Mangliu on film: Wu Wenguang and the Beijing blind floaters

Abstract

With the loosened Household Registration Policy in China in the late 1980s and early 1990s, peasants flocked to major cities and became peasant workers. Meanwhile, some provincial artists moved to the art capital of Beijing to pursue their artistic careers, among them Wu Wenguang, a pioneering figure in the New Documentary Movement in the 1990s. The two different social groups shared the designation of mangliu because of their similar amorphous or floating lifestyles. In this article, through an analysis of Wu Wenguang’s works in the 1990s and early 2000s, I examine how he documented ‘blind floating’ artists as well as peasant workers, whose life trajectories became entangled. For Wu Wenguang, as representative of provincial artists who lived in the urban-rural fringe of Beijing, his documentation of his contemporary blind floating artists is consistent with his recording of the peasant-turned-blind-floater. I also explore how Wu Wenguang’s aesthetic of xianchang (being on the scene) is in accordance with his self-identification as a blind floating artist who lived in communities with blind floating peasant workers. The collaborative piece Dance with Farm Workers provides a reflection on the utilisation of peasant workers in performance art. Wu Wenguang addressed social issues revolving around peasant workers by revealing their status of being exploited in the collaborative performance between artists and peasant workers. In the guise of collaborative performers, peasant workers were nevertheless caught in a power relationship similar to the one between employer and wage labourer.