150073 SE Juchang as Method - A Performance and Communication Project with Young Artists in China (2023S)

The concept of "juchang" (literally "the field of theatre") was proposed by Li Yinan, based on her many years of theoretical and practical endeavors in dramaturgy and documentary theatre at the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing. Li Yinan regards juchang as a somaesthetic (Shusterman 2006) and critical perspective in theatre studies as well as in social construction. By combining in-depth interviews with Chinese partners, physical training, and theatre performance, the students learn to communicate on an equal basis and thus to achieve a new way of knowledge production.

This course is designed especially for the students of Chinese Studies at the University of Vienna. The students taking this course will have the opportunity to communicate with the young artists in China who participate in the art project "Voices from the Iron House", which will have its world premiere in May 2023.

The year 2022 was for many an unusual year that should be recorded in history. This feeling is especially intense for Chinese young people of the new generation (born after 2000). They spent important forging years in their life in extreme conditions, experienced unprecedentedly strict lockdowns and, at the end of the year, a sudden, unprepared, and shocking "liberation".

2023 started quietly. This year also marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of Lu Xun's (1881-1936) "Nahan, Outcry", the first short story collection in modern Chinese. In 1923, Lu Xun wrote in its preface:
"Suppose an iron house has no windows and is indestructible, and there are many sleeping people in it, who will soon be suffocated to death, but they don't feel the pain and sorrow when they go from sleep to death. Now you cry out. Do you think you are doing them a favor by awakening those who are more sane and by causing this unfortunate few to suffer irreparably dying pain?"

In 2023, one hundred years later, young Chinese artists will set up a small "iron house" on the Day of the Youth (May 4th) in Beijing. Through videos, installations and interactive performances, they will let their voices be heard.

In the first week of May, the Vienna students will first have the opportunity to watch the premiere of this art project as invited special guests. Then they will be divided into small groups (2-3 people) and each group will start close, personal communication with a young Chinese artist participating in the "Iron House" project. Through mutual interviews, the young people from both places will share their experiences during the year 2022, their understanding of the "iron house" (what could the iron house mean to a young person living in Vienna? Will the iron house continue to exist in/after 2023? Is it breakable? How to break it?) Starting with this individual communication, the Vienna students will gather materials in order to make an original contribution to the project at the end of the semester on the Campus of the University of Vienna. This could be a simple lecture performance or take a bolder experimental form. Besides the exchange with the Chinese artists, the students will also be offered theatre workshops.

One of the aims of the course is first to connect people of the new generation in an era of crisis. Secondly, it will make the students reflect upon processes of knowledge production and learn to use juchang as a method of Chinese Studies. Against the actual background of wars, epidemics, and the increasingly tense international relations because of nationalism (in a narrow, negative sense) and conservatism, the course seeks to build an cross-cultural platform to face the crisis together and to think about the ways of modernization of the human societies.