The boundaries of reality are the area of play…

Dear Friends, 

皆さんこんにちは。Zen Fotoのご案内をいたします。次の展覧会 ”A. Face 2 Face with Wu Chin-Chin” が５月14日から始まります。オープニングパーティは同日18:00から21:00で、ウー・チンチンさんも来廊され ます。彼女は中国の若い作家です。アメリカとフランスの教育を受けて、現在北京にお住まいです。今回展示する両氏の作品は ともに女性のポートレートで衝撃的なイメージを含むため、ヌード写真に敏感な方々はご遠慮ください。もしご高覧いただければ一生忘れ られない展覧会になるかと存じます。

なお、今回の展覧会では通常と異なり作品の性質から展覧会の会費を頂戴します が、展覧会場にて会費に相当するZen Fotoの出版物をお渡ししますので、なにとぞご了承ください。

Our next exhibition is titled: “A. Face 2 Face with Chin-Chin Wu ”. We will exhibit the works of Nobuyoshi Araki face to face with the works of a young Chinese photographer. Chin-Chin Wu was educated in the USA and Paris and she is now based in Beijing. Zen Foto is pleased to hold this first major exhibition of her series of intimate portraits of women, entitled “Vis-a-vis: Portraits of New Women.”

The content is not suitable for people under the age of 20 or for those sensitive to explicit images of the naked human body.

We do not normally charge for entrance to Zen Foto but, due to the nature of the images included, we will invite visitors to become members of this exhibition. Visitors will be given Zen Foto publications of value equivalent to the price of membership. In case of hardship please let us know and we will happily make exceptions where appropriate.

Kind regards,

Mark Pearson

Zen Foto Gallery, Shibuya, Tokyo

www.zen-foto.jp

The front cover of the Book:

The back bear:

Innen - The Inside:

Special thanks to Alexander Scholtz from Berlin, gifted architect and my book publisher, and Susanne Weigelt, an amazing young designer and artist from Leipzig. The dummies of this book will be available for the duo show with Araki-san in Tokyo, opening May 14. Entry strictly by prior reservation. A small catalog for the exhibition will be available in limited editions. A big ‘thank you’ to all the great women who participated in this project. I will have a gift copy for each of you!

Jennifer Lin:

I was recently going over some lines of inquiry I’ve previously explored regarding the state of art and I came across something I wrote awhile ago…please feel free to comment, I’d really love to see what you guys think about my question..it would be really quite interesting to me to see what people think, since I am inextricably implicated in the art world, have a read…. again, would love to know what you guys think of the question I’ve posed. xoxo Jennifer

Adorno, Horkheimer and MacDonald, in brief, put forth the argument that popular culture is merely a manufactured commodity; that is, mainstream cultural products like Hollywood movies, music etc. are bereft of any originality and creativity. MacDonald in particular argues that the avant-garde movement escapes the dilemma of commodification, for it “simply refuses to compete”. Furthermore, MacDonald articulates that “[the avant-garde movement] created a new compartmentation of culture, on the basis of an intellectual rather than a social elite” (MacDonald, 63). MacDonald’s point is highly debatable given that modernists like Picasso, T.S. Eliot and Stravinsky belonged in fact to a very exclusive group, that was determined by social and intellectual status.
Furthermore, avant-garde art was made distinct from products of popular culture because they are imbued with originality. Yet T.S. Eliot, an artist who is emblematic of the avant-garde movement was reputed to say that “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal”. So originality becomes a moot point, and a very inconcrete benchmark in identifying creativity and the status of non-commodification in any given cultural artifact. So by what measures in contemporary culture are we able to distinguish between the kitsch and the avant-garde, and by the same token, between the kitsch and academicism, when the lines between these categories potentially overlap? Is it possible to draw the lines between these categories at all? Are not all works that are produced in our culture in danger of being kitschy as long as it had the time to evolve or better yet, digress? Look at for instance, Pollack’s abstract expressionist art, or Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. These previously avant-garde works are now squarely within the domain of popular culture, as they are seen often hanging the the dorm rooms of college students or in the waiting rooms of dentist offices. Is it possible for any artistic or non-artistic works to remain “before the vanguard”?

