The Empress Dowager Cixi and the Breakdown of the Panopticon

The body of photographs commissioned by the Empress Dowager Cixi are unique amongst Chinese imperial portraits because they weren’t of a private nature (for instance, the book of the Yongzheng Emperor’s masquerade portraits) – though they weren’t necessarily made with the Chinese public in mind, they were meant for display in various hallways of the Forbidden City and for exhibition at world fairs. At the same time, in the aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion, portions of the Forbidden City began opening up to the public. For the first time in history, the people of China were able to gain access to a space and put a face to a previously unseen, panoptic force at Beijing’s centre that ruled over a vast and now tottering empire. In studying the intersection between the Empress Dowager’s portraits and the Forbidden City as a general structure, I hope to discover what happens when a panoptically arranged space breaks down and suddenly the subjects are able to see that which has been watching them. Furthermore, how is it significant that the largest audience to see renderings of this ruling force were foreigners?

Sorry Guys, I have the flu

My questions/points for Salim's Project:

Have you considered what both of these curved structures mean in a city build on graphs and modules?

There are five Golden River Bridges right? Maybe something about unity (the red ribbon) and multiplicity.

Maybe contrast the Golden River Bridge’s association with grand events and the Red Ribbon’s emphasis on minimal human interference.

The idea of the public in both of these spaces. One is meant to be all inclusive to the public, one is meant to systematically exclude people

Chen Shun-chu's Family Parade installation and Qingyun Ma's Father's House both engage with issues of heritage, location and biography in a concrete, structural way. Using architectural elements, they strive to connect the past and the present. I will attempt to explore how do these portrayals of history and location differ. Chen Shun-chu places photographs of his family members on the abandoned buildings of his ancestral village in Taiwan. Qingyun Ma built a modern house using traditional inspiration for his father. They both engage with traditional architecture through ruins or traditional building methods, and employ a sense of collection and stacking. The framed photographs seem to enforce the structure, as the stones from Jade Valley enforce the walls of Father's House. Both the photographs and the stones were collected from the past, hoarded as examples of familial ties and traditional heritage. The artists seem to seek to tie themselves directly to the land, to their origin points in the villages of their fathers. Both artists do not reside in the villages where they've created their works, and approach the land as someone with a familial connection, an outsider looking in. How in this way do they engage traditional methods from a modern standpoint? What does it mean for Chen Shun-chu, a Taiwanese artist, to create art about displacement and his heritage as compared to Qingyun Ma's return to his father's ancestral village as a Chinese expatriate? 

The Opening Ceremonies, Architecture, and the Cultural Past

The Beijing opening ceremonies lasted 4 hours, cost over 100 million dollars to produce, featured 15,000 performers, and was attended by over 100 heads of state or royalty. It was created to be, and has since be called, the greatest opening ceremony ever. The two most prominent thematic features of the ceremony were its referencing of Chinese art and culture, and its blending of advanced technology with more traditional motifs. Furthermore, the ceremony was intimately connected with the building in which it took place. Architects Jaques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron have described it as an "anti-monumental" structure and a "collective building", but how exactly is this communicated? How is structure different from the structures in Tienanmen Square that were, likewise, built for and dedicated to the public? How does the change in public architecture reflect change in the Communist Party or the people of China?

On the other hand, the Olympic torch played as important a role in the opening ceremonies as the stadium, especially in terms of the themes outlined above. The torch itself, which was designed by a team from the Lenovo Group (the largest sellers of PCs in China), not only represents traditional Chinese culture and its modern intersection with high technology, but also embodies the globalization inherent in the Olympic Games. To light the cauldron, one of the most famous athletes in China, Li Ning, was suspended high above the stadium as pictures of the torch's journey were projected behind him. After "running" around the entirety of the stadium Li Ning lit the fuse to the cauldron as the final three pictures were displayed. They were the last three places that the torch went before coming to the stadium: Tienanmen Gate, Mao's Mausoleum, and The Monument to the People's heroes. Why would the organizers chose these places as the last stops on the global tour? What did these images, in tandem with the most ideologically charged object of the whole ceremony, as well as the building itself, attempt to say about contemporary Chinese culture, the communist party, and the relationship those two have with the country's recent past? How is Chinese government trying to portray itself not only to the people it governs, but to the entire world?

Identity and Illusion

In an analysis of the album of costume portraits of the Yongzheng emperor and the Juanqin zhai, (Lodge for Retiring from Hard Work) I hope to investigate the relationship between the manipulation of identity and space through painted illusion. Both the portrait album and the Lodge for Retiring from Hard Work employ elements of masquerade to convey some idea or concept of imperial power. I am interested in the differences that arise when this strategy is applied to a small, personal object as well as a space built for a specifically preformative, public purpose.

