Tutorial: Moving Images and A User’s Guide from China

2016.05.21-2016.06.26
Pino Pascali Museum, Foundation, Polignano a Mare, Italy

The Pino Pascali Foundation continues the intercultural project started with the ongoing exhibition “Convivium”. The 21st of May at 7 pm it launches TUTORIALS, a project on Chinese video art, curated by Mariagrazia Costantino which involves thirteen artists and just as many ways of understanding everyday life. The artists are: Guan Xiao, Fang Lu, Li Ming, Li Ran, Lin Ke, Liu Chuang, Liu Shiyuan, Lu Yang, Ma Qiusha, Tao Hui, Ye Linghan, Yu Honglei and Xu Zhen (MadeIn Company)

From the 21st of May at 7 pm Chinese video art will be focus of the project curated by Mariagrazia Costantino, independent critic and curator as well as art director of OCAT in Shanghai from 2012 to 2015. The title of the project is Tutorials – Moving images and a User’s Guide from China, and it will involve artists such as Guan Xiao, Li Ming, Li Ran, Lin Ke, Fang Lu, Liu Chuang, Liu Shiyuan, Lu Yang, Ma Qiusha, Tao Hui, Ye Linghan, Yu Honglei and Xu Zhen (MadeIn Company) who will present thirteen dierent, ironical and fun ways of seeing and explaining the world and reality, also through provocation, but with the aim of identifying and involving the interlocutor.

A “tutorial” is technically an on-line lesson which uses certain strategies and conventions to illustrate specic contents. One of the most common ways of making tutorials or guides consists in lming oneself while doing what the person does best in order to produce a video that will then be uploaded on YouTube and shared with followers on the dierent social networks.

The most bizarre “tutorials” are on “ How to be kids again; How to be graciously crazy; How to be pretty and popular in middle school; How to eat faster; How to be “ That girl”; How to get people to believe you are an alien; how to get obsessed by something” and so on.

The artists in this exhibition apply the same principle and similar techniques, but make fun of the concept of “tutorial”and reach dierent conclusions which are often quite critical.

‘ These artists were born in a country which, as the cradle of Confucianism, has given a great deal of importance to the relationship pupil-teacher’ – the curator, Mariagrazia Costantino explains – ‘they have grown up in an era during which knowledge is available to everyone, including practical knowledge, but in the endemic form of tutorials. For thousands of years education in China was based on the confucian approach built on the absolute respect for teachers. However, today the country struggles to nd suitable ways to hand down knowledge… But the point is: what kind of knowledge are we referring to? The race for new growth targets dictates that we periodically revisit what we held as true “before” as well as regularly resorting to tutorials which, despite not having any apparent or immediate practical use, represent a model and guidance to young people.

These artists, mostly born in the mid 1980s, are among the most interesting gures in China today, their works are being exhibited in Europe, the United States and Asia.

This project is part of Pino Pascali Foundation’s collection “An Eye on the World”, a series of exhibitions which have brought to Polignano a Mare the works of American, Israeli, Iranian, Japanese and Chinese artists.