The boundaries of reality are the area of play…

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!

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.

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

A free conference on 70’s feminist experimental cinema in France. It is definitely marked on my calendar:

http://www.lepeuplequimanque.org/maisonpop-et-melies-2007/vendredi-12-octobre-2007

Pionnières du cinéma d’essai et expérimental
féministe français

Vendredi 12 Octobre - 20h30
Maison Populaire de Montreuil
ENTREE LIBRE

« Le regard des femmes, on ne le connaît pas » écrivait Viviane Forrester en 1976.
Avec cette première séance consacrée aux pionnières du cinéma d’essai et expérimental féministe français, ce cycle s’ouvre par le geste inaugural porté par trois réalisatrices de « découper, déchiffrer et inventer » le monde, exauçant le souhait de ces années-là de chercher « collectivement et individuellement un langage féminin ». Simultanément aux cinéastes et collectifs qui filmeront directement les luttes des femmes, certaines tenteront d’inventer une nouvelle façon de produire des images. C’est ainsi que le regard jusque là par trop absent des femmes se déploie, venant « changer qualitativement de mots et de pensées, pour amener un contenu vraiment révolutionnaire » à leurs films. « (…) j’ai le désir que femmes et hommes changent. Comme commencement à une beauté autre » disait alors Danielle Jaeggi.

En présence d’Anne-Marie Faure, Michka Gorki, Danielle Jaeggi et Hélène Fleckinger (historienne du cinéma féministe des années 70)
Programmation : Aliocha Imhoff & Kantuta Quiros et avec l’aide précieuse d’Hélène Fleckinger.

SORCIERES-CAMARADES (1971, 10 mn) de Danielle Jaeggi
« Un film sur les femmes / Un film par des femmes / Un film pour les femmes / Avec une caméra d’homme.
Un jour des femmes verront ces images de notre triste survie et se demanderont comment nous avons pu la supporter. » (extrait)

UN GESTE EN MOI (1972, 20 mn) de Danielle Jaeggi
« (…) Entraîneuse de pères – Folle les seins en l’air – Nymphomane familière –
Hystérique toque.
Images de femmes. Elles collent de partout.
S’en débattre en connaissance de sexe. » Danielle Jaeggi, Paroles…elles tournent !,1976
« Dans la société capitaliste, tout est basé sur l’aliénation, sur le fait que l’on existe par le regard des
autres. » (extrait)

INTERPRETATIONS (1975, 11 mn) de Michka Gorki
« L’infirmité des illusions
L’aliénation continuelle d’agressions imprévues
l’impunité d’une foule anonyme forte d’une cohésion de lâcheté
L’impuissance face à l’irrémédiable.
Maitriser ses révoltes fulgurantes
A chacun sa bêtise, bien personnelle, bien limitée. » (Extrait)
« J’ai réalisé un film dans lequel j’ai hurlé mes révoltes de femme, de comédienne aculée à la folie pour ne pas vouloir jouer le jeu de la bestialité de la société » Michka Gorki, Paroles … elles tournent !,1976

MALEDICTINES de Anne Marie Faure et collectif Vidéa (1975, 14 min)
Film expérimental sur le corps féminin. Vidéo collective, vécue, filmée et montée par cinq femmes.

Textes: KQ&AI

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:

I got this in the mail last week from Better World Inc., the other half of our collective of two named “Etranges Etrangers.” By the way, he is in my opinion the most cutting-edge French photographer living in Copenhagen. I’ve been trying to persuade him to move to Paris, but ok I’ll stop digressing…

Better World explained to me that they are images taken from erotic magazines in the 60’s, although I am very sceptical - some of these images are as erotic as medical records of mutilated genitalia…

I have not been very active on the blogging front, as I have been mainly doing research, script writing, and quite a bit of journaling to clarify directions I want to take next season.

The female genitalia project has taken off and I’ve been receiving more responses than I could possibly reply to individually. I do try when I feel it elicits a reaction from my part. I’m a bit amused that most of these tend to be private, either via private msg in MySpace or e-mail, and am definitely touched when I see that there’s a confessional element, a therapeutic process that is taking place. Some of these msgs are 5 or 6 pages long, and I think I’m going to post them anonymously somewhere here.

This and the overwhelming response that I received from the models have brought me to the decision to post a series of theorical texts on the female genitalia, starting from excerpts from my thesis. I think the logical place to start would be the beginning of photography in the nineteenth century, Over time, I’d like to compile the largest online resource available on the subject.

I was interviewed by Gildas from www.chictype.fr yesterday. For those who don’t know, it’s a Parisian Bobo (bougeois-bohème) website on fashion, culture, and dandysm. I think the video will come out next week and you will see me in all my 70’s geekgirl glory. There’s something about dandysm that’s so intellectually sexy that I even forget my feminist stance against the blatantly misogynistic aspects of it. I mean Baudelaire was such a woman hater, yet such an intellectual turn-on (no, no him, his ideas). At this day and age, finding great mental fucks is infinitely more challenging than finding fulfilling/satisfying sex.

Conversation inevitably turned to Lacan, his famous claim that the female sex organ is an emptiness to be filled, the drawing that he asked André Masson to make as a wooden sliding door for the famous painting “Origine du monde” by Gustave Courbet, and numerous (un)ethical practices including the stealing of Georges Batailles’ wife via analysis. Other discussions that were completely off-camera and off the record included pedophilia as the one label that prevents all meaningful dialogue and discussion on the sexuality of children, all in the name of”protection”. This is a subject that can get me ranting to no end, much like “patriotism” in the context of Iraq and 9/11, or “freedom of choice” in the context of health care reforms in the US. So I think I’ll stop spilling and start my day.

Currently reading:

The Unknowable Gurdjieff (Arkana)
By: Margaret Anderson
Release date: 06 August, 1991

Women In Antiquities
By: Charles Seltman
Release date: 1956

&

Art in Theory, 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas By: Paul Wood Release date: 01 October, 2002

 

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.

 

LES RENCONTRES INTERNATIONALES DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE D’ARLES 2007

Projections of photographic series, at the international photography festival in Arles, France, July 2007.
Series by JM Babonneau aka. Better_World_Inc.
and by Chin-Chin Wu aka. Post-Modern China Doll.

We made this video with my coolpix camera and Better World Inc. did the editing. The choice of music is really eerie, which sort of transformed the whole experience for me. I dig it!