Action-Camera: Beijing Performance Photography

Exhibition catalogue from Action-Camera: Beijing Performance Photography at the Belkin (7 April-4 June 2000) with texts by Keith Wallace, Thomas J. Berghuis and Maya Kovskaya. Curated by Keith Wallace, the exhibition explores an aspect of performance art that is prominent in mainland China and in particular, Beijing. In mainland China, performance art is a relatively recent development with not much more than twenty years of activity. Action–Camera: Beijing Performance Photography examines the trajectory from the discreet underground performance art community centered in Beijing’s “East Village” in the early 1990s, to a current internationally recognized practice. Performance art in China during the early 1990s represented a moment when the avant-garde resurfaced in a powerful way in order to break with the past and to forge new artistic directions within a rapidly evolving society. Many of these performances were recorded by photography and video to provide a document. These early photographs were not necessarily intended to be presented as artwork, yet have emerged as such in various exhibitions. The artists were quick to acknowledge the power of the photograph and increasingly looked to photography as an integral component of their live performance work. Artists include Ai Weiwei, Cang Xin, Dai Guangyu, the Gao Brothers (Gao Zheng and Gao Qiang), Han Bing, He Yunchang, He Chengyao, Hong Hao, Li Wei, Ma Liuming, RongRong, Wang Qingsong, Xing Danwen, Zhang Huan, and Zhu Ming.