ARTISTS TALKING

Clutching two-and-a-half millilitres of White Flower ointment, I smile nervously. I am sat in Manchester’s Chinese Arts Centre, and curled naked opposite me is Leung Po Shan. A white carnation is poised in her lips, her face two centimetres from mine. A ticking metronome reminds me that I cannot leave until the bottle is empty. Luckily, a queue is waiting; plus, I am not the one bearing my pubic hair.

Live art in China and Hong Kong has been particularly rife since 1990 and ‘Vital’ provides a platform for artists of Chinese descent throughout the diaspora to converge and showcase pioneering forays into the hybrid art form. The rupture with tradition is dramatic – the first official exhibition of nude photographs in China was held in 2001. Post-Mao, -Deng, -Tiananmen and -Olympic win, emerging Chinese art rejects ink and brush. The contemporary media approach harnesses immediacy of body in direct interaction with the public. “We don’t have many spaces or funding support in Hong Kong,” relates Kin Leung. Indeed, his Hopeless Hope extends live art into community involvement. I am transfixed for thirty minutes as an undulating organic human machine unravels before me. Bandaged with kidney beans, Kin Leung as central tree figure is surrounded by six audience members who unwittingly drip melted ice onto him through pumping interlinked hands together. Scant resources spurs collaborative experience.

Immediacy of live art can be overbearing. The enactment by Beijing’s Guang Yu is startling: two KKK clad figures hold the artist by reins as he crawls back and forth on a large sheet of calligraphy paper. Brush tipped in his mouth, painstakingly he directs each letter ‘I Love you all. Want to know what I can do to please you?’ With raspy breath, he manoeuvres dog-like between letter and ink dish. Subjugated for thirty minutes, the audience is silent, inert. Later, he tells me he invites all viewer reactions. Good: I tell him I felt ill.

Maybe live art takes getting used to. I am enjoying rubbing scented oil into dry skin now, watching as naked artist morphs delicately, playfully, a flower yearning sunlight. I am engrossed. Leung Po Shan’s body as an interactive art vessel requires no multimedia simulation. Flesh on flesh is real and viewer/participant role is transgressed. Round her toes a red ribbon is tied, but instead of connoting bloodshed, censorship, identity, the intimate one-on-one overrides red and incites nurturing strokes. Prior to the performance, I was sceptical. Leung Po Shan insisted her practice was non-gender-centric and avoided labels. Meanwhile Leung Po Shan (first name Anthony) reveals an image of herself smashing the PRC flag projected onto ice. Her exhibition poster details a labelling system bent on self-categorisation. Was not the Centre at risk of ghettoising Chinese art and reducing Chinese artists to ethnic heritage?

Zhang Lianjie’s video documentation My Face In New York culminates in his smearing viscous raw egg onto his face which he rubs against McDonald’s glass door. His expression is an angry opera mask shedding tradition, his body deployed to pit authoritarian China against rampant consumerism.

Evidently, it is impossible to escape cultural identity; existence requires such confrontation. Awareness of artist materials and associations inferred through work is as important as the curator’s purposeful motivations for representing Chinese artists. Irrefutably, the power of ‘Vital’s performances and ensuing discussion generated from the mixed audience confirms that Chinese Art Centre’s intentions are far reaching. Art’s possibilities have been compellingly extended by key influential live artists of our time. As Marcus Young quips “I don’t mind labels, as long as you give me many different ones”. I’ll try that next time I am rubbing oil on someone.