 

Post Modern China Doll:

The avant-garde movement(s) rises from the spirit of questioning, so for me the earliest avant-gardists were Heraclitus, Socrates… The impulse of questioning is by nature uncommodifiable, however, once the process is objectified/commodified (into an object, a painting, a book, a movie, a record), it is always made so with the intention to enter some sort of circuit/market. Can we draw a parallel to Zen Buddhism and say that the spirit of the avant-garde movement is always in a double bind once it’s articulated?

Contrary to Greenberg, I do not subscribe to the idea that the kitsch is the necessary fate of the avant-garde. It seems either too optimistic or too pessimistic of a view of humanity’s general ability to digest great avant-garde ideas. I’ll have to think about that one.

 I’ve been relatively absent from the blogosphere as I notice subscription rates go up. But really I’m unable to see statistics on this site when I’m in China because of some Internet glitch. Meanwhile, I’ve been busy commodifying (rather shamelessly shall I say) my artistic discourses and yes the book is coming!

I will be in Paris in about a week, then London. I am happy to announce that the English Edition of www.photographie.com will resume under video format, and we will be examining the mutations of the photographic imagery (interviews, discussions, etc) so be on the look out.  In April, Soldiers During the Time of Peace will be showing in Art Shanghai, and I will be there. At the end of May, I will have two workshops with Austrian students from the Vienna Fotoschule-Filmschule school. The art boom is over, but art lives on! 

P.S. Like the mean professor or the masochistic first-year art student, here’s two pieces of reading that I (self) assigned. I really need to read the stuff that I talk about instead of being found furiously photocopying Chinese art magazines in B&W (btw why isn’t there a Reader’s Digest for the thousands of magazines out there?). I suppose this is the gap that’s likely to be left in your education when you went to a film school but picked up the theory bug on the way from sensitometry 102 to creative thesis-related fictional theory write:

Greenberg: Avant-Garde and the Kitsch:

http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/kitsch.html 

New York Times Article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/arts/design/15cott.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&emc=eta1

Robert Berman Gallery Presents:

«VIS-À-VIS, PORTRAITS OF NEW WOMEN»

«对视 : 新女性肖像 »

Pigment print, Edition of 5, 120×160 cm
© Chin-Chin Wu, 2006-2008

Catalog available upon request

photo MIAMI
Wynwood Art District, Miami, FL
(Enter on Midtown Boulevard)
BOOTH #304
Robert Berman GALLERY
www.robertbermangallery.com

December 3 - 7, 2008
Opening December 2th, 6 - 10 pm

Upcoming exhibitions:

photo LA
January 21-29, 2009
Downtown Convention Center, Los Angeles, CA
BOOTH #C109
laartshow.com

30th Anniversary Exhibition, Part 1

Robert Berman GALLERY
At Bergamot Station Arts Center, Santa Monica, California
January 24 - February 21, 2009

 

Group exhibition of selected photography and photo based works featuring:
Alex Prager, Jeff Charbonneau & Eliza French, Andres Serrano, Rafael Serrano, Man Ray, William Wegman, Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, Dennis Hopper, Edmund Teske, Shirin Neshat, Christopher Felver, E.T. Risk, Harry Bowers, Lauren Marsolier, Marc Fichou, John Colao, Marla Rutherford, Dietrich Wegner, Cameron Gray, Gerald Slota, Chin-Chin Wu, Hana Jakralova

Are you looking to push boundaries of your body and mind? Interested to get to know your body better? Want a better nude portfolio but haven’t found the right photographer? See how an artist works?

I am a Chinese-American artist living in between Beijing and Paris. Currently seeking women of all background and ethnicity for a large-scale conceptual art project – portraits of the female genitalia. The identities of the subjects will remain entirely anonymous and I offer to make other nude photographs or portraits in exchange. Length of time is estimated at around 1 1/2 hours (please plan extra time for other photo shoots).

