Chinese Art and Energy: Broken Tools (Cultures of Energy)

Jenny Lin, U Oregon

“Floating Social Sculpture: Contemporary Chinese Art amidst Global Change,”  paper given at the Cultures of Energy 2nd Annual Spring Research Symposium, April 19–21, 2013



2010 tweet “crazy bad”
pm2.5 deep tissue penetration
three decades: socialist >> market based economy
great costs, environmental degradation
16000 dead pigs in river near Shanghai
Americans seen as meddlesome and arrogant
movies: Jia Zhangke, Still Life
Liu Jianhua: ceramics. Sculpture. Transformation of Memories 2003. Fallen trees as corpses. [me but it also has to do with torsos and legs] Outsourcing work to factories. Daily Fragile. Large scale installations. Lots of tools removed from use... [OOO!] churning out ever more useless objects
[Lin does not talk about the relation to Hans Belmer]

Xu Bing, Tobacco Project (Duke). “Even Communists are free to smoke”
Shanghai Gallery of Art. Tiger skin rug made of cigarettes! 
Forest Project. Using art of children. Children’s drawings >> trees

Ai Weiwei: 100 million porcelain sunflower seeds >> Tate’s Turbine Hall. Viewers invited to frolic. Hand painted, hand crafted. Grasp connection between imported objects and their production. But seeds emitted dust. Proved hazardous >> roped off side room and gaze from distance! 
art projects like these uncover cross cultural relationships
Joseph Beuys: social sculpture; meaning in handling and so on (correlationism)
China as waste ground