WE HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH ART

Category:Performance/ Video Art

Artist: Tan Tan

Performance date: 8th Nov. 2015

Film Production date: Dec. 2016

Length: 11:08min

Filming place: at Arsenale, Corderie, Artiglierie, Tuvalu pavilion, the alley outside of Arsenale, during the 56th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia

This is one of the most important performances in "Venize Biennale 2015", which was created and performed by Tan Tan at the sites of 56th Venice Biennale.

In November 2015, artist group TanBo created plenty of performance, photograph, video, installation, sound art, intermedia art works at the site of the 56th International Art Exhibition of Venice Biennale. With these works, they announced to the world that they won the first "Super Lion Award" of “Venize biennale”in the art history! Following, they spread an “online exhibition” with their awarded works in several editions of web news. These news were “liked” and “shared”countless times by their “friends”on facebook and other online platforms from all around the world …

Below is the page of the work series "Venize Biennale":

This is an intermedia work in-between performance art and film, which was created at the 56th International Art Exhibition of Venice Biennale. In this work you will see a fully charged powerful criticism on today's contemporary art with nonsense humor.

On 8th Nov. 2015, in Arsenale, one of the most important venues of Venice Biennale, artist group TanBo (composed of Chinese artist Tan Tan and Belgian artist Eric Bribosia)was watching a performance “In the Midst of Things”. The performers walked among the audience and sang with opera voices in a improvised feeling. After a while, Tan Tan “went out” from the audience, began to walk around the performers with her Venetian mask which was bought from a tourist shop just before. With Tan Tan’s passion, the performers gradually did some vocal and physical interactions with her. Everything looked perfect, until suddenly one of the performers shouted, “Stop! Stop! Stop! " he came close to Tan Tan and pointed at her, declaring angrily, "This woman has nothing to do with the performance! …We must stop it because you might think that she has something to do with the performance!”

TanBo and many other audience couldn’t believe that, one“avant-garde”performance at the highest-level contemporary art exhibition could be like this…Anyway," even if we have nothing to do with art, we still do! " Tan Tan continued to do this performance in other spaces of Venice Biennale with her partner Eric Bribosia.

In the first half of this video, it looks like a normal documentary of a performance, while soon after, some shots of the performance come back but in reverse motion, and are turned into a hip-hop music clip! The performer's serious command “Stop! Stop! Stop! " becomes a nice rhythmic chorus of the tune...

Sound art “Stop this Performance” linked with this work

--This work has some delicate relationship with the performance, you can only know it during listening…