In late January, three artists known as the Xijing Men spent a whirlwind 10 days in Kansas City and Lawrence.
Chen Shaoxiong from China, Gimhongsok from Korea and Tsuyoshi Ozawa from Japan launched a rocket and conducted classes in mathematics, philosophy and sports.
They gave an artists? talk at the Kansas City Art Institute and held an art summit at the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas.
Since 2007, the three have come together several times a year to collaborate as the Xijing Men. The name derives from Xijing, a fictional nation state they invented to serve as a touchstone for their projects and performances.
The trio?s activities in Kansas City culminated in the opening of an exhibit at Block Artspace of their videos, props and drawings, including a video made during their stay in Kansas City. Organized by Artspace director Raechell Smith and Kris Ercums from the Spencer, the show marks the men?s first major U.S. appearance, capping several introductory showings in the area.
In 2009, Smith included Chen in her ?Stairway to Heaven? exhibit of new art from China at Block Artspace.
The collaborative work of the trio first surfaced locally the same year, in Ercums? ?Ordinary/Extraordinary? Asian video show. Last fall, when Chen Shaoxiong visited the Spencer to do a project about the topic of protest, he suggested a future show featuring the Xijing Men.
It was a perfect fit for Smith.
?I like it when artists deal with issues with humor,? she said.
For the Xijing Men, humor serves as an international language.
Their engagement with issues began with their invention of ?Xijing,? a word fusing elements of Beijing, Nanking and Tokyo. Translated from the Chinese, Xijing means ?western capital.?
For the past six years, Xijing has served as the artists? platform for comment on the foibles and folderol of state officialdom and for alternative approaches to policies regarding everything from borders and immigration to education and city planning.
As seen in multiple videos and scruffy props at Block Artspace, the Xijing men turn it all into a game: If you want a passport, make one. If you want to enter the country, do a little dance.
They conceived their Xijing project as a series of chapters, which began with ?Do You Know Xijing?? a set of three videos that introduces the concept as well as the spirit and ethic of the Xijing Men.
Shot individually by the artists in Okinawa, Japan; Korea?s Yeongjong Island; and Hainan, China, the videos document the responses of common working people to the question, ?Do you know Xijing??
The answers from shopkeepers, fishing net menders, factory workers and others reveal dreams and flights of imagination, misunderstandings and a desire to be helpful.
?Never heard of it,? one says. ?It must be nice,? another muses. ?My sister lived there,? one Japanese woman reports. An elderly Chinese man concludes ?If anyone knows about this place, it must be a government secret agent.?
At times the responses take on an ?Alice in Wonderland? absurdity, in part because of the language difference from English-speaking viewers.
The fun of the piece is its balance between earnestness and humor.
Some of the material is scripted. The Korean video, for instance, features an actor who was in on the joke.
In an interview at the Artspace, Gimhongsok said he took this tact after discovering that Yeongjong Island is inhabited by newcomers who thought the reason they didn?t know about Xijing was because they hadn?t lived there long enough.
In 2008, the artists followed up with ?This Is Xijing.?
For this piece, each of the artists orchestrated a puppet show, which yielded the exhibit?s main sculpture display in the form of puppets used in the three productions.
Although developed at three venues ? Platform Seoul, Tate Liverpool and the Aichi Triennale, Nagoya ? the videos are thematically linked by their basis in ?Journey to the West,? a famous 16th-century Chinese novel about the journey of a monk and his three disciples to retrieve sacred Buddhist texts.
The underlying theme is spiritual enlightenment, but the Xijing Men cleverly insert their own ideas into the drama. Here and in some of the other videos, Western viewers will be struck by the characters? perceptions of an ?exotic West,? an inversion of centuries of Western portrayals of the ?exotic East.?
The third chapter, ?Welcome to Xijing,? includes the exhibit?s most entertaining segment, a hilarious enactment of the Xijing Olympics, featuring a range of nutty sports events in which the artists indulge their proclivity for using everyday objects such as toilet paper, shoes and balloons as sports paraphernalia. Incorporating much flag-waving and pomp, the piece was made in 2008, the same year that Beijing hosted the Summer Olympic Games.
The comparison is inevitable, but the Xijing Men are not interested in direct critique, preferring to make their points about governments and their activities by creating a parallel universe.
?It?s easy to criticize,? Gimhongsok said. ?We just make a conversation.?
There is a delightfully dada aspect to their activities, and like the dadaists, whose rejection of reason and logic was a form of protest against World War I, the Xijing Men have a serious message. When you boil it down, it?s a lesson in values. Xijing promotes creativity and communication, tolerance, family, knowledge and work.
All of them have a place in the video ?Xijing Immigration Control.? This second part of ?Welcome to Xijing? is a series of short vignettes enacted by the artists and members of their families. In one segment, Gimhongsok plays an official who reads out immigration rules such as ?People with a bright smile and positive attitude will be allowed to enter.?
In another segment, Chen?s daughter asks, ?How do I get a passport?? ?You make it yourself,? her parents respond. Later she and her father gain admission past the immigration counter by performing a little dance.
Throughout, the players have fun with everything intended to regulate, just as they have fun with the many functions and trappings of state in the fourth chapter, ?I Love Xijing.?
Material things are not important in Xijing, as evidenced by the artists? repeated use of common objects and their DIY approach to making the props they need.
In ?I Love Xijing,? a narrator uses a map covered with mounds of rice that he moves and divides to illustrate the history of Xijing. A segment on city planning shows the artists carving up a watermelon. The finance and economy of Xijing consists of printing money on Kleenex.
And then there is the Xijing Constitution, with its various acts, including the Antagonism Control Act and the Thinking Development Act, which the artists illustrate by drinking beer.
Their camaraderie and decision to team up as the Xijing Men grew out of repeatedly finding themselves in the same exhibitions overseas, Gimhongsok said.
The exhibit includes a wall of drawings that show how they work together ? in essence, exchanging storyboards that lay out the contents of the videos.
For their newest one, ?I Love Xijing: Xijing School,? the artists enlisted Kansas City Art Institute students and alums to participate in a series of unconventional classes. History amounts to an alums social hour with beer, laughter and snacks. The sports session consists of learning how to massage a massage table and then taking the technique outdoors to exercise it on a chair, a tree and a brick column. The philosophy class is a prolonged group nap on blankets on the floor.
The science class, which involved launching a rocket created from a plastic bag, was the most demanding session. After two failed attempts to launch one outdoors, they succeeded indoors at the Artspace, a feat accompanied by cheers and flag waving.
The rocket dangles from the ceiling in the front gallery at the Artspace, which also features student drawings from the language class that the artists projected and traced on the wall. Steel wire shelving displays an assortment of inconsequential items ? a tiny toothbrush, a Sharpie, a pocket calendar, a key, with dated labels stating their value ? contributed during a math class.
Chen, Gimhongsok and Ozawa envision their project as a series of five chapters, which means there is only one left to go. Finishing it will amount to a veritable expulsion from paradise.
Unlike anywhere else, in Xijing, artists call the shots.
Source: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/02/15/4067405/multinational-artists-fictional.html
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