My studio is in the historical center , 2 minutes from the Drum Tower（鼓楼) subway station, very close to Nan Luo Gu Xiang（南锣鼓巷）, Hou Hai (后海）， and other major tourist attractions. You can find information for this project on:

http://www.chinchinwu.net/?page_id=98

including a making-of video where the models who have participated talk about their experience and their views on the subject matter. You can also find some pictures and background info on the site. There’s a Chinese article in the magazine Hope／希望杂志报导 about the project:

http://www.chinchinwu.net/?page_id=191

39 women world-wide have already participated in this project. I hope that you will decide to participate in this very important project! This work will be edited into a book published by Trolley Books (London, www.trolleybooks.com) in May 2009 and exhibited in Photo Miami, Photo LA, etc.

Contact me at:
mail@chinchinwu.net with your phone number and I will call you.
Also Skype handle: chinchinlive

Thank you,
Chin-Chin Wu

I can’t help but to be totally delighted by my brilliant friend Pierrot’s theoretical musings every single time (I definitely won’t fail to bring a notebook for our date on Wednsday!). This one on the title of my series “Vis-à-vis”:

dimanche 1 juin 2008

Tathata / sur Chin-Chin Wu

” Pour désigner la réalité, le bouddhisme dit sunya, le vide ; mais encore mieux : tathata, le fait d’être tel, d’être ainsi, d’être cela ; tat veut dire en sanskrit cela et ferait penser au geste du petit enfant qui désigne une chose du doigt et dit : ta, da, ça ! Une photographie se trouve toujours au bout de ce geste. Elle dit : ça, c’est ça, c’est tel ! […] La photographie n’est jamais qu’un chant alterné de “voyez”, “vois”, “voici” ; elle pointe du doigt un certain vis-à-vis, et ne peut se sortir de ce pur langage déïctique.”

Barthes, Roland, La chambre claire, Paris, Cahiers du cinéma, Gallimard, 1980, p.15-16

Extrait de la série “Vis-à-vis”, Chin-Chin Wu, 2006-08

Mon amie Chin-Chin Wu est l’auteur d’une série de photographies qu’elle a rebaptisé récemment “Vis-à-vis”. Je m’interrogeais jusqu’à ce matin sur ce nouveau titre sans trouver de réponse particulière. Connaissant le grand soin qu’apporte cette artiste à fonder son propos sur une série de photographies qui rencontre, j’en suis certain, des réactions très variées, je déduis que ce titre fonctionne comme une petite annexe, une note de bas de page. Sans chercher à l’enfermer dans un sens particulier, ce qui serait de mon point de vue réducteur pour la série, le titre “Vis-à-vis” me semble être néanmoins un indice donné par Chin Chin sur les spécificités photographiques de son travail. Car il s’agit bien d’un pur travail photographique ; inscrit dans son histoire, conscient de ses codes, malmenant une tradition picturale, et jouant avec ce que l’outil photographie peut faire de mieux : brouiller les pistes, faire se superposer les grilles d’analyse du spectateur. L’érotique (la pulsion libidinale au centre de l’acte photographique), le pornographique (la tristesse de la chair offerte dans un éclairage uniforme, morcelée, défigurée), le médical (le point de vue clinique sur la femme et son appareil génital) et le politique (la connaissance des femmes de leur sexe, dans une approche féministe) dialoguent pour une fois dans un travail qui n’exclue aucun de ces champs, qui au contraire s’appuie sur la force polysémique de la photographie et s’enrichie par tous les discours qui y cohabitent.

Vis-à-vis, donc, est un terme qui suppose un échange, un dialogue, fait intervenir la notion du spectateur, du regardé-regardant plus précisément. On dit d’une vue qu’elle est sans vis-à-vis pour marquer l’absence d’un regard de l’extérieur vers l’intérieur, mais aussi pour signifier l’impossibilité de notre regard (puisque supposé voyeuriste) à pénétrer chez l’autre. Le vis-à-vis est un pacte silencieux du regard.

