Twelve years ago, Qi Lixia and several migrant sisters founded the Beijing Mulan Blossom Social Work Service Center to provide community services and mutual assistance platforms for grassroots migrant women and their children and families in Beijing. The Mulan team now has four full-time staff members, and a lot of daily work relies on the spontaneous service and support of community sisters, volunteers, and cooperative teachers. The participating sisters range in age from their thirties to their fifties. Their jobs are predominantly in the service industry, and some are stay-at-home moms or small business owners. They basically come from the surrounding areas of Beijing, mainly from Hebei, Henan and Shandong. In Beijing, most of them live in or within a few kilometres of the village of the Mulan Community Center in Changping, Beijing.
From the beginning of the establishment of the Mulan community, Qi Lixia and her team members have decided to set up a literary and artistic team and organize various literary and artistic activities as a focus of their work. In her view, the Mulan community independently carries out literary and artistic creation, in addition to enriching the cultural and entertainment life of the sisters, it is more important to enhance the self-awareness of female workers internally and tell the real life of female workers externally. For too long, grassroots migrant women have been on the fringes of socio-political and economic life, their figures, voices, and stories almost always excluded from the visibility system of the cultural landscape, and in the limited narratives of the mass media, their image has often been portrayed as some kind of vulnerable group that arouses social sympathy and urgent external help. For the Mulan sisters, the significance of creating their own literature and art for migrant women is not only to win social visibility for this group, but also to stimulate the subjective consciousness of grass-roots migrant women, in the process of independent expression and spontaneous connection, to recreate themselves, define the collective, and then jointly create reality.
At the Mulan Community Activity Center, migrant sisters can enrich their spiritual lives through photography groups, writing classes, and collective creation and rehearsal of dramas, songs and dances by professional teachers, and meet more partners who can support each other, in the process, the values of gender equality, self-empowerment and solidarity advocated by Mulan have gradually gained more and deeper recognition. In the form of collective creation, the Mulan sisters have completed the choreography of many songs and dances such as "Mulan Blossom" and "Imperfect Mother", and the community sisters have thus stood on the broader stage such as the Chinese Dream Show, the Spring Festival Gala of Migrant Work, and the Branch Venue of the United Nations World Conference on Women. In 2019, the Mulan community cooperated with Zhao Zhiyong, a professor at the Central Academy of Drama, with Zhao Zhiyong as the screenwriter/director, and on the basis of a large number of visits and research on mobile female workers and in-depth exchanges and discussions with them, the Mulan sisters rehearsed the stage play "Fertility Chronicle". This documentary drama work uses the real childbirth experience of migrant women as the material, and brings a private, complex and even painful topic to the audience with their own voices and bodies, understanding and feelings.
Continuing the clues opened by the "Fertility Chronicle" and promoting the attention and discussion of the plight of grassroots women, in 2021, Zhao Zhiyong and the Mulan community jointly launched a | entitled "Personal History" with the Beijing Yue Art Museum Game Theater + Exhibition "Mulan's Story" - A Comprehensive Art Project of "Narrative of Grassroots Migrant Female Workers". "Magnolia Blossom" has collected a large number of living objects, documents, photos, etc. that witnessed the experiences of the sisters in the process of community visits in the past many years, which have been brought to the exhibition hall as the life documents of these grassroots migrant women, and they are displayed in front of the audience in the most initial and real state. The plays, songs, photography, and literary works created by the Mulan sisters individually or collectively are also presented in the exhibition hall. Audiences can flip through their diaries, letters, novels and poems, hear their self-narrated voices, see their songs and theatrical performances, as well as the flashes of everyday life that they capture through photography, and even try to substitute themselves into their place to experience another life - the exhibition also sets up a "Mulan's Story" game theater, through role playing, allowing players to experience a blind box and limited choices in life that a working woman may encounter in various life situations. This exhibition, which has no professional artists, is, as one of its curators, Zhao Zhiyong, puts it, a disenchanted art scene that does not whitewash reality, does not promise the future, but merely records and reproduces fragments of certain experiences in the lives of a group of people. In China today, the total number of migrant women has exceeded 100 million. Together, several fragments of their life experience are a huge and hard reality in which we all live.
