Art for Anti-Art's Sake--Victoria Lu on Performance Art

Five years ago there was an exhibit of Dadaist art at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. By way of giving a Dadaist welcome to the opening of the exhibit, performance artist Lee Ming-sheng came (uninvited) to the main exhibition lobby- -and urinated. But the museum confiscated his work "Defecation," and maintenance workers at the museum were so angry they rushed forward to beat him up. As another part of his work "Lee Ming-sheng equals Art," Lee walked down Chunghsiao East Road (the main shopping district) with a television screen enlarger on his head, carrying name cards, and calling out "I am Lee Ming-sheng." Later he went along the road writing his name in chalk, for which he was brought in by the police for a little chat.

After the urination incident, Lee Ming-sheng placed a copy of the ROC constitution on the toilet in the bathroom at the Taiwan Document Workshop, leaving nothing else in the bathroom that could be used as toilet paper. He called this work, "Our Constitution Can Finally Be Put To Use." Even today, Lee is as combative- -and as hard for most people to accept- -as ever.

Why would Lee Ming-sheng do something like this in an art gallery? Because action and performance can break through the old formats for art. This type of "art that is not art" in fact originates in the Dadaism that the museum was displaying.

At the beginning of this century, the supposedly beautiful world that was being created by industrialization collapsed overnight amidst war and destruction. People began to doubt all man-made systems and so-called civilization. Artists deliberately moved to break down academic-style classifications, turning to ridiculous gestures which did not adopt traditional formats of depiction (painting and drawing), sculpture, or drama, as a way to challenge the authority of tradition.

Conceptual artists in the 1970s carrying on the Dadaist spirit rejected the idea that art could only exist in museums and galleries. The street, or a factory, could also become space for a display. They denied that art should just be appreciated passively and provoked their audiences, deliberately making the audience into part of the creation. They denied that creativity could only be expressed with pigments or clay, so everything, including their own bodies, or indeed any object under the sun, became material for artistic creativity. For example, they came up with body art, happening art, land art, environmental art, and so on. The form which used the human body to act and perform to bring the creative conception to life came to be known as "action art" or "performance art." Thus, from its origins in Dadaism through its development in conceptualism, the spirit of performance art has always been to reject tradition and to topple the system.

Take for example Hsieh Teh-ching, who has been doing performance art continuously in New York since 1978. Each one of his works lasts not an hour or two, but a whole year. The asceticism required to undertake these works takes superhuman courage. Imagine not entering any civilized structure for a whole year, in the bitter cold of New York; this was quite a shock for Western artists.

On another occasion he locked himself in a steel cage for a year for his work "Self-Confinement." For a year he was tied to Linda Montano, the two never touching. For another year he punched a time card every hour. These works represented the fact that modern people who think themselves free are really not, and expressed the "impossibility of autonomy" in life. Just think of how we devote ourselves to earning money to buy a house, and after we have it we can't go anywhere. In relations between people, we live very close together, but are remote from one another. Hsieh is one name that will not be left out of the history of modern art in the West, and can even be seen as playing the role of the "Terminator" of performance art. Yet if you look through newspapers in Taiwan which covered his work back when he was starting out, there is no shortage of terms like "insane" to denigrate what he was trying to say.

In fact, there are examples of something like performance art from China. During the Ming dynasty, a certain wise man did not much care for social affairs and the mundane matters of life. One day he was invited to a birthday dinner by a wealthy businessman, and brought a large painting of peaches (which stand for "longevity") as his gift. All the guests filling the hall declared their approval, and asked him where his wondrous talent came from. The wise man responded, "I'll show you! I'll paint another one right here and now." With these words, he dropped his pants, and printed a scroll using his buttocks. Now that's sarcastic performance art! The only difference now is that performance art has in the last ten years developed into a creative art form in Taiwan mainly because of Western influence.

Still, it is not fair to see this type of art as simply "copying" or "doing old things that other people have been doing for half a century."

All art is shared as the common heritage of mankind. Moreover, the timing, location, and human conditions all have to be ripe for an art form to penetrate and set down roots in Taiwan. Dadaist artists challenged authority, and provoked the audience to throw things, yell, or even hit the performers. When you think of it this way, it's very clear why it was during a period of political transition in Taiwan that performance art began to attract people. You could say that the spirit of rejecting authority is completely identical with this art form.

Art in Taiwan, whether dramatic art or fine art, has always lacked a critical spirit. Under martial law, there was an an oppressive atmosphere, which sparked opposition. A group of artists (mainly in the fine arts), such as Chang Chien-fu, Kuo Shao-tsung, Chen Chieh-jen, Lin Wen-ling, Lee Ming-sheng, and Wu Ma-li, began to explore the new format of performance art.

The conditions for the rise of performance art in Taiwan included a greater flow of information from abroad and also a relaxation of the overall environment; however, the main force was provided by "self-expression" by individuals. Kuo Shao-tsung states that at that time, he could not fully express his ideas with just the brush. Given this environment, early works were often consciously or unconsciously focussed on political or social taboos. Indeed, the performance itself was a protest, since it risked arrest or suppression.

