From “doing works” to “doing things.”

Zhou Bin: Yes, we used your blue bowls you donated to the Archives. These days it’s been pretty sunny in Chengdu. Yesterday we all sat on the rooftop, basked in the sun, drank tea, and chatted. We had the first meeting of the UP-ON Performance Art Archive this year. We talked about things.

Sophia: Were there any specific themes or speakers?

Zhou Bin: Only the Archive staff members participated. We talked about how to make adjustments and which projects to do this year.

Sophia: So, it wasn’t an event.

Zhou Bin: It was a formal meeting.

Sophia: Go ahead and talk about whatever you feel is important.

Zhou Bin: Let’s talk about about what you are interested in.

Sophia: Well, first, can you introduce yourself and the Archive?

Zhou Bin: Before I set up the UP-ON Performance Art Archive, I was an artist, focusing on my own creative work. I was engaged in oil painting in Beijing up to 1997. I thought performance art was something that people did when they found out they couldn’t paint.

I moved to Chengdu in 1997, and met performance artists. When I saw what they did with performance art, I decided to give up oil painting. Since then my creative practise centers around performance art. It’s been 26 years now and my biggest regret is having waited so long before doing this kind of art.

At 45, I gave an introductory speech at my solo exhibition at the Chengdu Museum of Contemporary Art. I talked about the transition from my past half-life into the next half of my life, and how I’m really interested in new possibilities of personhood.

I started in 2016, taking six years to complete the Self-transformation Project. There were four projects, each for a year: A 365 Day Project, A Leisurely Game of Chess, Write a Book, and Self-criticique.

Sophia: Oh, there is a fourth?

Zhou Bin: The fourth project is titled “Self-criticique”.

Sophia: A year long piece?

Zhou Bin: Right. Each lasted a year.

Sophia: Oh, why don’t I know about this last year long artwork?

Bin Zhou: Oh, I created a poster at the beginning of the project announcing its commencement. Shortly after the project was executed, the direction changed, starting with a frustrating and self-defeating conflict that I had with someone three times in a short period of time.It made me want to take a good look at myself and see what needed changing.

So, on February 18, 2021, I started to do Self-critique, which lasted a year. This project had no specific material output, requiring only that I remain very aware of each moment of my life throughout the year.

It took six years to do the Self-transformation Project, and it gave me a new perspective on art. This informs all future artistic work. Looking back, each project has transformed me in different respects, optimizing me for my current creative practise.

A 365 Day Project forged my self-control, I could adjust and control my physical and mental state under any circumstances, keeping my plans on track. A Liesurely Game of Chess helped me let go of my long-term obsession with art. This really helped me take a hard cold look at my thinking, and a sharper look at the direction of my work from a broader vision. Write a Book made me realize my thoughts and concepts can also be presented in ways beyond traditional forms. Now my work reaches a broader spectrum and demographic, even outside of the art system. I am now connected with society along multiple axes. Self-critique helped me to consciously think from the perspectives of others. This know-how is crucial to running an organization, where it’s all about integrating a work team to smoothly conduct various tasks.

After I finished the Self-transformation Project, my friends were always asking me when I’d get back to making art. Indeed, this was top on my mind, as well. I was really drilling down on some questions. Like:

1. What does it mean to say something is ‘art’?

2. What style and content fully mobilize and release my energy?

3. What kind of art could I do that others do not want to do or cannot do, but I want to do and am able to do?

4. What has the most power to change the status of art?

I started shifting the direction of my work from the private sense of “doing works” to the more public sense of “doing things.” This is how I manifested the UP-ON Performance Art Archives.

My idea of establishing a performance art archive came from two things. First, it was in 2015 that I went to Cologne, Germany to see the Black Kit Performance Art Archive founded by Boris Nieslony in 1981. Boris spoke with me about the archives for more than two hours, and I was deeply inspired by what he had to say.