Reality is still challenging and difficult for "Mulan". The high mobility of grassroots migrant women, so that Mulan's community work is always facing the repeated cycle of "construction - repetition", as Qi Lixia said, Mulan's strategy to deal with the mobility problem is to accept it, not only to accept Mulan's own mobility, but also to accept the mobility of community sisters, in this process to learn from the experience of other institutions, and strive to do more things they want to do. In addition to the difficulties of work caused by mobility, Mulan's crisis appears almost every year or two. Tight budgets, demolitions, sudden rent increases by landlords... For grassroots non-profit organizations that lack external resource support, each of these is an existential test. In the first decade of the Mulan community, such changes occurred six times, and it was not until the past two years that the environment was relatively stable. Although the lack of various resources makes it very difficult for Mulan to further expand, they will continue to deepen the various literary groups and courses that have been carried out, and at the same time seek opportunities to further disseminate the oral stories of the Mulan sisters in the form of publications and other means. For Mulan, whether it is a drama or an exhibition, every opportunity to speak out and present themselves is a step for them to accumulate strength and move towards the future.
Taking this exhibition as an opportunity, The Paper's "Thought Market" interviewed Zhao Zhiyong, Qi Lixia and Cheng Qi, and the interview was divided into two parts: the first and second.
"Mulan's Story" exhibition scene Photo courtesy of Yue Art Museum
From "Community Theater" to "Game Theater"
The Paper: Is this the first time that "Magnolia Blossom" has organized sisters and expressed themselves in the form of an exhibition? What is the origin of the idea of using the game theater approach to guide the audience into the real female life behind the exhibition and the literature? What are the main considerations for choosing to take the personal history and life history of the sisters as the theme and the literature as the main form of presentation?
Zhao Zhiyong: Our exhibition is actually not the first exhibition of "Mulan Blossom", and there have been photography exhibitions of Mulan Sisters in Beijing and Shanghai before. This time, in fact, at the beginning, it was planned to be made into a theatrical form. Because in the process of making "Fertility Chronicle", including after the completion of this play, Li xia and her team members did a lot of interviews in the community, a total of more than sixty interview records, and after watching it, I felt that if I did the drama again, it would be a bit wasteful for these precious materials. And in the Mulan community to do drama, all kinds of resources are very limited, can only do a relatively small scale, can not have too many actors, and can not present too many people's stories. But each of the sixty or so interviews impressed me, so is there a way for everyone's story to be presented in front of the audience? At that time, we did not want to just rehearse a drama to show the audience, or hoped that through more interaction, the audience would be able to substitute for the perspective and life of grass-roots migrant women, so that we were more willing to actively explore these related issues.
Stills from "Fertility Chronicle" Photographer / Li Hao
So at the beginning, we just wanted to use the interactive form, and did not decide to use the game theater, just two overseas theater students, Jia Jing and Zhang Jingwen, came to the Mulan community to volunteer, and after we talked together, they suggested using the game theater method, like the script that young people usually like the script killing. We also felt very good, so we decided on the plan of theater games and asked these two students to serve as screenwriters. In the process of designing the game, we sent these previous oral materials to two students, asked them to read and then produce a basic script, at the same time Lixia also convened several workshops in the community, we and some other friends who are familiar with the issue of grass-roots migrant women have participated in this process, everyone read the first draft of the script together, give opinions and suggestions, through multiple rounds of internal testing to gradually improve the game that was not mature at the beginning. In this process, the two screenwriters also have a deeper understanding of the issue of grass-roots migrant women, and further improve the script on this basis.
