New Media Art Exhibition in China | Beijing Art Museums

Hey welcome back! On Sunday I visited a new media solo exhibition of 'Unknown Unknowns' at Today Art Museum. Before coming, I read an interview with the Chinese artist Zheng Da in an article and I had a lot of expectations.

00:00 Intro
01:00 First artwork
02:25 Second artwork
03:15 Third artwork
05:01 Fourth artwork
07:25 Last artwork of Zheng Da
08:55 Permanent collection
10:16 New media documentary in China
13:40 Difficulties new media artists face

Among 5 large installations featured in this exhibition, the the center piece titled 'The Unfettered Language of Machine' is the most impressive. However, other works were not displayed in the optimal way due to the logistic issues caused by the pandemic.

The exhibition covers 3 floors - 2nd floor featuring this new media art exhibition, 3rd & 4th floor showcasing a permanent museum collection. What confuses me the most is the curatorial idea: why did they have to put those two exhibitions together? They are unrelated in every way possible.

Just like many other exhibitions I have visited, new media art seems to be the cherry on the cake, decorating and perhaps elevating the exhibition. The market for new media art hasn't been fully developed in China. It reminds me of a potential PhD thesis topic I wanted to study - interactive new media documentary.

Interactive documentary and new media art are alike: they need extra tech support and modified space to showcase, and they are very niche. Even it is a small niche, I expect to find a handful of interactive new media documentaries made in China by Chinese filmmakers. But I could not find any - not even one. Sure, there are traces of a few, but they could not be located. I wondered why no one has made such works? After some research, I found that one of the main difficulties was the platform to show the works.

Without the option of showing works on their websites, new media artists in China struggle to get exposure. Pace Gallery Beijing, one of the leading contemporary art galleries working with new media art closed its Beijing center in 2019. What is going to be the market for new media art in 2021? If you were an artist, what would you do? Let me know in a comment below!
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Video mentioned: Dadbot project by James Vlahos
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