SinoNet: PEN-Lesung am Montag, 3. Juni für den inhaftierten Autor Li Bifeng, inkl. Werke aus Taiwan.

[Jacqueline and Martin Winter]

What is Chinese literature about? What is art about, in any medium, time or place? The reading for the imprisoned underground poet and activist Li Bifeng 李必豐 on June 3rd, 2013 in Vienna (http://penclub.at/events/worldwide-reading-fur-li-bifeng/, and see attached pdf) will include works by a diverse range of authors. Li Bifeng has become known through his association with Liao Yiwu, the exiled poet and documentary writer, now in Berlin. On his own, judging from his available work and his literary impact in China, even in dissident circles, Li Bifeng would not have become famous. This doesn't mean he is not worth reading. But he has had little opportunity to find an audience, and not everything that is available online now is as compelling as Liao Yiwu's signature poem Massacre, or any other famous piece of writing in Chinese. Actually, none of the works by Li Bifeng I have read up to now sound very dissident at all. They are "just art", so to speak. He could have published them, as a different person.

On May 3rd, 2013, we had a very interesting workshop and discussion at Vienna University's East Asia Institute, on literature in East Asia. It was initiated by Lena Springer, who invited Zhang Chengjue (Cheung Shing Kok) 張成覺, expert on the year 1957 and the so-called Anti-Rightists-Campaign in China. Zhang and Springer were inspired by Lu Xun expert Qian Liqun from Peking University, who called for research on the late 1950s in China across disciplines. The workshop in Vienna was about censorship, political changes, publishing conditions and (self-)perceptions of artistic quality. Professor Schirmer told us about a debate in South Korea more than 20 years ago. A big-wig critic who became culture minister later published an essay, lamenting the lame state of Korean literature. A poet responded and said he had poems that could not be published, and his friends also had literature that could not be published because it would be considered dangerous, unstable, unsettling. 不穩。The critic said he didn't understand. Surely good art would be independent of politics and would only need imagination and talent? Not so, the poet replied. Art is potentially unsettling, if it is powerful art at all. The critic didn't get it again. Sounded very much like Prof. Kubin and his friends in China. Also like Taiwan 30 years ago, of course.

Besides works by Li Bifeng, the reading for Li Bifeng in Vienna will include texts by Li Khin-huann (Taiwan), Shih Ming-te and Shih Ming-cheng (Taiwan), famous fiction writer Liu Zhenyun 劉震云 (Henan, Beijing), the female migrant worker poet Zheng Xiaoqiong 鄭小瓊 (Dongguan), famous iconoclastic poet Yi Sha (Xi’an) and last but not least Zhao Siyun, whose poem for June 5th was introduced by Michael Day on the MCLC list in 2010. Maybe also “Farewell to the 20th century” by Song Tik-lai 宋澤萊, if we have time. Or other stuff from Taiwan and other places.

Martin
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