Karin Grace Oen: Admonition and the Academy: Installation, Video, and Performance Art in Reform Era China (2012)

Wu Shanzhuan, The Big Characters, 1985. (source)

“China’s Reform Era (1978-present) has seen the reinvigoration of academic, and artistic practice, and a rapprochement between the Chinese Communist Party and the intellectual elite. At its beginnings in the early- to mid-1980s the new availability of foreign texts and media led to Culture Fever, a widespread phenomenon throughout the intellectual and artistic spheres characterized by enthusiasm for the philosophy, literature, and art of the West and pre-Communist China and the simultaneous uptake of discrete Western and Confucian philosophies. These discussions often addressed modernity and modernism in China, a crucial homology to early twentieth century Chinese negotiations in literature and the arts and the development of an amalgamated ‘Chinese modernism’ comprised of elements of both Confucian and Western philosophy and aesthetics.

As this dissertation argues, key early experimental works of the Reform Era by Zhang Peili, Wu Shanzhuan, and Zhang Huan reveal a proclivity for subtle and indirect admonitory messages about China’s socio-political climate – a contemporary inhabitation of the traditional elite scholar-artist and his obligation to criticize immoral or unjust policies or actions. This admonitory practice was built by artists educated in elite academies (specifically, the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing and the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art in Hangzhou) yet utilized completely new and non-academic media. What this thesis terms as an ‘art of admonition’ utilized traditional tropes, including direct remonstrations of officials, withdrawal from official life in protest, and the concept of the ‘middle hermit’ – a scholar who admonishes official policy subtly and indirectly.

The experimental practices of artists after their graduation from elite academies stemmed from the extra-curricular resources made available to them, especially the schools’ libraries. The connection of these unofficial works to the official academies, their validation by art market success, and the subsequent official endorsement accorded to these and other artists in the later Reform Era blurs the distinctions between official and unofficial artistic practice in China, suggesting a strong endorsement of the dissident artist’s role as ‘middle hermit’.” (Abstract)

Thesis, Ph. D. in History, Theory, and Criticism of Art and Architecture
Dept. of Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012
Supervisor: Caroline A. Jones
214 pages

Publisher

PDF, PDF (13 MB, updated on 2017-1-11)

Slavko Kacunko: Closed Circuit Videoinstallationen: Ein Leitfaden zur Geschichte und Theorie der Medienkunst (2004) [German]

Die Publikation setzt sich mit der Möglichkeit einer fundierten und transdisziplinär legitimierten Geschichte und Theorie der Medienkunst auseinander. In ihrem Mittelpunkt steht eine historisch-geographische Vorstellung von ca. 1100 Medieninstallationen aus vergangenen vier Jahrzehnten. Die auf diesem Weg dokumentierte Arbeit von 650 KünstlerInnen ist das faktische Fundament der vorgelegten Studie. Ihr lexikalisch angelegter Ansatz baute auf einer systematischen Untersuchung des Materials auf und ihr erklärtes Ziel war die historische Präzision unter Einhaltung der Transparenz von Bezugsquellen.
Das Buch fungiert als unverzichtbare Bestandteile einer Einheit, die einen wesentlichen Baustein für die künftige Medienkunstgeschichte und -Theorie darstellt.

Publisher Logos Verlag, Berlin, 2004
ISBN 3832506004
1062 pages
via author

review (Britt Schlehahn, Sehepunkte, in German)
more reviews

publisher

PDF
View online (HTML)

Juan Downey: El ojo pensante / The Thinking Eye (2010) [Spanish/English]

Catalogue of the exhibition of a US-based Chilean pioneer video artist. During his career Downey created an extensive body of work that also includes electronic and video sculptures, photography, painting, drawing, printmaking, performance, installation and writing.

Curated by Julieta Gonzalez
Co-curated and Edited by Marilys Belt de Downey
Texts by Carla Macchiavello, Valerie Smith, Julieta Gonzalez, Nicolas Guagnini
227 pages

Exhibition website
Wikipedia

PDF (English section pp 173-217; 4 MB, updated on 2014-9-14)