Qi Lixia: In fact, in addition to the intensive interviews conducted in recent years because of the production of the "Fertility Chronicle" drama, "Magnolia Blossom" has been doing oral interviews with migrant sisters since 2012, but the number of samples at that time was relatively small. By the time of "Fertility Chronicle" in 2019, we visited and investigated 29 migrant sisters in the Mulan community, and asked them to dictate their childbirth experiences and family stories as a reference source for drama. After the completion of the drama, our research work has not stopped, has been continuing to advance, and even extended beyond Beijing, for example, we found some institutions in the Pearl River Delta region that also do grass-roots migrant women's services, through those institutions to interview migrant workers in the Pearl River Delta region, this stage later collected about 30 interview records, and finally added up a total of 65 oral interview cases of migrant women. But because not every sister was willing to present her interviews publicly, a total of 28 sisters agreed to edit the content into a booklet and make it public in the exhibition. So in the end, we presented a total of 28 oral pamphlets with different characters as the protagonists in the exhibition hall, as a real blueprint for the player's corresponding characters.
In addition, in the exhibition hall, we also presented these interview materials in the form of audio, and the audience could hear the real voice of these migrant sisters in the 20 headphones hanging on the wall. A large number of living objects, documents, photos, etc. that witnessed the sisters' experiences collected during the previous years of community visits were brought to the exhibition hall.
There are 20 headphones hanging on the wall in the distance, where you can hear the real narration of these migrant sisters. Photo courtesy of Yue Art Museum
Speaking of the origins of the game theater, we were recruiting volunteers to sort out these oral materials, and the two volunteers just mentioned were originally involved in the preliminary work of material collation. Both of them were interested in drama and oral histories of migrant women. Because what we originally wanted to do was another drama after the "Fertility Chronicle", but because of the epidemic, there are some restrictions on the overall planning, and at the same time, we and Teacher Zhao also found that the impact of the epidemic on the grass-roots floating population is relatively large, while looking at these interview materials we sorted out, while considering other possibilities, at this time, friends have successively recommended the form of the game and various games to us, such as "Li Wisdom Survival Game", etc., and then "Duckweed Dinghai" that focuses on community care. The number of times we came to Beijing to try it out, we also went to experience it. After that, the form of game theater was determined.
Zhao Zhiyong: From the very beginning, we explained to the two volunteers that this game is definitely not a mainstream game of script killing or commercial operation, it is not purely to bring pleasure to players, but through the game, so that players can experience the real situation of grass-roots migrant workers in a role-playing way, as well as some social issues related to this. We still hope that the two game writers can consider the game and plot design from this perspective.
At the beginning of the internal test, we did not think that the game can be used with the exhibition to cooperate, but want to present the four stages of a migrant woman's life, the way to use is relatively simple, that is, to put the recording, the recording will have some of the more typical situations that grassroots mobile women may experience in life to present, players need to make choices in the process of role playing. But in the end, we found that no matter how you choose, it seems that in the plot you can't really control the fate, it is a feeling of being pushed by fate. So we later felt that this was not ok, this kind of play is too passive. Although it can indeed present the situation of these working women in society very realistically, it is a bit too depressing for the experience of a game, and it still needs to add some fun. As a result, there is a theater part that conducts "pre-job training" when players enter their working careers, and there is some improvement in fun.
The "play-in-play" of theater games, the "pre-job training" improvisational theater led by Zhao Zhiyong. Photo courtesy of Mulan Community Service Center.
Another important twist is that "Magnolia Blossom" launched an online working women's photography group during the epidemic, and after the first batch of works were printed, they held a small sharing meeting, and after I participated, I felt that these works were really fantastic, and the results of these photographic creations should be seen by everyone as much as possible. Due to the limitations of various resources, this game is still thin in design compared with most popular and commercially operated games, such as in commercial games, players can get upgrades or update equipment and other rewards by completing tasks, and the experience will be richer. In the process of testing and improving, I came across the idea that in fact, we equipped this game with an exhibition at the same time, turning the exhibition hall into a space where players can experience richer functions such as treasure hunting or upgrading, and in the exhibition hall, the oral stories of the Mulan sisters that we have done over the years, as well as their photography, literary works, etc. are fully presented, and at the same time, they are matched with the game to hide some of the game's tasks inside. With the exhibition that cooperates with the game, the player's task can be combined with the exhibition content and exhibition space, and the game is more complicated. By accepting the task and going to the exhibition hall to see these works, the player can have a better understanding and easier to enter the story behind these works.