Et c’est précisément le regard, plus que le sexe, qui est au centre de cette oeuvre “Vis-à-vis”.

Currently listening :
Beethoven: Complete Sonatas for Pianoforte & Cello
Peter Wispelwey, Paul Komen
Release date: 1993-08-17

As the laureate of Mission Jeunes Artistes (Young Artists Mission), I am invited to meet the following professionals over a period of three days in Toulouse in September:

I was selected based on my female genitalia project - Vis-à-vis. I really had trouble finding a space to exhibit this work in Paris. I will be exhibiting it in Arles, along with other more recent work. I also have a ongoing book project with a German editor near Berlin. Does anybody have any advice?

Many thanks go to Franck Maindon, Claire Bras, Linda, Jean-Marc Sanchez, Didier de Faÿs, William Ropp, Maxime Lacolley, Pierre Marilly, Sandrine D., Natacha.., and all the models.

Dear Friends and Family,

The Chinese magazine “Hope” (希望）just published an article on the female genitalia project in its March issue. I thought it would never make it with the hypersensitive attitude of the government with the coming of the Olympics, but here is the article.

When I was in India this past winter, a 22-year old freelance journalist called Riva contacted me from Shanghai about doing an article on the project. She had read about it on a well-visited art and culture blog in China (the blog continues sending me traffic until this day even though much of the message of the project is unfortunately distorted as censorship prevents people from viewing the video in China). She explained to me that the readership of Hope is mostly cosmopolitan, independent-minded young women, and could I please talk about my artistic intentions to China’s youth? I was equally intrigued. Besides being a freelance journalist, Riva is also a successful entrepreneur and owns her own boating magazine. She is truly the exemplification of what I find so incredibly exciting and refreshing about today’s China.

In the article, I talked about growing up in Communist China in the 80’s, migration and displacement, the Chinese diasporic experience, how I arrived at the idea of the project, difficulties that I encountered, reactions of the models and the public, recent fads in plastic surgery for the vulva and my experience working with plastic surgeons, my ideas of feminism and female fulfillment… She’s even run a small advert for interested models at the end of the article. For the Chinese-literate, all of this is obviously self-explanatory.

I am going to be in Shanghai from the 11th of April. The family has opened up a gallery on Changde Rd in the Jing An District, and we will have a stand at Art Shanghai. I am bringing some of my prints, many of which are not available online. I am also bringing two artists, one Czech, one French. And then of course I’ll be stopping by in Beijing where I hope to see many people I love and miss.

Then going to the Czech Republic to work on a group conceptual art project in situe in an arms factory, about 14 days in June.

And of course I’ll be appearing in Arles with Better World under the guise of Etranges Etrangers for the opening week in July. Look forward to some new VJ sequences at Cargo de la Nuit, the place where cool people congregate.

Thank you for reading until this far. I hope that this e-mail finds you joyful and in good health and that our paths will cross again soon!

Much love,
Chin-Chin

THE FRAME

The most important thing in art is The Frame. For painting: literally; for other arts: figuratively - because, without this humble appliance, you can’t know where The Art stops and The Real World begins.

You have to put a “box” around it because otherwise, what is that shit on the wall?

If John Cage, for instance, says, “I’m putting a contact microphone on my throat, and I’m going to drink carrot juice, and that’s my composition,” then his gurgling qualifies as his composition because he put a frame around it and said so. “Take it or leave it, I now will this to be music.” After that it’s a matter of taste. Without the frame-as-announced, it’s a guy swallowing carrot juice.

…

- Frank Zappa

LET’S ALL BE COMPOSERS

A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.

Want to be a composer? You don’t even have to be able to write it down. The stuff that gets written down is only a recipe, remember? - like the stuff in Ronnie Willimas’s MACHA book. If you can think design, you can execute design - it’s only a bunch of air molecules, who’s gonna check up on you?

