Patty Chang at UCCA

ok sports fans. if you are in beijing and you have some free time around 5pm, then you MUST MUST MUST come to hear Patty Chang speak at the UCCA:

A Chinoiserie out of the Old West:
An Artist Talk by Patty Chang

Thursday, June 12
Time 5:00pm
UCCA auditorium

Organized in collaboration with UCCA and the Arrow Factory, Beijing

New York artist Patty Chang comes to Ullens Center to talk about her artistic practice and the project she is currently working on in Beijing.

Patty Chang is perhaps best known for her work as a performance artist and the videos and photographs that derive from these often provoking performances. As the principle subject, Chang's performance work often tested her own physical limits and the limits of the audience. Her more recent film based projects have taken a slightly different course, focusing on processes of mythmaking, constructed identities and the production of real and fictive cultural imaginaries. Shangri-La (2005) documented a real visit to the imaginary place of Shangri-La located in Zhongdian, Yunnan Province and included the repeated sculptural construction and reconstruction of the town's principle icon, Snow Mountain. Her most recent work (in collaboration with David Kelley), Flotsam Jetsam (2007) is a layered narrative addressing themes of landscape and identity against the backdrop of Yichang, a small town along the Yangtze River affected by the Three Gorges Dam project.

In this talk, Chang will give an overview of her artistic practice but will primarily introduce A Chinoiserie out of the Old West, the project she is currently working on here in China. Based on a 1928 text written by Walter Benjamin about the Asian American film starlet Anna May Wong, this work will take the form of several short film pieces that deal with representation, translation, mistranslation, and crossed meanings. Chang is in Beijing to film the first segment, which will be shown in late July at the Arrow Factory, Beijing.

Patty Chang is a 2008 finalist for the Hugo Boss Prize, and was recently featured in the MOMA New Directors series for her work Flotsam Jetsam (2007). Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions internationally.

http://www.ullens-center.org

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《西部概念里呈现的中国风味》：张怡(Patty Chang)

艺术家讲座本次讲座与北京箭厂空间共同主办

2008年6月12日 下午5点
尤伦斯当代艺术中心

纽约艺术家张怡将在尤伦斯当代艺术中心讨论她近期在北京的拍摄项目。

在张怡的行为艺术作品里，影像和摄影创作尤其备受注目。她的作品主要题材来源于艺术家在行为作品里对自身的洞 察和考验观众的界限。在近期影像作品里，张怡关注的主题包括传奇的演绎过程， 建构同一性，现实生活中和虚构的文化假象。2005年的作品《香格里拉》纪录艺术家在云南中甸县的一次实地考察，在文学虚构里的香格里拉重复塑 造一个具有当地代表性标志的雪山。2007年，张怡在长江的宜昌市拍摄她的最新的作品《漂浮物》（与大卫。凯利合作）。作品的背景描 述三峡大坝引起的变化，同时应用叙述的手法建立一个围绕环境和同一性的主题。

在这次讲座中，张怡将和观众分享她对艺术创作的概述， 和特别介绍她的作品《西部概念里呈现的中国风味》，作品主题来源于1928年瓦尔特·本雅明为美国亚裔女影星黄柳霜写的一片文章。 艺术家希望通过一系列短片来反映再现，翻译，误译和跨文化传译的演变。张怡在北京拍摄作品的第一部分， 近期将在北京的箭厂空间里播放。

张怡于2008年候选于Hugo Boss Prize, 她的作品《漂流物》（2007）被入选为MOMA举办的新导演系列作品之一。张怡的个展和群展在国际上备受注目。 这次讲座是尤伦斯当代艺术中心和北京箭厂空间的首次合作。

http://www.ullens-center.org

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see you later.

alxa

i'd never heard of the Alxa League prefecture of Inner Mongolia until I got there.



After driving due west for two straight days from beijing we arrived at a bizarre vegas-like architectural structure that marked the edge of the inner mongolian badajilin desert. Our friend, Wu Er Shan, was scouting locations for a film and going to visit his cousins who are herdsmen in badanjilin. wangwei and i tagged along with the production crew for 12 days, riding camels, battling mosquitoes, weathering sandstorms, eating many a lamb, and drinking quite enough baijiu.

After the first day i realized a few things:
1. i have no knowledge as to how to survive in the desert
2. city people are wimps
3. camels are cool

we camped out for 3 days, rode camels through spectacular scenery and arrived in Miao Hai, where Wu Er Shan's cousins have a home and where his uncle has started to refurbish a 300+ year old temple that was destroyed during the cultural revolution. As we trodded up over the sand dunes the lake was an amazing oasis. after 3 days in the desert, the eyes adjust to see only the color of sand and sky; the white walls of the modest temple were shock.