Editor's note: This article is from WeChat public number "Wu dislike" (ID: esnql520), the author Wu dislike.
Author| Cici
Edit| Wu Dislike
When you search for "teamLab Shanghai" on Weibo, the first popular tweet is about photography skills, and the blogger is a photographer with 1.5 million followers.
She suggests wearing white plain clothes as much as possible, "because there will be various projections of flowers or water particles on you." She specifically asked the staff and learned that "there are fewer people in the morning when the museum opens and in the afternoon when it's almost closed." In this tweet, she also gave detailed information on picking the right scene for taking photos, how to take photos to create a sense of space, utilizing on-site lighting to fill in the light, and even gave advice on post-production.
As for who teamLab is? Leave the homework to the fans. Except this time no one will correct the blogger that it's teamLab and not teamlab, just like fruit fans would correct that it's iPhone and not iphone back in the day.
But does it really matter that much who teamLab is? For most people, as long as it looks good in pictures.
01
On March 23rd of this year, after six years of design and renovation, the Shanghai Oil Tank Art Center was officially opened to the public, and one of the first exhibitions was "teamLab: The World of Water Particles in Oil Tanks", which lasted for five months.
Founded in 2001, teamLab, an art collective from Japan, wanted to explore the intersection of art, science, technology, design, and the natural world. This exhibition, while utilizing a computer program, allows the viewer to interact artificially, meaning that the viewer participates in the creation of everything they see in the moment. For example, flowers are created and wilted by people, and people can also block the flow of water.
Soon this exhibition became a 'Netflix Exhibition' and exploded many people's friend circles. Looking back at the wave of exhibitions carried out since the spring, in addition to teamLab, Yayoi Kusama, Musha, and Rehberg's If Your Eyes Don't Need to See It, They'll Be Used to Cry are all high-frequency phrases in the circle of friends.
Becoming a Netflix exhibition is something that seems easy in Shanghai, but is not.
The easy part is that this city has a large base of exhibition-goers, ranks first in the country in both income and consumption dimensions, and young people living in Shanghai are more willing to pay for cultural experience-based consumption.
But there is no hiding the fact that competition is fierce. On the website of ARTLINKART, a database of Chinese contemporary art, only two cities in China, Shanghai and Beijing, are listed individually, and cities including Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hangzhou are regarded as 'others'.
According to ARTLINKART statistics, there were 641 exhibitions of culture and art in Shanghai and 583 in Beijing throughout 2018. These exhibitions were mostly held in galleries, art museums, exhibition spaces, and art centers. That is to say, in terms of commerciality and artistry, these exhibitions recorded in the library were mainly planned and curated by professionals, with artistry being the most important, followed by commercial considerations.
In the English context, the word closest to the domestic Netflix exhibition is pop-up exhibition, which directly translates to flash mob exhibition.
The term was first coined in 2007 to describe exhibitions that are often temporary and less formal than a gallery or museum show, but above a private art show. Such exhibitions usually provide a more immersive experience for visitors than many traditional museums and galleries. Exhibitions allow for public participation, with some artworks sometimes dependent on exhibitor interaction, and many also aim to open up discussion and dialog on social issues.
Another word that comes along with it is instagrammable, meaning likeable, recognizable and widely spread on ins (and everything else on social media).
To summarize the two words: a Netflix exhibition is bound to satisfy people's need to take photos, show off, and make a mark on social media. Highly saturated colors, everything can be photographed, and a temporary sense of detachment from reality are the must-haves for most commercial Netflix exhibitions.
02
In China, Netflix is not a type of exhibition, but a result of intentional or unintentional action. However, there is a clear path between running to "become a netizen" and making art first and then becoming a netizen. Interestingly, exhibitions that label themselves as netizens, whether they are netizens or not, are almost never entered into the ARTLINKART database, which allows curatorial organizations to submit information on their own initiative, which is clearly not the intention of such exhibitions.
Abroad, the Museum of Ice Cream made its debut in New York in 2016 and quickly swept through the likes of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Miami. Similarly, there's the Candy Republic in Australia, the Dessert Museum in the Philippines, and the Supercandy Museum in Cologne, Germany, describes itself as an 'instagram-making exhibition' - complete with colorful confetti and 2,000 flamingos (fake, of course).
In Shanghai, there are lonely bubble noodles, incredible decompression museum and its counterparts. Some foreign exhibitions such as Cotton Candy and Daydream have visited Beijing and Shanghai, and there are countless others that follow the example of the Museum of Ice Cream and Lost Love.
These types of exhibitions are clearly differentiated from exhibitions such as teamLab - in Shanghai they are almost exclusively located in shopping malls as a way for malls to attract traffic.
If you trace the predecessor of Shanghai shopping malls, the department stores, you will find that commercial centers have a long history of favoring exhibitions. At that time, Daxin organized calligraphy and painting exhibitions, and works by famous artists such as Zhang Daqian and Feng Zikai were on display, which became an important way for Daxin to accumulate social reputation and create cultural capital.
Nowadays, this kind of exhibitions focusing on artistic aesthetics in Shanghai is almost entirely left to specialized pavilions or art malls like K11. Traditional shopping malls with long histories have returned to their old ways, taking on the business of wooing tourists on Nanjing Road and no longer taking on any particular role in educating the public about culture. Daxin has been transformed into the No.1 Department Store, while Wing On Department Store, which has changed its name from Hualian back to Wing On, has a four-month-long exhibition this summer, "Lonely Bubble Noodle 2.0".
