The topic of the Shanghai Biennale 2008 was “Translocalmotion” which should supposedly encompass ideas of urban development and globalization in a mega-city like Shanghai. So the topic was location-specific and social, as the city cannot be imagined without the people who live in it.
The resulting exhibition was not very convincing. Three floors of the Shanghai Museum of Modern Art were representing three different approaches to the central topic.
The ground floor was reserved to commissioned location (i.e. Shanghai) specific works. I have nothing to say about this part at all, because it was just boring. I even don’t remember anything from that part now, except the worst artwork, which was a shaky unedited video of the in-flight TV screen which is on the back of the seat in front of you.
But let’s get to the second floor. Here the curators decided to show a small number of bigger projects. Most of them pretty eye-catching, but… Lets take them one by one.
First you were confronted by a corridor full of Yue Minjun’s huge dinosaur sculptures. It was big, it was shiny and sparkling (the finishing paint), and that was it I guess. Each dinosaur’s face had the same evil grin which we have all seen a thousand times in Yue Minjun’s paintings.
Further on, another room was reserved for Lonnie Van Brummelen & Siebren De Haan’s project entitled “Grossraum (Borders of Europe)”. I pretty liked this one and it was a nice contrast to the shiny glossy dinosaurs from the previous room. Brummelen and De Haan’s project was more on the conceptual side and they were obviously trying to communicate a standpoint on their own. Without reading any long concepts or taking time to see all the videos, I understood it as a critique/contemplation on the mutually contradicting processes of globalization and regionalization. While some barriers are being opened, others are being erected. I understood the huge field of oversized sugar cubes as a direct reference to the perverted European agriculture policy.
Next there was a sound installation by Suchan Kinoshita. The spatial set up – a dark room with a rotating disco ball hanging from the ceiling – were rather distracting my attention from the sound part and I saw no clear connection between the sound and the rotating disco ball. In contrast to the exciting glittering of light reflections, the sound seemed dull and uninteresting. Although I am sure it wasn’t.
Continuing further, you were confronted by an extensive installation of Mike Kelley, a presentation of a fictional city called Kandor. I enjoyed the complexity and combination of different media, but it did not really convince me on the conceptual side. I understand Kelley is working with topics of utopia, urbanism and popular culture, yet I missed something there which would help me to get the whole message. I also found the obvious common connection with the Biennale’s general topic a bit too superficial. As if the decision to put in the exhibition would be a result of one single google search.
The above mentioned four works occupied almost all space of the museum’s second floor. And they were to be taken as the ‘major part’ of the exhibition. Not too bad, but not too good either.
In the hallway one could see Tang Maohong’s traffic lights, with his typical animations serving as substitutes for the red, yellow and green lights, which made me feel like meeting an old friend. The animations were in his recognizable style, and I guess that in order to conform with the ‘urban’ topic, he decided to dress them into the ‘urban’ outfit in the form of traffic lights. As this was not the first time that he presented round-shaped animations, it made sense. Once gain, the ‘obviousness’ of the connection degraded the result a bit.
I will mention another ‘too obvious work’, which was Huang Hsinchien’s “Shanghai, shall we dance”. when I saw the work on previous displays, I considered it pretty fresh and new. But this time, the new title combined with big band music from the 20’s made it really over-the top, and it became an entertaining pre-school kids toy at best.
Now just a short note on a two-channel video work by Harun Farocki, Counter-Music. It stood out for me, as it was full of meanings and references, just in contrary to the one-dimensionality of most works. It seemed strangely out of place there. Most people just passed by and flocked around the 2:1 scaled down hyperrealistic model of a migrant’s workers room by Jin Shi.
There’s not enough space to mention all the works, but I think you got a general idea by now, specially the repeating words ‘obviousness’ and ‘superficial’. To me, this exhibition was littered with works, which tried to make a very superficial connection to the general topic. The resulting expression was totally ‘flat’ – it was an image, but nothing behind. Some artists tried to disguise this shallowness behind a conceptual veil, but nevertheless one could not ignore it. There was a video of migrant workers stuck at the train station during the spring festival, a video of miners with cheap inversion effects, but both without any critical reflection. The main topic of urban development was followed on a primitive level of visual similarity only. There was no single mention of any controversial topic with relation the huge changes taking place in the city and economy. If there were any ‘problems’ depicted, it was always made sure that they were in a place far away from China, as in the case of European borders in Brummelen & De Haan’s work, or another documentary-style installation about some conflicts in Africa. In China, everything is obviously perfect and therefore only thing artist’s can reflect on is the harmonious society and utopias about to come in a romanticized age of global capitalism and thought control.
Video artwork list:
1. Yue Minjun / 岳敏君 / Colorful Running Dinosaurs / 五彩龙腾
2. Lonnie Van Brummelen & Siebren De Haan / Grossraum (Borders of Europe)
3. Suchan Kinoshita / Are there Six
4. Mike Kelley / From Kandors 2007
5. Tang Maohong / 唐茂宏 / On the Way / 在路上
6. Huang Hsinchien / 黄心健 / Shanghai, Shall We Dance？ / 上海，我能请你跳支舞吗？
7. Harun Farocki / Counter-Music
8. Clemens von Wedemeyer / Otjesd
9.Yang Shaobin / X-Blind Spot / 杨少斌 / X-后视盲区
+
Bonus: Bu Hua – Savage Growth (2008) at 7th Shanghai Biennale 2008