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Vital06 Artists |
 Click here to view more images of Marcus Young's performance. |
Marcus Young Following previous performances in cities across the world, Marcus Young brought his slow-walking project “Pacific Avenue” to the streets of Manchester for the Vital 06. Emerging from the Arndale Centre on Corporation Street, the usual five minute walk to St Anns Church took Marcus, dressed in a beautiful long beige Chinese garment, around three hours. He made eye contact with everyone he met and his slowness served to disrupt the usual pace of the urban city landscape. This public intervention was met with reactions ranging from intrigue to bemusement when by chance passers-by stumbled upon the slow-walking artist with his umbrella, inching forwards at a snails pace. Those knowingly catching Marcus walking his “Pacific Avenue” on the street perhaps experienced the action from a slightly different perspective as the theatre of everyday life unfolded around him. |
 Click here here to view more images of Lisa Cheung's performance installation |
Lisa Cheung Lisa, who's decorative glass-sculpted lights hang from the tea house in Chinese Arts Centre, presented a new performance installation in a beautiful yet sombre piece of work. Within a darkened space, Lisa invited audiences to set up a series of lamps in the room and immersed the walls in colour, text and light thrown out by the swirling spinning shades, somewhat reminiscent of that familiar soothing bedtime ritual. This emotive effect was dramatically overturned when it became apparent the viewer was immersed in something far more sinister...“The tide is coming up” read one swirl of text across the gallery wall; “tell my family to pray for me” another. Instead of calm, Cheung's light installation was powerfully and provocatively transporting the viewer into the desperate thoughts of the Morecambe Bay cockle-pickers; reading their final text messages to their loved ones. |
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Leung-Po Shan Anthony In this intimate one-to-one encounter with the artist, participants were invited to enter into a physical dialogue of power play whilst being offered the opportunity to very much explore sensuality with this interdisciplinary artist. Itchy Itchy was challenging yet beautiful, inviting one audience member at a time to spend fifteen minutes massaging Leung-Po's naked and restrained body. Within the context of the gallery this encounter forcibly transcends everyday constructs of power, sexuality, desire and gender and the ticking metronome drew upon Leung-Po's Buddhist inspiration, to remind us to enter into the very moment with her and transcend into that precious time of now, of the 'live' experience. Links: Weblog | images of artists at Vital06 |
 Click here to view more images of He Yung Chang's talk and work. |
He Yung Chang In his artist’s talk, Chang arrived in Manchester having taken a day off from his latest epic piece of work “Touring Round Great Britain With A Rock”. Chang, renowned for his works that test and push the boundaries of what is possible of our bodies, offered an insight into his solo performance practices from 1998 to date. He presented audiences with photographic documentation of a number of his performances whilst talking about motivations for creating the work. He also offered a glimpse into his own personal feelings and reactions whilst carrying out the work. Of Casting (2004), Chang told audiences that when he broke out of enclosed concrete block, he was so hot and tired that this very action served as a reminder that the suffering he personally experienced in the outside world was nothing in comparison to what he can endure through his own unique and visceral practice. |
 Click here to view more images of Yadong Hao's performance |
Yadong Hao “Let me wash your hand of me.... with me” was a gentle opportunity for audiences to participate with the artist in the ritual act of washing to cleanse. This durational piece invited audiences one-by-one to wash their hands in a bowl of water with Yadong. At the bottom of each bowl was a personal photograph from Yadong's past. This beautiful work allowed for individuals to have a personal moment of contact with the artist and representations of her life, exploring autobiography, the past and our feelings and emotions about our personal lived experiences. Links: weblog |
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Edwin Lung Forming part of Edwin Lung's future collaboration with Chinese Arts Centre, Light by Light was premiered at Urbis. Invited audiences viewed Edwin’s swirling body from above as he spun a drum from his neck at high speed against a backdrop of projected light and sound. Edwins movement transfixed audiences whom, when prompted by a light change, were invited to participate in the event and aim ping-pong balls at the swirling drum and make a wish. Each ball, etched with an individual’s wish for the future, bounced and danced around the space, creating cheers as people hit the target. This piece of work, Edwin’s first in the UK for 10 years, will continue to explore the relationship with wish-making as he continues his residency, working with the Chinese communities in Manchester. |
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Ying Mei Duan Presenting a range of photographic and film documentation of her work, Ying Mei Duan has often taken her inspiration from personal memories and dreams. Ying Mei, who's practice from her time in the East Village in Beijing through to a further period of study in Germany as a student of Abramovic and now beyond, showed a body of work including “I love computer” where she slept on a train station platform whilst hugging a computer and a beautiful sleeping piece on a ledge on a gallery wall, at which point the artist highlighted that ideas for her art often come from those quiet moments; when “sleeping is a comfort”. Her performative actions are always presented very much at odds with her physical environment. Giving audiences a insight into both her practice and inspiration for making work, Ying Mei highlighted how she attempts to use embodiment as means to pose questions for the onlooker. |
