Social Engagement: A Focus on China
The Discourse on Music in Early Ancient China
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Hanna Kupś
Music was one of the earliest forms of art to interest ancient Chinese philosophers. While the Confucian school of thought dominated the debate on music in the Zhou China, other philosophies, such as Taoism and Mohism, also sought to define the influence of music both on the individual members of the society and the whole country. The aim of the paper is to describe the musical thought of Taoism and Mohism and to contrast them with the definition found in the Confucian books and treatises.
Invisible Performance as an Artistic Strategy of Chinese Socially Engaged Art in the 21st Century
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Weiwei Sun
This paper dedicates itself to an aesthetic criticism on Chinese socially engaged of this century. According to art theorist such as Claire Bishop, Shannon Jackson, “socially engaged art” is a new art genre has emerged evidently in the West since the 1990s, and it is rooted in the historic avant-garde from the 1910s. This type of art doesn't only reflect the society but also intervene the society; meanwhile, the artworks are constructed situations/actions but not material objects. Several urgent questions arise with the boom of socially engaged art projects in China nowadays. As the art development and the social system in China are remarkably different from the West, what are the special artistic strategies of these Chinese projects compared to the Western ones? How do they attempt to affect the social reality of China? To answer these questions I employ an interdisciplinary methodology combining visual arts theories and performance studies. One crucial strategy I have discovered is "invisible performance," which is a word I adapted from a theatre technique of Augusto Boal, referring to a theatre performed in the social reality, therein the spectators become involved without knowing that they are inside an artwork. Applying this strategy seems particularly effective for the socially engaged art in China due to the strict censorship in the social system, which prompts art to become a substitute for direct political actions for social changes. Many art cases from Ai Weiwei, Zhang Xian, Wu Wenguang that created invisible performances will be discussed here.