In addition, the mall also undertakes animation and IP exhibitions. Relatively lightweight, entertainment-oriented exhibitions are obviously more suitable for shopping mall consumption.
Whether it's a webcam exhibition that favors an artistic orientation or one that is purposely tailored for commerciality, photographability is common.
Abroad and at home, museums and galleries have undergone a sea change in just a few years regarding the matter of taking photographs. From banning to conservative partial permission to encouraging photography, it is actually a transfer of power and a break of monopoly position. Authoritative institutions compromise in the face of the current environment, and visitors tagging on social media allows these exhibitions to spread better.
Jia Jia Fei, head of the digital department at the Jewish Museum in New York, summarized it this way in a 2017 TED Talk: "In the pre-digital age of photography, the message was: this is what I'm looking at, I've seen it. Whereas today, the message is: I was there. I saw it, I took a selfie."
The 'sense of presence' that visitors seek is one of the greatest advantages of exhibitions as a live art. Films are generally inexpensive and not worth showing off, while theater is relatively costly, and both strictly speaking do not allow photography.
Here we have to mention one of Shanghai's out-of-circle Netflix plays, Sleep No More, which landed in Shanghai in 2016, initially priced at 550 for weekday performances and 650 for weekend performances, and was soon speculated on by scalpers to over a thousand tickets. To say it is a theater is actually too narrow, the way the actors perform is modern dance, several floors of space can be explored at will by the audience, wards, bamboo forests, pharmacies and other scenes set with a clear theme, coupled with the extremely delicate display of items, it is not too much to say that it is a large-scale exhibition.
Not only is photography prohibited during the performance of this three-hour play, but the audience is even forced to seal their cell phones in small black bags, and will be asked to leave the stage if they are caught snapping photos during the performance. But after a series of 'strict rules' that are almost completely out of step with the times, it leaves the audience with objects they can show off on social media: masks and cards.
03
In "Why are there more and more "Netroots" in art exhibitions", the art media DBL put forward a point of view that is worth thinking about: in the past few years, the momentum of contemporary art in Shanghai and Shenzhen has been fierce, and the birth of a large number of Netroots exhibitions may have something to do with the regional industries of the two cities. The two cities have a large number of successfully incubated e-commerce, netroots and designer brands, and at the same time, they are also important areas for traditional advertising and clothing industries, which have a relatively large demand for publicity of beauty and brands.
The Museum of Contemporary Art and Urban Planning in Shenzhen mentioned this phenomenon in a reply to a question in the press, "It's normal for ordinary visitors to take photos of exhibits that look good. What I'm afraid of is the netizens standing in front of the exhibits and not going away, or sitting on the stairs and posing, and what I'm most afraid of is the Taobao shopkeepers who come with a suitcase at one time and can shoot all day long inside the museum, letting the customer service sisters help them go back and forth for a dozen times to pick up their suitcases, and then occupying the toilets for a dozen times to change their clothes."
Though I didn't see a similar phenomenon in Shanghai, maybe webloggers avoid weekends? But one observation is that some of the B-station uploaders' vlogs are indeed making their way to exhibitions.
As part of contemporary art, the exhibition likewise has more room for interpretation.
Admiring, taking photos, and commenting are all a way for visitors to gain a sense of presence. Artists have self-expression, but visitors can have a completely different understanding, and upholders just have to express their feelings. In a sense, viewing an exhibition is the lowest threshold for people trying to shift their thinking from 'what is this about' to 'what I see is what I see'.
"Netflix" should not be a derogatory term.
Some artworks and artists are indeed pushed to the tide by social media and people give new meanings to it, even if it's in the form of a selfie.
"Yayoi Kusama" was not recognized by her own mother at first, and later by the mainstream art circle in New York, but Pop Art became a successful example of combining commerce and art. Polka dots and pumpkins, which have a strong visual impact, have become popular nowadays, and in the past few years, she has been one of the hottest artists in the world.
And when people suddenly discovered that Mucha, a Czech artist, had created such beautiful and exquisite posters, decorations and jewelry designs a hundred years ago, which in turn was closely integrated with the current trend of cultural creativity, the exhibition of Mucha's works became an Internet sensation.
In 2018, Beyoncé and Jay-Z chose to shoot the music video for their collaborative single "Apeshit" at the Louvre. The four-and-a-half-minute-long music video includes several famous paintings by Jacques-Louis David and Theodore Géricault, and ends with Da Vinci's masterpiece, the Mona Lisa. A month after the launch of the music video, the Louvre launched a specialized tour, which takes about 90 minutes and includes 17 works of art featured in the music video.
In 2018, the Louvre broke an all-time record for annual attendance, with a figure of 10.2 million visitors up 25% from 2017.The Louvre acknowledges that MVs are to blame, and that this meets the museum's goal of appealing to a new generation of viewers who make extensive use of social media.
Interestingly, due to the huge difference in middle class structure between the country and the old western cultural powerhouses, attracting the younger generation is rather not a problem in China, they are the main force of cultural consumption.
The paradox is that even in a city like Shanghai, the younger generation still lacks art education in their upbringing, and the absence of museums and galleries creates a lack of independent aesthetics. At this point, it becomes a relatively safe choice to choose exhibitions that are highly recognized and can be screened on social media.
It takes a high degree of spontaneity to get used to eating candy and ice cream and maybe try a healthy diet. And in the vast majority of cases, becoming an internet sensation yourself is the best way to beat the bad money.