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Dai GuangYu This artist presented the first performance of the festival with a performance in Chinese Arts Centre gallery space. “I love you. What can I do to please you” provoked the relationships of power between artist and audience to be reconsidered in that moment when the text he was writing became clear on the gallery floor. Dai Guang Yu also delivered a talk about “Live Art in Mainland China”, where he presented an insight into the difficulties in presenting and practicing Live Art and performance art in China. Dai highlighted the tensions that can arise when the government is not always understanding of the contemporary art scene. Dai also offered a perspective into the differences when presenting work in the Province of Chengdu compared to the political, economic and urban centres of Beijing or Shanghai, and further maintained that relationships between artists and the media were instrumental for performance art and it's practice to be understood, supported and legitimised. |
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Mad for Real Offering audiences a wry look into their numerous public interventions, Mad for Real artists JJ Xi and Cai Juan presented a film screening of their works to-date giving audiences an insight into their tongue-in-cheek, yet highly politicised, actions and interventions. Crammed into the back of a white van outside Urbis with festival goers, students and shoppers Mad For Real continued their exploration of raw everyday materials by juicing tomatoes in a blender and preparing freshly made drink for the intrigued audience. The two interventionist pranksters had caused an earlier stir by gate-crashing the opening party of Vital 06 in Manchester 235 as Monkey King, caricatures they have embodied to create havoc whilst also making an ironic statement about their own ethnicity. |
 Click here to view images of Patty Chang's work and viewing of films |
Patty Chang For Vital 06 Patty Chang showcased two of her latest pieces of film work as she returned to Chinese Arts Centre. An established artist who's practice often explores physical and non-physical realities Chan screened “When a Kiss isn’t just a Kiss” in which she sucks water from the glass of a mirror to reveal an interplay of two and three dimensional spaces, revealed by fluctuations in stillness and movement. In the second piece “Shangri-La”, Patty explored the story of the mythical utopian place on the Tibetan border cited in the novel Lost Horizon, depicting a very different construct of place and reality through a private Chinese perspective in contrast the that of the Western public, again questioning the very nature of constructed realities. |
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He Cheng Yao Possibly the most visceral work of the festival, Vital 06 final performance was a challenging live work by He Cheng Yao. Offering ten years growth of her hair for sale the atmosphere in Chinese Arts Centre became charged as the candle auction ended at £300 and the highest bidder carefully cut off his lot. Commenting upon the artist as object, alongside the growing focus upon the economic value of Chinese Art within the contemporary art market, this live performance continues He Cheng Yao's spectacular performances which question the very essence of her existence and her own social position in society. |
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Yuen Kin Leung A gentle action-based piece was Yuen Kin's first performance in the UK. Exploring the themes of growth and the conditions required for germination, Yuen Kin, through a series of actions, invited audiences members to interact with one another by touch in an attempt to germinate and water seeds that had been carefully 'sewn' under bandages to his arms and legs. From the warmth of touch, ice cubes were melted between participants hands and dripped onto the seeds, metaphorically giving them the water needed to grow and develop. This piece of work beautifully commented upon the most basic needs of our existence through actions which captured some wonderful visual moments where audiences met each other within the artwork itself. Links: website | weblog |
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Lee Wen A film screening of works by this international Singaporean artist gave festival-goers an insight into the body of work by this formidable performance artist who commonly examines themes of culture and identity within his work. Wen is best known for his performances as “Yellow Man” wearing bright poster paint as an exaggerated symbol of his ethnic identity. The film screening offered a further insight into Wen’s practices that often question conservative assumptions about art and also examine South East Asian practices within an international context – something at the fore of Wens practice. His film screening included Wen's Yoko Ono inspired bedroom sit-in “Give Peace a Chance: Redux”, an interactive installation and performance where visitors were invited to join Wen for a sit-in bedroom protest for peace at Singapore Management University. |
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Zheng Lianjie Festival audiences were offered an insight into the practices of one of the most prominent early performance artists when Zheng Liajie gave his artist talk at the festival and also screened one of three pieces of work to camera he has created between 1997 and 2003 called “My Life in New York”. This documentary film sees Zheng visually overcome by the New York landscape as he takes eggs from a nest, which he proceeds to break open in a downtown coffeeshop, perhaps representing the longing for fertility of his own mind through the symbolic use of this object. Zheng also showed audiences his most renown work "Binding the Lost Souls: Huge Explosion 1993", which was controversially banned in China because of the manner in which the work was able to transcend it's beautiful construction, questioning inherent and symbolic ideologies of The Great Wall in an ever shifting and changing China beyond the period of the Cultural Revolution. |