New roles for art collectors, organisations created by Cao Fei on Second Life – Uli Sigg is RMB City governor

Cao Fei RMB City A second life city planning 2007

 

INTERVIEW CHINESE ARTIST CAO FEI

Editor of Asia Art Archive’s Diaaalogue, Sue Acret spoke to Chinese artist Cao Fei about her Second Life project RMB City which was officially launched in January 2009. In this project which uses as a medium the online virtual world called Second Life, Cao Fei develops new roles for collectors and art institutions which blur the lines between digital and real.

Susan Acret: Please tell us about your avatar China Tracy and the RMB City work and how the online world of Second Life became a platform for these works.

RMB City – a city utopia with Chinese aesthetics

Cao Fei: During the creation of i.Mirror and the China Tracy Pavilion (A machinima-documentary about China Tracy’s first explorations of Second Life, and the large-scale installation where it premiered at the 2007 Venice Biennale), I started to think about creating a place that belonged to China Tracy within Second Life… her own ‘city utopia’. China Tracy felt that since most cities within Second Life were Western in style, she wanted to represent some of her concepts about Chinese urban development in a space that incorporated Chinese aesthetics and identity, albeit in a surreal hybrid style.

Blurred boundaries between real and virtual for modern generations
S.A: You’ve said that your generation, brought up in a digital world, ‘will always compare virtual and real’ and that sometimes the boundaries between the two can be blurred. Your art reflects this movement between these two spheres. What opportunities do virtual worlds offer artists that are not available in the ‘real’ world?

C.F: Second Life is a world where the conventional free-market economy still applies. Although we call it a virtual world, its economic structure and the virtual currency is tied with the ‘real’ economy. From a visual perspective, Second Life appears to be hyper-real and excessively imagined. Combined with its uncertain identity, it can be mysterious and enigmatic to people. On arriving in this virtual world, China Tracy was attracted by the hyper-real prison, but also felt an unavoidable sense of oppression.

Cao Fei, i Mirror Second Life Machinima, 28 minutes

Although the boundary between virtual and real is becoming more and more blurred, the way the virtual world contradicts and coincides with reality offers something ambiguous and complex. This, to a certain extent, enhances our lives as a whole, providing a reference for the exploration of individuality and the nature of life.

Another reason that the virtual world appeals to me is that it transcends obstacles in reality, despite being hyper-real. It offers a virtual platform for human beings to experiment with a possible utopia, such as building an individualistic heaven, drafting laws and systems, generating new discussions and thoughts, etc.

 
S.A: How many collaborators have you worked with for your RMB City project? How do you find your collaborations with these ‘real’ people?

C.F: Collaborators involved in RMB City include collectors, galleries, scholars, researchers, artists, schools, various exhibition projects, commissioned projects, biennials and triennials, etc.

New roles for art collectors organisations, Uli Sigg is RMB City governor

1. Collectors
We invite collectors to actively participate in the actual development of the city. For example, we invited Mr Uli Sigg to be the first governor of the city (for 3 months), in order for him to oversee and propose a blueprint for the utopia of RMB City in terms of its systems, construction and direction.

2. Public organizations
We are now working closely with Serpentine Gallery. They are one of the real information centres for RMB City. Also, UCCA which will collect RMB City, will have a virtual art gallery and other independent projects. Some art organizations are willing to rent spaces to be involved in this project and also develop their own projects.

3. Exhibition/ Project
I have realized personal projects for biennials and triennials via RMB City, for example, for the 2008 Yokohama Triennial and New Orleans Biennial, as well as on some consigned projects, such as H Box’s video project. I would like to some overseas artist residency programs to take place the RMB City’s platform.

4. Other
We invite different parties (not just limited to the art field) in the real world to participate in the virtual world. We also invite Second Life avatars who are interested in our project.

Therefore, RMB City insists on ‘the cooperation of virtual and real’: collaborators should come from both worlds. Through this process, we hope to improve conventions and develop a new path.

Cao Fei Cosplayers, video 2004

S.A: Your use of internet platforms such as You Tube and Second Life is a democratic, open way of creating work, insofar as it is available freely to large numbers of people all over the world. Do you often get feedback from ‘non-art’ audiences on the internet?

C.F: Yes. I have received emails and messages to China Tracy in Second life, and comments on my YouTube videos, and friend-offers via My Space and Facebook.

I quite like these different forms of feedback from different channels, and meeting different people in different worlds.