The exhibition hall where players "treasure hunt" and do tasks presents the works of the online working female photography group initiated by "Magnolia Blossom" during the epidemic. Photo courtesy of Yue Art Museum.
At this point, I proposed to the game designer that since the player is going through several stages of the life of a working woman as a virtual "magnolia" in this game, why don't we give everyone the opportunity to see the real "magnolia" story at the end of the game? Anyway, we already have so many interview documents and materials, then in the end can not set up a link, the player borrowed the name of a Mulan sister in the game, the end of the game at the right time we can give the real experience of the Mulan sister in reality to him /her to read, so that the player understands with him /her share the same name of the Mulan sister in real life. So there is the final part of the game, we will compile the 28 real Mulan sisters oral information to him/them according to the name drawn by the player, so that he/she can see what kind of life the "other self" of his game character has experienced in real life.
In this way, we hope to amplify the characteristics of this game as much as possible, so that players do not get lost in the virtual game situation, but know that the game is actually linked to social reality, linked to the real experience of a marginalized group. Hopefully, after experiencing such a game, players will pay special attention to this group of people who are not particularly easy to reach in his/their lives, or are relatively easy to ignore.
The Paper: How did the sisters in the community react to the game?
Qi Lixia: From the original intention of designing this game, the audience we imagine to play the game is not a group of migrant women, he/she may be some people who pay attention to social issues, women's issues, especially grassroots women's issues, and may be more college students.
In addition, at the beginning of the game's open recruitment, we were worried that if our sisters were more involved, they would not be hurt in the process. For example, if some players are condescending and look down on this group, then our sisters may be hurt during the interaction of the game. I already have immunity to this aspect myself, and I can listen to the player's sharing throughout the whole process, no matter what kind of perspective, because I have my own experience and experience as the foundation. But if it's a sister with no experience in this area, we're still worried about the negative impact of the game on them.
The Paper: "Mulan's Story" is presented in the form of a game theater + exhibition, compared with the "Fertility Chronicle" drama in 2019, what is the difference between your feelings as an organizer?
Zhao Zhiyong: Drama and this exhibition are two very different experiences for me. At that time, the script of "Fertility Chronicle" was written by me, and from the perspective of the creator, after reading these dozens of life stories, I felt that it was unlikely that they would all be presented in the script, and I could only choose from it. In doing this, I already feel as if I have some kind of presupposition, to see which story is more acceptable to these urban white-collar and middle-class audiences who enter the theater, first of all, to impress them, so that they can empathize with the protagonist of the play, these grassroots migrant women. We also have some narrators who live in a world that I personally feel may be a little too much for the audience of the play to be a little too much beyond their cognition, ethics and imagination, and I may not choose to present a story like this in the play.
But I later felt that this choice was a very unfair thing for our narrators, who spoke based on trust and willingness to share such personal and private experiences with us. However, this experience had to be selected in our place, and I personally felt very uncomfortable with it at the time. Why should I choose, to presuppose what kind of story can be presented to the public, and then to arrange the story and polish it into a more refined thing that can be accepted by the middle class aesthetic? Why not let these stories go directly to the audience without being too embellished and polished? So, when I was doing this exhibition this time, these stories could be put in full and directly in front of the audience, and I was very satisfied with this.
In addition, as far as a play is concerned, I can actually expect many of the audience's thoughts in the process of watching the play, including their sharing afterwards. But this time the game theater, it has more interactivity than the general drama, the audience's autonomy is stronger than when watching offstage, not the previous reaction that is completely within our preset range.
