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MOMENTUM AiR
PANDAMONIUM Residency
Qiu Anxiong, Feng Bingy, Xu Wenkai
2 May – 19 Jun 2014
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Within the context of ‘PANDAMONIUM: New Media Art from Shanghai’ and as part of ‘Works on Paper II’ during Berlin’s Month of Performance Art, the MOMENTUM Residency hosted three extraordinary artists from Shanghai; Qiu Anxiong, Feng Bingyi and Xu Wenkai (aka Aaajiao). This series of Residencies was made possibile by the generous support of Chronus Art Center, Shanghai.
David Elliot, Li Zhenhua, Rachel Volloch, Gabriele Knapstein, Siegfried Zielinski, Feng Bingyl, Qiu Anxiong, Xu Wenkai
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Qiu Anxiong (b. 1972, Chengdu) was born in the capital of Sichuan province in the southwest of China. There, he studied under the progressive artistic practice of Ye Yongqing and Zhang Xiaogang. Qiu and his friends collectively founded a bar which became a hub for the blossoming underground music and art circles in Sichuan, and his colleagues included He Duoling, Zhou Chunya, and Shen Xiaotong. In his animated films, Qiu co-mingles the classical and the contemporary, using the traditional Chinese ink-and-wash style to transpose contemporary social and environmental issues onto traditional Chinese landscapes. A friend and neighbor of Yang Fudong, Qiu has exhibited broadly internationally, having studied contemporary international art and traditional Chinese culture at the Kunsthochschule Kassel, Germany. In 2004 he began teaching at Shanghai Normal University and currently lives and works in Shanghai. Qiu received the Chinese Contemporary Art Award in 2006 and has exhibited widely, including a recent solo-show, titled Qiu Anxiong, The New Book of Mountains and Seas II at the Arken Museum of Modern Art in Ishøj, Denmark (2013) and group exhibition ‘Ink Art’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (2013). He is one of the artists undertaking the PANDAMONIUM Residency, and will be producing new work for this show. |
Recording Date: 18/5/2014
Duration: 13 min 42 sec
A work-in-progress developed especially for MOMENTUM’s ‘Works on Paper II’ performance series during Berlin’s Month of Performance Art. PANDAMONIUM’s artist in residence Qiu Anxiong embarks on an experiment to explore new, uncharted territory in his artistic practice. For the first time in his oeuvre, Anxiong will combine video with live performance and animated paper cut-outs, all overlaid to create a surreal contemporary re-invention of the traditional Chinese art of Shadow Theatre. Projected onto a screen resembling the form of classical Chinese scrolls, the traditional medium of paper is here re-imagined and animated with moving images and moving bodies.
FENG BINGYI
CV – Website
Residency: 25 May – 19 Jun 2014
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Feng Bingyi (b. 1991, Ningbo) is a young emerging talent in the Chinese art scene. Having studied under Yang Fudong at the China Academy of Art, she follows in his footsteps with her focus on cinematic traditions, while employing a poetic language. Distancing herself from the chains of external reality, she looks for inspiration within her internal impressions, which she expresses in the forms of installations, photography, documentary and animation. After receiving both the Outstanding Graduation Work Award and the China Academy of Art Scholarship from the China Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou in 2013, Feng continued her studies at the Chelsea College of Art and Design, University of the Arts in London in 2014. Though she has been exhibited in China alongside well-established contemporary artists, she has never before been shown in Berlin. Feng is one of the artists undertaking the PANDAMONIUM Residency. |
Workshop Bauhaus University
The youngest artist in PANDAMONIUM, Feng Bingyi, took centre stage to present her work for a group of students partaking in the Master-course ‘Public Art and New Artistic Strategies’ at Bauhaus University’s Media, Art and Design Faculty. Bingyi focussed on her ongoing project, ‘Book of Notes’, in which she attempts to record her thoughts and free-flow of associations during (or directly after) dreaming, inebriation and otherwise uncontrolled states. From what she insisted was and should remain a thoroughly personal approach, a fascinating discussion unfolded regarding the centrality of the artist’s subconscious, the responsibility to engage in socially pressing issues and to what extent the two may or may not be incompatible.
XU WENKAI
CV – Website
Residency: 9 May – 5 Jun 2014
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Xu Wenkai (Aaajiao) (b. 1984, Xi’an) is one of China’s foremost media artists, bloggers and free culture developers. Having studied physics and computers, Xu Wenkai is self-taught as an artist and new media entrepreneur. In his works he focuses on the use of data and its various forms of display. In 2003 he established the sound art website cornersound.com and in 2006 he founded the Chinese take on the blog We Make Money Not Art: We Need Money Not Art. He is devoted to Processing, an open-source visual programming software, Dorkbot, a non-profit initiative for creative minds and Eventstructure, an interdisciplinary center for art, media, technology and academic research based in Shanghai and founded by Xu. In his works, Aaajiao focuses on the use of data and its various forms of display and on the processes of transforming content from reality to data and back again. His most significant contribution to the field of new media in China is a social one, as he act a as a vector for the interpretation and communication of international and local trends in the artistic use of software. Recent exhibitions include his solo-show titled The Screen generation, at C Space (2013) and chi K11 Art Space in Shanghai and at 9m2 Museum in Beijing (2014) and group-exhibition TRANSCIENCE – INTRACTABLE OBJECTS at Taikang Space in Beijing (2014). Xu is one of the artists undertaking the PANDAMONIUM Residency. |
Body Shadow (2014 – ongoing)
Aaajiao, never ceasing to think beyond ostensibly clearly demarcated categories, embarked on an ambitious project that is still in progress today, ‘Body Shadow’. Whereas tattooing has been an art of marking the body by external means, he is devising ways to let the body itself determine the image, thereby endowing the tattoo with a biologically personalized and incidental character. Based on the traditional Chinese science of acupuncture and its grounding in the age-old understanding of the Meridian-system, it is the networks inside the body, rather than any rational, conceptual process that determine the image. The art of tattooing being largely prohibited and/or underdeveloped for its controversial status in China, Aaaijiao made studio-visits to discuss his plans with various avant-gardist tattooing artists in Berlin – a city steeped in tattoo-culture. The first execution of this project will be on Aaajiao’s own body.
Stay updated on the developments here.
Body Shadow from aaajiao on Vimeo.