S.A: Born in the late 1970s and brought up in the ’80s, can terminologies such as Generation X (the consumerist generation) or Generation Y (the Net-generation or Generation Why) describe who you are? From COSplayers to the RMB City project, are your art projects the result of generational influence or your personality?

C.F: Since 1978, China has undergone an inevitable reorganization. Before we were ready to respond, we were already receiving all kinds of influences from a new time. Everyone is the product of a generation; ‘I’ am an individual as well as a transcendental object. Perhaps a young person who attempts to influence the world or China Tracy who surfs around the virtual world, are indeed coming from the same route. And as for me, I remain extremely close to yet with an appropriate distance from any of these worlds. This gives me a macro view of the ‘world’. And then I decide how I should deal with it and derive my system to process all the complex messages of life. In Chinese terms, it involves entering (reality) and renouncing (the virtual) the world simultaneously. This journey is to experience both worlds while constituting the two.

This interview is edited. For the full version of this fascinating interview and more images go to Asia Art Archive.

Related categories: Chinese artists, virtual art, reports from China, video art, emerging artists,  new media, Uli Sigg, art collectors

Related posts:

• Cao Fei’s first solo museum show in Germany Jan 2009
• Artist to watch Cao Fei Sep 2008
• UBS collecting video and global art  Aug 2008 – Cao Fei’s work has been acquired for UBS collection

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Ullens Center shows three Chinese Contemporary Art Award winners

An exhibition of the works by the winners of the Chinese Contemporary Art Awards is on at the Ullens Center until December 21 2008.

About the Chinese Contemporary Art Awards

The  awards were founded by Uli Sigg in 1997 as a nonprofit entity to enhance the position of Chinese contemporary art both domestically and internationally. With the growth of the art market in the ensuing decade, the purpose of the awards has shifted to emphasize a critical position on the conversation over what constitutes meaningful art in current Chinese production. In the words of Uli Sigg, “The market is today the dominant force to validate artworks. To balance and enrich this debate, an institution such as the CCAA plays an important role.” The awards offer a platform for artists to become recognized on the world stage and to allow foreign curators to identify some of the most interesting art in greater China.

About the exhibition at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art

”We are really proud to present CCAA at UCCA. In showing the 2008 award winning artists, UCCA is committed to the future of Chinese art and recognizes its value beyond market forces” said Jerome Sans, UCCA Director.

Liu Wei, Tseng Yu-Chin, Ai Weiwei, were selected by a jury committee consisting of

• Hou Hanru, Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs and Chair of Exhibitions and Museum Studies at the San Francisco Art Institute;
• Ken Lum, Canadian artist of Chinese heritage who has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, enjoyed a career in education, and has participated in many major exhibitions;
• Gu Zhenqing, curator and critic in charge of the recently opened gallery Li Space;
• Chris Dercon, Director of the Haus der Kunst in Munich;
• Ruth Noack, curator of Documenta 12;
• Huang Du, independent curator and critic who co-curated the sixth Shanghai Biennale;
• and Uli Sigg, founder of CCAA.

The artists were judged on the display of ‘original and unique talent in artistic creation’  to help stimulate debates about artistic value in the currently booming art market.

The exhibition of the winning artists’ works is accompanied by a publication written by Pauline Yao, who received the newly-established Chinese Contemporary Art Award for independent art criticism in 2008. (Buy book here)

Liu Wei (1972) – Best Artist

Liu Wei was born in 1972 and is based in Beijing. His installation and conceptual artworks have achieved great success on the international art scene. In his experiments, he continually revises his system of artistic production and methodically interrogates that which most artists take for granted. He has shaken our understandings of both the definition of contemporary art and the role played by the exhibition in this system. Liu Wei does not fear failure, and often begins again after unsatisfactory projects. In this way, he gestures towards a future beyond the current boom in the Chinese art market against a background of global production and consumption.

 

 

 

 

Tseng Yu-Chin – Best Young Artist

Tseng Yu-Chin, born in 1978 and based in Taipei, is recognized with the Best Young Artist award, creates work characterized by a deep and subtle humanism. He is largely concerned with the role of the individual in the context of a changing contemporary society, especially in terms of the perceived demise of traditional configurations of community and family; his practice, however, is also filled with hope and redemption. His films and videos are in turns compassionate and voyeuristic, pushing depiction of his subjects almost to a point of representational crisis. In this way, he pays homage to the pioneering video art of Zhang Peili while developing a unique aesthetic voice. These pieces often appear as video vignettes borrowed from a particular model of Taiwanese cinema, allowing his work to act as a bridge between the changing modernities of mainland China and Taiwan.