Qi Lixia: I feel that people participate in the game and watch in the drama, and the reaction is very different. The audience of the play is the viewer, and the viewer's perspective is particularly different from the character on the stage, although it is possible that he/she will be moved somewhere. For example, after the performance of "Fertility Chronicle", some female audience members told me that they would feel pain, they would be touched, they would feel empathy - these are all based on women's fertility experiences, a common personal experience. But more often, there is still a very large distance between the audience and the protagonist. But in this game theater, I see that some participants are trying to fully substitute for the identity he/she draws to go forward, and some people will struggle in the process: do they choose the characters in the game with their own identity and personality, or do they choose as the "magnolia" drawn by the game? This is the question he/she will talk about in the game theater, including when reviewing and sharing with the game participant. In this way, these people who participate in the game will be more aware of the life of a migrant working woman, and will go further when trying to stand in her position.
Zhao Zhiyong: In the past, we really needed to invest too many resources in doing theater, and we needed to go to artists, lighting designers, composers, etc., because I think if the things we make are too rough, the audience may not be very interested. In a place like Beijing, if a play is too crude in form, the audience may dismiss it. The sisters in the community have put in too much emotional labor in this process, especially in the last Fertility Chronicle. This time, the game theater does not need such a large amount of resource support, and it does not have such a big burden. So if you continue to do it later, this method may be easier to continue.
The Mulan sisters rehearse "Fertility Chronicle", photo courtesy of Mulan Community Service Center.
But if it is a social drama approach, one of the biggest benefits is that for the community sisters, although a lot of emotional labor and time experience is invested in the process, the growth they personally get is relatively large. After becoming a game, the education of the main external population will be less involved for the sisters within the community, and the sense of self-empowerment will be less strong.
Qi Lixia: This should be seen in two. For example, just talking about the "Fertility Chronicle", the sisters invested a lot of emotions, and the special touching parts of the play are actually laughter with tears, blood and pain. These pains have never been treated or shown in us, and then suddenly there is an opportunity to be pulled out and presented to the audience. For these sisters involved in the drama, on the one hand, there is a possibility of being healed, on the other hand, there is also the possibility of being re-injured. I don't talk about others, I talk about myself, because I have been involved in it from interviews to performances, plus my feelings for this group and for individual women are relatively strong. Therefore, from the end of the performance, until the back of the long time, you will feel that there is actually a very strong pain in the heart. This pain cannot be said to be purely injurious, because there is also power in pain, and you can get strength by being able to face the pain, but the process is actually very painful.
At that time, I talked to Zhiyong several times, and I said that the next time we want to do such a drama, we must do it better. Emotional and psychological support for everyone should be more adequate, and if there is a situation that may cause pain, we must have a better way to deal with and deal with it. In the last play, I would have felt that although we had paid attention and predicted in advance, we still didn't know that the pain would come so violently and so long-lasting.
In this exhibition, we will discuss with you in advance how to use these interviews, where to use them, and obtain the consent of the parties, including the items collected, as well as the photographic works of the photography team, all of which have prior communication and consultation. So when the sisters participate in this exhibition, they will have a feeling that our works are all that I am willing to present. In this way, they take out their own works, and their pride is particularly strong. At the opening of the exhibition, the sisters would tell the others: This is my picture, when did I take this picture, and so on. This feeling is a very strong desire for self-expression, to let people see that this is my work, my story.
Exhibition site. Photo courtesy of Yue Art Museum.
When the narrative of grassroots female workers enters the scene of contemporary art
The Paper: Back to this exhibition, what is the reaction you expect to hold an exhibition in a contemporary art settlement area like 798? Are you satisfied with the responses you have received so far?
Zhao Zhiyong: If you do an exhibition in 798, you will come to see some white-collar workers, students, and some friends who will be interested in the topic of contemporary art and migrant workers. We hope that through such an exhibition, we can open up some space so that everyone can see the current situation of the life of migrant women in the community. Because this group is often obscured in our society, their situation and the actual predicament are not easy to see. We feel that this exhibition still achieves its original goal. The feedback from the audience shows that everyone is still very touched by the life stories of the sisters in the community, and they also recognize the significance and value of this exhibition.
