The exhibition "Translated Acts" is the first in a three-part series of
exhibitions at the House of World Cultures to be held by renowned guest
curators from New York. Yu Yeon Kim, Okwui Enwezor and Salah Hassan will
present artistic positions for the House of World Cultures which have
hitherto received only inadequate attention on the German exhibition
circuit. They will present artists from Africa, Asia and the two Americas
whose work calls critically into question the existing divide between
periphery and centre, Western and non-Western art.

The Korean Yu Yeon Kim will hold the first exhibition "Translated Acts:
Body and Performance Art from East Asia": The internationally renowned
curator, in her exhibition at the House of World Cultures, will present
multimedia works by twentyeight artists and groups of artists from China,
Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Berlin is the first stop for this international
exhibition which will subsequently be shown at the Queens Modern Museum,
New York, as well as various museums in East Asia.

"It seems to me" the curator says about her work, "that Western art history
has failed terribly in the record of its relationship to non-European
cultures and has a definite tendency to mistranslate, misinterpret and
denigrate art that has come from Asia, Africa the Middle East and South
America. ... Overall, contemporary performance art in East Asia, whether as
a form of political protest or an expression of social and spiritual
anguish, has taken cultural practice far beyond the walls of museum and
gallery and cause us to reassess the way we derive meaning from art, and in
particular the way we evaluate non-European art."

The works in the exhibition "Translated Acts" revolve around the perception
of the body in the context of the increasingly urbanised and technologised
societies of East Asia. The artists show the manipulated, deformed or newly
created virtual body as a projection screen for social conflicts and new
sexual identities, as a medium of political protest and spiritual
recollection.
"Translated Acts" here means the translation and expansion of performing
action into the area of electronic and digital media, or rather the penetration of the body into networked, virtual space.
Many examples of contemporary performance and body art from East Asia are
not in accordance with usual expectations. They extend from dramatic and
emphatically political protest through to complex social and emotional
alienations. Thus for instance Japanese artists began using technology and
electronic media contemporaneously with the economic boom of the eighties
in order to highlight the rifts in Japanese culture. In China political
repression led to a search for new ways of and opportunities for
performance in secret. Video thereby became the most popular medium. As in
China, so in Taiwan performance art was also often a form of political
protest. Contrastingly, in South Korea, performances were often organised
close to the border with North Korea and related to the contradictory
ideologies and systems of belief which have developed as a consequence of
the Korean War. Thus these works of art reflect in a very particular way
both the unparalleled economic, social and cultural upheavals Asia has
experienced since the Second World War, and the enduring influence of the
religious and philosophical currents of Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism.
o The photographic essays of the famous Taiwanese artist Chieh-jen CHEN are digital reconstructions of his own body in multiple and often dismembered
performance sculptures.
o The digitalised images of Mariko MORI show the Japanese artist cloned and
superimposed in various moments of simultaneity. Her work contains
references to Buddhist and Shinto ideas of repetition and reincarnation.
o The Japanese artist HIROMIX documents her everyday life and that of her
teenage friends in Polaroid snapshots. Her "Photos of Girls" are reflective
portraits and at the same time the expression of a fetishistic objectivisation of young women and the things that surround them.
o ZHANG Huan's performance "My America" from the series "Hard to
Acclimatize" was created in the USA. The Chinese artist, the only Asian,
leads an event with naked men and women, defined by apparently ritual acts.
o With his video installation the Hongkong artist HO Siu Kee develops a
space whose proportions are oriented on those of the artist's body. "Golden
Proportion" reflects the fundamentals of human being and action.

Yu Yeon Kim, the curator of the exhibition, was born in South Korea. She
lives as an independent art curator in New York and Seoul and is co-founder
of the Internet art organisation PLEXUS. In 1997 she was curator of the
exhibition "In the Eye of the Tiger" and was the representative of the 2nd
Johannesburg Biennale for the exhibition "Transversions". In 1998 she put
together the Asia-Pacific section of "Cinco Continentes y Una Ciudad" in
Mexico. In 1999 she received a research grant from the Asian Cultural
Council and organised the Latin American section for the 3rd Kwangju
Biennale in South Korea in 2000. Her essays have been published in "Art
Asia Pacific", "Wolgan Missol", "Atlantica", "Flash Art" and "Intelligent
Agent" among others.

The Artists in the Exhibition
Korea: Hey-Yeun Jang, Kim Young Jin, Michael Joo, Atta Kim, Ja-Young Ku,
Young Kyun Lim
China: Huan Zhang, Gu Wenda, Zhu Jia, Qi Li, Ho Siu Kee, Ma Liuming, Lin
Tian Miao, Wang Gong Xin, Wang Jian Wei, Wang Xiaoshuai, Xu Bing, Qui
Zhijie
Japan: Dumb Type, Hiromix, Takehito Koganesawa, Mariko Mori, Chiharu
Shiota, Motohiko Odani
Taiwan: Chen Chieh-jen, Hsieh Tehching, Lin Chun-chi, Yuan Goang-ming

The Translated Acts exhibition will be complemented by "Body Performances
in a Virtual Space" by the Japanese group Dumb Type. From 22 March to 8
April, every full hour from 4.00pm to 7.00pm, their multimedia installation
Cascade will be presented in the foyer of the House of World Cultures. The
group of artists creates new forms of production, thereby providing
consistent answers to the modern state of consciousness in our times.