Chen Chieh-jen recalls how he and some partners took advantage of the relatively relaxed political atmosphere of an election campaign and performed the work "Malfunction" in less than 15 minutes in the Hsimenting area of Taipei. They wore all white clothes, and wrapped their bare feet and their heads with cloth. They formed a line and marched through the crowded theater district. People lining up to buy their tickets did their best to avoid them, and some even thought they were political prisoners being arrested.

At that time they did their performance and then ran off. when the performance was over they melted into the crowd to avoid the police, and it didn't even occur to them to try to publicize their act to the press.

When Chen performed the work "Test Explosion in the Womb," which entailed crawling out of the sea on to land, a year before the lifting of martial law, part of the performance was blocked by the coastal defense authorities. Also, Lee Ming-sheng planned to unfurl a line all the way from his home to the Taipei Fine Arts Museum for a work called "Non Line." The police showed up bright and early at his door and barred him from leaving to carry out his plan.

This type of performance was like a stimulant, sparking popular and media interest, and leading to excess and exaggeration. Creators like Kuo and Chen felt that it was too easy for the artists, the media, and the public to play up the most provocative parts of a performance, thereby distorting it. But even today, the performance artist who most frequently makes the papers is Lee Ming-sheng.

At that time many performances used themes or props in which bondage figured prominently. Although the artists announced no political manifestos, the driving force behind these works was the idea of resistance. "What we protested against was not simply a particular authority, but our very selves as we grew up under martial law," explains Chen Chieh-jen. That is to say, as the generation that had grown up under martial law, their lives were spent in a stultifying atmosphere, and they felt a kind of undefinable anxiety and unhappiness they wished to express, without a very clear idea of what they were opposing.

The lifting of martial law marked a new era for the arts, especially for performance art, imbued with a spirit of rebellion. Artists no longer labored under such heavy political and historical burdens, and politics ceased to be the sole focus of attention. This has especially been the case for those under 30. The courage required to risk disaster has been transformed into sensory stimulation. The white terror and political repression have become myths or totems.

In March of this year, Yau Jui-chung, born in 1969, placed an ad in magazines stating that he was going to "attack and occupy all of Taiwan." He travelled to six locations across the island, historically associated with the six periods of Spanish colonization, Dutch colonization, rule by Cheng Cheng-kung of the Ming dynasty, rule by the Ching dynasty, the Japanese occupation, and the period under the Republican government. He stripped naked and urinated, as a dog does to mark its territory, and took commemorative photos, completing his "occupation of the native soil."

Lin Chiu-er, similarly youthful, took the 350 drawings he did in the military and, over a five month period in 16 locations, discussed his work with audiences. Artists have moved from the political and social appeals of the past toward aesthetic and sensory experiences. Besides the loss of the focus on protest with the lifting of martial law, Kuo Shao-tsung, who did several action art performances early on, feels that "the performances that placed emphasis on the body were like the opening of a flower, and have been replaced by the 'Little Theater' which has come after."

H.C. Tang, who two years ago returned to Taiwan after a stay in France, has done many exhibitions, mainly utilizing actions to give play to her artistic concepts. Last year she performed in the large main hall of the library of the National Institute of the Arts. Using flour, she made white circles around the places where the floor tiles intersected. She continually bent over and scattered her flour, just as a farmer in the Kuantu Plain plants rice. She "planted" in this way for three whole days, then opened the door and let the wind scatter the flour on the floor. The juxtaposition of the deliberately planted flour circles and the natural crops on the plain made for a very unique spectacle.

It has always been the case that performance artists have had the hardest time supporting them-selves. Except for a few famous ones who heve been able to garner funding from the national or local governments or from private sources, or who sell recordings and props from their performances, most artists must support themselves with other kinds of work.

The only domestic artist who has been able to rely entirely on performance art has been Lee Ming-sheng. Since martial law, he has tended toward performances related to nature. He does his gardening on the mountain behind his house in the nude, and casually picks up things from nature and makes designs. Coming down the mountain, he tied a red ribbon around every tree on Tunhua Road, Taipei's most tree-lined boulevard. In 1990, he got together with some foreign friends to call the leaders of all major countries to remind them of the importance of environmental protection, treating this as a gift to the leaders.

Last year he was invited to perform at the "Vienna Open Exhibition," marking a high point in his ten year career. He collected customers' accounts printed on computer paper from Italy's largest telephone company, and rolled them into a circle four meters in diameter, with the shape resembling the growth rings of a tree. The hook was, the more paper he rolled, the more trees that were cut down. Today, when fax machines, computers, and satellite telecommunications can be linked together through telephone lines, the paper roll is getting bigger and bigger. This indicates that the more we consume, the more income the telephone company earns.

The day of the opening ceremony, Lee took Kaoliang alcohol, four gallons of cattle blood, and 500 cc of his own blood, and dumped it over his head. Later he crawled across cross sections of the "growth rings" to complete this metaphorical sacrifice.

Although performance or action art is not new in either the West or in Taiwan, most of these artists have only begun to taste the freedom of mixed media, of which the human body is one form. Faced with a growing population of creative talents, performance art is not likely to be the only form for creative types. But it will become one of their methods of expression.