There is, of course, that the people who come to see such an exhibition are always those who are interested in the topic. Those who have no understanding or interest in the topic may have a hard time entering an art museum to see such an exhibition. Therefore, how to break through the limitations of the stratosphere, bring similar topics to a broader social space, and arouse more public attention. I am afraid that this is not something that an exhibition can do. There needs to be more public space discussions, more inclusive social environments, and more grassroots self-organizations like Mulan to carry out services and cultural voices for mobile groups.
Over the years, some viewers will also encounter some viewers questioning the significance of this community cultural practice from the display space of the achievements of Mulan cultural practice. One way to ask is: As a self-organization serving grassroots migrant women, why should Mulan pursue the pursuit of displaying its achievements in urban middle-class cultural spaces such as theaters and art galleries? One real reason for this is that there isn't enough space in the community to do such a presentation. Mulan's two activity rooms add up to only more than 20 square meters, and our various cultural practice activities are carried out simply because of ugliness. If there were to be a performance and a presentation, such a small space would simply not be able to accommodate both the performer and the audience. The cityside village community where Mulan is located simply does not have any public space open for such activities. Ten years ago, Mulan might have been able to do activities in the village square, but these open spaces have gradually become commercial, converted into parking lots and barbecue stalls. There are some alternative spaces in cities, but not only are they small, but they are also often less accessible to migrant workers. This is the limit of the objective conditions we face. In the village community of Chengbian Village, where the Mulan Community Center is located, there is no room for even square dancing. Many of the housekeepers I know see participating in square dancing as a sign of some kind of local citizen status, "only the owners of the community can dance", this is the fact they told me. Beijing's most famous square dances are concentrated in the Wangfujing area, the busiest commercial area in the city center, and migrant workers living along the North Sixth Ring Road are unlikely to come to participate after work. This is a very paradoxical and ironic fact, in a place like Beijing, even the most grassroots mass cultural leisure activities such as square dance are full of class segmentation. Therefore, we can only turn to cultural institutions such as theaters and art museums, whether from the perspective of "doing public welfare" or from the perspective of "paying attention to the bottom of society", they will include the achievements of grass-roots cultural practices such as Mulan into their exhibition schedules, even if only as an embellishment.
In addition, bringing the cultural practices of grassroots migrant workers to art galleries and theaters inevitably leads to their encounters with viewers from different social classes. Whether or not to do this is highly controversial among practitioners and researchers of community art. Auguste Pova, sensing that his approach to the practice of "drama of the oppressed" was being abused in a variety of different situations, imposed strict restrictions on this. In his last book, Aesthetics of the Oppressed, he emphasized that such theatrical activities were an artistic practice done by artists from the underclass in pursuit of the liberation of the people at the bottom, together with the people of the community at the bottom. Therefore, he specifically stipulates that the audience of this kind of drama must be like the performers on the stage, from the marginalized and vulnerable social groups, and the performance is to provide a space for these marginalized and vulnerable people to explore how to change their situation. Therefore, according to the fundamentalist Poirvoy theory, Mulan's community cultural practice is certainly not a pure community art practice, because its audience is many urban white-collar workers and middle-class.
But in the last decade or two, Beauva's fundamentalist definition of community art has been questioned by a growing number of practitioners and researchers of community art. As a typical example, Tim Prentzi, a British researcher of community theatre, argues that the performance scene of community drama should gather as many people as possible who occupy different positions in the social power structure. Involving these people from different strata and with different power resources in the discussion of how to change reality is the most effective mode of practice. If community art is an attempt to intervene and change social realities, then engaging in such a cultural practice is not only an empowerment, but also a responsibility and obligation. Prentzi argues that it is highly unreasonable to place this responsibility and obligation entirely on the most vulnerable marginalized groups, and to pardon those with more power and resources for the promotion of social progress. In his view, these statements of Beauvoy's later years deserve reflection. My personal theoretical view of community art has been very influenced by Pois, but I also think that discussions like Prentezzi's are very noteworthy. Over the years, Mulan's community cultural practice has also started from the empowerment of grassroots women and the construction of cultural subject identity, trying to disturb the public in different social classes, so that they can think with us about the real problems we face and the social picture we want to build. In order to achieve such a goal, we must first be able to enter their cultural space.
