Zu Guo - Ancestral Nation

Ancestral Nation represents one part of a trilogy of video and photography works, looking at contemporary Chinese culture. The word 'Ancestral' lead me to reflect on one of China's eminent thinkers, Confucius. I wanted to make a link between this great scholar and today's society, in particular, to see what extent his teachings have impacted on China in recent times.

Depicted in the 3 channel video installation are two main scenes. One showing a festival and procession in Qufu, Shangdong province, marking the birthday of Confucius. The other scene reveals people outside Guangzhou train station, in Guangdong province.

I tried to highlight the rhythm of a staged event in correspondence to that of everyday life, where individual desires and governmental aspirations are played out as rituals and metaphors.

The word 'Country'

In the last few years, I have been looking at developments in China, in particular, it's current cultural values. I wanted to explore how contemporary culture is impacting on individual lives and also on the collective aspirations of a nation. To begin exploring a country's cultural identity, I needed to create a point of entry. In my view, language and culture have close associations, and so that was a logical starting point.

From language, I then picked the word 'Country' as spoken in Chinese. There are 3 principle ways in Chinese to say 'Country'. They are: Zu Guo (which isn't used so much these days), Guo Jia (most commonly used) and Jia Xiang (sometimes used by villagers or when somebody wants to refer to their distant motherland).

Zu Guo in English means Ancestral Nation, Guo Jia means Nation Family and Jia Xiang means Family Village. Each phrase is linked to the next and each conjures up notions of identity, nationality, place, unification and a sense of time and history.

In my next post, I'll discuss a video I made for Ancestral Nation. I'll also go into detail my plans for my residency at Artsway. That's where I'll be developing new work responding to Family Village.

Life is Cheap

I had a meeting today with the director and the curator of Artsway. We discussed if it was appropriate for me to go to Chengdu or not. From their point of view, it would be a bad idea (which I was kinda relieved to hear). Not only from the logistical and practical point of view, but also for the fact that it would be insensitive for me to go out there and make art at such a time.

But the thing that really fluxed me, was a subsequent phone call I made to my Chinese fixer. She was born and raised in Chengdu, but left for the UK after the Cultural Revolution. She's responsible for helping me find local travel guides, so I thought I'd better call her to see how Sun Ming, our guide was coping. Although she explained that most people are sleeping in their cars, rather than take the risk of staying in their homes, she also said I should get on with it, and go. Without a hint of humour, she said my life was not worth that much to be so careful about things. I think she believes me to be a wimp!!

I spent an hour or so afterwards trying to digest my fixer's advice before calling KLM to see if I could get a refund for my flight on the 30th of May. But as far as they were concerned, Chengdu Airport is operational and so the best they could do was give me up to the 30th June to take my flight or lose out. I tried to explain that an earthquake had occurred, killing lots of people (and maybe pandas too) and it might not be safe to go there so soon, but I think they were a little bored with me.

What is a life worth?

What a dilemma

For my residency at Artsway, I had proposed to produce some new work in Chengdu, Sichuan Province of SW China (more on the concepts later).

But as most people know by now, this is the exact region that has just suffered a huge earthquake, measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale. So devastating, the impact was felt as far as Beijing and Vietnam!! I have to say, my first thought was with the panda's, as this is the region where they come from. As they are a rare breed anyway, I am hoping some of them have survived. As for human lives, I don't think we are going to know yet, exactly how many people have died, gone missing etc, since as it's still not been possible to reach the epicentre of the quake.

On a personal note, this catastrophe is making me feel quite deflated and confused. Even before starting my residency, I had begun the task of preparing for my trip to Chengdu. But from the moment I started my residency, I have done nothing but focus on the project, planning, preparing, setting the ground work, arranging local help in China etc. There's been weeks and weeks of research, honing myself until the day I will go - supposedly on the 30th of May.

The feeling is akin to being a 100m swimmer who dedicates all their time to training, perfecting every aspect of their sport to give themselves ever chance of success in a major tournament - only to be told a week before a race, that the pool has no water, and isn't going to have any for the foreseeable future.

At the moment, 50% of me is saying stay put and reschedule everything. But the other 50% is quite stubborn, and just want to go out there on the 30th and get on with it.

What to do?

Old Postcards

Here are some of the fab postcards I bought a few days ago, depicting romantic views of Dorchester. Some of the cards date back over a 100 years. I get the feeling 1 or 2 of them will end up in a video I hope to produce in the coming weeks.

Week One

It's been a week since my arrival in the New Forest, Hampshire. So far, so good. It's a 2 month residency with Artsway, so I don't want to rush into making any work immediately. In fact, since my arrival, I've been behaving like a tourist - going to farmer's shops, checking out some thatched cottages, stroked a few donkeys and spending loads of money (£48-50) on 10 postcards!! They are lovely though...some dating back to 1910, with beautiful hand written messages. I'll scan them and show everyone soon.

Incidentally, all the postcards are of Dorchester...which is my current source of interest. Dorchester will see a lot of me in the coming weeks - as I am interested in it's history and architecture, and how it came to be, that it has inspired a town developer to build a Dorchester in Chengdu, China!!

More on that in a few days.