This weekend is dedicated to the extensive public programme, “Last Two Decades Revisited”, which revisit an alternative timeline for Chinese art history and tackles the historical significance, but also current fragility, of cultural exchanges. Confirmed participants include: Chen Tong, Li Zhenhua, Alexander Brandt, Hu Jieming, Song Haidong, Carol Lu, Jin Shan, Liu Jianhua, Zhang Peili, Hyunjin Kim, Georg Schöllhammer, Pieter van Wesemael, Beatrice Leanza, Guo Xiaoyan, Tsuyoshi Ozawa, and more. Curators: Charles Esche, Defne Ayas, Davide Quadrio as well as Carol Lu will moderate. During this period, film screenings and performances will also take place.

Van Abbemuseum and Arthub Asia is delighted to invite you for the symposium “Last Two Decades Revisited” that will take place on Saturday 15 May (11am - 5pm) and Sunday 16 May 2010 (11am – 5pm) at the Dutch Culture Centre at 800 Changde Lu.

The symposium aims to investigate
1. An alternative timeline for Chinese art history
2. The historical significance but also the current fragility of cultural exchanges.
3. International responses outside China to globalism and the connection of art to civil society.
4. Artists’ collectivism in Shanghai and rest of China.

May 15, 2010

11.00-12.30 hrs.
Cracking Open Once Again: The Timeline of Chinese Art History. Part 1 1979-1995 (approx) - a panel discussion with participants Song Haidong (artist), Chen Tong (artist/publisher), Leng Lin (curator/gallerist), moderated by Carol Lu.

Is there an agreed history? What are the possible narratives for Chinese contemporary art history? What kind of timelines are possible to draw up in Chinese art history? Does this way of thinking about developments in China make sense, or is it borrowed too much from western art history models? The soft Chinese art history takes its twists and turns, both from 79 and 89. What happened since then? What were the consequences of the diaspora after 1989? Is autonomy of art a possibility at all? What is the meaning of avant-garde? The continuation of points of encounters from 1920s onwards, what does it mean? Isolation of practices out of public view?

12.30 – 13.15 hrs.
A screening of AAA documentary- “From Jean-Paul Sartre to Teresa Teng: Contemporary Cantonese Art in the 1980s” as part of Double Infinity.

Based on primary research, rare film footage and personal interviews with key artists, AAA’s documentary bears witness not only to the “reading fever” that gripped the Chinese art world in the 1980s. It also highlights the experimentalism and verve of artists and critics in South China whose contributions to the development of contemporary art have been long lasting and deep.

13.15 – 13.30 hrs. 15min Q&A

LUNCH BREAK

14.30-16.00 hrs
Points of Encounter: Chinese art reception as shaped by abroad - perceptions and exoticism (1995-2010) with Li Zhenhua, Qiu Zhijie, Hu Jieming, moderated by Davide Quadrio
Questions of Respondent: Zhang Peili

Why is China adopting Western models and structures? Has (and is still) Chinese contemporary art been instrumentalized by the international art system? Did Chinese artists play the game and did not realize the long-term effects on the artistic environment in China? Where does mainstream start that artists are so concerned about? Isn’t art about media and impact these days? How much can one be an outsider? How can contemporary art deal with itself when fenced in within sites such as creative industries? Why everybody seems fed up in talking about China in relationship with the West? Is there a possible way of approaching this never-ending theme and make it new and relevant? What are the problems of shaping translations of artistic practices? Is there any hope for cultural exchanges?

COFFEE BREAK

16.00-17.00 hrs.
Rites of Passage by Julika Rudelius. Originally conceived as a film, Rudelius organizes a live work around the notion of translation. Her work will be simultaneously translated into Chinese, Dutch and English, in the live context of the performance, creating a continuous shifting of meaning in the work.

DAY II

SUNDAY MAY 16
Globalism/Internationalism/Localism

  11.00-12:00 hrs.
Key remarks by Pieter Wesemael about World Exhibitions and their histories

11.15-12.15 hrs.
Globalism/Internationalism/Localism
Keynote lecture by Pieter Wesemael putting the Shanghai World Exhibition into its historical context and looking at how World Expos have reflected on international and globalist politics since their beginning.

12.15-13.45 hrs.
Global Claims, Local Effects
Defne Ayas, Charles Esche, Kim Hyun Jin, with Georg Schöllhammer will be looking at inter-European cultural conditions especially since 1989 and introducing specific cases from elsewhere in the non-West including the post-Soviet Caucasus and Republic of Korea.

What might it mean to connect Chinese and other non-western situations in cultural production and presentation? Is a new kind of non-aligned cultural movement useful or possible? How are artistic histories in these regions recorded and written and how might the received narratives be questioned? What is the influence of European modernism on the extra-European world given that it was exported as a universalist form alongside colonialism and socialism in former third World countries? To what extent do developments in countries such as former eastern Europe or Turkey mirror the post-1989 experience in China? How do they differ?

LUNCH BREAK

14.30-16.00 hrs.
Localism and social engagement in Shanghai
Key players who talk about socially engaged forms of artistic production in contemporary Chinese art. The talk will highlight collective efforts, with focus and encouragement for multiplicity, and open-ended experimentation.  Tsuyoshi Ozawa (Xijing Men), Jin Shan (Shu Fu Collective), Alexander Brandt, Beatrice Leanza, moderated by Defne Ayas. Respondent: Guo Xiaoyan

COFFEE BREAK

16.00-17.00 hrs. (in the exhibition area)
Golden Ghost (Double happiness comes to the door) by Surasi Kusolwong. The Thai artist, Surasi Kusolwong installs a whole room full of waste thread material in which a golden necklace is hidden every week and can be found by lucky visitors. The finder is able to keep the necklace, making the “game” a truly worthwhile experience, playing with the extremes of value within society.End.

The symposium is organized by Arthub Asia (Defne Ayas, Davide Quadrio) & Van Abbemuseum (Charles Esche).