"If you see a performance artist, kill him", 1997 - lee wen 李文
“incomplete notes on performance art”
unpublished 1997
Performance art in a sense makes representation of the self. The question, “what is self?” leads to “what is performance art?” It is quite a different issue if one considers it comparatively, say between East and West, or between neighbouring countries. One general observation may be that of Asian cultures showing a cultural preference for individualism to be submissive to the group or society. However, if one look more closely, there are intrinsic differences, how individualism asserts its existence under such a prejudice in each society. Our experience in situations that relates to the currency of our society gives us our references as to who we are and hence also what we do.
As a child we listened to stories of our parents, telling us their experiences of the recent past. Events that for us were of the quality of a fairy tale even though they could be describing something sinister and frightful like bombs falling on us during the war. Its not that we do not believe in them, but like fairy tales, the experience of our reality is totally different in terms of time and place. Just looking back at places that I have lived in, many have changed beyond recognition, what more of my parent’s generation and what they have been through. Meandering through it all underneath their own actions, social situations provide the background to one’s personal drama of life.
-portraiture-chinese mastery in landscape-human place in universe-portraiture-
“The term “performance” has become extremely popular in recent years in a wide range of activities in the arts, in literature, and in the social sciences. As its popularity and usage has grown, so has a complex body of writing about performance, attempting to analyze and understand just what sort of human activity it is. For the person with an interest in studying performance, this analysis and commentary may at first seem more of an obstacle than an aid. So much has been written by experts from such a wide range of disciplines, and such a complex web of specialized critical vocabulary has been developed in the course of this analysis, that a newcomer seeking a way into the discussion may feel confused and overwelmed”
- Marvin Carlson -”Performance - a critical introduction”
Routledge, London and New York, 1998, p. 1 and 187
The above quotation from Marvin Carlson’s book appears in the beginning of the introduction as well as its concluding chapter, as he makes a performative ritual of repetition in writing, making a circle like a snake eating its own tail. In between Carlson analysed performance in a diversity of definations and usages, spanning a comprehensive spectrum from the social sciences to cultural practices and theories, focusing in 2 chapters out of 8 on the art of performance as we might be inclined to discuss here . Such an exhaustive survey gives one the predilection that everything may now be regarded as performance or performative these days. This has prompted another American writer, Amelia Jones to prefer using the term “body art” in her analysis of performance art per se. In refering to these American studies, I may be complaisant to the somewhat propagandistic and arrogant claim that performance art is primarily an American phenomenon by Carlson (in page 2!) of his book. However, I must admit that reading mainly in the English language in Asia, it is difficult to find much literarture in the shops on performance art besides that coming from Europe and America.
However my practice of performance art has its own unwritten involvement. In Singapore, I watched the performances of Tang DaWu, during the 1980’s. I had a short encounter with him in his solo exhibition in 1979. His exhibition, “Earthworks” was held at the National Museum Art Gallery. DaWu had lived for 20 years in England and was doing things with the earth from an open site in Singapore’s fast developing landscape. DaWu put things in an art gallery which no one had done before in Singapore. There were drawings made from the stains left behind by rain water on white linen hung over natural formations of drains. Different levels of rainfall on different days left a different shade of earth on the linen, forming new landscapes. There were also some cubic cakes of earth that had a circle written with a calligraphy brush. As the mud cake dried in the sun, it cracks and proved to be omenous signs of creation and destruction. The exhibition also showed photographs of DaWu digging on site while preparing for the exhibition. It seemed like a process which involved different stages of “performance”. Whether it was one of responding to the tropical climate of Singapore in an everchanging landscape, losing its natural spaces to highrise and concrete.
before I ever had any idea that I wanted to end up doing what I am doing now. What is it? Art? Performance art?
“the most productive life of culture takes place on the boundaries.”
- Mikhail Bakhtin, “Speech Genres and Other Late Essays”,
trans. Vern W. McGee, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1986, p.2
Performance art in a sense makes representation of the self. The question, “what is self?” leads to “what is performance art?” It is quite a different issue if one considers it comparatively, say between East and West, or between neighbouring countries. One general observation may be that of Asian cultures showing a cultural preference for individualism to be submissive to the group or society. However, if one look more closely, there are intrinsic differences, how individualism asserts its existence under such a prejudice in each society. Our experience in situations that relates to the currency of our society gives us our references as to who we are and hence also what we do.
As a child we listened to stories of our parents, telling us their experiences of the recent past. Events that for us were of the quality of a fairy tale even though they could be describing something sinister and frightful like bombs falling on us during the war. Its not that we do not believe in them, but like fairy tales, the experience of our reality is totally different in terms of time and place. Just looking back at places that I have lived in, many have changed beyond recognition, what more of my parent’s generation and what they have been through. Meandering through it all underneath their own actions, social situations provide the background to one’s personal drama of life.
-portraiture-chinese mastery in landscape-human place in universe-portraiture-
“The term “performance” has become extremely popular in recent years in a wide range of activities in the arts, in literature, and in the social sciences. As its popularity and usage has grown, so has a complex body of writing about performance, attempting to analyze and understand just what sort of human activity it is. For the person with an interest in studying performance, this analysis and commentary may at first seem more of an obstacle than an aid. So much has been written by experts from such a wide range of disciplines, and such a complex web of specialized critical vocabulary has been developed in the course of this analysis, that a newcomer seeking a way into the discussion may feel confused and overwelmed”
- Marvin Carlson -”Performance - a critical introduction”
Routledge, London and New York, 1998, p. 1 and 187
The above quotation from Marvin Carlson’s book appears in the beginning of the introduction as well as its concluding chapter, as he makes a performative ritual of repetition in writing, making a circle like a snake eating its own tail. In between Carlson analysed performance in a diversity of definations and usages, spanning a comprehensive spectrum from the social sciences to cultural practices and theories, focusing in 2 chapters out of 8 on the art of performance as we might be inclined to discuss here . Such an exhaustive survey gives one the predilection that everything may now be regarded as performance or performative these days. This has prompted another American writer, Amelia Jones to prefer using the term “body art” in her analysis of performance art per se. In refering to these American studies, I may be complaisant to the somewhat propagandistic and arrogant claim that performance art is primarily an American phenomenon by Carlson (in page 2!) of his book. However, I must admit that reading mainly in the English language in Asia, it is difficult to find much literarture in the shops on performance art besides that coming from Europe and America.
However my practice of performance art has its own unwritten involvement. In Singapore, I watched the performances of Tang DaWu, during the 1980’s. I had a short encounter with him in his solo exhibition in 1979. His exhibition, “Earthworks” was held at the National Museum Art Gallery. DaWu had lived for 20 years in England and was doing things with the earth from an open site in Singapore’s fast developing landscape. DaWu put things in an art gallery which no one had done before in Singapore. There were drawings made from the stains left behind by rain water on white linen hung over natural formations of drains. Different levels of rainfall on different days left a different shade of earth on the linen, forming new landscapes. There were also some cubic cakes of earth that had a circle written with a calligraphy brush. As the mud cake dried in the sun, it cracks and proved to be omenous signs of creation and destruction. The exhibition also showed photographs of DaWu digging on site while preparing for the exhibition. It seemed like a process which involved different stages of “performance”. Whether it was one of responding to the tropical climate of Singapore in an everchanging landscape, losing its natural spaces to highrise and concrete.
before I ever had any idea that I wanted to end up doing what I am doing now. What is it? Art? Performance art?
“the most productive life of culture takes place on the boundaries.”
- Mikhail Bakhtin, “Speech Genres and Other Late Essays”,
trans. Vern W. McGee, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1986, p.2