ALEXANDRE Philippe

France

In residency: march 2011

Philippe ALEXANDRE's land art creations are spontaneous and realized from his builder's knowledge and with raw materials found on the spot. The knowledge of the place, the territory and also its people are essential.

His career led him to meet the Land art with Andy Goldsworthy's first works.
But he wants to remain a craftsman who uses the raw material according to an appreciation of rudiments of know-how, by refusing the numerous industrialized products of energies and resources.
Human has to remain the main actor of his environmental development on his territory. That's why Philippe ALEXANDRE created a company, Petra Terra, which fights against the concrete lobbies by restoring the patrimonial techniques with construction's propositions that centuries have demonstrated the perpetuity.

ARRAOU Peggy

France

In residency: october - december 2009

Peggy ARRAOU is a video artist on the move. Her films all come from the same movement: towards the Other. A movement they invite to, through a sensitive plastic and formal approach and a careful humanist attention.

In 2009, she was in residency at Rhizome Lijiang (Yunnan, China) to work on a portrait project with farmers: During one minute, the persons she met have to hold the pose.

She is also working with the artist Peter SINCLAIR, making the film Road Music, his project - see Peter SINCLAIR.

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BRAULT Christine

Quebec, Canada

In residency: march - may 2011

" For several years, my artistic explorations have converged into site-specific, relational aesthetics and performative actions involving local communities. It remains important for me to conceive a piece or an action integrated to its environment and which places its occupants amid the work itself. Neither reflection, nor reappropriation, I conceive my practice as a poem stemming from an encounter with the Other according to the place and the context. The process of the encounter becomes the raw material of a work… writing personal and\or collective stories.

The in situ work experience allows me, among other things, to invest more substantially a space and\or a community by making my own mark in inserting myself through diverse cultures. Through this sort of action or interaction, conveying the spectator\protagonist is intrinsic to the work in progress in one way or another. Moreover, as a performing element, my physical presence, inherent to the whole in situ research, intervention and action process proves to be essential to enrich the connection between the artist and the spectator. As an ethnologist, I let myself be permeable to the Other...

In Lijiang, contrary to my recent artistic interventions, I am allowed infiltrate, returning me permeable to the Naxi's culture, to its people, by soaking me literally as in the figurative way of this chamane's ground. To understand more this rich ancestral identity, I come to put certain elements stemming from their natural environment in thin stratum overlapping in my own identity. Over the residence's course, this discovery and taming process takes shape in the public, natural or constructed place, by diverse performative actions, by the meeting, the presence of the One and the Other one."
Extract from Christine Brault

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BURKHART Gary

France - USA

In residency: october 2010

Gary BURKHART teaches the scientific communication in research centers and universities. He also publishes scientific articles and requests for projects and\or fundings, and works on the presentations in the congresses.

In residence with Rhizome, he intervened at the Foreign Affairs Office of Lijiang Teachers Training College - University with students and teachers on the stylistics in the technical and scientific speeches.

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CLAUSS Julien

France

In residency: september - october 2009

Julien CLAUSS studied music, acoustics, fluid mechanics and material sciences.

He made sculptural sound works and has developed installations and performances. He physically seeks to engage the listener in the process of listening and uses the sound as a means to establish a relationship between the physical body and its environment.

(You may also see Events, Erhai Floatings sounds)

www.cycliq.org

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COZANNET Awena

France

In residency: juanary - march 2012

Oscillating between sculpture, drawing, scenography and installation, Awena Cozannet anchors her work into the human body and on the human being as well as on their temporality. She uses the material as a language and the body as a material. Some of her sculptures have actually been carried by herself or by others, for the time of a photography, or for a public performance. This approach has brought her to develop collaborative artistic practices in Bangladesh, in Burma or in Pakistan (...) which have deeply influenced her work. Besides, she has substantially broadened her skills through the various projects, the residences and the exhibitions in which she has been invoved or that she has been organizing in France and abroad.

