Barbara Pollack Reactivation—The 9th Biennale 2012 October 1, 2012–March 31, 2013

The Power Station of Art, Shanghai. Courtesy of the Shanghai Biennale.

igger than ever before and definitely more chaotic, the ninth edition of the Shanghai Biennale is simultaneously a great leap Bforward for China’s cultural scene and an incoherent curatorial jumble. The Biennale inaugurated a new location, the Power Station of Art, formerly the Nanshi power plant that served as the Pavilion of the Future at the 2010 Shanghai Expo. With nine thousand square meters of exhibition space within a thirty-one-thousand-square-meter facility—requiring a much bigger budget than provided by the Shanghai government—the new museum was still being renovated just two days before the opening, making it almost impossible to install on time the massive number of works by ninety artists and artists’ collectives from twenty-seven countries.

Conceptual artist Qiu Zhijie, nominated this year for the Guggenheim’s prestigious Hugo Boss award, served as chief curator, and he directed a team that included gallerist/curator Johnson Chang Tsong-zung, media theorist Boris Groys, and former Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art director Jens Hoffmann. In addition to the exhibition at the Power Station of Art, the curators invited thirty cities, from Detroit to Auckland,

14 Vol. 12 No. 2 to host pavilions located in empty buildings along Nanjing Road, bringing over one hundred more artists to the event.

Huang Yongping, Thousand Under the theme of Reactivation, Hands Kuanyin, 1997–2012, cast iron, steel, various items, a nod to its new home in a former 800 x 800 x 1800 cm. Courtesy of the artist and the Shanghai power station, the Biennale Biennale. was divided into four sections: Resources, Revisit, Reform, and Republic. But it seemed that the curators ignored these categories when installing the works on view. For example, Resources included Shanghai Biennale veteran Huang Yongping’s jaw-dropping sculpture Thousand Hands Kuanyin (1997–2012), in the main lobby, a magnification of Marcel Duchamp’s bottle rack reaching three stories high with steel hands covering its one thousand prongs, each holding an object of significance in Chinese culture, from chopsticks to Buddha statuettes. But this section also includes works on the first and second floors, including Light, Falling Like A Feather (2012), by Wang Yuyang, a string of white neon lights suspended through the center of the museum as if falling gently through the air. These two works were spectacles that distracted visitors from the more thoughtful aspects of Resources, where several works were linked by the theme of education, including drawings by reformer Rudolf Steiner, notes for lectures by Joseph Beuys, a neon wall installation by Joseph Kosuth, and a miniature version of Night School, an education lab at New York’s New Museum, recreated here by Anton Vidokle, Eungie Joo, and Nikolaus Hirsch.

Wang Yuyang, Light, The overall layout of Reactivation, Falling Like a Feather, 2012, fluorescent light tubes. however, was so disorganized that Courtesy of the artist and the Shanghai Biennale. it took the tenacity of a Sherlock Holmes to find such connections. It was far more rewarding to abandon the Biennial’s categories entirely and find themes running through the exhibition in a more serendipitous manner. While wandering through the first floor galleries, for example, I discovered hidden away in a darkened room a work by young Shanghai artist Lu Yang, a 4-channel, 3-D animation, The Anatomy of Rage (2011), depicting the Buddhist deity Yamantaka from a neuroscientist’s perspective which looks at aspects such as brain chemistry and chemical imbalances. Following a string of arrows into the one-hundred-and-fifty-metre-

Vol. 12 No. 2 15 tall chimney of the power station, I found Swiss artist Roman Signier’s Roman Signer, Chimney Project, 2012, wood barrel, explosion of blue pigment, created by dropping a two-hundred-kilogram paint, performance. Courtesy of the artist and the Shanghai steel ball into a pool of paint. While almost overwhelmed by the breadth Biennale. of the exhibition, there were spaces in which subtle connections could be found, such as the gallery that features Israeli artist Nira Pereg’s meditative videos about religious factions in her home country, Sophie Calle’s subtle interrogation of blind observers at the edge of the sea, and Pakistani artist Naiza H. Khan’s Observatory Archives from Manora Island (2010), which conveys a redolent nostalgia for a place few have visited. These three artists, placed in close proximity to each other under the thematic of Republic, share acute insights into the human condition, which they communicated through the most understated means.

