please stand up?" Dec.1999
      • "If you see a performance artist, kill him", 1997
      • Lexicon Of Dissent
      • Sustaining Alterity in the Times of R(v)apid Changes.
      • How To Change The World Without Really Trying
      • Open Letter to the Nation of Josef Ng's
      • Letter to Alan Oei
      • Return to Daydreams >
        • Iola Lenzi/Shifts
    • Journey Of A Yellow Man >
      • Journey of a yellow man No.2
      • Journey of a yellow man No.3
      • Journey of a yellow man No.4
      • Journey of a Yellow Man No.5: Index to Freedom
      • Journey of a yellow man no.6
      • JYM No.9: Trees Resurrection
      • Journey No.11: multi-culturalism
      • Journey No.15: Touching China
    • More China Than You[我比你中国] >
      • More China, Manchester
      • More China, Rome
      • More China, Tokyo
      • More China, Cheng Du
      • More China, Suzhou
    • Ghosts Stories >
      • Ghosts Stories, Tokyo
      • Ghosts Stories, Kwang Ju
      • Ghosts Stories, Mexico
    • Stagger Lee >
      • Stagger Lee
    • Re-imagined Self >
      • Mirrors In The Dark
      • Picasso & Me
  • Interactive Art
    • Ping-Pong Go Round
    • World Class Society
    • AIM: Raffles
    • Chewing Gum Paintings
    • Give Peace A Chance Redux
    • Art vs. Art
    • Freedom, Service, Hope >
      • Freedom, Service, Hope #1
  • Revisits
    • Give Peace A Chance Redux
    • Anthropometries
    • Zen For Clay
    • Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps)
    • COSMOS: Currencies OfferingS Move Over Sky
  • Contexts & forms
    • Drawings (as Renewal) >
      • Drawings (as Endgame)
      • Songs Unsung
      • Portraits of Remarkable People and Tree
    • Strange Fruit
    • Unframed7
    • Nychthemer 1 & 2
    • Lifeboat
    • Dream Boat
    • One Stone, Three Forms
    • Paintings
  • Institutional Critique
    • I Am Not A Performance Artist >
      • I Am Not A Performance Artist/This Is Not A Work Of Art
    • Is Art Necessary? >
      • Is Art Necessary?
    • Anyhow Blues Project >
      • Diary of A Dead Artist >
        • Diary of A Dead Artist #1, Xi-An, China
        • Diary of A Dead Artist #2, Staglinec, Koprivnica, Croatia
    • Dog Man Domesticate
    • "Room For Nothing To Do" >
      • "Room For Nothing To Do #1
      • "Room For Nothing To Do #2"
      • COSMOS: Currencies OfferingS Move Over Sky
  • Texts
    • Lucy Davis/“Insects as Others”
    • Adele Tan/Art & the Iterative
    • Lee Weng Choy/Critical Response
    • Mitsu Salmon/Daydreamer
    • "Inside an Outsider's Dream" Huang LiJie
    • "A Performative State of Indefinite Duration" Bruce Quek
    • Chinese texts: 中文 >
      • Chng Seok Tin/黄人之旅--李文与行为艺术
      • 已死艺术家的日记 1 – 070513 : 英汉翻译:朱爱伦