France's partners: Musée des Tissus et des Arts décoratifs de Lyon / Musée Muséum Départemental de la ville de Gap / Galerie Françoise Besson

China's partners: Consulat Général de France, Chengdu / Institut Français de Chine / Alliance Française, Chengdu / University of Lijiang / Rhizome Lijiang Art Center

www.awenacozannet.fr

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DE MAAR Marrigje

Netherlands

In residency: juanary - february 2010

Marrigje DE MAAR's photographs of domestic interiors taken throughout China over the past three years draw upon two important lineages: interior and travel photography. DE MAAR's unique approach is to address both simultaneously. Her photographs reveal not only a genuine cultural sensitivity but also a respect for the individual and for the pride people take in their homes.
… In these photographs, the concentrated natural light streaming through windows and illuminating the rooms evokes paintings by the Old Masters from DE MAAR's home country... Each of her photographs, while not staged, has been carefully conceived and framed. The fundamentals of image-making, which requires a fascination with the effects of light, considered compositions and an interest in sharing one's view of the world, are certainly all at work in DE MAAR's work.

One of DE MAAR's objectives coincides with the concerns of those early photographers traveling the globe – to share how people live. But, whereas in much travel photography, past and present, the focus is on the notion of difference, this artist is able to find shared values in what she sees and to express these parallels in her work… Whereas other artists make foreign lands seem inaccessible and alien, DE MAAR's work makes the world seem a smaller place, where people have certain habits and desires in common.

Extract from Ashley C. Givens, Assistant Curator of Photographs, Victoria & Albert Museum

The photos she has taken during her residency in Rhizome has been exhibited in 2011, in the Huis Marseille, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

www.takeadreamforawalk.com

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ECHENIQUE José - LEON CANNOCK Alejandro

Peru

In residency: july - august 2010

José ECHENIQUE's artistic activity recovers from a poetics of the existence, where the life and the artistic practice become confused. It is about an invention and often about a reinvention of his own life through a performative practice which is also an interrogation on the production of a singular subjectivity and on the human and social ecology.

Alejandro LEON CANNOCK has followed studies in philosophy leaning on a classic academic education. Now, Alejandro creates an appropriate language: the philosophy becomes identified more with the work of an artist trying to activate the sensibility of the persons. He undertook a project of a philosophy's construction for non-philosophers. He considers essential that the philosophy has to bound with various disciplines and should open itself in the folk culture. He defines himself as an urban philosopher, a pop philosopher.

http://enlachina.free.fr/

FRANCES-KING Caroline

England

In residency: december 2010 - february 2011

During the last 12 years Caroline FRANCES-KING has been specializing in botanical illustration.

In residence in Rhizome, she finds a more personal way, using her researches to work on the Chinese healing plants on dongba paper.

www.botanicalart.wordpress.com

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JUBERT Giovanni

Spain

In residency: october - december 2009

Giovanni JUBERT is a professional typographer working independently across oceans.

In Rhizome's residence, Giovanni JUBERT studies chinese calligraphy in the Foreign Affairs Office of Lijiang Teachers Training College- University.

www.giovannijubert.com

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LEHBERGER Frank

France - Germany

In residency: march - may 2011

Frank-René LEHBERGER is a process artist cum calligrapher, mastering rare Buddhist calligraphic art forms of ancient India, Tibet, Mongolia, Korea and Japan – known as Siddham. His works on different media (paper, silk, clay, bone, stone, etc.) and his combination of carefully crafted environmental installations aim at creating a codified bond between the invisible and visible realms while revealing the interconnectedness of all phenomena in time-space.

The origins of Siddham reach back some 2400 years. Early Buddhist sacred texts were written in the Sanskrit alphabet of India. All over Asia, the art of writing and replicating Buddhist texts became known as Siddham (literally: “meditative accomplishments”). When Buddhism was introduced to China nearly 2000 years ago, this art form became known there as XiTan or FanZi (literally: “Sanskrit letters”). The Siddham tradition was discontinued in ancient China in the waning years of the first millennium AD. The Siddham tradition has now virtually died out on the Chinese mainland.
Yet in Japan – where it is known as Shittan or Bonji – it continued to flourish and produced eminent masters who were the heads of Buddhist institutions.

