What is the Long March?
The Long March is a metaphor. It is an international cooperation, it is a campaign, and a complex art project subtitled “a walking visual display.” It is a journey, whose participants include artists, theorists, and art activists, from both China and abroad. It uses the historical Long March as a geographic and discursive framework, and the curatorial plan parallels the grand narrative of the historical Long March: its romantic ideals of turning failure into success, of taking to the road in search of utopia, of founding an alternative democratic society through engagement with the masses, leaders, and soldiers, of representing the intellectuals and the people, of holding imported theories and tactics up to the lens of reality in the local context, of generating the new and powerful praxis that led ultimately to the founding of the current Chinese state.
Our New Long March looks for a new approach to contemporary art, using China as a platform. The projects, like the journey itself, are constantly developing, incorporating works that include traditional Chinese ink painting, the Western standbys of oil and sculpture, the contemporary norms of conceptual art, performance, video, sound, and site-specific installations, non-art, and so-called “folk” and amateur art. Many of the projects realized on-site during the journey also include workshops, symposiums and special methodologies of Long March, namely the authorless or non-art happenings we call Long March Installations and Long March Events. Participants work together, turning local resources into the international language of contemporary art, and conversely imbuing international art with a local context and significance—making, as the Maoist dictum goes, “art for the people.” In doing so, they generate new energy for a Chinese art world at a critical juncture, and raise, from a point that teeters between center and margin, systemic questions about the geographic and ethnic categorization of artworks and the centralization and institutionalization of the art-system.
Why the Long March?
The Long March route was carefully chosen for its symbolic import. Historically, it has been the road by which the Han Chinese colonized or were colonized by minority peoples, a path for transmission and translation of ideologies, a route for armor shipments to Indochina during WWII and most significantly, the Communists and Mao’s ultimate road of revolution. More recently, it has come to symbolize a road towards the utopian Socialist Market Economy, or Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. In this new Long March, according to a survivor of the original Long March, the late Deng Xiaoping: “Development is the hard-core principle.” In this present revolution, a new Chinese context is born. The Left has become the conservative element, while the Right has become the liberal. Has communism failed in China? What do people think of the Long March today? Our Long March generates discourse and brings memory of history/geography/ideology together, creating new memory in historic space. We march beyond art, looking to establish a new consciousness of art in relation to history, culture, and memory.
Methods
Exhibitions may involve a mixture of new works created by artists for a particular site, old works shown anew in an interesting cultural/historical context, reproductions of works and other artifacts displayed for purposes of education and transmission, film screenings, and discussions of printed materials. Each site of the continually evolving project has been chosen to represent a certain historical, political, geographical and/or artistic context. Following each exhibition, we hold discussions with invited artists, curators, critics and the local public.
For each Long March project, the curatorial prepares extensively and travels to the site, documenting the journey and compiling an archive of the experience. Along the way, local and international artists join in at different venues to create and/or show their works. During the process of on-site encounters and mutual exchange, the definition of the later exhibition will be redefined, constructing a platform to examine history, theory, and art on an international level.
International Exhibitions
Another part of the Long March is the march into international space. The works that were created on the road, including painting, sculpture, installation, video, photographic and written documents, will be sent on a touring exhibition of international art institutions. This show will be accompanied by a documentary film. The collection of objects and texts created during the march will include the re-creation and re-enactment of some site-specific works realized on the road.
Recent stops of the Long March Project in international space include, the National Museum of Contemporary Art (Oslo – Norway), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Lyon – France), the 2004 Shanghai Biennale, and the 2004 Taipei Biennale. Currently, we are in preparation to launch the next leg of the Long March international “Chinatown”. The first site will be the 2005 Yokohama Triennale in Japan September 2005.
Curator as Artist
Another element of the Long March’s curatorial strategy involves blurring the line between the work of the curator and that of the artist. Inasmuch as the meaning-making process for art on the Long March involves not only the works themselves, but the context in which they are shown, artists yield a bit of autonomy to curators in a collaborative process that integrates creation and display.
Participating Artists
Works by more than 250 Chinese and international artists have been selected. Participating artists also include “amateurs,” art students, traditional and folk artists whose unique perspective will lend to the project’s overall diversity. Every individual we come across along the road may become a participant, another marcher.
Contact Information
25000 Cultural Transmission Center
Mailbox 8503, Beijing 100015, China
Tel/Fax 010-64387107
lm@longmarchspace.com
www.longmarchspace.com
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