Ellen Pearlman, New York-based writer and editor of the Brooklyn Rail who lives part time in China, offers an in-depth consideration of Cao Fei’s “People’s Limbo,” recently presented at Lombard-Freid Projects in New York.
“RMB City in Limbo”
Presented as part of the group exhibition, “The Girl Effect” Lombard-Freid Projects
September 10 – October 10, 2009
Cao Fei’s ongoing project in Linden Lab’s Second Life program titled “RMB City” (RMB is the Chinese currency, the renminbi) has taken a decidedly political bent with her newest 11-part installment, “RMB City in Limbo.” Using the moniker she adopted at the Venice Biennale, “China Tracy,” to spin wistful tales of romantic longing in cyberspace she has here produced a scathing operetta that tackles real-world issues, indicting Marxism, Capitalism, and Communism as co-defendants for the current economic meltdown.
Using her elegiac trademark style of floating avatars, Cao takes aim at the field of new money dreams that comprises modern day China, interjecting traditional symbols like pandas and tea houses around Rem Koolhaas’ iconic CCTV Tower. In this fabricated world she convenes the ultimate CEO level board meeting between Karl Marx, Mao Zhedong, a young Lehman Brothers broker and Lao Tze. By addressing the financial fiasco and its philosophical and ethical boundaries, a subject that even the venerable artist Ai Wei Wei has yet to pounce upon, she probes the roots of the global economic malaise, drilling down to gaze, Shakespeare-like, upon the folly of the human condition. Since she is not Aristotle or Plato but a visual artist, she turns her narrative into action shots rather than overarching solutions designed to save the body politic.
The piece opens to strains of the sepulchral aria “Ave Maria,” with a panoramic view of a golden statuette of the madonna and child. As we embark on a tour of a perfect architectural world, Mao and Marx enter stage right, floating down to land at a dockside site offering job applications to the unemployed (though in this fantasy world the hapless applicants are decked out in Dolce & Gabbana). The Lehman broker dialogs with the Monkey King, the legendary figure of Chinese culture based on the Tang Dynasty monk Xuanzang, who went to India, brought back the Buddhist Sutras – and translated them into Chinese. The Monkey King tells Lehman Brother, “There was time to escape from the (financial) trap,” but Lehman doesn’t ask how. He just beseeches the simian for ways to get out of debt. Monkey King tells Lehman he dug his own grave, but Mao, who wants to work even though there are no jobs to be found, pipes in with “Crisis is the beginning of restart.” Marx opts to pay homage to the tomb of the now deceased Lehman Brothers, “R.I.P. 1850-2008,” offering oranges and incense.
It is disconcerting, to say the least, to see Marx, kneel down to give a young Lehman Brother upstart a foot bath, and then stimulate his “acupuncture points of desire and greed,” hitting precisely on his “pivotal point of deception.” Stymied by the financial crisis, the masters of the world’s two great economic systems Capitalism (Lehman) and Communism (Marx and Mao) play the children’s game of hacky sack, lobbing feather balls with their feet and asking the Chinese sage Lao Tze for advice on how to emerge from this devastating meltdown of derivatives and debt swapping. Lao counsels them to find “The Way.” It’s a great answer for those with a philosophical bent but I wonder how the response would go down with the unemployed who are plowing through their life savings and 401(k)s.
Cao Fei’s earlier works dealt with issues of identity, costume and masquerade though animation and play acting. She produced a series of photographs exploring the tensions inherent in young Chinese CosPlayer’s (Costume Player’s) lives. In this Second Life piece she integrates real world issues into the program’s insularity and expresses the repressed need within China to look to ancient spirituality to solve the global crisis. Her work, however, does not engage in real life transformation like Micha Cardenas’ project, “Becoming Dragon” which pushed the boundaries of biotechnology, virtual reality and life. In “Becoming Dragon” Cardenas spent 365 hours connected to a head-mounted device with a stereoscopic display that restricted access to any visual information except a virtual world. Cardenas did this to mimic one of the psychiatric requirements that requires her to live for an entire year as the new gender she was seeking to become through surgery.
The gnawing question raised by “RMB City in Limbo” is when does Second Life become a substitute for cleverly conceived 3D animation? Can any change occur through avatars? What does this have to do with art? Is Second Life a game, or the unfolding of a new type of aesthetic? That already says something about the real power of art, whether it be virtual or palpable.
