PERFORMA 2007: Lu Jie and Qiu Zhijie, Long March (The Thunderstorm is Slowly Approaching)
The Thunderstorm is Slowly Approaching, by the artist Qiu Zhije, takes the traditional Chinese dragon dance as a starting point for investigating the pressures to hide national identity within a 'host' culture, in a festive public gathering in Chinatown. The Thunderstorm is Slowly Approaching includes installation, performance, video, and a ceremonial ten-member dragon dance team wearing a costume made from camouflage.
Qiu Zhijie is an artist, curator, writer, and teacher whose experimental projects since the mid-1990s incorporate varied media in a visual challenge of authority and presumed social understanding. He was one of the first to engage new media activity in China, cocurating the influential exhibition Post Sensibility: Alien Bodies and Delusion in Beijing, in 1999. Qiu Zhijie is currently a professor at Total Art Studio at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, where he established a course focused on cultural research and concept-based practice through artistic creation, curation and teaching. Major group exhibitions include: The Real Thing: Contemporary Art from China, Tate Liverpool, UK; 2nd Yokohama Triennale, Japan; 5th Shanghai Biennale, China; and Transience: Chinese Experimental Art at the End of Twentieth Century, Smart Museum of Art, USA.
PERFORMA's Defne Ayas interviewed Lu Jie (Curator of the Long March) and Qiu Zhijie on November 7, 2007, in the AIR Clocktower studio.
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Established in 2004 by curator and art historian RoseLee Goldberg, PERFORMA is a non-profit interdisciplinary arts organization committed to the research, development, and presentation of performance by visual artists from around the world. Throughout the year, PERFORMA presents lectures, panel discussions, and workshops on an ongoing basis that explore the relationship between performance and the visual arts. ARTonAIR.org was the official radio partner of Performa09, Performa07 and Performa05. The third edition of the internationally acclaimed biennial was held in New York City in November 2009, showcased new work by more than 150 artists, and was presented in collaboration with a consortium of more than 80 arts institutions and 40 curators, as well as a network of public spaces and private venues across the city. ARTonAIR.org is also home to recordings of Not for Sale, a dynamic series of symposia on visual arts performance presented by PERFORMA. These sessions are organized by RoseLee Goldberg, Founding Director, and Defne Ayas, Curator, PERFORMA.
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