Live Performance Video Installation

Video Bureau ist eine gemeinnützige Organisation, die sich auf Videokunst konzentriert. Ihre Arbeit besteht hauptsächlich aus der Archivierung von Video-Kunstwerken und den dazugehörigen Dokumenten, um eine umfassende und erforschbare Datenbank für Forscher, Studenten und Sammler aufzubauen. Video Bureau ist eine gemeinnützige Organisation, die eine Plattform zum Ausstellen, Organisieren und Archivieren von Videokunst bieten möchte. 

Das chinesische Video Bureau Art Centre hat 30 Arbeiten von mir in seine Sammlung aufgenommen.

2018 habe ich eine Auswahl dieser Arbeiten in einer Vorlesung vorgestellt, die ich als interaktive Performance gehalten habe, so dass die Aula zum Galerieraum wurde. In märchenhafter Sprache habe ich viele Geschichten zu meinen Arbeiten erzählt, die Einblicke in bislang unbekannte Hintergründe ermöglichten. Dazu wurde neben Videos von meinen Performances auch mein CD-Album gespielt.

To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain

Do you know who I am? I am the video that recorded the making of the most seen and well-know Chinese Contemporary performance art work To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain. I’m from 1995, and it’s such a pleasure to meet you here in 2018! If it’s not for me, people would not know that many details behind this work. Also, I provide important material for the researchers who are interested in East Village. How pround I am!“

Finger Biting & Red Dress

“My name is The Seated Woman. I was completed when Yingmei was studying in Braunschweig, Germany in 1999. Biting Fingers and Red Dress in the Video Bureau were also made in the same year. In Yingmei’s opinion, performative video should be recorded by the camera when there are no audiences, which is different from the live performance video you will see later. It was because Yingmei didn’t have much courage to do solo

performance art that she made video. Performance.”

“We look nothing special, but we changed Yingmei’s later art career. When Marina Abramović saw us, she accepted Yingmei as her student at once, and as time goes by, performative art became the most important means of Yingmei’s art expression.”

Help!

“Hi everybody! I was recorded in 2002 when Yingmei was doing performance in Berlin. That show was curated by Marina Abramović, who invited her students to join it and they began and completed their performances at the same time. As there were many sudentss but only one cameraman, there was not much time for me to be recorded, but I’m lucky enough to be kept. During the performance, there was something quite funny: Yingmei was performing on a 7-meter high shelf, which made the people there so worried about her that it caused some misunderstanding. You want to know what happened? Go ask Yingmei!”

Clown

Humble as I’m, I’m one of Yingmei’s most satisfied performance videos. In fact, I was recorded after the live performance. As Marina paid close attention to the recording of performance work, she herself presented there to help the recording. What do you think of me? I’ve got a question: if it was the audience instead of Yingmei in front of the camera, what will be the recording?

Friend

When I was posted on the internet, people fell in love with me immediately, and I became the most watched performance video of Yingmei’s. The video you’re watching was not recorded in front of the audience from the live performance, but recorded after Yingmei and Mirko Winkel finished their live performance. They had different versions, and they chose me in the end. And I also made Yingmei think: is it better to record during the show or after the show?

Talking to Myself

My name is Talking to Myself. I’m not a live performance video, also not a video performance, but I am a video film. In 2001, Yingmei found a job and worked to clean the yard for about half a year. This work inspired her to make the video talk to myself. This video shows Yingmei working in the yard. She’s talking to herself as she sweeps the fallen leaves.

I was put on the shelf for half a year after the recording, because Yingmei didn’t know how to translate me so that people can understand me since nobody in Germany understood Chinese. One day, her classmate told her that she spoke German like a child, which inspired her to translate me using children’s language. I’m verylucky that Yingmei gave up many works, but she kept me and took me to many places. People like me very much.

Paradise

I am now, and i was recorded in yingmeis live performance in the first performance festival kiel in Germany. Did you see i am different than others you have jsut seen, because yingmei created a installtion and in the installation she did her liver perfroamnce. It is a bright guest room in an old castle. This octagonal room is with a curved ceiling. In the room there are a sloping bed and a wobbly night table with a glass; a table lamp stands on the ground and a chair tilts on the wall. The floor is bumpy with some little hills.

Everything is covered with white Chinese rice paper. Yingmei lies on the bed covered with rice paper and I am dreaming. It looks like all the things of my dream have arrived the room.

I heard that the audience who watched her perform at that time had a long queue. In fact, the live performance much much more better that the resocidng,, so please if you have chance you should expereicen the live performance not just the video!

Happy Yingmei

Have you ever heard of Happy Prince? A golden statue of a prince becomes friends with a swallow, and they help the poor together. In the end, they lose their lives in order to bring happiness to others. Happy Yingmei was inspired by this fairy tale. I was recorded in 2012 during Yingmei’s exhibition in Hayward Gallery, London. What you see now is only a very tiny part of the whole performance. Why only a very tiny part? Happy Yingmei lasted 3 months, 6-8 hours each day, and interacted with the audience in different ways. As the light was dim and constant recording would impact Yingmei’s interaction with the audience, the video could not be recorded completely. For Yingmei believes that the live perfoemance itself instead of the recording should be the key point and should be much more important since it was a live performance.

Interact with the shelf from the video bureau What you will see today are Yingmei’s works made during 1999 and 2017. There are performance video, daily performance, equally coopereated performance, and solo changing exhibition. I was recorded and edited in 2016 when Yingmei was in Chengdu in strolling along the discernable Min Jiang project. But I’m not merely a video. Do you see the sausage in front of me? We’re inseperable! This a new art form created by Yingmei——objects&video interactive performance. Besides the objects, interaction between the audience and the objects is also an important part of the “objects&video interactive performance”. Please taste the sausage. If you want to know what trouble the pigs are in, please look at the video.

Yingmei has been developing objects&video interactive performance since 2016, and now in Video Bureau you can also enjoy Adventure collaborated with Andrea Isa, The Great Sea with Heike Ludewig, I Wish My Beautiful Dream will Never Stop with Maria Lentzen, and Not Alone with Markus Mußinghoff.

Besides performance art, Yingmei also likes video very much. It expands the possibility for Yingmei’s art creation, and it can calm her down so that she can think.

I’m a recent work of Yingmei combining performance art and singing. My songs are turning into art MTV now, haha. Do you see Talking to Myself on the other side? I’m a derivative of it, please enjoy watching!