“Contagious love” arts project seminars[Excerpt]
Time: 3pm-5pm 8 September,2007
Location: TCG Nordica second floor gallery space
Host:Luo Fei
Participation artists / poets:Huang Youhua,Zhang Xiangwu,Zhang Yongzheng,Liu Jun,Dou Yu, Wang Jun,He Libin,Zhou Lei
The creation of artists is a rout their soul walks, and what they do is what belongs to them. I found it is hard while working on the topic of AIDS, since personally I never have this kind of experience. This topic should be about care, but this care is different from the care for oneself. I think this is an issue about shifting one’s focus: this focus should be shifted from the care for oneself to the care for another group. Then, what is the relationship between that group and me? Since the focus of care shifted, there should be some relationship. If you judge this issue from a purely objective view, what you do would be superficial. So I suppose there should be some relationship between their hearts and mine, and by feeling like this I can really understand them… The reason why I am here in this exhibit is because I am interested in the topic. Being different from other exhibit, this one conveys strong attitude of care. As far as artists are concerned, this is a worthwhile experience. I feel many of the exhibits I attended were empty, to some degree. They were purely art, or we can say academic, just like a routine game in the system. But this exhibit is very real, and is about a really big issue. Perhaps none of us know who is the AIDS infected around us, and maybe they are always around us, which is why I was interested.
–He Libing
I think AIDS is only a very tiny part of the issue, and it is a metaphor of something in our life rather than the disease itself. The reason why people are concerned about AIDS is not only because it is fatal, or else people should be concerned about a lot of other fatal disease, such as lepta. People are not only concerned about AIDS, but also have very strong ostracism and fear towards it. Perhaps it is because of the feeling of being dirty, which is also fatal. If you just regard it as then syndrome of a disease, a metaphor, there might be more people feeling it is more than a disease itself. How can people live under this disease? Actually everyone in living under a certain disease!
–Zhou Lei
We are expressing our care for AIDS in name of art, or we are doing art in name of art? I think these two are totally different thinking or work. If what we are doing is the latter, I would feel what we do is very superficial. Being superficial doesn’t mean the exhibit or these artworks are not good. There should be some good artworks, but this is not what we planned initially, which should be the concern and care for AIDS. Talking about concern, people would know what is AIDS and how AIDS is transmitted by some lectures and training course, together with some statistics to let people know about the present situation of AIDS, which is the first step: concern. These stuffs talked above, however, will not tell people how to care for another group, and statistics could only tell people what is that. Learning to care for the other is a shift, a sudden shift, to artists, including me. People are used to caring for themselves, but now they need to care for some others who they don’t know very well. Just like what Zhou Lei has said it is meaningful to regard AIDS as a metaphor. You can try to understand somebody who is hurt, who loses his love because their fragility is the same. Furthermore, when we care for others, we are not standing higher than them because we have the statistics, the knowledge, the resources of medical care and media… We care for others because we try to stand in their positions, try to feel ‘we people’s broken heart and soul’. By thinking like this, this care for others can be more powerful.
–Luo Fei
What do you think an exhibit can change? Actually it can change little, right? An exhibit is only an opportunity to express oneself. AIDS is not that horrible, in fact many diseases in our life are incurable, such as diabetes. AIDS at least can be interdicted and you at least know where it is from, but how about cancer? Cancer patient will never know where his or her cancer is from, which is more horrible. AIDS is only a kind of disease, and what is really horrible is that disease psyche.
–Zhang Yongzheng
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