Philip and Hangfeng have been in regular contact since the launch of the e-space lab international project on 04.10.2008 in the hub at the Bluecoat.
There are a number of collaborative art projects under way. One in particular has generated some video work. In English you can say that something is a something else. This is not just saying something is like something else, it is saying that one thing (that is not like another) is that other! So this is a complex juxtaposition that is the stuff of symbolism. This is not juxtaposition as things side by side, although the editing process works with apposition, it is exploring something by making it something other!
We chose songbirds in cages and birds in an aviary.
The songbirds in cages were video recorded by Hangfeng in a park in Shanghai. Parks in Shanghai are full of social and public discourse, people playing games, dancing, exercising, singing opera, and including people bringing their songbirds to a place where the songbirds can also engage in conversation and exchange. What if an art festival was organised in such a way that artwork could sing to artwork? The work of curators, looking after the artworks, would bring the artworks together, but the singing as discourse between artworks is something else. The gap might be as big as the difference in interests and understandings between birds and ornithologists, but crossing gaps is what our brains do best, and with symbols.
In the UK we don't take our birds to the park, but we like to see and hear them in situations like an aviary. We document the difference between China and the UK, and we make-up the scenario that the aviary is like the museum, situated in an international art world with artists networking, but they are not able to leave this particular environment. They are cooped up, literally! Nevertheless, as long as there is food and water provided, it is a life of song making.
Posted by Philip Courtenay
1 comment:
Whata an mazing contrast between Philip Coutenay's Orwellian aviary and Hang Feng's social network.I have three canaries who spend the summer on my windowsill, but it's getting a bit cold, even for cold blooded raptors, so they have to spend the winter indoors.
I can't imagine English people behaving like the Chinese ornithogists, walking their dogs is perhaps the closest they come to social interaction.
And of course the flights involved, are fuelled by seed,all art project should henceforth carry the logo "No aviation fuel was burned in this networking of curators."
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