"Beijing - Hong Kong, a susceptible and pleasing nature-study"

by Boris Nieslony 2007

Beijing, yes. Friendly and hospitable was my
reception. The city is big, the impressions are big
and then the most versatile encounters. To undergo, to
experience the streaming of people on and around the
Tian'anmen Square...

The explicitly expressed wish to write something about
the art scene of Beijing
is immense, is too immense, what can you really
experience and see in 12 days and sentimentalities on
various areas just help gradually. Due to
time-pressure, I was not able to attend all events at
the DIAF festival.

I was happy, to hold workshops in Beijing and Honkong,
I was lucky to perform in various styles according to
the "laws" of performance art, and was able to
experience, perceive and reflect many Chinese
performances. 

The starting point of my reflections is the
performance art and many discourses, that I could lead
with the help of the translatress Siu Lan's. And
slowly the questions and arguments crystallized, that
went far beyond my own.

The turnarounds within the argumentation were
surprising for me. Contradictions were not
differentiated to have them stand dialectically, to
have them appear fructuous, but there were relegated
into an untimelyness, into a speechlessness
namely with the words: this would be the difference
between the occident and China. This disrupting of
trains of though is the central element for me, to
write down the following thoughts:

Thesis:
A history of the art, any art, here in particular the
art of performing, is indeed possible, but it
represents an anachronism. (It fails it's time.) But
at the same time represents this "failing of it's
time" the dialectical delineation as the picture, the
figure of a "reminiscent presence" (presence as a
relict, mostly remembered in private) for example in
our discourse: we are Chinese. To deduce then
dialectically: where does "the Chinese" show, if not
during the discourse, showing itself thinking from
sentence to sentence? Does it show a booming economy?
Does it show in the exploding gallery-system, for
example 798? In the occidental designed and outbound
showing off of prosperity, that already many young
artists experience in their lives? Or does it show in
the cynics of the social bordering? And as the last
question, does it show in the various forms and
interpretations of performance art within the culture,
and social and political habitués? 

Culture belongs (and originates) within one time and
is read in another. What did I really read? I read the
image of annexation without a method, without any
critical instrumentalism, annexation as fetish, the
goal-orientated New, as the neoliberalism politically
expresses in the heartfelt embrace with a
post-capitalistic dynamic applying it's own
instrumentalism e.g. 798. (Formulates the imaging of
an expressive, individual freedom) Too often I saw the
targeted fin, the location of a setting, und not often
enough a "movement of the presence". Asked myself, do
translations of Wittgenstein texts exist in Chinese? 

The Deferrer (to rebuke) 
The Image. 
On the one hand performance becomes the movement
without a place and seen as a present. These actions
formulate a deep critic - deriving from the sediment
of loss - criticizing a culture, that shows it self
now remembering. it becomes present. The place, where
corresponding materialistic ways of existence become
apparent. Each performance is forced into it's
independence of form and distance from the person,
that created it. This distance allows perception.
("Who am I with you? And who am I without you?")

On the other hand we have the annex ion of form, the
self stage-managing. Thus the destruction of the
image, because the individual is self-stage-managing.
This is the space, where the glance gets lost, where
contents, symbols and any meaning freeze into a
design. 

The visible images, gestures, performances as such
have to have space and time to create their own impact
and not have them devaluated with the "connotation" as
a fetish of their presentation. 


Maybe the difference shows itself within the
discourse. But I would not see it that much as as any
opposing of orient and occident, or any differences
between Europe and China, but as the antagonism, that
I create between me and many other artists worldwide
dialectically and then illustrate. 

All else I saw and was allowed to experience, were the
fructuous encounters.

In this spirit, I loved the performance of Kwang Lao
Wu, who combed sentences of a book by Friedrich
Nietzsche with a comb, stoic, page by page. Asked
myself - in sense of a dialectical image: how would it
be, to comb the Nietzsche text backwards, against the
"direction of reading"?

Or whether this is all just a translation phenomenon?

Boris Nieslony, October 2007

translation by Sibyll Kalff, October 2007

E. P. I. Zentrum
Europäisches Performance Institut
http://www.asa.de/