Upon returning to New York after her first visit to China, Soraya Broukhim provides a review of Wang Qingsong’s "When World's Collide" exhibition of photographs and videos at ICP. (Read more)
Upon returning to New York after her first visit to China, Soraya Broukhim provides a review of Wang Qingsong’s "When World's Collide" exhibition of photographs and videos at ICP. (Read more)
CONVERSATIONS: Ellen Pearlman on Cao Fei at Lombard-Freid, New York
Ellen Pearlman, New York-based writer and editor of the Brooklyn Rail who lives part time in China, offers an in-depth consideration of Cao Fei’s “People’s Limbo,” recently presented at Lombard-Freid Projects in New York.
“RMB City in Limbo”
Presented as part of the group exhibition, “The Girl Effect”
Lombard-Freid Projects
September 10 – October 10, 2009
Cao Fei’s ongoing project in Linden Lab’s Second Life program titled “RMB City” (RMB is the Chinese currency, the renminbi) has taken a decidedly political bent with her newest 11-part installment, “RMB City in Limbo.” Using the moniker she adopted at the Venice Biennale, “China Tracy,” to spin wistful tales of romantic longing in cyberspace she has here produced a scathing operetta that tackles real-world issues, indicting Marxism, Capitalism, and Communism as co-defendants for the current economic meltdown.
Using her elegiac trademark style of floating avatars, Cao takes aim at the field of new money dreams that comprises modern day China, interjecting traditional symbols like pandas and tea houses around Rem Koolhaas’ iconic CCTV Tower. In this fabricated world she convenes the ultimate CEO level board meeting between Karl Marx, Mao Zhedong, a young Lehman Brothers broker and Lao Tze. By addressing the financial fiasco and its philosophical and ethical boundaries, a subject that even the venerable artist Ai Wei Wei has yet to pounce upon, she probes the roots of the global economic malaise, drilling down to gaze, Shakespeare-like, upon the folly of the human condition. Since she is not Aristotle or Plato but a visual artist, she turns her narrative into action shots rather than overarching solutions designed to save the body politic.
The piece opens to strains of the sepulchral aria “Ave Maria,” with a panoramic view of a golden statuette of the madonna and child. As we embark on a tour of a perfect architectural world, Mao and Marx enter stage right, floating down to land at a dockside site offering job applications to the unemployed (though in this fantasy world the hapless applicants are decked out in Dolce & Gabbana). The Lehman broker dialogs with the Monkey King, the legendary figure of Chinese culture based on the Tang Dynasty monk Xuanzang, who went to India, brought back the Buddhist Sutras – and translated them into Chinese. The Monkey King tells Lehman Brother, “There was time to escape from the (financial) trap,” but Lehman doesn’t ask how. He just beseeches the simian for ways to get out of debt. Monkey King tells Lehman he dug his own grave, but Mao, who wants to work even though there are no jobs to be found, pipes in with “Crisis is the beginning of restart.” Marx opts to pay homage to the tomb of the now deceased Lehman Brothers, “R.I.P. 1850-2008,” offering oranges and incense.
It is disconcerting, to say the least, to see Marx, kneel down to give a young Lehman Brother upstart a foot bath, and then stimulate his “acupuncture points of desire and greed,” hitting precisely on his “pivotal point of deception.” Stymied by the financial crisis, the masters of the world’s two great economic systems Capitalism (Lehman) and Communism (Marx and Mao) play the children’s game of hacky sack, lobbing feather balls with their feet and asking the Chinese sage Lao Tze for advice on how to emerge from this devastating meltdown of derivatives and debt swapping. Lao counsels them to find “The Way.” It’s a great answer for those with a philosophical bent but I wonder how the response would go down with the unemployed who are plowing through their life savings and 401(k)s.
Cao Fei’s earlier works dealt with issues of identity, costume and masquerade though animation and play acting. She produced a series of photographs exploring the tensions inherent in young Chinese CosPlayer’s (Costume Player’s) lives. In this Second Life piece she integrates real world issues into the program’s insularity and expresses the repressed need within China to look to ancient spirituality to solve the global crisis. Her work, however, does not engage in real life transformation like Micha Cardenas’ project, “Becoming Dragon” which pushed the boundaries of biotechnology, virtual reality and life. In “Becoming Dragon” Cardenas spent 365 hours connected to a head-mounted device with a stereoscopic display that restricted access to any visual information except a virtual world. Cardenas did this to mimic one of the psychiatric requirements that requires her to live for an entire year as the new gender she was seeking to become through surgery.
The gnawing question raised by “RMB City in Limbo” is when does Second Life become a substitute for cleverly conceived 3D animation? Can any change occur through avatars? What does this have to do with art? Is Second Life a game, or the unfolding of a new type of aesthetic? That already says something about the real power of art, whether it be virtual or palpable.