The boundaries of reality are the area of play…

Dear all,

To celebrate two events Zen Foto will hold closing drinks from 4pm this afternoon:

1.       the closing of our exhibition “A. Face to Face with Chin-Chin Wu” of works by Chin-Chin Wu and Nobuyoshi Araki;

2.       from the Tokyo Customs Bureau we received a charge of importing material “that could damage public decency” (風俗を害する物品). This relates to our little catalogue of Chin-Chin Wu`s works - why don`t you come and decide for yourself? We value your opinions!

kind regards,

Mark Pearson

Zen Foto Gallery, shibuya, Tokyo

www.zen-foto.jp

In front of Araki’s images © Benjamin Beller (please beware of important perspective distortions)

Finally a brief review of the show by art historian, Art Forum contributor and Waseda University assistant professor Julia Friedman, taken from the blog Contemporary Art Tokyo:

This is the first Tokyo exhibition of the Beijing-based artist Chin-Chin Wu. It features her 2006–2009 project Vis-à -Vis, Portraits of New Women, in which fifty young women from Paris and Beijing posed for their “intimate portraits.” Upon entering the gallery, the viewers are invited to gaze into an aperture in a red lacquered peep-box installed just high enough making it necessary for all under seven feet tall to stand on a small wooden stool. The voyeristic effort is rewarded with a tiny illuminated image set against the back wall of the box. This quick throw back to Marcel Duchamp’s in/famous Etant Donnés, seems to address the elephant-in-the-room inherent in any art featuring female genitalia. Wu questions the inherently voyeuristic nature of viewing nudity just as she asserts the agency of the woman who participated in the Vis-à-Vis shoots by engaging them in a dialogue about the meaning of these portraits. Many of their utterances are featured in the making-of video that is also part of the show. Wu’s photographs are further contextualized by a selection of ten silver gelatin prints by Nobuyoshi Araki, hung in two tight rows. Araki’s work makes for an interesting juxtoposition with Wu’s, in my opinion, because it accentuates the raw sexuality of his work. Next to his, Wu’s photographs, for all their overtness, appear almost chaste: the viewers of her portraits do not need to worry about participating in the predatory visual act, her focus is the aesthetic differentiation.

There are eight large-format inkjet prints on view, with the rest of the project available for perusal in an eponymous publication by GALERIE VEVAIS (edited by Alexander Scholz). The book will be on sale in about one month in both hardcover and softcover versions. You can find additional information about the publication and see more of Chin-Chin’s works on her webpage.

Due to the graphic nature of the show the gallery had to set a series of deterrents for visitors that might seek things other than art enjoyment. If you decide to visit the exhibition (you have to be over 20 years of age), please make an email reservation with the gallery (amanda@zen-foto.jp). When you arrive you will be asked to sign a waver stating that you do not find the contents offensive, and pay an exhibition membership fee of 3000 yen. Once inside you will have your pick of Zen Foto publication to the value of the fee. The show is at Zen Foto Gallery, on view through May 23.

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!

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

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

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.

I have been checkmated. That was awfully heartless of you.

Motionless. Speechless. Expressionless. Tearless. In my out-of-character ungracefulness, I refused to admit to my defeat.

Yes theoretically, there’s no turning back, but the steaming beast in me wanted to violently flip the board over, permanently rewrite the rules of the game, and gently and harmlessly perform an ice-pick lobotomy on your frontal lobe.

Or, I guess I could just as well playfully cover your eyes, and then steal that piece of evidence working against me.

(rapid heartbeats!)

But which piece should I steal? How many steps would I have to go back? Back to BEFORE that fateful moment when our eyes met as recognitions of irresolvable past-life entanglements haunted and drew us back? Back to that past-life entanglement that we left unresolved, because we resigned to the fact that it was irresolvable? Or back to BEFORE the first time that I remember shoving you away?

The points in time where heart conundrums and love debts definitively begin and definitely end have always been points of befuddlement for me…

After a while I said as casually as I could why don’t we suspend judgment a bit longer, pretend that there are possibilities that we don’t yet recognize, other dimensions perhaps — after all, are our understandings not limited by the physical realms of our perceptions, by the here and now?

Currently watching : Women in Love Release date: 04 March, 2003

Ken Russel is my new fetish filmmaker! I think I’ll re-plunge into D.H. Lawrence this August.

*enraptured*

**Also check out this electronic magazine on neuroscience called Brain & Mind. Fascinating stuff!

Calendrier :

Vendredi 6 Juillet, à l’occasion du OFF de la Nuit de l’année, festival ArtCourtVideo 07, sur la façade du Théâtre d’Arles, rue Molière (près de l’espace Van Gogh), Etrange Etrangers commence la projection à 22h30 pile.

JM Babonneau proposera, en tant que VJ (Visual Jockey), une animation inédite de ses travaux photographiques en collaboration avec le DJ de ArtCourtVideo à la fin des projections.