Just Follow These Simple Instructions:

1) Declare your intention to create a “composition.”

2) Start a piece at some time.

3) Cause something to happen over a period of time (it doesn’t matter what happens in your “time hole” - we have critics to tell us whether it’s any good or not, so we won’t worry about that part).

4. End the piece at some time (or keep it going, telling the audience it is a “work in progress”).

5) Get a part-time job so you can continue to do stuff like this.

-Frank Zappa

It is not the language but the speaker that we want to understand.

Veda Upanishad

I have noticed that between plans for the holiday season, end-of-the-year work and art obligations, I have been very absent on the blogging front. I have also been spending way too much time on Facebook planning my trip to India (why is everybody on Facebook these days?), so this is my occasion to say “hi.”

Here’s the itinerary stripped down to the bare essentials, with some further fine-tuning needed (Everything in bold is SET IN STONE!):

* * *

13 Dec, 23:00 Delhi, arrival at Gandhi International Terminal 2 (Air India 7148)

15 Dec - 22/23 Dec: Rajasthan: Udaipur, Jaisalmer, (Pushkar?), Jaipur (transit), Agra (Taj Mahal, Fatehpur Sikri)…

22/23 Dec: overnight train from Agra to Varanasi (Benares, holy city on the Ganges).

23/24-29 Dec: days in Varanasi, day trip to Sarnath (Buddhist holy site)

29 Dec: overnight train to calcutta, fly to Goa

30 Dec - 2 Jan: Days on the beach

2 Jan: Jaie returns from Goa to Delhi, flight back to London.

3-7 Jan: either take the train to Hampi, Karnartika or follow Anita to Kerala (undecided!!)

3-4 (maybe 5) Jan: 48-hour drive through the Karnataka and Kerala coast to meet Anita’s mom in Cochin!

after: south India stuff - Anita, Sammi, Amanda, Ahmad and CC - the Lakshdveep (I think this may be too ambitious for me given the time frame).

7 Jan, fly from Cochin or Bangalore to Delhi

8 Jan, 1:20 Delhi, departure from Gandhi International Terminal 2 (Air India 7147)

8 Jan, 5:40 Paris, arrival at Charles de Gaulle Terminal 2E

Things I don’t want to miss:

- Meet a Vedic astrologer. Anita do you know a good one?
- I need to buy some Indian traditional music as well as meditation music. BTW, what are some gifts that Indian people appreciate?
-Good ayurvedic massages
-Meditation and yoga
- I need to buy some sculptures, preferably in wood or stone, silver jewlery…
- Many more things that I’m too tired to think of now…

Anyone been to India? Any good advice?

Am making a flyer now for an international medical congress that I’m going to be participating next Wednesday entitled, “Esthétique de la vulve: critique et techniques” (aesthetics of the vulva: critiques and techniques). Some 150 doctors and plastic surgeons around the world are going to be gathering together to discuss the ethical implications of plastic surgery on the vulva, a recent global phenomenon in vogue.

My short film on the female genitalia project will be screened at the end of the conference, and I hope to learn new things and meet people of interest for my research. I also got a stolen Powerpoint presentation of a renowned plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills called Dr. Matlock. His slogan? - “Medicine is business.” Dr. Matlock holds a M.D. as well as a MBA in medical business. The Powerpoint is hilariously engaging and unintentionally parodistic to the plastic spirit of Beverly Hills, THE mecca of cosmetic surgery in the world.

Report coming shortly on that front. I am also cleaning up my thesis for possible publication in France. That’s a lot of work before I leave for Delhi! And my head is full of India, and needlessly to say, of pussies .

Currently reading : The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner By Friedrich Nietzsche Release date: 12 April, 1967

The revolution is about to unveil!

