Thoughts on the  

 文/Jesse Cizauskas(司馬俊)
 Rule #1: I am not to look at other art reviews before completing this write-up. 

Since this piece has got me thinking about more personally generated art production, I want to interpret it from a personal point of view, to test the idea that art is completed by the viewer, that ultimately meaning fragments through what individual experience brings to a piece. I accidentally broke RULE #1 one sleepless night while checking out artforum.com on the internet, but the reviews that I read re-inforced my feeling that so much art, and art writing, is about SITUATING work in the art world, validating it through relations to established discourse and art history. While this can provide a necessary forum for discussion, it also seems to impact the production of so many artists (myself included) to such an extent that it calls into question the cherished notion of creative freedom. This is by no means the first time these questions have been asked, but they are fundamental and bear repeated asking. What forces influence, motivate or control artistic practice? To what end? Can good work be created outside of this institutional framework? And if so, what would its fate be? 

I've been asking myself these questions again because Zhang's "Situations" impressed me as operating outside of prescribed space. I was impressed with the quality of the work, but also felt compelled, for various reasons, including my weak Chinese, to interpret it through personal experience. I was glad that there was dancing and electronic music involved. I asked for some information about the work though an email to a friend that works at the gallery: 

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artist's name：張慈倫
 the name of the works：〈Situation series〉
 (She will finish 26 Situations.Why 26？Because from A to Z are 26 letters.) 

by the way
I can not show up Saturday afternoon because something busy. 
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I recognized the first character as Zhang, he artist's family name. It is the Situation series (possibly related to Situationism?), there will be 26, which for some obscure reason is connected to the alphabet. Hmmm... A reference to Western indoctrination? Post-Colonialism? Probably not, but at this point I should probably get back on track and discuss the artwork... 

Walking into the darkened back room of the SinPin gallery, I first noticed three large video projections dominating the back of the space. Each video was shot outdoors, in a lush park or countryside. The first was shot in a hippy-ish glade, half-forest, half-park, semi-wild but surrounded by rough benches made from tree trunks. The second took place deeper in the woods, but featuring a pile of rocks that could be some sort of rest area, and the third took place in an overgrown field. All three featured nature as an idyllic backdrop, green, peaceful, vibrant and alive. The loud buzzing of some type of cricket was the soundtrack to the installation. 

Each projection featured one or two lo-fi "astronauts" rocking out. Their white motorcycle helmets with reflective visors, white painter suits and cheap 7-11 raincoats transformed them into cartoons, somewhere between a Power Ranger and a Teletubbie. Reinforcing the cartoonish impression was the energetic and goofy raver dancing that the astronauts were doing. Although they looked really happy to do it, occasionally the exertion and tropical heat would result in collapse, leaving the astronaut panting, exhausted, I imagine satisfied with their hard work. 

In a darkened corner were 3 of the white motorcycle helmets on pedestals, in front of three monitors. The monitors contained a variety of other featuring the same characters, but in different settings, and behaving in more choreographed patterns. One situation was a short horror movie (the astronauts getting killed was really sad), others involved the astronauts moving in machine-like manner in abandoned industrial settings, or getting out of what looked like lunar exploration pods. Putting on a helmet provided a soundtrack, letting you feel what the astronauts were grooving to, and by extension making you one of them. It was very effective in creating empathy for the characters. 

On a more personal note, I felt a lot of empathy for the main character because of my wasted youth spent going to raves. I know how it feels to be carried away by electronic music and dancing past the break of dawn, and the main character seems to have the same compulsion to boogie. It's physically exhausting, but it feels so good. And as tenuous as it was, the artificial utopia created by the DJs and the dancers was what life was all about for a moment... I stuck around a little too long, beyond the creative beginning when the rules weren't set, when people came in costume (I remember an astronaut), transvestites with absurdly long feather boas, and riots before the police figured out that is was much better just to leave us in whatever warehouse the party was at. It was new and nobody knew what it was going to become. Later came the uniform, the brand name DJs, the monotony. By this time we all knew that the love was manufactured, and continued attendance was more about addiction than hope for something new. It had become a subculture, and it died. 

Understanding art through visceral personal experience isn't something that happens every day. 

Although sharing an element of physical ordeal or endurance with much other performance art, as well as decidedly strange behavior, this work had a sincerity that many performances lack. Unlike an artist that willingly undergoes trauma for the sake of making a statement, I had the feeling that this artist really wanted to be doing what she was doing. It felt like a natural extension of her life, unmediated by politics or absurdity. It felt more like play than work, which was refreshing. Much can be revealed through play, and in this case I felt a desire to create a perfect world, or at least a perfect moment. It was fun, uncontrived, endearingly goofy, but also isolated, somehow, requiring a full body suit, helmet, techno and an isolated environment to shut the rest of the world out. You can bring your friends though, and the helmets in the gallery felt like an invitation to come along. 

This work navigates a space between art, subculture and the personal. A subculture can never become art because of its adherence to uniformity, despite simultaneously providing "individual" identity. Subculture is design, and its art, if remaining within its boundaries, will serve only to identify it as belonging to that subculture, and perhaps being cool within it. This is my problem with so much graffiti art. Likewise, institutional art discourse contains prescribed methodologies, though veiled, that influence the practice of contemporary artists, reflected in plaintive articles on "University Art" and questions about the freedom of art due to political agendas and the demands of the market. Subcultures can briefly provide new blood, in the form of aesthetics and style. Transcending the boundaries of both subculture and discourse, through personal experience, is one way, demonstrated so well by this work, of creating something different, in a landscape where everything is the same precisely because everything is different. Beyond pose, beyond stance, beyond statement, original existence. 

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