Ai Weiwei – Lifetime Achievement award

Ai Weiwei, born in 1957 and based in Beijing, is recognized with the Lifetime Achievement Award. Perhaps no artist has mirrored the volatile and challenging history of Chinese contemporary art more deeply and accurately than Ai Weiwei. His work has transcended the category of contemporary art and penetrated the very heart of Chinese society, engaging with China’s complex social and political dynamics and contributing to its radically changing architectural and designed spaces.

“These exhibitions and this book will shed more light on the winning artists Liu Wei, Tseng Yu-Chin, and Ai Weiwei. They were selected in a very intense jury meeting and they deserve all the attention the CCAA book and exhibitions can create!”
-Uli Sigg

• Buy catalogue by Pauline Yao at Art Radar shop
• Ullens Center website
• images Liu Wei on Saatchi
• Youtube video Tseng Yu-Chin

More posts on recent art prizes

• Singaporean Yeo Chee-kiongs installation wins richest Asian Art Prize November 2008 
• Korean Canadian artist Tim Lee takes Canada’s premier art award October 2008
• Pakistani artist Huma Bhabha takes Aldrich Museum emerging artist award August 2008

For the latest news on up and coming artists subscribe to Art Radar

Sovereign Asian Art Prize 2008 emerging artists on show in Hong Kong

ASIAN ART PRIZE

The Sovereign Asian Art Prize carries a first prize of US$25,000 and is in its 5th edition. This time the acceptance criteria have been broadened from all forms of painting to all forms of 2D media. Thirty finalists have been selected by a panel of experts from 1000 entries. A public prize is also awarded to the painting which receives the most votes from the public who attended the exhibition or cast their votes on the website.

The culmination of the prize is a public auction where it is hoped that funds will be raised to support charities and a ‘first of its kind in Hong Kong’ three year residency programme for international artists.

Judges are Uli Sigg (collector) Peter Aspden (Financial Times critic) Pamela Kember (art historian and critic) Victoria Lu(musem consultant) Pooja Sood(Director of Khoj Foundation) and Xu Bing (artist).

Finalists

Australia: Bundit Puangthong, Chris Wake, China: Collette Fu, Hou Yan Yan Hong Kong: Caroline Chiu, Chow Chun Fai, Man Fung-Yi, Gretchen So, Peter Steinhauer, Angela Su, Anothermountainman India:Seema Kohli, Indonesia:Terra Bajraghosa, Suroso Isur, Saputro Uji Handoko Eko, Japan: Yu Hara, Maiko Sugano, Noriko Yamaguchi Korea: Dongi Lee, Lim Taek Malaysia: Chan Kok Hooi, Hoo Kiew Hang, Myanmar: Mor Mor Philippines: Robert Langenegger Singapore: Mee Ai Om Taiwan: Chiu Chien-Jen Thailand: Jaratsri Prasongdee, Laura Spector, Sirat Ubolyeam Vietnam: Le Thiet Cuong

Radar’s picks

Lim Taek

Korean artist Lim Taek’s work is inspired by 18th century traditional Korean black and white ink drawings. Tael transforms these into 3D sculptures made of plastic and Korean traditional paper which he installs in a gallery.  He then photographs animals trees rocks and people and places these images into the installation. His intention is to create a dreamlike sensation for viewers as they gaze at his imaginary world.

Maiko Sugano

Japanese artist Maiko Suganowas nominated by Asia Art Archive. She is interested in bridging barriers and misunderstandings by seeking common ground across cultures. In 2002 Sugano was presented with the Jack and Gertrude Murphy Fine Arts Fellowship sponsored by San Francisco foundation. She also runs an artist residency house called ‘YomoYama House’.

Angela Su

This work ‘Amorpha Juglandis’ is part of a series and drawings and embroideries in a project entitled ‘Paracelsus Garden’ – an imaginary location inhabited by insects and plants which on closer inspection reveal themselves to be a bizarre juxtaposition of bones muscles and organs. This work takes the form of a moth which uses the cochlear (part of the human inner ear) and scapulas(shoulder blades) as wings. The entire work is embroidered with fine polyester filament on silk.

Noriko Yamaguchi

Noriko Yamaguchi was born in 1983 and her work crosses over the mediums of photography and performance art. In the ‘Ketai Girl’ series Yamaguchi wears a bodysuit made of cellphone keypads a comment on today’s society where people are in constant telephonic touch but ache for physical connection. In 2004 she received the Panel of Judges Award at the 21st Century Asia Design Competition held by Kyoto University of Art and Design.