Brought to you by none other than:
Better World Inc. & Post-Modern China Doll

I am featured as the “Chic Type” of the week (interview in French):

J’ai été sélectionné en tant que “Chic Type” de la semaine.
Voici l’interview, 3e partie:

I am featured as the “Chic Type” of the week (interview in French):

J’ai été sélectionné en tant que “Chic Type” de la semaine.
Voici l’interview, 2e partie:

I am featured as the “Chic Type” of the week (interview in French):

J’ai été sélectionné en tant que “Chic Type” de la semaine.
Voici l’interview, 1e partie:

 

CLICK TO VIEW PORTFOLIO
Chin-Chin Wu © 2006-2008

The exhibition contains 15 life-size photographs, sound files audible through headphones, one cabinet de curiosités, experimental videos, and the making-of film.

 

/le film 0307 avec ST1.flv

Making of - Femmes: Portraits Dé/Visagés

Camera: Linda

Editing: Jean-Marc Sanchez

 

Musician, psychoanalyst, graphic artist, police woman, professor of French, photographer, journalist, students in fine art, philosophy, literature… 15 women from different walks of life have accepted to pose for this series Vis-à-vis, a series in perpetual construction.

The exposure of the female genitalia implies an ontological vulnerability. Is this why it has remained as one of the last bastions of censorship in the field of representation? It seems to me that the female genitalia have suffered from the polar treatments of paternal protectionism, which excludes them from the social field, or male exploitation, which has demands perfectly “cultivated” and remolded vulvas. I wanted to see if there was a strategy that could neutralize traditional diametrical views of the female genitalia operating on these paradigms of attraction-repulsion. This series came into being in order to examine our capacity to look at the female genitalia as they really are, without resorting to a ready-made alibi.

Several axes of reflection were explored in this series:

Horizontality, verticality. I think this is the key axis of reflection when it comes to how to show the female genitalia. The vertical axis is considered the “noble” axis because it distinguishes us from all the quadrupeds. It is also the position that “condemns” the vagina to its invisibility. For this series, I have established a horizontal position of the body that aligns on the same horizon the face and the genitalia, the mouth and the vagina. At the same time, we have a sensation of verticality given that the frame is tight and that the frontal point of view forces us to “face” the picture.

Human, animal. If the vertical position renders us human, are the genitalia not the last vestiges of our animal nature? Simone de Beauvoir describes this ancient struggle of women between the propagation of the species and the desire for individuation and transcendence as such: “Woman’s individuality is constantly combated by the interest of the species; she appears possessed by strange forces… It is not without resistance that the woman lets the interest of the species settle in her body.”

Nature, Culture/Raw, Cooked (Lévi-Strauss). If nature condemns us to animality, the human species attempts by all means to erase traces of our animal nature: clothing, accessories, piercing, waxing, paranoia of body hair… The ultimate step would be to cultivate or “cook” our genitalia, supposedly the rawest part of our body.

Face, genitalia. The personification of the female genitalia is a very ancient theme (Baubô the mythical vulva). If we operate a 90° visual rotation of the photograph, we can see, by a visual contamination of sort, a face that superimposes on the structure of the genitalia. The face is often deemed the most human and the genitalia the most animal part of our being. This visual confusion destabilizes established hierarchies.

Baubô, the mythical vulva

Mouth, Vagina. In the essay “Mouth” by Georges Batailles, the mouth is a high place of individualization in human beings because it is capable of words, whereas in animal life, the mouth is understood as “the principle element in the system of capture, killing, and ingestion of preys where the anus is the point of accomplishment.” In these portraits of women, the “lips” of the genitalia are open and expressive, allowing them to ascend to the same status as the mouth.

Masculinity, femininity. The “faces” that we see superimposed on the structure of the genitalia convey very “masculine” traits. This questions the validity of the foundations that separate the masculine and the feminine.

Eroticism, academicism. The pelvis that one perceives as toppled over reminds us of the arched back that eroticizes the pose according to conventional erotic codes, whereas the frontal viewpoint neutralizes the images (a form of academicism since the Dusseldorf School). This provokes an instability in the reception of the photographs and leaves space for ambiguity and hesitation.

I invited my models to stay open to these tensions, fragilities, and paradoxes of existence that constitute us as women.