Reactivation—The 9Th Shanghai Biennale 2012 October 1, 2012–March 31, 2013

Barbara Pollack Reactivation—The 9th Shanghai 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 Hong Kong 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, Paris, 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 Beijing 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.

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