Beijing Swings

sp · Joined: 27 Feb 2003 Posts: 218

What did you think of this heavily-hyped show?

I was left pretty cold by the end of it, but there was also a lot to think about. None of the art seemed particulary interesting to me. The ideas behind a lot of it seemed very weak and there didn't seem to be much aesthetic power to it either - just shock value. The 'AK47' guy had some interesting things to say about life in modern Beijing and some of his work looked intruiging, but overall I thought a lot of the artists lacked any deep, interesting ideas and were a bit pretentious and kind of clueless (especially the 'penis wine' guys).

The baby eating guy: His main point seemed to be that there are no laws against eating dead babies, so he decided to eat a dead baby. I have to admit I found this pretty repellant. OK so there are no laws against eating dead babies, but there aren't many laws regarding diet in general, because it is generally assumed that people are sensible enough not to eat anything disgusting. There is no law against eating sh*t either. Does that mean he's going to do that next?

Also I think there are some laws - religious and judicial - which deal with general standards of decency and which I think cover what he was doing. (PS: I had assumed before that his work was fake, but now I've seen more of his photos, I'm not so sure. What did others think?)

Another shocking piece involved the preserved corpses of a pair of conjoined twins, which a pair of artists smothered with their own blood. Apparently this represented the concept of marriage and union. I thought this was especially pathetic. A feeble idea, expressed lazily using dead human bodies as props.

Maybe the most interesting thing was not the art itself, but what it tells us about modern China. Why is this 'art' being made in China? What is it about life in that country that inspires people to do this sort of thing? And why are the authorites, so ruthlessly efficient in clamping down on other forms of 'unacceptable' culture, so tolerant of this particular genre of art?

The art we saw seemed to show a strange lack of respect for the sanctity of life and humanity, that humans - once dead - are simply props to be used for whatever purpose we want. Does this reflect an attitude in China that 'life is cheap' ?

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