See

• larger images and more information about all the artists see Sovereign website.
• more posts on prizes and awards for Asian art

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Artist to watch Cao Fei

ARTIST TO WATCH

As we scan the news every day, some new artists and new trends emerge out of the cloud of informaton bigger bolder and brighter than the rest. This is the first in an occasional series in which we beam in and take an in depth look at one artist or art trend.

CAO FEI

Cao Fei  is a female artist who was born in 1978 in Guangzhou China and is now based in Beijing.

What people are saying

Red Mansion Foundation, London: “Cao Fei is no doubt one of the most remarkable and powerful artists of this generation.”

Serpentine Gallery London: “Cao Fei is one of the pre-eminent Chinese artists of her generation”

About the art

Photographs, videos and installations.

Influences include superheros, avatars, electronic entertainment, pop music, TV drama, computer games and new subcultures such as Japanese Manga, American Rap, and Hong Kong films.

Why her work is interesting

Cao Fei fearlessly experiments with new media, in particular virtual media such as Second Life. She is fascinated by the contrast between urban reality and fantasy-perfect etopia and how it is possible to move between the two at the flick of a switch. Her art presents the issues and zeitgeist of her generation.

I am interested in “the premise that people can choose characters that are very different from their real selves. They can use their character to create a “second life,” to change their friends, family, and lifestyle — like switching a TV channel “says Cao Fei in an interview with Artkrush.

“I started to confuse my two lives, and so I compared them. The younger generation, like 15-18 year olds, I don’t think they ask as many of these questions; that kind of lifestyle is their real life — they belong to a technological world — but for my generation, we will always compare virtual and real”

Her work

 

Cosplayers: King Kong at home

 

She first attracted international attention in 2004 with COSplayers, a video and photo series about Guangzhou teens dressing up as Japanese manga characters.

At the 52nd Venice Biennale 2007, she premiered China Tracy Pavilion, a project exploring the virtual worlds of Second Life that merged role-playing, ethnographic documentary, and animation.

After discovering Second Life, Fei embarked on a six-month journey through the wonders of the digital realm, as China Tracy, and many came across her through a YouTube stream in which she introduced herself in machinima footage with Chinese subtitles.

According to Fei, all sorts of typical activities occurred during that period: ‘Fly, chat, build, teleport, buy, sex, add friends, snapshot…’

 

I.Mirror Documentary Video 2007

 

These experiences were documented and generated the three-part, thirty-minute epic, ‘i.Mirror’ that Fei exhibited at Venice’s Arsenale back garden as well as on YouTube.

A recent project RMB City, an online art community in the virtual world of Second Life is on show at the Serpentine Gallery and on-line.

Institutions and collectors are invited to buy buildings in RMB City and programme events and activities in them. The project is an experiment exploring the creative relationship between real and virtual space.

Career highlights

Cao Fei has exhibited around the world in premier institutions such as Ullens Center for Contemporary Art Beijing, Mori Museum Tokyo, San Francisco Art Instute, Serpentine Gallery and Red Mansion Foundation.

She has been shown at the Venice Biennale, Istanbul Biennial, Taipei Biennial, Biennale of Sydney and her work has been included in important survey exhibitions such as “Between Past and Future – New Photography andVideo from China” Asia Society New York.

Collectors of her work include Guy Ullens, Carnegie Museum of Art, The Israel Museum, Uli Sigg, Guan Yi amongst others.The famous Chinese collector Guan Yi names Cao Fei along with a handful of other artists as an important artist of her generation.

 

Cao Fei Siemens project

 

In the Siemens sponsored art project “What are you doing here?”, the artist Cao Fei worked with employees from subsidiary OSRAM China Lighting to turn their individual ideas, hopes and expectations into art.

Auction history

As at September 1 2008, Cao Fei is still much under-appreciated at auction. She has only had 3 photographs at auction, one at China Guardian May 2007 which sold for US$21,890 including premium (over double the estimate) and two at Sotheby’s New York 2007 which were bought in.

Where to buy

Dealers:

• The Courtyard Gallery Beijing
• Pekin Fine Arts Beijing
• Grace Li Zurich

See (in new window)

• Cao Fei’s website
• Cao Fei’s up to date bio on artfacts.net
• Latest price history on artnet artprice findartinfo
• more posts on Cao Fei including participation in Mori Art Museum video weekend 2008, Ullens Center show 2008, RMB City at the Serpentine to 2009
• Cao Fei excerpt from Robert Adanto documentary video ‘The Rising Tide’ on Saatchi website

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