What’s the Relationship between Art and Film in Chinese Contemporary?

Still from Wang Bing’s first narrative feature “The Ditch,” which debuted in-competition at Venice Film Festival September 2010.

International artists are increasingly exploring the gray area between narrative cinema and gallery-based art practice – but in China, perhaps surprisingly, the division is still immense. Though many Chinese artists started out in film school (including Ai Weiwei), and conversely many filmmakers studied art, at some point those paths (and distribution channels associated with them) seem to diverge and never again meet. Broadly speaking, filmmakers such as Jia Zhangke show their work in film festivals or other “screening” venues with a seated audience, and sell their work through television and DVD distribution (and perhaps delve into the murky waters of online distribution). On the other hand, moving-image artists such as Yang Fudong primarily show their work in galleries, museums and biennales (presupposing a mostly “walk-through” audience), and sell their work in limited editions to dealers and collectors. There are exceptions to this rule, especially in large exhibitions aiming to present a wide swath of contemporary Chinese creativity (i.e. Centre Pompidou’s influential 2003 “Alors la Chine,” which displayed Jia Zhangke alongside Song Dong), artists whose work can easily blur these lines (i.e. Cao Fei, whose exhibition history is full of numerous film festivals as well as Biennales, and some of whose videos are available on DVD as well as online), and epic pieces that because of their length or scale, are better suited to a gallery setting (ie Wang Bing’s 9-hour documentary “West of the Tracks”).

It will be interesting to see the evolving relationship of art and film, especially as the mainstream Chinese film industry continues to grow, and the Chinese artworld expands into ever-new directions. Genre-blurring screening programs and venues such as Vitamin Creative Space’s current “Cinema” program may be instrumental, as well as commission-based projects, and above all, the willingness to take risks on the part of creators, curators, programmers, collectors, and audiences. Hopefully China’s independent filmmakers can appropriate some strategies from their art-world counterparts about creating a sustainable practice through commerce, and artists can start playing with the intriguing funding, distribution and presentation possibilities opened up by crowd-sourced fundraising, quasi-curatorial festival programming, and online dissemination of works.

国际艺术家越来越多的开始探索介于叙事电影和基于画廊下的艺术实践之间的灰色地带，但是在中国，惊奇的是这种区域划分还是非常明显的。尽管许多中国艺术家开始在电影学院（比如艾未未）同时相反也有许多电影导演开始学习艺术，在某些时候这些途径（和与其相关的分销渠道）看起来是有分歧的也不会再相交。总的来说，电影导演比如贾樟柯在电影节上展现他的作品或者在其它放映场地，通过电影电视和DVD销售渠道来销售自己的作品（或者也许在网络上进行销售）。另一方面，影像艺术家比如杨福东主要在画廊、美术馆和双年展上展示自己的作品（观众大部分是匆匆的过客），把自己限量版的作品卖给艺术商人或者收藏家。当然也有例外的情况出现，尤其是针对中国当代广泛创造力的大型展览（比如巴黎蓬皮杜中心的2003年的中国当代艺术展 “中国怎么样？”上展示了贾樟柯和宋东的作品），艺术家的作品很容易模糊那条界线（比如艺术家曹婓，在她的展览履历上大部分是电影节和双年展，同时她的有些作品的视频可以在DVD商店或者网络上购买的到），同时史诗般的作品由于它自身的长度和规模也同样比较适合放到画廊作为一个影像装置（比如王兵的长达9个小时的纪录片“铁西区”）。

看到艺术和电影之间关系不断演变是非常有趣的事情，尤其是在当前中国电影工业持续增长和中国艺术界的表现扩展新的方向状态下。风格模糊的放映计划和场馆比如广州维他命创意空间当前的“电影院”计划或许更有帮助，以及以佣金委托为基础的项目，最为重要的是创作者、策展人、收藏家和观众等愿意去承担这些风险。希望中国独立的导演可以适当调整策略，通过商业来创造一种可持续性艺术实践。同样艺术家可以开始玩引入资金、发行和演出的可行性，通过开辟筹款来源、带有策展性的艺术节目和网络上传播发行作品。

This article is part of Samantha Culp’s ongoing research into the complex relationship between China’s art and cinema worlds, and will be further expanded during a forum at the 7th Chinese Independent Film Festival in Nanjing, October 2010. Samantha’s New Territories Studio is currently developing a screening program to investigate these issues, as well as other experimental art/film projects.

此文章是高文雅（Samantha Culp）正在研究的在“中国当代艺术与电影界之间复杂的关系”一文中的部分选段，更多内容将在2010年10月份的南京第七届独立电影节的论坛上呈现。她的新界工作室目前正完善一个播放计划以进一步对这问题进行调查，同时包括其它的实验艺术和电影项目。