At left: a handpainted silk protective mask featured in the Shanghai Art Museum’s online anti-SARS art show. Check out this bas-relief portrait from the same show. The museum’s online exhibit features the work of professional artists — not “folk art” per se — and pulls together works from similar, smaller projects at museums and galleries throughout the region.
This Newsweek article has more details, and examines how painters, sculptors, filmmakers, playwrights, and ‘Net artists throughout Asia are exploring the epidemic’s cultural impact through art:
“At least seven SARS movies are rumored to be in the works — including one that will tell the story of a Chinese nurse, modeled after Florence Nightingale, but set in modern SARS-crisis days. The City of SARS director Steve Cheng is hopeful that his flick will capture a momentous time in history. ‘No other event like this may pass my way again,’ he says. But with scientists worried that the outbreak will resume this fall, SARS may become as much a fixture in Asian art as it is in Asian life.”
What exactly is “folk art” in the digital age? During the past few days, our readers have been hashing that out via email and on the SARS art thread discuss board. BoingBoing pal JohnVon submits this to the ongoing debate: an excerpt from a DeBug magazine interview with Sean Booth of electronica group Autechre.
“Folk has always been economically defined. [Consider] indie [guitar
band] music, the cheapest thing to buy in the 80s was probably a guitar
and a little fuzzbox, so they made guitar and fuzzbox music… there is
very little independent music that uses guitars anymore cause it just
costs more then computers, end of story. Computers are just the cheapest
way for people to make music now… The next few years there is going to
be a really major upsurge cause now it is not only kids that are into
electronic music or dance music that are using computers it’s everyone.
Anyone who is into music is getting one.”
More SARS art contributions from BoingBoing readers: Madrid-based blogger Marta spotted this and this painted on Barcelona streets; Mike contributes this card game; Rich found snarky new tshirts; JohnVon dug up a gem of Chinese government doublespeak prose; Alan shares a sign.
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