Live Art in Chengdu up on festival - 2019
- Rory Mencin
- Nov 21, 2019
- 4 min read
Updated: Nov 13, 2024
Rituals of Fire
As the sun sets on a cool, October night in Chengdu, a man ceremoniously strips the clothes off his back and begins to prowl through a grassy field on the outskirts of the city. His long ponytail whips back and forth excitedly. He is not alone.
Dozens of onlookers cram into the safety of used shipping crates to watch the nearly naked figure bark orders at young college students to gather around him and hold their torches steady.
As he lights them one by one, the dry air becomes damp with the smell of gasoline.
The circle is complete, but the ritual is not. At his command, a giant pentagram 20 feet high ignites in hot, cracking flames, casting a pagan glow on the rural countryside. There are no fire safety personnel, no medics,* and no rules. This is the seventh Up-On Live Art Festival in Chengdu, China, and the architect of this design is renowned Chinese performance artist Cang Xin.
UP-ON Live Art Festival
Titled “Energy Conversion,” this circle of fire marked the climax of the 4th full day of the 2019 7th UP-ON International Live Art Festival in Chengdu, China. With over 27 artists from around the world participating in this 9 day event, calling it a “festival” is an entirely appropriate term for the overall atmosphere. However, as I wandered around the University of Finance And Economics (Eastern Campus) on October 20th, there wasn’t any baseline to compare UP-ON to, no “control setting,” and absolutely no litmus test to prepare me for the carnival of craziness I would see and experience.
On this particular day, 6 artists experimented with explosions, fire, sweat, dirt, plant bondage, and, of course, their bodies.
Outside of the library, 90-year-old Finish芬兰 artist Helinä Hukkataiva invited students and spectators alike to sit across from her, one-by-one, as she calmly sketched outlines of rocks.
Down the street, Chengdu native Yang Junfeng noisily cracked open the earth with construction tools. Afterwards, he inserted a single golf ball into a light fixture.
In an empty parking lot, a man by the name of Peng Xiang stuffed plants into his mouth and pants onto his head before writhing on the concrete like a bizarre, barely breathing scarecrow, moaning and panting.
Perhaps the most powerful performance came from inside an abandoned shipping crate, where local artist Qiu Wenqing individually locked eyes with each audience member, gave him or her a handful of dirt, and laid on a chair to be buried alive in a spectacularly moving fashion. I didn’t understand any of it, but I didn’t have to. It was theater of the absurd made reality, and it was enthralling.
Chengdu:Mecca of Performance Art
Aside from the obvious theatrics of the afternoon activities, UP-ON still manages to strike a balance between being both approachable and academic, and dares to exist in the space between market forces and political intrigue. Witnessing this surreal spectacle is completely free of charge, just as the organizers intended. Founded in 2008, UP-ON is an entirely non-profit event in Chengdu dedicated to curation, experimentation, and expression.
Yet, to call it a labor of love would be a monumental understatement. UP-ON is a battle.
Spearheaded by Chengdu-based international performance artist Zhou Bin, sculptor Yang Cheng, and Liu Chengying, UP-ON wages war on mainstream public and political discourse to carve a space for fresh artistic dialogue. Yet, this hasn’t always been easy. In a country with very traditional and rigid mediums of expression, performance art, called “live art” (xinwei yishu in Chinese), emerged as a direct response to these constricting barriers.
By using their bodies as a form of canvas, artistic pioneers like Zhou Bin blazed a new trail in the mid 90s, and in the process, threw light on pressing social and political issues in Chengdu, such as the preservation of fresh water and the government’s demolition of historical sites. As a result, Chengdu became a mecca for free artistic expression until horrified government officials deemed it a disruptive influence on social stability, and officially outlawed all public performances in 2001. Although this forced artists such as Zhou Bin, Yang Cheng, and Dai Guangyu to go “underground,” their artistic torches never fully extinguished. They continued to teach and lecture, until finally, the ban was lifted in 2008, and the first UP-ON Live Art Festival was born.
The 7th UP-ON Live Art Event
Since then, UP-ON has provided a platform for over 200 overseas and Chinese artists to express themselves, cementing its role as one of the most important international live art events in China. Although this seems like a grand claim, the event itself doesn’t feel pretentious, at all. On the particular day I attended, the festival opened with a bilingual, entirely casual lecture by Spanish artist Carlos Llavata. Throughout the hour and a half speech in the Tianfu College of Southwestern University of Finance And Economics, the audience, primarily university students, were completely engaged as Carlos peppered his artistic journey and creative process with plenty of jokes.
Later that afternoon, Carlos would take his clothes off in front of these same giggling students, throw water and rice over his body, and invite them to take part in his performance… by shooting live fireworks at his face.
After the lecture, scores of neon clad university volunteers ushered an audience of artists, students, and casual observers to and from each performance around campus. Oftentimes, they even participated. In a piece orchestrated by Tong Wenmin, 100s of black-clad university students crammed themselves into a rusty, disused shipping container, covered themselves with tape, and hid their features behind plants.
Although I’m not entirely sure what the point of this piece was, watching several sweating students’ diligent attempts to remain still while others muffled their laughter made me feel strangely at ease. They weren’t actors, they weren’t artists, they were just ordinary people finding amusement in the absurd. For me, it was okay to not fully understand what was going on. If they could enjoy themselves, so could I, and if they could engage with art, anyone could.
The blurred boundaries between artist vs audience, serious vs slapstick, and scholastic vs casual is what makes UP-ON entirely worth attending and absolutely worth preserving in the future as an example of what makes the Chengdu art scene so interesting, avant-garde, and yes, weird.
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