Qingni is Qinmin’s best friend; they were high school desk-mates. Both of them went to the West Coast of the United States for collage. Now both Qinmin and Qingni live in New York City; they are still best friends. Qinmin’s art practice drew heavily from their friendship and the experience of living in-between worlds.
QINGNI QINMIN is an immersive installation and performance conceived by artist Liu Qinmin, and marks the second chapter in an ongoing research-based work “REAL PLAYER 56.” The artist positions herself as a cultural contradiction, mixing autobiographical story-telling, choreographed movements, music, sculpture, and the allure of entertainment. The artist and five dancers will articulate personal takes on everyday cultural conflicts through Chinese folk dance, hip-hop choreography, Chinese ethnic costuming, global pop music, and handmade wearable objects. The project reinvestigates the idea of authenticity in any claim to “real culture,” and introduces unexpected hybrids from genres previously considered utterly unrelated. Creating REAL PLAYER 56 project has been an unique writing process for the artist. It is fictional, fragmented, improvisational, and funny as it is real. It lends a delirious new voice to those who always had to do so through mastering other “languages.”
Curated by Xin Wang. With special thanks to Chambers Fine Art for their generous support and Asian Contemporary Art Week 2018 for featuring the performance in the ACAW Open Studio
“In Qingni Qinmin, I intended to explore a more complexed visual structure, it is more like a process of creating an animation. The second chapter is different than the first chapter. I gave up the idea of “creating a great structure or choreographic work. Then, I deleted a lot of solos/ narratives. I tried to delete myself from this chapter too. During this process, I am more interested in using a basic visual choreographic tool– Storyboard. I went back to this simple but exhausted working process. It requires my concentration on details and transition. Every single storyboard is a visual narrative, an image. If a tiny detail went wrong, all the stories will be affected. Audience will feel uncomfortable. Therefore, it is so hard to be complete.”– Qinmin Liu
Thanks to:
Qingni Qinmin performer：Alexandra Carter，Jun Zhou，Liana Kleinman, Nina Moss, Zixin Liu.
Music credit ：Royksopp, Ryuichi Sakamoto，Acid Arab，Audrey Hepburn
For images and more information, please visit the artist’s website: https://www.qinminarts.com/thank-you-letter
xin wang 