Another Class, Will You Play with Me? 又一堂课，你愿意和我玩吗？

Creator(s)

Dong SONG 宋冬

Preview

Date

4-1994

Format

Article

Exhibition Event Title

Another Class, Will You Play with Me? 又一堂课，你愿意和我玩吗？

Date of Exhibition Event

April, 6, 1994

Location of Exhibition Event

Gallery of the Central Academy Of Fine Arts, China

Materials

Silk prints, paper, blackboard, television, water tap, clocks, and more

Dimensions

For blackboard: 2.4 x 4.8 m

Description

For this artistic complex, SONG set up the space's backdrop wall with silk-printed scholarly symbols such as "x", "+", "-", "!", etc. The symbols arranged themselves in pairs of two following vertical orders, until the circular wall of the room was fully occupied. Scattered on the floor were exam papers (some of which were real ones, while others were counterfeits that serve no testing purposes). The exam papers were printed with the aforementioned academic symbols in black paint, aligning its design with its extended space of wall. By one end of the room installed an assembled blackboard(s), measured 2.4 x 4.8m. Before the blackboard, nine sets of student desk+chair were installed by order of 3x3x3, forming an unenclosed square. Before the "classroom" parody, a long desk featuring seven clocks sat at the center of the room. Under each clock that fixated on the table, a water tap (with different colors for every tab) was attached to the table. Exuding from the tap was not water, but many shreds of exam paper, cascading to the seven televisions stood on floor, each corresponding to a clock and tap. During the work's display, SONG invited nine artwork staffs acting as students to sit at the prepared desks and chairs. Each of the staffs was dressed in scholar robes. In their hands they held a few blank books (without any content), and tried to decipher the blank books futilely. Audiences of the work were invited to make (re)marks on the blackboard or spaces on the blank board. After marks were made, the "students" would meet with a "teacher" (another actor in the work) to discuss the audiences' "artworks". As you could perhaps observe, participation from audiences was constitutive to the work as a whole. Indeed, the artist clarified that one major theme this work attempted to explore is the distance between artwork and audience: how to at the same time reduce AND augment the distance between art maker and art viewers within one work. (The augmentation part might play in as the artist and audience cannot mutually understand each other). (This description might not be accurate as Song might executed the artwork without according to the proposal). (Song, "Proposal for Another Class, Will You Play with Me?", available on Zhou Document; see also Wu, "市井后现代”，国际汉学，available on https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/wuhung/files/2012/12/Shijing-houxiandi-Vernacula-Post-Modern.pdf) (Jerry Wu'23).