DIGITAL DIGEST ASIA
facing page: Mark Aerial Waller in Xi’an. Courtesy the artist
Much of my time there was spent talking with artists from Xi’an. The contemporary The film I am making from the Xi’an residency is based on a Taoist ritual that
art scene was small – a handful of people under thirty, then the rest over forty and happens every day at 4 pm. Most days it is open to the public, but it is not for the
mainly part of the Chinese establishment. Their artistic concerns are quite public. I like this relationship – it creates a reverence for the music, and it becomes
different from mine – painting was the main medium, like Chinese neo-geo, with less possible to impose a value judgement on it. What interested me was not the
some interesting exceptions. One artist, Yuang Fenghui, made work with thickly music as a melody or rhythm to be enjoyed in an aesthetic sense, but its structure
laid graphite, so the whole surface was covered; within the blackness you could and its narrative.
see figures contained in ever-increasing parentheses – very beautiful work, and
not the graphic figuratism you see a lot of in China. My host, the artist Yue The event starts with one or two of the priestesses entering and hanging out,
Luping, worked in a more conceptual manner. My visit was actually the subject of casually, without the sense of ceremony of a Christian mass. Then the priestesses
his work, so I was constantly photographed and filmed in tourist locations and stand in front of the Taoist icons, their backs to the entrance. A small ensemble
meeting artists and giving lectures. A strange experience. of musicians enters and sits, preparing their instruments and joking a bit. A gong
is tapped and a drum beaten in increasing tempo, leading up to a roll. The flautist
China is still a communist state, so there seems to be an awkward feeling around starts playing intermittently; he breaks and there is more drum roll, then a pause,
personal expression for artists there. Political expression comes easier in the then more flute, some chat, then it starts:
figurative protest paintings of much of contemporary Chinese art.
The musicians play a melody with small chimes and the flute, then stop.
Overall the country is in a transition period between communism and neo- The priestesses play a small percussion instrument,
capitalism. I say neo-capitalism because the modes of capitalism have been set tapping as if to make sure of something,
up quickly and mimicked, like a Dolce & Gabbana handbag made from a light piece of singing, about three words, from a priestess,
polyurethane. Commodity exchange is less entrenched than in other places, but then the ensemble starts to play more melody; this time more coherent and
the contradictions are more apparent. High-street brands are, for example, made confident.
in China but not sold there. The domestic and export markets have virtually no This lasts about three minutes.
interchange – though on the top floor of a multistorey clothes market you may Then it dies away as the priestess hums or murmurs.
find an expensive, chic stall selling factory seconds from Topman. Then they start to sing more coherent words.
It becomes very quiet, just quiet singing between a man and a woman.
There is also a weird phenomenon of top-range brand malls that have no The ensemble moves in again with more melody, less percussion.
customers, and instead operate like 3-D Vogue fashion pages: the ground rent is Not as brazen as earlier, more delicate for about four minutes, joining in with the
cheap enough for brands like Gucci to be there, and for the malls to employ singers.
pretty staff who pretend to work for customers who do not come. Chinese The singers pause and the music seems to sing in the same way. It is difficult to
people feel uncomfortable about shopping there, and the items cost more than hear whether the sound comes from voices or from a bowed instrument.
five months’ white-collar wages, so they’re just advertisements for branding. The percussion joins in, then the ensemble stops.
There is silence and a priestess sings alone and is replied to by a male voice.
Away from the city centre it is very busy, with lots of kind, sweet people who cook Then several priestesses sing in unison and the ensemble start up once more,
amazing and strange food. Once you get used to the textures, it tastes with the voices,
wonderful. and stops.
Then this very sexy chant starts up, a unison of priestesses, repeating the same
Young people are very respectful to each other as individuals. In a restaurant the words in an accelerating loop. Time is kept by the central priestess, who taps, with
waitress is not a servant but more like a friend of a friend – not intimate, but on a seductive sprightly edge, on a wooden block that is very smooth and soft.
equal human footing. People are so active, as you might expect, and are Various singers fade in and out of audibility. As they swap roles, there’s always
constantly doing things with not so much time for reflection. one who maintains the rhythm.
The rhythm slows back down over about four minutes to a quiet space – just
The videowork was set within this situation, but it was not something that I chanting softly and wood-block percussion.
wanted to address directly. That would be impertinent, and is not my job – making After the slight pause they pick up again on the way back to another soft
work abroad is the same as making work in London. I look for the relationships crescendo, accompanied by a ringing metal sound.
between mythology in high and low culture, across many eras, at the position of It steps up slowly, the rhythm backs down and up, like pixels in computer graphics.
culture and its traces in society, and how these traces are interpreted over time. It’s not a straight line.
In China I worked with a pro-communist restaurant singer who I asked to sing in The singing becomes more perfect, murmuring, then quieter, and then an
the park, some amateur love-seeking singers in the southern city of Kunming, incredible crescendo, like an earth-shattering orgasm.
and the musicians and priestesses in the Xi’an Taoist temple. I also recorded the And the musicians break in and peel off slowly.
recollections of a twenty-two-year-old girl’s visit to her grandmother’s deathbed,
where she was attended by her grandmother’s visiting beau (the grandmother It is very erotic.
outlived her husband by many years). The Taoist and communist singing are like
mythologies in themselves, and I create new ways for these mythologies to
emerge, mixing traditional, anecdotal and conceptual concerns. As told to Melissa Gronlund
161 Artreview
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