Beijing East Village
Encyclopedia
The Beijing East Village was an avant-garde artistic community of the early 1990s located in the eastern part of Beijing
, just past the Third Ring Road on what was then the city's margins. It was formed in 1993 when a group of like-minded artists took up residence together in a "village" of low-quality migrant worker housing, fixing at the entrance a handwritten sign. Their community's name was inspired by the East Village
of Manhattan
, with which they felt an affinity in their experimental aesthetics. Only the year after its founding, following the arrest of Ma Liuming for cooking naked in a courtyard, the community was closed by the police, though former residents continued to collaborate.
, for example, was from Hubei
, Zhang Huan
from Henan
, Cang Xin
from Heilongjiang
. Their aesthetic was decidedly avant-garde; they ignored the goings-on in the then-influential Yuanmingyuan artistic community across the city, rather choosing to cultivate a distance from their peers. They frequently collaborated on performances, which the photographers among them documented. Manuela Lietti points out that this sort of community collaboration, though less frequent in the West, has not been uncommon in China:
Sources for list:
's most famous performances, 65 Kilograms and 12 Square Meters, were staged in the Beijing East Village, 65 Kilograms in his own combination living space and studio, 12 Square Meters in a public toilet not far from there.
In 1995, after the community had been disbanded, many of the Beijing East Village artists collaborated on the performance To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain in Mentougou District
, including Wang Shihua, Cang Xin, Gao Yang, Zuoxiao Zuzhou, Ma Zongyin, Zhang Huan, Ma Liuming, Zhang Binbin and Zhu Ming.
Beijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
, just past the Third Ring Road on what was then the city's margins. It was formed in 1993 when a group of like-minded artists took up residence together in a "village" of low-quality migrant worker housing, fixing at the entrance a handwritten sign. Their community's name was inspired by the East Village
East Village, Manhattan
The East Village is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, lying east of Greenwich Village, south of Gramercy and Stuyvesant Town, and north of the Lower East Side...
of Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
, with which they felt an affinity in their experimental aesthetics. Only the year after its founding, following the arrest of Ma Liuming for cooking naked in a courtyard, the community was closed by the police, though former residents continued to collaborate.
Residents
The residents of the Beijing East Village comprised, most significantly, the first generation of Chinese performance artists, as well as the photographers who would document their works. They had come to Beijing from the provinces: Ma LiumingMa Liuming
Ma Liuming is a contemporary Chinese painter and pioneer of performance art. He is known most of all for his exploration of the power and poetry of public nudity in China, where such behavior was strictly forbidden...
, for example, was from Hubei
Hubei
' Hupeh) is a province in Central China. The name of the province means "north of the lake", referring to its position north of Lake Dongting...
, Zhang Huan
Zhang Huan
Zhang Huan is a Chinese artist based in Shanghai and New York. He made his BA at the He Nan University in Kai Feng and his MA at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing...
from Henan
Henan
Henan , is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the central part of the country. Its one-character abbreviation is "豫" , named after Yuzhou , a Han Dynasty state that included parts of Henan...
, Cang Xin
Cang Xin
Cang Xin is an artist based in Beijing working in performance art and photography.Cang Xin was born in Heilongjiang Province, China....
from Heilongjiang
Heilongjiang
For the river known in Mandarin as Heilong Jiang, see Amur River' is a province of the People's Republic of China located in the northeastern part of the country. "Heilongjiang" literally means Black Dragon River, which is the Chinese name for the Amur. The one-character abbreviation is 黑...
. Their aesthetic was decidedly avant-garde; they ignored the goings-on in the then-influential Yuanmingyuan artistic community across the city, rather choosing to cultivate a distance from their peers. They frequently collaborated on performances, which the photographers among them documented. Manuela Lietti points out that this sort of community collaboration, though less frequent in the West, has not been uncommon in China:
In many places in the world, particularly the 'West', artistic practice has frequently been carried out on an individual basis. In China, however, artistic practice has often been undertaken within the realm of a community of individuals bound by a precise common trait, be it of a political, social or creative nature. In a country whose history and cultural agenda have often been characterized by collective movements, the bond between individual expression and communal practice has always been tight and at certain moments even obliterated the individual's voice.
Partial list of residents
- Cang XinCang XinCang Xin is an artist based in Beijing working in performance art and photography.Cang Xin was born in Heilongjiang Province, China....
- Duan Yingmei
- Gao Yang
- Kong Bu
- Li Guomin
- Ma LiumingMa LiumingMa Liuming is a contemporary Chinese painter and pioneer of performance art. He is known most of all for his exploration of the power and poetry of public nudity in China, where such behavior was strictly forbidden...
- Ma Zongyin
- Rong Rong
- Tan Yeguang
- Wang Shihua
- Xing Danwen
- Xu Shan
- Zhang Binbin
- Zhang HuanZhang HuanZhang Huan is a Chinese artist based in Shanghai and New York. He made his BA at the He Nan University in Kai Feng and his MA at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing...
- Zhu Ming
- Zuoxiao ZuzhouZuoxiao ZuzhouZuoxiao Zuzhou is a Chinese musician and artist. Educated at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts, he founded the rock band No and was a member of the Beijing East Village art collective. He has also contributed to the Huayi Chinese Festival of Arts at the Esplanade, Singapore, and provided...
Sources for list:
Performances
Two of Zhang HuanZhang Huan
Zhang Huan is a Chinese artist based in Shanghai and New York. He made his BA at the He Nan University in Kai Feng and his MA at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing...
's most famous performances, 65 Kilograms and 12 Square Meters, were staged in the Beijing East Village, 65 Kilograms in his own combination living space and studio, 12 Square Meters in a public toilet not far from there.
In 1995, after the community had been disbanded, many of the Beijing East Village artists collaborated on the performance To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain in Mentougou District
Mentougou District
Mentougou District is in west Beijing.Spanning 1,321 square kilometres, with 266,591 inhabitants , it is subdivided into 4 subdistricts of the city proper of Beijing and 9 towns ....
, including Wang Shihua, Cang Xin, Gao Yang, Zuoxiao Zuzhou, Ma Zongyin, Zhang Huan, Ma Liuming, Zhang Binbin and Zhu Ming.
Photography vs. performance art
As Gaby Wood writes, the Beijing East Village photographers' practice of documenting the performance artists resulted in "a curious aesthetic difficulty":When the photographers documented the performers, whose work was it? As recently as 1998, the New York exhibition of contemporary Chinese art, Inside Out, credited the photographic records of performance works by Ma Liuming and Zhang Huan to the performer, not the photographer. In Between Past and Future, the new show of Chinese photography and video at the V&A, some of the same images are listed as artworks by the photographer.
'I got very confused,' Xing Danwen says of this tussle. 'I had to go to an expensive copyright lawyer in New York. She said: "These are your photographs, they are your copyright." I still wondered if they were my own artwork - in a way it's not, but they are my photographs.' She resolved the issue by publishing a book entitled A Personal Diary of Chinese Avant-Garde Art in the 1990s. In a similar vein, Rong Rong's limited-edition hardback is called Rong Rong's East Village.