Samedi 7 Juillet, au Cargo de Nuit, 7 avenue Sadi Carnot, Arles.

JM Babonneau proposera, en tant que VJ (Visual Jockey), une animation inédite des travaux photographiques d’Étranges Étrangers en collaboration avec le DJ du Cargo de Nuit, entre minuit et 4 heures du matin.
www.cargodenuit.com

Photographie, France’s premier multimedia magazine on everything photographic, has covered our projections at Rencontre Internationale de la Photographie d’Arles 07.

At the projection this evening, we will be interviewed by Photographie.com. Rendez-vous at 10:15 on the façade of Théatre d’Arles, near Espace Van Gogh, rue Molière.

A few screen shots:

Read the rest of this entry »

Media elite’s last gasp effort to
save crumbling empire

Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones/Prison Planet.com | March 16 2006

MySpace isn’t cool, it isn’t hip and it isn’t trendy. It represents a cyber trojan horse and the media elite’s last gasp effort to reclaim control of the Internet and sink it with a stranglehold of regulation, control and censorship.

Since Rupert Murdoch’s $580 Million acquisition of MySpace in July 2005, it has come from total obscurity to now being the 8th most visited website in the world, receiving half as many page hits as Google, despite the fact that on first appearance it looks like a 5-year-old’s picture scrap and scribble book.

MySpace is the new mobile phone. If you don’t have a MySpace account then you belong to some kind of culturally shunned underclass.

What most of the trendy wendy’s remain blissfully unaware of is the fact that MySpace is Rupert Murdoch’s battle axe for shaping a future Internet environment whereby electronic dissent, whether it be against corporations or government, will not tolerated and freedom of e-speech will cease to exist.

MySpace has been caught shutting down blogs critical of itself and other Murdoch owned companies. They even had the audacity to censor links to completely different websites when clicking through for MySpace. When 600 MySpace users complained, MySpace deleted the blog forum that the complaints were posted on. Taking their inspiration from Communist China, MySpace regularly uses blanket censorship to block out words like ‘God’.

Earlier this week Rupert Murdoch sounded the death knell for conventional forms of media in stating that the media elite were losing their monopoly to the rapid and free spread of new communication technologies. Murdoch stressed the need to regain control of these outlets in order to prevent the establishment media empire from crumbling.

MySpace is Rupert Murdoch’s trojan horse for destroying free speech on the Internet. It is a foundational keystone of the first wave of the state’s backlash to the damage that a free and open Internet has done to their organs of propaganda. By firstly making it cool, trendy and culturally elite for millions to flock to establishment controlled Internet backbones like MySpace, Murdoch is preparing the groundwork for the day when it will stop being voluntary and become mandatory to use government and corporate monopoly controlled Internet hubs.

The end game is a system similar to or worse than China, whereby no websites even mildly critical of the government will be authorized.

The Pentagon admitted that they would engage in psychological warfare and cyber attacks on ‘enemy’ Internet websites in an attempt to shut them down. The fact that the NSA surveillance program spied on 5,000 Americans tells us that the enemy is the alternative media and that it will be targeted for elimination. Google has been ordered to turn over information about its users by a judge to the US government.

The second wave of destroying freedom of speech online will simply attempt to price people out of using the conventional Internet and force people over to Internet 2, a state regulated hub where permission will need to be obtained directly from an FCC or government bureau to set up a website.

The original Internet will then be turned into a mass surveillance database and marketing tool. The Nation magazine reported, “Verizon, Comcast, Bell South and other communications giants are developing strategies that would track and store information on our every move in cyberspace in a vast data-collection and marketing system, the scope of which could rival the National Security Agency. According to white papers now being circulated in the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries, those with the deepest pockets–corporations, special-interest groups and major advertisers–would get preferred treatment. Content from these providers would have first priority on our computer and television screens, while information seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, could be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out.”

The original Internet will deliberately be subject to crash upon crash until it becomes a useless carcass of overpriced trash and its reputation will be defiled by the TV and media barons cashing in on the perfectly streamlined Internet 2, the free for all network that just requires you to thumbscan in order to log on! Those with a security grading below yellow on their national ID card will unfortunately be refused access. Websites that carry hate speech (ones that talk about government corruption) will be censored for the betterment of society.

For the aspiring dictator, the Internet is a dangerous tool that has been seized by the enemy. We have come a long way since 1969, when the ARPANET was created solely for US government use. The Internet is freedom’s best friend and the bane of control freaks. Its eradication is one of the short term goals of those that seek to centralize power and subjugate the world under a global surveillance panopticon prison.

Rupert Murdoch’s MySpace and its ceaseless promotion by the establishment media as the best thing since sliced bread is part of this movement. In saying all this we do encourage everyone to set up a MySpace account, but only if you’re going to use it to bash MySpace, Rupert Murdoch and copy and paste this article right at the top of the page! See how long it is before your account is terminated.

—————————————

Visit our MySpace page by clicking here. Will the censors shut it down or keep it up to save face?