LANGUAGE AND TEXT: ARTISTS
SONG DONG (CHINA)
( b.1966)
Stamping The Water (1996)
BACKGROUND
Song Dong was born and educated in Beijing and he continues to work and
practice in China. He is an artist that often deals with the ephemeral working
in photography, installation, video, and performance. He has been a significant
figure in the development of Chinese conceptual art since the early 1990’s.
CONCEPTUAL PRACTICE
As part of the emerging conceptual art practice in China, artists such as
Song were quite marginalized in comparison to other artists using traditional
mediums. Facing lack of acceptance by both commercial and official venues/
galleries, ignored by media, constrained by limited financial resources
and failing to attract international notice, many conceptual artists had
to source out new venues to exhibit their art.
Artists began exhibiting within the confines of private spaces, creating
‘Apartment Art’ (Gongyu yishu) Using their apartments as exhibition
spaces, inexpensive and impromptu art happenings emerged, creating an underground
art phenomenon. With much of the work being performance based, and often
unrecorded, these performances existed only in the moment. From this group
emerging in the 1990s, Song Dong explores notions of transience, perception
and the ephemeral nature of existence. As I understand it the time is over
when artistic styles are defined by medium, method, paradigm. When I make
use of these the only thing that I have in mind is whether they fit my ideas.
Like other Chinese contemporary artists, Song Dong has chosen to use the
calligraphic form and the ancient tradition of writing, to strike at the
heart of ancient cultural conventions. He uses postmodern techniques in
his performance pieces; in using his body he is working with a form that
defies and satirises the past concepts of perfection and permanence and
he renders the text (a form of permanence and aesthetic tradition) both
transient and useless.
TECHNIQUES
Documentation
Like other Chinese artists of his generation, Song Dong has been forced
by political and financial circumstances to employ inexpensive materials.
His small-scale works can easily be reconfigured or displayed, and he has
tried to cultivate a solitary, meditative way of working. This is the essence
of conceptual art; signification is achieved primarily through the idea
itself and only through documentation with photographs and videos can the
works exist.
ARTWORKS
A conceptual artist by nature, Song creates works such as Writing Diary
with Water (documented in 1995), that exist only in the moment of creation
and memory.
Another one of his ephemeral works include the piece Stamping The Water
(1996). A series of 36 photographs are the only documentation of this performance
executed in the Lhasa River of Tibet. Repeatedly stamping the sacred water
with an ancient wooden seal with the character for water “shui”
carved on its end, Song attempts to create a “connection between a
sacred environment and a secularised, private heart.”
For the past decade, Song Dong has employed a calligraphy brush dipped in
water, rather than ink, to document his daily reminiscences on stone. (Writing
Diary 1995-) The hand-drawn text lasts for just a fleeting moment before
it evaporates with the steam that arises from the stone’s surface.
This practice allows Song Dong to keep his thoughts and musings secret,
while at the same time, provides the mental release inherent in traditional
diary keeping. The evaporating text serves as a reminder of the transience
of life as much as a comment upon the mediative process that engenders it.
The words literally and metaphorically disappear.
As a performance piece, the documentation consists of only 4 small photographs.
However, the artist believes that they do very little damage to the original
idea, even though they contain no references to the senses involved in the
actual artwork.
In another work in 2005, Song Dong presented a special performance. For
one hour, amid the crowds of tourists and workers weaving in and out of
Times Square, Song Dong continuously recorded the time using water and brush
to paint directly onto the concrete surface that surrounds him. Within this
chaotic, city setting, Song Dong’s gesture created a focus on the
consumption of time. Writing Time with Water is a powerful example of Song
Dong’s interest in context and ritual. The performance stems from
the artist’s ongoing series, Writing Diary with Water. October 17,
2005 12 - 1 p.m.Times Square (Broadway and 44th Street)
EXHIBITIONS
Song Dong has participated in contemporary group exhibitions as the traveling
exhibition Inside Out: New Chinese Art (1998-1999) and Transience:
Chinese Art at the end of the Twentieth Century (1999), at the Smart
Museum of Art in Chicago. Also in Australia at the Asia Pacific Triennial
in 2002, Queensland Art Gallery.
REFERENCES
Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art 2002
Queensland Art Gallery Catalogue Seear, L. (Ed)
Walsh, J., Song Dong The Diary Keeper p.97
visualarts.qld.gov.au
creativetime.org
Images and information about the artist and actual performance footage can
be viewed.