Today's situation
—— On the Food as Art Project

The world is changing fast.The emergence of post-industrial cities has called for new art forms to reflect the new global world which follows the trend of ``cultural inter-penetration'' and is motivated by high technology and a new cultural ideology.

Contemporary artists have been coming up with new challenges for the stage created by new urban space and cultural ideology. How to integrate the contemporary art with the new century and new feelings?

The idea of Food as Art project and its execution are based in this context.. The first consideration was to use eating as the theme and starting point of the new art creations, because eating is the most basic activity of human beings. In addition, culinary culture is hailed by the Chinese as quintessence of the country's tradition. The widespread use of chopsticks across the world can be seen as evidence of the glamour of Chinese culinary culture.

I wanted to find a nice restaurant downtown to present the new art experiment. I finally found Club Vogue, a cool bar on Beijing's famous bar street, Sanlitun. I hoped that art event did not come out only as a traditional art show.

It would also involve such interactive projects as modern dance and performance, which is full of theatrical effect. I hoped the project would turn the bar both into a combination of a theatre, dining hall and a gallery, creating a new environment for new art.

New art in the new century should not keep ordinary people away. It should not be over-sophisticated but an accessible thing for educated regular people in contemporary times. As Chairman Mao said: Art is for the people, art should serve the people. It should reflect real life and stir a sympathetic response from the audience. New art should aim at creating a strong impact on the audience who are ordinarily numb to the arts in this fast-pace commercial world.

Guided by this pretext, I selected certain artists and their works to be involved in the special art event.

Artist Zhang Dali's contribtution The Heads featured seven heads made from pork skin jelly; a popular appetiting dish in northern China. The seven heads were put in a row on a tray fixed into wall. The work could be viewed as the extension of his graffiti on the ancient city walls of Beijing and it can both be savoured as an art creation and delicious food.

Artist Zhang Nian continued using Egg as his art strategy. However,this time, his new piece was quite different. He used a yellow lampshade as the yolk and the surrounded it with rice to represent egg white. When visitors examined it closely. they would find four tiny toy knights shooting of each other in the sand-like egg white. If the knights can be seen as a symbol of maleness and the egg stands for female, the work also conveyed the meaning that human beings' major desires are food and sex.

Artist Huang Yan presented his work Bone and Landscape. He put a large number of cattle bones on a table. Under the bright light,visitors could clearly examine traditional Chinese landscape paintings on each piece of bone. The strange and ridiculous scenes impressed the audience a lot . Engraving traditional Chinese landscape paintings on bones indicated that the spirit of Chinese traditions were printed on people's hearts.

Artist Gu Dexin's work February 17, 2000 was a genuine ceramic flush toilet which was put on a red velvet covered table.

A bulk of ``human waste'' was visible in the toilet while a fresh red rose extended out from the excretion, reminding the audience of the romance of Valentine's Day three days earlier. Five sets of dishes and knives were put around the toilet, suggesting that a big feast was ready to be served. The work mixed spirit and material life, romance and luxury living conditions, and human being's metabolism and energy circulation.

Young artists Sun Yuan and Peng Yu jointly completed a work entitled Hunting the Soul. It was a real eye-catcher which shocked the viewers. The creation showed a running dog which seemed to be hit by a sudden death and frozen right at that moment. The work captured the brisk and dynamic pace of the dog and the painful and astonished facial expression before it died. Under a dazzling spotlight, filtered through a convex lens, the hair-free dog was baked. Steam and smoke was ascending from the dog's head and the room was full of the smell of roast meat. The upwards smoke could be seen as the soul which had escaped from the dog's head and gone to a place no one would know. The artists tried to agitate viewers into thinking about the relationship between soul and flesh.

Performance art could also be seen at this art event. Performance art had Been taboo in official art shows for a long time because it aimed at challenging social norms in the 1990s. However, artist Luo Zidan's many performances in Chengdu have been reported by the mainstream media in recent years. On this art event, he brought his recent creation named Upstart Educated Person Turned into Hooligan. Wearing traditional leisure wear and half reclined over the a table which was full of food and drink,and with waitresses serving on both side, the educated upstart ate greedily leaving a mess around and on the table. A big screen was installed behind him showing a well dressed gentleman picking up money from a dustbin.

The last episode of this project was a modern dance show entitled The Last Supper. Wearing red coloured translucent dresses, four performers led by dancer Wang Chunhong moved to the rhythm of music. On a long table surrounded by 13 chairs, the performers gestured and used knives and forks to cut and eat each other.

Food as Art was not a show or performance but an art presentation, a Gathering which involved audience interaction, and an experiment integrating art and life together at a certain time and in a special location.

Digested from Artcircle 2000 May issue

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