15 years of Conversations with Beijing Artists

Beijing Views, documentary 

This idea was based upon the project 40+4, Art is Not Enough! Not Enough! but has been extended to analyze the artistic landscape in Bejing through interviews that cover two decades of history starting from 1995, with a focus on 1998 and finally, ideally Beijing in 2008. We have altogether 150 hours of footage filmed by Daria Menozzi. This footage has already been digitalized with the support of Arthub.

We will reduce the participating artists’ number from 40 to 10 in order to manage the documentation in the most efficient way (10 artists interviewed 3 or 4 times in the last 20 years). Of course the project can be enlarged depending on available funding.

The interview’s technique will be the same as it was in the Shanghai documentary, but the set of questions will change according to the original questions presented in the historical material we have. When possible, we would like to keep questions to all artists interviewed close in similarity. With this process we will be able to create a conversation with the same artist-self and with the same questions that cover almost 20 years of their activities and, more importantly, their lives.

Technique and Other Practical Notes

We would like to use the same shooting techniques during filming, keeping a style of camera that has been used for the previous film work work by Daria Menozzi. In this case the camera will be fixed: a proper documentary setting.

Olivo Barbieri will document the artists interviews with a series of  photographic portraits.

Participating Artists:
Liu Wei, Wang Guangyi, Feng Mengbo, Lin Tianmiao, Gu Dexin, Ai Weiwei, Wang Jianwei, Zhang Yonghe, Zeng Fanghi, Yan Lei and two curators (tbc)

The outcome will be:
1. A video installation and also most likely a one channel film/documentary
2. Portraits of artists by Olivo Barbieri
3. A book/catalogue