In the past two years, the aftermath of the global epidemic has been repeated, and we seem to have long been accustomed to the continuous closure and restart of theaters, art festivals and expositions have been postponed or cancelled, and in the case of the actual reduction of international performance exchanges and art market exchanges, a new cultural ecology has also followed - online live theater broadcasts, global online auctions, virtual exhibitions... How much impact will the new technologies spawned by the pandemic have on the art industry?
2021 Basel, Hong Kong, the exhibition "test the water" digital display
In the field of performing arts, we see that performers have not stopped moving forward to explore, and 2021 can even be said to be a "year of recovery" - the restart of the Avignon Theatre Festival, the resumption of live performances at the Edinburgh International Arts Festival, the return of the Wuzhen Theatre Festival after a two-year absence... For the performing arts industry, which has been dormant for nearly two years, it is undoubtedly an exciting thing to return the performance to the scene.
The scale of offline has shrunk, so they have actively pioneered various types of online art forms, especially in times of travel restrictions, live broadcasting and screening have become the most intuitive and timely measures for art festivals. For example, the "Far in Front of You" unit of the 8th Wuzhen Theatre Festival screened eight works from the six major theatre festivals (festivals) of the Edinburgh Festival, the Berlin Theatre Festival, the Avignon Theatre Festival, the Salzburg Festival in Austria, the Dutch Arts Festival, and the Krakow Divine Comedy Theatre Festival in Poland; in Europe, the Berlin Theatre Festival, which is known for its professionalism, has even changed to a comprehensive online performance.
2021 Wuzhen Drama Festival, live performances and online observations are jointly performed
Looking at the domestic performance market throughout the year, the works of foreign drama and music counterparts can almost only achieve "indirect communication" through the screen. Although we know that the charm of live art cannot be replaced, these "expedient measures" also inspire us to re-examine the relationship between theater and performance, and to think about the meaning of theater creation.
On the other hand, in the field of art auctions, the way art is traded is also changing due to travel restrictions. Taking Basel, Hong Kong in 2021 as an example, the exhibition "tests the waters" digital display, changing the flat presentation of individual works in the past to a video display to enrich the audience's perception. At the same time, artists have also begun to use virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR) technology to display or sell their own works of art, and viewers can "examine" the artworks on the mobile phone screen, and even can see the materials, textures, fine lines and other details of the works that may not be visible to the naked eye.
In the past, the online auction, which has been in a marginal position in the art auction market, began to "brush the sense of existence" last year, and the number of people participating in the online auction and the transaction price have repeatedly reached new highs. Objectively, the epidemic has catalyzed the rapid growth of online auctions of artworks in 2021, such as the online auctions carried out by China Guardian, Beijing Poly, Christie's, Sotheby's and sotheby's, etc. continue to have new records. At the Guangdong Chongzheng 2021 Autumn Auction, collectors browsed the fine drawings, original drawings, partial maps and back maps of the lots through the mini program, and clicked to enlarge to slowly examine, screen and appreciate. In the end, nearly one-fifth of the auction volume will come from the "Chongzheng Line" Mini Program.
A series of data and phenomena show that after the downturn in the market in 2020, with the help of diversified technical communication means, the Chinese art trading market is gradually picking up in 2021.
Even though the real obstacles to art exchanges in 2021 still exist, many galleries and art institutions have also taken the opportunity to rethink and change their mindsets. In the future, online is the "painkiller" of the transitional period, or is it a new situation that can be opened up at once? It is a question left for more practitioners to explore and answer. (Zhu Rongting)