Nira Pereg, Sabbath 2008, 2007–08, video, 7 mins., 12 secs. Courtesy of the artist and Shanghai Biennale.

16 Vol. 12 No. 2 Left and right: Sophie Calle, Voir la mer, 2011, video, photographs. Courtesy of the artist, Galerie Perrotin, , Paula Cooper Gallery, New York

Naiza H. Khan, The Observatory: Archives From Manora Island, 2010–12, photographs, drawing, video, installation. Courtesy of the artist and the Shanghai Biennale.

Thomas Hirschhorn, Spinoza Car, 2007, installation. Courtesy of the artist and the Shanghai Biennale.

Given the ambition of the curators in terms of the scale of the exhibition, it was not surprising that there were many international art stars included in the Biennale, a boon for a Shanghai public that might not be familiar with some of these names, but there was a lack of contextualization to underscore their significance. Thomas Hirschhorn’s Spinoza Car (2009), a full-sized automobile packed with ephemera related to this great philosopher, seemed to be included mostly because of its emphasis on accumulation, linking it superficially to Ouyang Chun’s Infinity Column (2012), shown nearby, which consisted of a stack of everyday objects including a birdcage with live pigeons atop Louis Vuitton luggage, but neither of them fit into the Biennale’s themes. Gillian Wearing’s well- known videos of British drunks and vagrants and police officers are set off to the side, segregated, in wooden-walled rooms, like packing containers, an indication of how little they fit in with the overarching themes of the Biennale. There is little need to include again the overly exposed Peter Fischli and David Weiss classic video The Way Things Go (1989), and Anthony McCall’s light show You and I, Horizontal (2012), a thoughtful work that demands unbroken attention, is pretty much lost in the confusing arrangement of surrounding galleries.

Vol. 12 No. 2 17 Ouyang Chun, Infinity Column, Hannah Hurtzig, 2012, installation. Courtesy of the artist and the Shanghai Biennale.

Left: Anthony McCall, You and I, Horizontal, 2012, light installation. Photo: Blaise Adilon. Courtesy of the artist and Sean Kelly Gallery, New York. Right: Lucy + Jorge Orta, Antartica World Passport Delivery Village, 2012, installation. Courtesy of the artists and the Shanghai Biennale.

But the Biennale did demonstrate profound progress over previous ones by its inclusion of performance art. But I have no idea what visitors thought about Tino Seghal’s work, in which three female security guards surround anyone who enters their gallery and sing, “This is the contemporary, contemporary, contemporary” (perhaps it should have been translated into Chinese). On the other hand, a long line stood in wait to have their faux passports stamped at Lucy + Jorge Orta’s Antartica World Passport Delivery Village (2012), a makeshift collection of huts to be set up in the

18 Vol. 12 No. 2 South Pole as a place that welcomes all. Grass Stage Theater, a troupe from Shanghai, revived their experimental plays presented in a short-lived space, the Nail Theater, that previously operated in Shanghai and then closed, by juxtaposing scripted text with slides and videos projected above them. Even without understanding a word, the actors were so passionate that I found the experience fascinating and moving.

While not one of the stated themes, one pronounced element of the Biennale was the interrogation of the archive. This was manifest in the work of artists who collect and catalogue information, creating miniature libraries and reports that may or may not be based on fact. Shanghai photography duo Birdhead presented several large-scale grids of images that juxtaposed close-ups of gardens with snapshots of youth culture. American political artist Martha Rosler showed photographs from Cuba that she shot in 1981 and that consisted mostly of views that demonstrated the importance of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in daily life through their constant, though often subtle, presence on wall murals or television screens. Hong Kong artist Ho Sin Tung conjured up an entirely fabricated archive from his fictional Hong Kong Inter-Vivos Film Festival complete with hand drawn posters, seating charts, and film stills. On the other hand, the team of Zhuang Hui + Dan’er documented a very real social issue, the decline of the city of Yumen due to the depletion of its oil resources caused by over- drilling, here presented as an installation of photographs and artifacts set in a faux photo studio.

Irrelative Group, Family Letter, 2012, installation. Courtesy of the artist and the Shanghai Biennale.

