Jay Koh and Chu Chuyuan were invited to Shanghai, Beijing and Hangzhou as part of a professional residency (autumn 2006). The two artists/curators undertook research also on BizArt and they have been asked to give a report about this organizations with suggestions to how to improve the managment of the organization itself.

Here below and abstract about their experience by Jay Koh. A more complete report will be published in the the 10th anniversary book of BizArt.

“This is not my first trip researching art in China as i have travelled widely in various parts of China from 1997 till present. In 1999, I was involved in a “sister cities” partnership project of Beijing-Cologne, in which we had organised a performance and discussion in Artist Store House in Beijing and a show in Galerie N in Cologne.

Superficially the art practices in China seem to project great freedom in conceptualising frameworks as compared to practices found in other places in Asia or in the West. These include foreigners setup art spaces and business in China that exist over a relatively long period of time if compared to other countries with military and communist structures such as in Burma or Vietnam.

These observations are based on the various interviews conducted with well established artists that concern regarding ethical issues behind production is not think about(analysis), grounded by the reason that society moves in such a quick pace, any ethical conclusion will be out of date when emerged in art works. Further exploration on the issue reveal that the “deeds” of the Cultural Revolution and the policies of the ruling authority have, in a sense, released the practicing artist from having the obligations to be “ethical”. The cruelty and inhumanity of the past seem to be used as a justification for not needing to be ethical in the present. Or even to be responsible for the meanings that can be projected from their works.

These attitudes can be seen to be manifested in extreme pieces of artwork such as the video “50 ways to rape a woman” or photography that show the eating of corpses of dead babies or performances showing the removal of the heart of a sedated living animal, presenting the beating heart and the process of “returning” it into the animal. The artists feel that they are just reflecting the hard reality of the world they live in, so that it is fine to reproduce these acts in the ‘art context’.

These attitudes do not have any adverse effect for the artists in marketing their works even though in most writings on contemporary art in China that refer to practices and productions that take place in Beijing and Shanghai always seem to connect to the political and social tensions that exist in the society. In the 90s, Tiananmen is always a major reference marker to history grounding the production of art works. This decade the marker has moved onwards to the democratisation process and emerging consciousness of a “new” China, to its various aspects such as economy of the urban and rural or environment as fallouts of global capitalism. A nationalist influence on the art economy has now entered into the picture through the formation of the new middle class creating a boom time for artists in conventional production such as in paintings.”