Three Contested Sites—The Worldly Fables of the Long 1990s三个争议的场域——漫长的九十年代及其当世寓言

Three Contested Sites—The Worldly Fables of the Long 1990s is a long-term project co-curated by Nikita Yingqian Cai and Mia Yu, first exhibited at Times Art Center Berlin from September to December 2022. For its research, an open call selected one exhibition-history researcher each from Thailand, Berlin, London, Hong Kong and mainland China to form a research group; I was the researcher from mainland China.

Zooming in on three exhibitions and their transnational itineraries that map the discrepant connections across stories, artworks, cities and thoughts, the project attempts to unpack the long 1990s in view of post-Cold War Europe–Asia reverberations. The exhibitions are China Avant-garde at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, which marked the watershed year of 1993 together with a succession of “offshore” exhibitions focused exclusively on contemporary art from inside mainland China; Die Hälfte des Himmels (Half the Sky) at the Frauenmuseum Bonn in 1998, the institution’s rebuttal to a protest against the lockout of Chinese women artists in the China! exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Bonn in 1996; and Cities on the Move, the emblematic exhibitions that toured Vienna, Bordeaux, New York, Humlebæk, London and Bangkok and documented the accelerated changes and urban flux of global Asian cities.

More than key events in Chinese contemporary art history, these exhibitions were transnational sites of contacts, conflicts and productive contestations, where social processes, art projects, cultural agents, institutional positionalities and urban spaces intersected to create worldly fables about the canonisation of Chinese contemporary art, the global rise of the Asian art market, the dualistic fixation of East–West ideologies, and the emergent millennial coordinates of gender, ethnicity and urban identity. In September 2022, Times Art Center Berlin staged an archival revisit of the three exhibitions, contextualised by artistic responses and reflections from the present, with an intergenerational mix of thinkers and researchers invited to look again at the cultural resonances of the long 1990s.

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2022年1月，广东时代美术馆与时代艺术中心（柏林）联合发布「三个争议的场域——漫长的九十年代及其当世寓言」研究员招募，从92份申请、22位面试者中选出5位研究员：陈颖华、聂小依、赵淼、钟玥妮、郭秋孜。

项目介绍 About the project

“三个争议的场域”尝试聚焦1990年代发生的三个系列展览，将其中交织的故事、作品、城市和思想，重新放置于它们跨国巡回的图谱和场域当中，聆听和审视冷战结束后漫长的九十年代中，欧洲和亚洲的多频共振。这三个展览分别是：首展于柏林世界文化宫的“中国前卫艺术-”（后巡展至鹿特丹、牛津、欧登塞，1993-1994)；波恩女性美术馆举办的“半边天” （1998）；在欧洲、美国和亚洲的不同城市（维也纳、波尔多、纽约、弗雷登斯堡自治 市、伦敦和曼谷）展出的“运动中的城市”（1997-2000）。这些展览不仅是中国当代艺术史中的关键事件，也是跨国交流和建设性争议产生的场域。社会过程、艺术项目、文化代理人、机构立场和城市空间的合力，共同塑造了中国当代艺术的典范、亚洲艺术市场的崛起、东西二元意识形态的固化，以及新的有关性别、民族和城市身份等回荡于千禧年后的当代寓言。

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通过推进中的访谈、档案的重组和新旧作品的呈现，“三个争议的场域”试图解绑催生这些事件的文化网络，并呈现其中多样化肌理和推动者。这些有关中国或亚洲当代艺术的展览，受到来自本土及外部的全球化驱动，将国别化、区域化的框架和图像，与去民族化、国际化的意图，共同引入到策展实践和艺术语言当中。从今天的视角看来，这些巡回展览是在相互关切和关联中创造的多元世界，它们的争议性不可避免，与之相关的事件、人和物构成的星图，也透视出已成历史的九十年代充满相对性和偶然性的一面。这个项目以文献地图及艺术家的介入和诠释为核心的首站呈现，将于 2022 年 9月在时代艺术中心（柏林）展出——展览并非对研究成果的全面呈现，而是作为研究网络的干细胞，培育结合网站平台、出版、流动图书馆、讲座和工作坊等多样形式的参与性知识生产与流通，联结不同的研究及展示机构；而不同代际的研究者和思想者，也将以全新的目光，共同审视九十年代的深远影响和文化共鸣。