I must admit that I spent a considerable amount of time trying to decipher the connections among the artworks in this Biennale, often coming up empty handed since, despite the designated themes, there seemed to be little reason for their placement or relationship to each other. For this reason, one of my favorite works was by the collective Irrelevant Commission,

Vol. 12 No. 2 19 whose Family Letter (2012) documents a performance where each artist blindfolded his parents and brought them to a spot they remembered from their childhood. In the resulting videos, the parents rested their hands on the shoulders of their child as they were led through the streets of the city, an unintended metaphor for the experience of most visitors to this exhibition who wandered galleries and hallways not knowing what they were about to encounter.

Far more curatorial strength could be found at the city pavilions, some Kane Sy, Boulevard du Centenaire Made in China: installed on the fifth floor of the Power Station of Art, but with the majority Untitled 2009–10, photograph. Courtesy of the artist and the located in derelict spaces and even a former department store on Nanjing Shanghai Biennale. Road. The setting was so decrepit and unmanageable that when many of the foreign envoys showed up to install their exhibition, there were complaints about the insatisfactory circumstances they encountered—no lighting, no doors, no walls. Nevertheless, many seemed to tackle the shortcomings and turn them to their advantage. Detroit presented a neo-vaudeville team, The Hinterlands, with dancer Haleem (Stringz) Rasul, and created an impromptu stage in a dilapidated room with screens showing video footage of silent films along with hometown settings. Pittsburg contributed a fully operational estate sale, with goods all brought from a single family home, and Shanghai buyers were allowed to purchase pictures of priests and Santa Claus or embroidered tablecloths and baseball pennants, many that were specific to that city. On a more “exotic” note, Dakar’s contemporary art space Raw Material showed photographs of that city’s African Chinatown by artist Kan Sy, depicting a community full of shopkeepers selling knock- off bags and DVDs, not so different from those found on Nanjing Road. bravely overcame the severe limitations of their dark vault of a space by installing First Nations artist Brian Jungen’s ceremonial masks made from Nike sneakers and placed in museum vitrines as well as a full- scale skeleton of a whale made from plastic chairs hanging from the ceiling and dramatically lit by a spotlight.

As stated in numerous interviews, Qiu Zhijie considered the introduction of city pavilions to be his most profound innovation within the concept of the biennale. This was a kind of revision of the richly funded national pavilions found at the Venice Biennale, but, in a time when nationalism in art has been roundly criticized, Qiu Zhijie’s choice of cities was savvy and not only included cultural capitals (Berlin, Amsterdam, Los Angeles), but also unexpected and overlooked places (Lima, Tehran, Ulan Bator) or new

20 Vol. 12 No. 2 art magnets (Moscow, Mumbai, Istanbul). It was brave for this chief curator to stack up the artistic output of Shanghai with the accomplishments of these other diverse communities demonstrating that places outside of China often have a more sophisticated and experimental approach to art making and a more solid grasp of curating.

Vancouver Pavilion, Brian China can be a tough place for international contemporary art, so I Jungen, Cetology, 2002, plastic chairs. Courtesy of the artist, hesitate to criticize any biennial as ambitious as Reactivation. Certainly, Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Shanghai Biennale. the installation was free of many of the problems that plagued its former location, the Shanghai Art Museum, which is housed in an old jockey club from the colonialist era. At the Power Station of Art, at least, unlike previous Biennials at the Shanghai Art Museum, the works were for the most part dust and fingerprint free, which may not seem like much but was a miracle given the problems with installation and the fact that construction was still taking place on opening day. But this Biennale, like most of the exhibitions I have seen in China, lacks what can only be called curatorial vision, a sure- handed insightfulness that justifies the selection and placement of each and every artwork. Under the supervision of the right curator, art exhibitions can vibrate with meaning without becoming didactic. Too often, in China, the selection of over-scaled work—like those found here—becomes a substitute for the skilled orchestration of varied points of view, something the next Shanghai Biennale, or, for that matter, any other major exhibition undertaken in China could benefit from. But that, of course, would require a longer time frame to allow for appropriate planning and fundraising, something this biennial struggled without. What was accomplished, even given this lack of support, is far better than any Shanghai Biennale in recent history, but that accomplishment alone sets the bar too low to inspire a more thought provoking show for the future.

Vol. 12 No. 2 21