Creative Disturbance

Zhang, Peili is considered the father of Chinese video art for his three-hour video 30X30 (1988). He is also as an influential educator who started the New Media Department at China Academy of Art in 2002 where young artists such as Hu, Weiyi, Lin, ke, Lu, yang among many others graduated from. This episode starts with a re-discovery of his 30X30. The work depicts the artist breaks a mirror and glues the pieces together. Although being labeled as the first Chinese video art piece in China, the artist’s intention behind the work has been ironically covered by its fame. Firstly, in today’s talk, it is actually called a “failure” by Zhang as he actually planned to lock the audience in the room, forcing them to stay with the monotonous or “meaningless” time of mirror gluing, and thus making obvious the consciousness of time passing. However, it was him ended up being forced to hold the video controller and keeping fast forward under the press of the audience. What made this work pivotal in contemporary Chinese ar