Hou Chun-ming, who does "installation art," often works with theater groups, with his assembled pieces serving as stage props. His work "Hou Family Wedding" brings together installation art and performance art. Compared to his early performance art, adding specialized workers to the music and performers makes the form far more sophisticated than in the past.

On the day of the performance, Hou Chun-ming held a wedding with the atmosphere of a funeral; audience members brought gifts of cash (as at weddings) rather than buying tickets to attend. The arrangement of the indoor sand dune and the wooden structure symbolized yin and yang, living space and a grave. The bride appeared as a woman, but, in taking off her clothing became a man. At the end of the wedding, Hou, the groom, cut down pork that had been hung at the place and invited the audience for a feast. Hou Chun-ming, who is going through a separation from his lover, used a ritualized performance to explore the problems of relations between the sexes and of life and death. Action art is not merely a single work, it is an event that becomes part of the memory of the person who created it; perhaps it also became part of the lives of the people in the audience at the wedding.

This is not merely the spirit of Dadaist art. Through changes in time and environment, action art or performance art has become a form of artistic expression. As a part of the audience, don't simply appreciate the finished product; you can also participate in the creative process, and become part of the work.

[Picture Caption]

p.74

In the days before the lifting of martial law, performance art often had a tense protest atmosphere. The photo shows the Chen Chieh-jen work "Malfunction," performed in the Hsimenting area of Taipei in 1983. (photo courtesy of Chen Chieh-jen)

p.75

In his 1978 work "Self-Confinement," Hsieh Teh-ching, well-known for his work in New York, locked himself in a steel cage for one year. In his 1983 work "Tied Together," he spent a year tied to- -but never touching- -a woman. The se works were meant to express the lack of autonomy of people in civilized life. (photo courtesy of Mali Wu)

p.76

In 1992, H.C. Tang first ate some food on the exhibition site, then left the garbage at the same place; after this she made several trips outside with a shovel and brought in dirt to bury the garbage. Next she brought in plants which had toppled over when she dug out the earth, and then put her own nameplate in the hole in the ground outside. In the one month of the exhibition, the plants died first, and then the nameplate decayed. What she wanted to say was that the superficial way in which people deal with garbage is not compatible with nature, and in the end people will suffer the consequences. (photo courtesy of H.C. Tang)

p.78

In 1994, Yau Jui-chung travelled to six different historically important sites in Taiwan, stripped naked, and urinated, taking commemorative photos. Then he used installation art motifs to place them in a gallery, completing his "Action to Occupy the Native Soil." (photo courtesy of Yau Jui-chung)

p.79

In 1993, Huang Wen-hao invited everyone to the IT Park Gallery to collect and cut up the wheat that he had spread around, and then to squeeze the juice and drink it. Then he took soil that had stuck together in a block because there were wheat roots growing in it, and piled it on  a brass table that looked like a chemical battery. He was depicting the circle of life and energy among wheat, soil, people, and brass tables. (photo courtesy of IT Park)

p.80

In 1993, Lee Ming-sheng performed at the Venice Open Exhibition. He rolled up account records from a telephone company into the shape of a tree trunk with concentric rings like those marking the age of a tree. Then he dumped his own blood and cow's blood over his head to complete his work, "Meteor and Circle." (photo courtesy of  Mali Wu)

In his 1978 work "Self-Confinement," Hsieh Teh-ching, well-known for his work in New York, locked himself in a steel cage for one year. In his 1983 work "Tied Together," he spent a year tied to- -but never touching- -a woman. The se works were meant to express the lack of autonomy of people in civilized life. （photo courtesy of Mali Wu）

In 1992, H.C. Tang first ate some food on the exhibition site, then left the garbage at the same place; after this she made several trips outside with a shovel and brought in dirt to bury the garbage. Next she brought in plants which had toppled over when she dug out the earth, and then put her own nameplate in the hole in the ground outside. In the one month of the exhibition, the plants died first, and then the nameplate decayed. What she wanted to say was that the superficial way in which people deal with garbage is not compatible with nature, and in the end people will suffer the consequences. (photo courtesy of H.C. Tang)

In 1994, Yau Jui-chung travelled to six different historically important sites in Taiwan, stripped naked, and urinated, taking commemorative photos. Then he used installation art motifs to place them in a gallery, completing his "Action to Occupy the Native Soil." （photo courtesy of Yau Jui-chung）

In 1993, Huang Wen-hao invited everyone to the IT Park Gallery to collect and cut up the wheat that he had spread around, and then to squeeze the juice and drink it. Then he took soil that had stuck together in a block because there were wheat roots growing in it, and piled it on a brass table that looked like a chemical battery. He was depicting the circle of life and energy among w heat, soil, people, and brass tables. （photo courtesy of IT Park）

In 1993, Lee Ming-sheng performed at the Venice Open Exhibition. He rolled up account records from a telephone company into the shape of a tree trunk with concentric rings like those marking the age of a tree. Then he dumped his own blood and cow's blood over his head to complete his work, "Meteor and Circle." （photo courtesy of Mali Wu）