One of the things that happened in the exhibition that I was more impressed with was that one morning I went to the art museum and saw two masters who looked like migrant workers in the art museum, and hurriedly browsed around the exhibition hall and left. I wanted to ask them how they learned about the exhibition, how they felt when they saw the exhibition, and I wanted to give them a guided tour. But because I had a mission to take the game theater at that time, I didn't have time to talk to them. So I saw them casually turn around in the exhibition hall and leave. I find it particularly regrettable. The various cultural and artistic institutions in our cities are very institutionalized on the one hand, and insufficiently inclusive on the other. It is difficult for grassroots mobile groups to enter such spaces. Mulan's work is also hoping to change this situation a little bit. At least our performance exhibition can bring the community sisters and their children and families to some spaces such as art galleries and theaters that are usually very isolated from their lives.
The Mulan Sisters open at the exhibition. Photo courtesy of Mulan Community Service Center.
The Paper: From the perspective of the art museum, what is the audience's different feedback on this exhibition?
Cheng Qi: There are many, the most different is indeed the diversification of perspectives, breaking the original circle culture of the art circle. From the perspective of society, art, public welfare, love, people, family, economy, etc.
It should be noted that in the meaning of the exhibition, the presentation of live objects only completes 60% of the exhibition, and the remaining 40% is jointly completed by different audiences. This is the interesting place of contemporary art, and I have always felt that only when something meets the right person can it truly radiate its spiritual attributes. So the audience's reaction and feedback is part of the exhibition, not optional. This exhibition tries not to express a certain position, but to present it objectively. Due to the difference in the audience, people of different ages, different experiences and work fields will have different feelings when they see the exhibition. Just like some viewers say: In the eyes of the artist, it is an artistic experiment, in the eyes of the owner of the object, it is life, and in the eyes of the researcher, it is the manifestation of social structure. Different people and objects make up different fields, which are both independent and intertwined, and intricate.
A guestbook on the exhibition site. Photo courtesy of Yue Art Museum.
This is what we want to be, we don't want to have the only answer, because everyone has limitations, and we often say "turn a blind eye" is to see and not think, because people's focus will always happen to things that are more related to themselves. That's how I am, so I hope that this exhibition is open, multi-faceted, multi-angled, and maybe it will be closer to reality.
One of the most memorable messages was that on Christmas Day, when I went to look at the guestbook after work, one of the viewers wrote: "God can't pay attention to every corner, so he created Mom." ”
The Paper: In the process of preparation, planning and implementation, is there a tension between the suggestions of "professionals" and your ideas and needs?
Zhao Zhiyong: Our various cultural projects will have a lot of professional artists to cooperate, for example, this online photography exhibition held by Lixia is that there is a professional photographer giving online photography lessons to the sisters in the community, and every performance, including the exhibition, there will be some professional artists, and we invite them to help. All these artists who come to help, they are very recognized by Mulan's concept and the action of such a community cultural practice, and they are also very cooperative with Mulan's work, and we do not have any contradictions and conflicts with them in concept and practice.
This process is also a process of mutual learning. For the artists involved in the practice, their experience working with the community sisters I believe will certainly have some inspiration for their future creations, especially young artists participating in such community projects should be a good opportunity to get to know and understand society. In the process of working with artists, the Mulan Sisters and mulan community center also began to understand how to transform the life experiences and stories of everyone in the community into art forms, and for them, this is indeed a process of democratization and demystification of art.