The art of Siddham combines mindfulness, meaningful action, and aesthetic appreciation – as such it could be called an ancient form of process art. Buddhist practitioners understand the visual experience as well as the creational process of Siddham to be a transformative and devotional act that transcends time. It is created for the benefit of all sentient beings and not only the aesthetic appreciation of spectators and art collectors.

“The exciting thing about all this is that as it is new it is old and as it is old it is new, but now we have come to be in our way which is an entirely different way.”
Gertrude Stein

Frank-René LEHBERGER's creative work is deeply influenced by Buddhist philosophy as well as the philosophical views of American physicist David Bohm (1917-1992). In addition to calligraphic process art, his works also include photography, video-art, ethnographic film making, choreography and performance art together with his wife DeChen-Péma BETSANG.

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Mc CABE Darcy

USA

In residency: april 2012

"I am fascinated by the interplay of industrial materials, environment, and perception.
My practice seeks to find that space between nostalgic notions of certainty and present experiences, where the only assurance is knowing that all things change, decay, evolve.

Often, expectations frame the experience that ultimately forms the final memory of a place. The foundation for this encounter is already half-formed in the mind, the impression becomes whole, once a person physically reaches that destination.
Frequently, when a place has a great reputation, people are disappointed once they experience the site for themselves, as it can never live up to the expectations they held in their minds. However, in this search for distinctive experiences time and again it is the simple, quiet, points of every day life escaping through surreal circumstances that leave the greatest lasting images in peoples’ minds.

It was through my own interaction with Lijiang that I decided to create an interactive exhibit surrounding my work, to help people physically understand the process of expectation, realization and acceptance. As people’s perceptions are half-formed before they reach a destination, surrounding the work was a half-finished installation of various building materials. Viewers will be invited to reassemble and finish the work upon their arrival at the opening. As they leave, they will be invited to take away a scrap of material that helped form the surrounding installation, seeing that when one leaves a place they only take a fragment of that experience with them, which ultimately frames their lasting memories."

http://www.darcymccabe.org

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MENNERDAHL Emily & BÖTTERN Jonas

Sweden

In residency: juanary 2012

"Hillside Projects is a collaboration between Jonas Böttern and Emily Mennerdahl. Consisting of long-term excursions and research, their projects set out to challenge and question our view/the way we look at landscape. Researching a particular site, they work with text, photo, painting, drawing and books whilst considering aspects of history, culture and the natural world.

A recent project Rhododendron Study, 2011 was initiated whilst spending a longer period of time at the foothills of the Himalayas in north India. Each day involved lengthy walks, observations, drawing and writing whilst conducting a detailed study of the specific landscape. Elements such a flora and fauna, weather, light and colour conditions were also examined through the use of an analogue medium format camera. Rhododendron Study consists of 5 large scale collages divided into two parts; index and study. The work is a visual investigation of the topography of place. It is also, through the use of text, a consideration of scientific, historical, philosophical and poetic aspects assigned to that particular place.
The collages are made of photographs (ink jet prints), cut up and re-arranged to create new interpretations of the landscape. The index prints function mainly as a mapping of the place, based on both the real and the imaginary. Oil paint is also applied to the images as a means to erase excessive information and to isolate a specific object in order to perform an in depth study. In this the case, the object of study is the Rhododendron tree.

At Rhizome we continue our excursions conducting a new study of a new landscape. We find a specific scene which we study/examine. We find a subject for investigation. We draw, take photos, write and collect local materials. The landscape in which Lijiang is situated specifically appeals to us. It lies on the other side of the large mountain range where we spent last year working."

www.hillsideprojects.net // www.emilymennerdahl.com // www.jonasbottern.com

Mu Yun Bo (Lana)

China

Mu Yun Bo alias Lana is an Lijiang native artist (Yunnan, China). For more than two years, Lana continues his colossal project: make a mural painting assembled by several wooden panels (approximately 110 x 80 cm each) which represent the Paradise, the past, the present, the future and the Hell of Lijiang: 30m of wook carving, and he goes on...

In his works, Kafka or Van Gogh's references appear: as Kafka, the metamorphosis, the den, the playful exploration, the mountain (= the castle): a city point of view… As Van Gogh, the same spiral heavens and the excessive drawings and paintings, the same life's overflowing.