When we discussed the portrait album in class, the question I kept asking myself was why this album exists in the first place. Considering the fact that imperial visage portraiture had such a concrete and important public function in this era of the Forbidden City, the production of a album of portraits depicting the only person who was ever intended to view it seemed very odd to me. Obviously, issues and questions of imperial identity are central to answering this question. While all the official visage portraiture from this era is quite formulaic in its emphasis on inexpressive, frontal depictions of the emperor in traditional Manchu dress, the album portraits show the Yongzheng emperor in a variety of costumes and active situations.It follows to then to link these series of portraits with a desire establish oneself as a capable ruler, one who is equally competent in a variety of costumes and settings. However, this reading of the images becomes problematic when we remember that these pictures were not dispersed as were the imperial visage portraits. Rather, these were only for private contemplation and enjoyment of the emperor himself. Therefore, these pictures are more in line with the masquerade culture of Western Europe than the tradition of imperial propaganda. However, there are many questions that still remain: why would the emperor want to engage in a pictorial masquerade with himself? In what ways do these masquerade portraits comment upon Yongzheng's conception of himself as a ruler? 

While the album portraits are an interesting example of pictorial illusion for a manipulation of identity, the murals of the Lodge of Retiring from Hard Work present an interesting example of pictorial illusion as a manipulation of space. This issue becomes even more interesting when we take into account that the elaborate murals decorate a theatrical space, thus, a public space that is inevitably charged with meanings of concealment and transformation. The theater murals create a space that masquerades as something else. It is an amalgamation of various spaces and locations that are brought impossibly together in an interior room. Thus, it is similar to the portrait album which also functions as fictive collection, however, in the case of the album it is an assemblage  of types of people rather than types of spaces. 

Here are links to the articles we read in class that have great images of the theater murals and the portraits, respectively: 

http://academic.reed.edu/art/courses/art392f07/PDF%20files/NieChongzheng001.pdf

http://academic.reed.edu/art/courses/art392f07/PDF%20files/WuHungOrientations001.pdf

The Qianlong Treasure Box and Cao Fei's RMB City: Who controls?

The western Wunderkammern fascinated the Qianlong emperor, who had several made for the imperial family - incorporating many of the exotic treasures extracted from around the empire into this new aesthetic platform. Housed in the context of imperial Manchu dominion (remember the significance of the jade disc on top and the square shape of the box), items could be taken out, discovered, examined together or apart, rearranged or replaced. The dramas enacted in this perfected context, the safety and power these dialogs lent to the imperial family were undoubtedly some of the main reasons the Qianlong emperor called for their production and cultivation.
It is through this lens of the imperial miniature that I intend to examine Cao Fei's RMB (Renmin Bi, or the People's Currency) City, the space inhabited by it's denizens, the artifacts within it, and its role as microcosm of the Chinese experience.
Chairman Mao's statue floats in the sea, beckoning seafaring travellers entry to the City. Rem Koolhaas's CCTV tower floats suspended overhead, while the Bird's Nest Stadium sits rusting on the shore. A factory belches smoke into the sky, the flames suggesting a permanent explosion toted over the populace. Skyscrapers drift off the coast, tossed carelessly into a milk crate. Tiananmen gate sits atop the city like a crown, watching over all, a symbol both of traditional Chinese imperialism, as well as the power of the Chinese consumer (note that the gate occupies the "heads" side of the RMB). The city is a jumble, with buildings askew and whole structures hovering threateningly over RMB City's little island. The landscape is frenetic, hyperactive, with enormous cultural symbols cast among one another in smorgasbord of cultural symbols, blown up to represent a physical space (though in the miniaturized noospace of cyberspace). As in the Qianlong treasure boxes, the city houses juxtapositions, symbolic dramas, cultural emblems to be be discovered and considered. But what kind of power is lent to the people of RMB City? Through the production of this new platform for cultural image, how can we see the way the Chinese people own their country? Especially in the utopian, idealized universe of Second Life, where people can be literally anything they want to be? Are the people given liberty at last? How does RMB City facilitate ownership of Chinese space?

Sorry for the lateness!

Who can use this space?

The Gate of Heavenly Purity, Hall of Supreme Harmony, Meridian Gate, and the Gate of Heavenly Peace all line up along the central axis that runs through the Forbidden City. Crowning ceremonies, the declaration of an imperial decree, and other assemblies made use of these four points. However, lines of movement along the central axis fall into a strict order. Who could advance towards the Hall of Supreme Harmony, who could pass through the three gates, who could exit the city in what direction are questions that feed into my big question - Who was allowed to cross over the Golden River? And were there restrictions as to how the bridge should be crossed.

I will inquire into the use of the Golden River Bridge and the idea of sight. The bridge acts like a barrier between the Meridian Gate and the Hall of Supreme Harmony. Depending on what side of the bridge they stood on would affect how people participate in assemblies. 

On the other hand the same question arises about the use of the red ribbon at the Tanghe river park in Qinhuangdao. This line of movement also affects site. It curves, it bends, it affects ways of seeing. Nature comes into the question as well. What does the treatment of water in both these situations say about attitudes towards the environment?