The other thing was that I read some materials from an art institution in Poland in 2017, about underground activities of Polish performance art in the 1970s and 1980s. Those blurred images and coarse texts conveyed a shocking power. It’s so sad to think so much of China’s first 50 years of performance art has been scattered and forgotten. I think that performance art is sometimes ignored or demonized, leading to it being understudied. I decided to establish an institution similar to Black Kit, to preserve, display and research performance art documentation and materials.

On November 20, 2021, the UP-ON Performance Art Archive was established, as a result of the common efforts of many colleagues. There were 20 Founding Directors to provide capital, as well as numerous supporters who all donated money and materials. Our work team of more than 20 members is made up entirely of volunteers.

We have positioned the Archive as an independent non-profit organization focused on research and promotion of performance art. Coming from an international perspective, the Archive collects and preserves performance art materials and documents, working diligently on the culling, presentation, and research of these archives. UP-ON PAA also organizes lectures, forums, workshops, art festivals, and publications with a view to building a professional platform for the communication and practice of performance art. The Archive highlights itself not as a static storage space for documentary materials, but as an engine, incubator, and platform for promoting the current practice of performance art, whilst also exploring its future trajectories.

There are seven projects the Archive is currently promoting:

Looking Back is series of sharing sessions to compile scattered writings on the history of performance art, exploring in different regions both in China and internationally. In the process of collecting and sorting out these documents, we often discover new things, which encourage us to re-think contemporary art history. This repeatedly reminds us that, as a long-neglected part of Chinese contemporary art, it is urgent and necessary to collect and sort out performance art documentation. After all, most of the first generation of artists who explored performance art in China in the 1980s are advanced in years, and some of them have passed away quietly, leaving many first-hand accounts nowhere to be found.

File Box: Performance Art Textual Archive Project exists to collect performance art-related theoretical research texts, critical articles, as well as conversations and interviews about artists’ creative lives.

UP-ON and DIG IN are projects held regularly to advance the creative practice of performance art.

As an important medium for contemporary art creation, more and more young artists are interested in performance art and experiment with this medium. However, Chinese art schools do not teach performance art, and these books are rare, so people study and practice on their own by reading scant information. In order to establish a professional and open exchange platform for teaching and learning performance art, the UP-ON Performance Art Archive has launched the Night School project.

Another project is “Experimental Study Bureau”, which features thematic research into the archives, themselves, in the formation of a knowledge production system.

The seventh project is Unique Projects, which is for the Archives to participate more flexibly in various cultural activities as an institution. This allows the Archive to release its energy in greater space with broader possibilities.

So there you have it, my self-introduction and how the Chengdu Performance Archive came into being.

Zhou Bin: A 365 Day Project

Artist: Zhou Bin

Curator: Lan Qingwei

Overall Project Manager : Ye Caibao Project

Coordinator: Yang Cui Bo Zhenzhen

Creative Duration:

To continue over the period of one year from Aug 7, 2016 (First Day of Autumn in Chinese lunar calendar) thru Aug 6, 2017.

Creative Plan

365 artworks, one on each day

Site of Creation: Open Medium of Creation: Open

Creative Intent

To blur the boundaries between life and artistic creation. To push the limits of body-based performance in such a way that creative modality reaches its potential. To be able, when life and art pull the artist off balance, to arrive at a greater sense of order.

Zhou Bin: Write a Book—Unfinished Self-transformation Project

Artist: Zhou Bin

Sit of Creation: Open

Creative Duration:

To continue over the period of one year, from Sep 11, 2019 thru Sep 10, 2020.

Creative Plan

In writing my own book, l force myself to read more.

Concept:

In devoting myself to writing this book, I bring myself to a place and time where my past artwork and ways of thinking come together with a vigorous habit of reading books and learning new things.

Zhou Bin: Self-criticique—Unfinished Self-transformation Project

Artist: Zhou Bin

Sit of Creation: Open

Creative Duration:

To continue over the period of one year, from Feb 18, 2021 thru Feb 17, 2022

Creative Plan

Through sorting through and analyzing my performance art oeuvre, I reflect and research my creative praxis, spending one year in the post-production of Teaching and Learning of Performance Art.

Images courtesy of the artist