Lana's works are like a walk, movements, flows, cartographies. There are as many readings as possible ways and finally recognitions in the territory.

NG

France

In residency: february 2011

NG pursues a nomadic artistic project which leads her from residence to another residence experimenting fashions of group housings as well as architectural prototypes, testing any sorts of spaces, modes of life, of situations. To be artist is an adventure, Art a voicing of opinions.
NG pulls of her readings of Amazonia's botanical research, the conclusion that the world is unknown, that everything is to discover, to investigate. Every project - sound track, video, drawing, BD, performance is a particular expedition, with the meeting of persons, places, specific context, new tools.

Her last researches urged her to meet Yona Freedman and to question our modes of housing environment. From the house-bubble of Antti Lovag to Nice at the house VDS of Neutra or Freeman House of Frank lloyd Wright in Los Angeles, NG questions the utopias and the myths of the modernism. In its recent movies, abstract and enigmatic narratives, the architecture exceeds the question of the housing environment and joins that much wider, anthropological, of the human being; of the animal-human being, his dreams and his existential games.

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SHI Jidian

China

“I put down notes with wires. It is both a virtual attempt and an intentional plan. When I am facing a sculpture, I wonder if I can make it utter words or even whispers. I dream that it will eventually produce a song. In my imagination, I believe those songs stem from very old events that take shape and sing in their own turn amidst fire”.

Shi Jindian reproduces all sorts of different objects, in their slightest details, with wire and wire mesh: motorcycles, pieces of clothing, clouds, rocks, doors, cithara with seven strings. Those many modern time objects stand for timelessness. It constitutes a whole iconography that he covers up entirely with wire, providing a decorating impression, hence creating a genuine husk to the object.

It is a real jeweler’s work, poised between fullness and emptiness, destruction and creation: his sculpture is coming to existence only to the point when it is given up to flames.

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SINCLAIR Peter

France

In residency: december 2009

Peter SINCLAIR is an artist using the audio as a main medium. Engaged into artistic practices bounded to technologies he treats these mediums with a critical, sometimes ironic glance, operating encounters between people and machines to create new situations. His work evolves of the comic mechanics, by way of computers diversion, up to performances.
He teaches at the Superior Art School of Aix-en-Provence where he is responsible for the department sound since 1996. He is also a member of Scientist Council of the Research and Innovation Office in Visual Arts Division of the Culture Ministry and co-manages with Jérôme Joy the research laboratory and the 3rd session audio art program Locus Sonus.

In the residence Rhizome, he developed the Road Music project, from Lijiang to Zhongdian in association with Peggy ARRAOU, and settled a opened microphone within the project framework Locustream, audio Tardis.

http://petersinclair.org // http://nujus.net // http://locusonus.org

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WEI Qingji

China

WEI Qingji uses ink and silk paper but stands in contrast with traditional dogmas: composing the background of his works, newspaper articles provide an opaque feeling, a component filled of chatter-like sounds and noises. He uses brown tea color with which he draws an entire Chinese iconography entangled with western cultural stereotypes: dragon, little girl, lotus flowers, military person, dog, temple...

WEI Qingji is an artist and an intellectual personality who questions his role and his art amidst Chinese culture and especially in its encounter with the western world. He has exhibited his works in the most famous galleries across the world.
With this remaining question, yet unanswered: what is China becoming?

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Winter Story

France

In residency: august 2010

Winter Story is a living format, created by Sarah TROUCHE, performance artist and Benjamin HERR, architect.

The Act’N go project tries to propose an artistic laboratory to artists of various disciplines and nationalities.

With: François Cathala, Mathilde Ganancia, Benjamin Herr and Sarah Trouche.

www.winterstory.weebly.com

Wu Jun

China

"It took me nearly half a year to be treated in hospital, lying on the bed. There are many kinds of tube in my body and I could not move… My wounds could not be cicatrized and I have to suffer the pain…. I can't eat nor drink, and only can be survived depending on the nutrient fluid… No one can know what happen tomorrow. I have no confidence, I must banish self-pride and shame feeling to be only a thing that was manipulated by others.
"I want to survive" this belief helps me to come back from the death, just like a miracle. The happiness of re-obtaining the life changed my attitude to life. "