From Dream Studios to DreamWorks to…？R&D for a New Aesthetic Education Season 2, Episode 1 2022，01.08 - 2022，01.152022，02.22 - 2022，03.04南京艺术学院美术馆，南京，中国NO.5 Hall + International Conference Hall, Art Museum of Nanjing University of the Arts, Nanjing, China
李明 Li Ming 沈莘 Shen Xin 徐文恺 aaajiao 周滔 Zhou Tao 张鼎 Zhang Ding 郑源 Zheng Yuan
Produced and made by Wang Yamin
王亚敏
Team
Tang Xiao 汤笑 Tai Ziyue 邰梓悦 Di Zhengjie 狄政杰
Supported by 当代美术研究所-南京艺术学院Institute for Contemporary Art Nanjing(ICAN) 敬请注意加映等活动Screening and Special events schedule TBD
搏击的动作如何成为一种“美学活动”？作为一段动作影像，《猛龙过江》（Way of the Dragon）中李振藩（Breuce Lee）和查克·罗礼士（Chuck Norris）在古罗马斗兽场（Amphitheatrum Flavium）的桥段为什么会成为经典之一，成为众多影像生产——不论是电影工业产品， 还是艺术家“创制”的“影像艺术”，还是今天大众社交媒体影像劳动的——不断参考和引用的源泉。一定有某些一般的，通用的，关于动作的，魅惑的，政治和伦理的DNA铭刻在这一动作（演绎）中？
It's not simply a matter of who dies and lives, but rather, how the act of fighting for life and death becomes an "aesthetic activity." Why has the scene in Way of the Dragon featuring Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris in the Amphitheatrum Flavium become a classic among action films, a source of constant reference for much of moving image production – whether it is film industry products or "video art" created by artists, or today's mass social media. Can it be there is some general, universal, charismatic, essential, aesthetic and ethical DNA embedded in this performance?
Action movies are only a prominent case of a certain type of performative act and gesture. It seems that the project's retrieval of this "act" in artists' video works is at the level of general representation of the human's acts. However, it is an attempt at describing and contemplating a core moving image – "The Act as a Gesture" in the first exhibition and screening attempts to cover various "acts" as "moving images created by artists": labor and its rehearsal, physical discipline or development, motions as ideology, performance, competition, life management, etc. Among these "acts", the more orderly one is: as a moving image created by the artist, its shooting itself is also a kind of act, a general action as a gesture. A question of the action about an action? The initial context of The Action as a Gesture stems from the judgment that "general" encompasses the demands on aesthetic education in the current era. However, the current era in the culture, art and film industries does not really reflect this "general" requirement, or at least does not take up the function of creative aesthetic education, does not take up the task of leading and transforming people. They excavate and mobilize the general potential and vernacular of contemporary people, either indifferent and passively backward, or deliberately concealed. When it comes to our current mass appeal, it fails to tell a story of the masses. As an imaginary, public, educational program of the college and its extended exhibition activities, Action will attempt to continuously cover: 1) Films/video works and fragments in the general intellectual sense of archives, teaching materials, knowledge, etc.; 2) "Artists' films/videos"; 3) Mass (film) moving image production as "non-art" production (such as social media moving image production and consumption, Douyin and Kuaishou, etc.), and so on, trying to extract and summarize their "generality". At the same time, the gaps between the industries of knowledge production and academia, contemporary art and culture, and popular culture become the focus of this project: Is it possible to take the practitioners and products of a certain industry with its own limitations, and bring them into another industrial context, to attempt to release its creative potential and value? Wang Yamin