In Drawing Dadao I collaborated with Chinese artist Yang Zhichao to produce a set of drawings documenting a three-day performance festival in Beijing.
Building on ideas about performance and documentation explored in the photographic work Connotations Performance Images (1998), my original idea for this work was to ask a caricaturist to draw the festival. In the way that a single image might stand in for a performance, I began to think about how personal features (and mannerisms) are distilled by caricaturists and that it might be interesting to try to characterise performance-work in this way.One of the other performers – Yang Zhichao – was not a caricaturist, but was interested in drawing cartoons and so our collaboration began. Yang Zhichao did ‘live’ drawings of performances on one of the days, after which he worked from photographs when he wasn’t able to attend the whole festival. The subsequent set of drawings is a mix of ‘live’ drawings made during the event and drawings from photographs, which were made after.
Yang Zhichao’s own performance at the festival was very popular – in fact it was impossible to watch it through the ring of photographers surrounding him. Interestingly, while making the live drawings for our collaboration Drawing Dadao he was hardly noticed.
All Images:
Yang Zhichao’s drawing of Seiji Shimoda performing 6 Chopsticks
[ Photo: Yang Zhichao ] - [ full size version ]
