III Moscow International Biennale for Young Art

Involuntary Reader was exhibited at III Moscow International Biennale for Young Art at Moscow Museum of Modern Art.

Thank Francesca and her friend for taking the pictures for me!

Classifieds at SIA Gallery, Sheffield - until 23 Sep

My recent show - Classified - at SIA Gallery in Sheffield, opening last Thursday.

Thanks for Sheffield Institute of Arts, all the participating artists, and those who came to show :)

The ubiquity of information and data in our daily lives is pervasive, but we rarely question its nature and origin. The messages presented to us, are they truthful? How are they selected and classified? Who filters and controls them? And who has the authority to decide which information is worth seeing or preserving it?

The exhibition includes five UK-based artists, Estefani Bouza, Ting-Ting Cheng, David Penny, Marianna and Daniel O'Reilly, using photography, video and installation to explore and interpret the use of codified language in everyday life, challenging the authorized subjects and the way they categorize messages. In the artworks, the artists imitate the selecting, presenting and receiving process used by museums, libraries and mass media to raise questions related with classified information.

Estéfani Bouza's project Collection consists of fifteen photographs. Each of these images depicts legumes, nuts or raisins, which are enumerated. In the first picture of the project, one thousand and one items appear in the image, and in each photograph of the series one more is added. Each element shown is classified and ordered in reference to the recollection process used in the land notebooks of the XIX century.

The different elements are presented as catalogued specimens for analysis and observation in a way that indicates their significance, but it is also through this mechanism of representation that the ideology of the museums and the prerequisites of their collections are exposed and questioned.

Ting-Ting Cheng's I judge a book by its cover explores the relationships between language, identity and foreignness. In the project, She borrowed books of foreign languages from a library, and photographed the side of them in piles. Apart from the clue in the titles, the viewers cannot tell what language the books belong to. Language, in our society, works as a selection mechanism. It selects audience, deciding who would be able to read the books. By randomly choosing books of the language the artist cannot understand, Cheng positioned herself as a ‘cultural outsider’, that ‘she judged a book by its cover’, which signifying the distance between different cultures and how nationality/identity influence the way people judge others in our society.

David Penny's The Ship and the Nose was initiated through a residency at Manchester Central Library: the artist was invited to make a piece of work as the huge collection of the libraries archive was moved from its home to be temporarily re-housed in a local salt mine. From looking for remnants of objects and scraps of paper in bins, amongst dusty corners and under sets of shelves, things are given a new narrative potential. The library contains knowledge that is provisionally ordered and classified, waiting to be found again and processed in a new context. The same approach has been taken with these lost objects, they are found, re-ordered and grouped for display. Since working in the library Penny has developed the work to incorporate new imagery, responding to a sense of a narrative journey that the Ship and the Nose has come to represent. There becomes scope for movement of the imagination between the groupings of objects and images and an archive is re-built, re-interpreted.

Marianna and Daniel O'Reilly's Longbridge is a mock-documentary video about an incident which never happened. The artists used Google Earth to plan the entire shoot of the video from their home in London. Locations were mapped-out, and the set-pieces were planned. The artists also went to Copenhagen and executed the shoot disguised as tourists with an entirely virtual, minutely-planned itinerary. The subject of the film was drawn from Copenhagen’s famous son Søren Kierkegaard, who wrote at length about the serious moral implications of leading ‘the aesthetic life’. By throwing this criticism into the entirely aesthetic experience of the tourist, the artists attempted to flush out new experiences to be had from the old, treating cliché and truism as fertile, rather than barren soil. To then round this experience off, the O’Reilly's then posted images from the film back onto the locations on Google Earth, disseminating covert experience through the channels of distribution.

http://www.shu.ac.uk/sia/gallery/events/event.html?id=81

I know what you are trying to say, until 2 Aug

Thanks everyone who came to the opening.
It was really nice to see you all!!!

The exhibition goes on until 2 Aug. Today (23 July, Monday), from 4-7pm, I will be there, playing The mechanism of speaking Chinese with audiences. If you are interested in, please come along!!!

I judge a book by its cover

Dubbing Project

The Mechanism of speaking Chinese

I know what you are trying to say

N4 Library, 26 Blackstock Road  London, Greater London N4 2DW

Thank Rowan Arts and curator Fiona Parry for realising the exhibition.

http://www.islingtonexhibits.com/exhibitors-gallery-2012?item=319

I know what you are trying to say - my first solo show in London!

Opening: 19 July, 6-8pm, N4 Library, 26 Blackstock Road, N4 2DW

Play the game with the artist: 21 July, 3-5pm / 23 July 4-7pm

Please come and join us!

Thank Rowan Arts and Islington Exhibits for realising the exhibition.

It's fine, you can talk to me - exhibited at GlogauAIR Open Studio

Continued my interest in relationship between locality and foreignness, in It’s fine, you can talk to me, I transformed the negativity of language barrier between immigrants and local residents into a positive connection.

