TANG SONG
Tang Song studied at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now the China Academy of Art) during the 1980s. He is noted for his collaboration with the artist Xiao Lu in the ‘China/Avant-Garde Exhibition’ on 5 February 1989 at the National Art Museum of China. At this exhibition Xiao shot at her own work, Dialogue. However, Tang, mistaken as the shooter, was arrested until Xiao confessed to her gunshot. Both artists were subsequently detained. Tang and Xiao immigrated to Australia in December of that year, but have since returned to China.
“I prefer taking action; even if I were not engaged in art, I would still prefer taking action, which has something to do with my military service. All talk and no action is boring. But gradually, actions are memorialized or labeled as ‘performance art’. This includes painting—which is a form of performance; and photography, which is also a form of performance. Why? Because performance is fundamental. Without performance, everything else is just fluff.”
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