Abstract
This chapter argues that performance artworks in China involving the participation of migrant workers over the turn of the century simultaneously demonstrate a desire to fully merge with society through sustained engagement with migrant worker communities, and to create a critical distance between art and society. Two such different notions of the relationship between art and society are demonstrated through two conflicting uses of the concept of site-specificity, or “xianchang” in Chinese, in the 1990s. The paradoxes involved in the use and application of xianchang were a direct reflection of China’s post-socialist condition, which include both the continued embrace of the ideals of socialism and a critical questioning of the repercussions of China’s socialist legacy.
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Eschenburg, M. (2018). Approaches to Xianchang: Documenting the Real in Post-socialist China. In: Cammaer, G., Fitzpatrick, B., Lessard, B. (eds) Critical Distance in Documentary Media. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96767-7_4
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