During the residency, I used advertisements with tear-off stripes and social networks on the Internet to invite local residents from Germany to tell me a secret in German, the language that I cannot understand. The processes of revealing secrets were documented by video, but without audio.

In this case, the participants shared their secrets with me, but without worrying that anyone, including me, would know or judge. The secrets still remain as secrets. I intend to narrow down the gap between outsiders and local residents, encouraging people to open their hearts to a stranger/foreigner. Here, the person who cannot understand one’s language becomes the person that one can trust.

The exhibition includes images and documents to illustrate the process of looking for participants, with the number of people who contacted me, the way they know the information, and the results, accompanied by the videos.  

Thanks all the participants who shared their secrets with me. 

Thanks everyone who came to the exhibition. 

Thanks everyone who I worked with in GlogauAIR during the period.

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Call for participants - Künstlerischer Aufruf an Teilnehmer

Haben Sie ein Geheimnis? Wollen Sie etwas gestehen aber finden keine Vertrauenswürdige Person, der sie sich anvertrauen können?

Mein Name ist Ting-Ting Cheng. Ich bin eine Künstlerin, und nehme gerade an einer Residenz bei GlogauAIR in Berlin teil.

In meinem Projekt "Es ist in Ordnung, du kannst mit mir reden", habe ich vor, die Negativität der Sprachbarriere zwischen Immigranten und Einheimischen zu einer positiven Kraft zu verwandeln.

Hierzu würde Ich sie gerne , als Person aus Deutschland fragen, ob sie mir ein Geheimnis auf Deutsch, einer Sprache, die ich überhaupt nicht verstehe, anvertrauen, oder etwas, worüber sie gerne sprechen würden, aber nicht wollen, dass andere darüber bescheid wissen.

Teilnehmer können so die versteckten Geheimnisse jemandem (mir) anvertrauen, aber ohne sich dabei zu Sorgen, dass jeder (mich eingeschlossen) darüber bescheid wissen wird. Die Geheimnisse werden Geheimnisse bleiben.

Der Prozess des enthülltem Geheimnis wird per Video dokumentiert werden, aber ohne den Audio-Teil.

Wenn Sie Interesse an einer Teilnahme haben, kontaktieren Sie mich per email oder telefonisch - photo.tingting@gmail.com / 017698232018

Glogauerstrasse 16, 10999 Berlin

Ich werde euch auf einen Tassenkaffe einladen!

Auf meiner Website können sie wenn sie wollen, mehr über meine Arbeit erfahren

www.chengtingting.com

(Ich verstehe kein Deutsch. Der Artikel oben ist das Ergebnis einer Google-Übersetzung, und Hilfe von Freunden, die Deutsch können)

Do you have a secret? Do you want to confess about something but can’t find a trustworthy person to talk to?

My name is Ting-Ting Cheng. I am an artist who is having the artist in residency at Glogauair in Berlin at the moment. My practice aims to examine the relationship between foreignness and locality by applying language as the representation of cultures and identity.

In the project “It’s fine, you can talk to me”, I intend to transform the negativity of language barrier between immigrants and local residents into a positive force.

Here, I would like to invite you, as someone from Germany, to tell me a secret, or confess anything that you would like to talk about, but something that you don’t want to other people to know, in German, the language that I don’t understand at all.

In this case, the participants can share the hidden secrets to someone (me), but without worrying that anyone (including me) would know. The secrets still remain as secrets.

Here, the person who cannot understand your language becomes the person that you can trust. I intend to construct an ambiguous relationship in between, a “helpful” but not “functional” conversation.

The process of revealing the secret will be documented by video, but without the audio part. In the final presentation, the audiences will only see the participants talking, without knowing what they are actually talking about.

If you are interested in participating, please contact me on photo.tingting@gmail.com / 017698232018

Glogauerstrasse 16, 10999 Berlin

I will invite you for a coffee or drink to thank you!

If you want to know more about me, here is my website, www.chengtingting.com

Festival of Art as Research

7 May - 14 May, Ottersberg, Germany

I have exhibited my "Dubbing Project" as well as realised the project "The mechanism of speaking Chinese" during the festival.

Thank everyone who participated :)

The mechanism of speaking Chinese (cards)

 The mechanism of speaking Chinese (setting)

The mechanism of speaking Chinese (interaction)            Picture: Neno Belchev

The mechanism of speaking Chinese (video)

Dubbing Project

Rule: I have applied 200 English words, all of which have similar pronunciations to certain Chinese words, such as “Fan”, “May” or “Chin”, on a set of hand cards. During the festival, I invited participants to randomly choose 4-7 cards, such as “May Fan Pee Chin Bye”, then asked them to read it out as if it is a normal sentence in front of the camera. The idea came from the “ching chong” joke from the West society. By using English words to speak Chinese-like conversation, I translate the original Chinese into the Chinese in the ears of Westerners, sarcastically converting the language into pure symbols, removing the words from the original context, questioning the relationship between language and cultural stereotypes.

Thank Laura, Neele, all the artists, volunteers, participants and everyone who came to the festival!

http://art-as-research.org/

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