Body Noise is Epochal Alienation
The mankind lasts today, and what perplexes the mankind the most perhaps is their body. All the vicissitudes involve with body. Where there remains history, the image of body dominates. Body is to be admired while also be denied at certain moment. On the surface, body seems to be owned by an individual, but actually it is the result of history and together possessed by society. It looks like a physical outfit, but it culminates with religion and concept. The existence of body reveals the existing social value. When questions are ponders, there must be an on-site body to confirm.
This is the theme of body and the pre-requisite for the expression of body today. When body produces noises, it is because of the entanglement of itself. The society conducts a series of social behavior under body, from birth to life, from body to potentiality. What all we have has been socialized, been politicalized. The limits of body exist before we were born. Birth and death have already been coded. Naturally the birth of our body and ripen of our body begins with the struggle between our body and what it already has been tamed and trained.
Through his entire life, some can never find the meaning of self. It might appear a wealthy life with fur-coat and BMW, but his soul has already gone, leaving only a physical outfit. While someone is willing to receive all the solitude and poverty just to confirm the meaning of life beyond body especially among those believers. With the development of society, the active expression and the action to distinguish body in art are quite bizarre and contradictory. In contemporary art, body is repeatedly used as an expression for experiment. The implementation of artistic behavior and the visual effect all cater for the purpose of an on-site body. Art inspires the mankind how to de-kitsch, how to re-live the body as a spiritual existence to against decaying. Body doesn't become more free under a more prosperous material world. On the contrary, it alerts the body with inspection ubiquitously. There is nowhere for body to escape.
Thus the taming and training of body become stronger, as we don't have religion. That's why we are afraid of our body and want to destroy it. The same structure in art expresses the soul's salvation and turnover to body. This exhibition reflects such an attitude, the variation of body is seen through performing art to video. From their artworks, we could deeply experience the dual confrontation of body as a subject and object. The artists describe the condition of body through an artistic mode and reveal the soul of body through their behavior. In particular, the self-denial as a narration questions the physical trait of body, the oddness and separation of the existing world.
It is because body produces noises that we are moved and try to imagine. We start to think of our body and the world. We recognize those valuable things among the fake and impulsive art scene. Today we don't lack any art concept, but we are short of the basic recognition and review towards humans. Starting from body, we find the existing error and conflict which remind us not being numb to our body that nurtures our soul. This is the origin of our value. When all these disappear, where is our body? When a healthy body exists and a soul decays, what is the use of body? When art becomes meaningless, how artists could be called artists.
Today this is what we should respond and consider. In order to quiet the noise inside our body, we need to erase the "canker" in society which is also one of the function of art that endowed by the present epoch. This is what we as artists should take.
- Wang Chunchen, May 27, 2012