I noticed that during the set-up of this exhibition, there were some community sisters and Mulan staff working with the curators on site. They often exclaim, "Oh, that's what exhibitions do, they can tell stories with objects like this, and these things can be exhibited as exhibits." I think it must be a very good learning and thinking process for the community sisters and Mulan staff. In addition, our curator, Mr. Cheng Qi, had a very pleasant cooperation with us this time. He recognizes and respects the significance and value of mulan community cultural practice, and spends a lot of time thinking about how to present the results of this work in the most appropriate form. The success of the exhibition has a great relationship with his painstaking efforts and efforts.
The Paper: For the curators, how is this cooperation with Mulan different from previous experiences?
Cheng: Although I have been trying to collaborate on exhibitions with creators in different fields, I hope to break down the boundaries of art and find a source of artistic energy. But this exhibition still made me feel more deeply that the great power of reality far exceeds art.
The most immediate feeling of this curatorial work is that it is very painful. The production of this exhibition is as real, natural and direct as people who are hungry to eat and thirsty to drink water, and it is the curatorial way I look forward to. Work is very painful and may have a relationship with people, the three aspects of the cooperation is complementary relationship mutual respect, Zhao Zhiyong teacher is different from the general drama theory scholars, he is a creative and grounded scholar who pays attention to practice, which is rare. Mulan's person in charge, Qi Lixia, is originally a migrant female worker, with strong comprehensive ability, rich experience, and strong mobility, coupled with Zhang Rui's meticulous work and the cooperation of sisters and volunteers, which complements my background in art curation.
The difference from the past is that we rarely talk about art together, and the same is true in the presence of Teacher Zhao, who only talks about life and experience. My work partners have changed from regular art workers to ordinary working women and volunteers at the grassroots level, but I am not uncomfortable at all, but I feel more efficient, not to talk about those lofty academic theories, in front of real life everything has become simplified and direct. In the design of the exhibition space and the choice of materials are different from the past, I did not want to create a "professional" scene of the art museum, and the exhibition materials were also "artistic" as much as possible, most of them chose materials that were closer to the daily life of the sisters, many of which came from the sisters' homes, and I hoped that this exhibition would grow out of Mulan's life. In the design of the exhibition, everyone respects my opinion and gives full trust, and the exhibition is also implemented by the Mulan sisters and volunteers, and the whole process is closer to labor. The whole process of curation is as solid and physical as a farmer planting the land, and the desire is simply to "throw down the seeds for germination" rather than for academic purposes.
798 "Yue Art Museum". Photo courtesy of Yue Art Museum.
The Paper: In such a cultural consumption center as the 798 Art District, in addition to art practitioners, the audience is a citizen with a certain consumption ability, as the curator of this exhibition, what is the reason for doing such an exhibition?
Cheng Qi: It is very true that cultural consumption is a common phenomenon today, whether it is contemporary art or theater, music, literature. This is worrying, and at this time, it is especially necessary to stimulate some energy from different aspects to form a more vital culture. This is the direction of efforts for art institutions and art workers. Yue Art Museum has been exploring cooperation with different fields, emphasizing the experimental nature of exhibitions, and has long insisted on supporting public welfare projects to serve the society and promote the full dialogue between art and society. Mulan's exhibition has the characteristics of both public welfare and experimentation, so the art museum and director Wang Feiyue have given full support. Specifically, we think about it from two main aspects: The first is from a social point of view, why do we want to do exhibitions? What function does art have in social development, how art has a relationship with the general public, and how to make the exhibition more realistic and have a closer relationship with the times. The second is to explore what is art today from the perspective of contemporary art. Where does the real energy of art come from? So the first starting point of this curatorial exhibition is not art, but people, living people, human complexity and the situation at the moment, which may be more important than "art", or this may be the real motivation for art. Our way of working is to first consider whether the thing is valuable rather than first determine whether it is "art" or not. We love the "happening" and "naturally growing" art that is closely related to human life. Be curious about uncertain, indescribable creative behavior. These creative acts do not come from training for the purpose of art, but from an urgent desire to express themselves. These seemingly less "artistic" behaviors and outcomes are likely to be today's art.