Art Attack: Weird City Lights, Ghost Ships and Anxiety

This week, while some are clearing out for some filial tombsweeping, we’re congratulating the winner of the JUE Festival Next Gen photo competition, anticipating the maiden voyage of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman and checking out an Israeli artist’s take on how anxiety works its way into art.

While we’re all waiting for this year’s Caochangdi Photospring to come to town, we can enjoy some photography in the form of the JUE Festival’s photo contest winners. Grand Prize-winner Liu Xiaotong went home with RMB 10,000 for his shot of an uncommon string of lights near Lishuiqiao (way up Line 5) in Beijing. See photo, above.

Here’s the photo from runner-up Huang Zhiqiang, which earned him a RMB 3,000 award:

And, here’s the People’s Choice winner, by Shen Peiyu:

Speaking of the sea (because that’s totally the focal point for that photo, right?), Wagner’s opera The Flying Dutchman opens at the NCPA on Monday, April 3. You can read more about this ambitious production in our April issue here (see p56), including how soprano Sun Xiuwei spent her Spring Festival learning the first German libretto she’s ever tackled for a public performance.

Also this weekend, a new exhibit by Israeli artist Keren Cytter is opening at Magician Space in 798. She’s one of those prolific multitaskers who’s made films and written plays and novels. The renovated gallery will be showing four video pieces that play on anxiety. I’d keep a stress ball in your pocket, just in case.

EVENTS THIS WEEK (MAR 30-APR 5):

New Opening:
Keren Cytter: Anxiety as an Artistic Tool
Mar 30-May 20. The Israeli artist posts her first solo exhibition in China, with videos about adultery, bleeding in a bathtub and a one night stand. Free. Magician Space (5840 5117)

Apr 1
Film: The Good Earth
Pearl S. Buck’s novel about Chinese rural life in the 1930s, adapted for cinema. Free. 6.30pm. Modernista (136 7127 4747)

Apr 3-4, 6-8
Opera: The Flying Dutchman
A tale of ghostly sea-born love. The much-anticipated spectacle opens the NCPA’s 2012 Opera Festival. RMB 160-680. 7.30pm. NCPA Opera House (6655 0000)

Apr 4
Film: This is England
A peek at youth skinhead culture in 1980s Britain. But are they really as tough as they try to seem? RMB 40 (includes coffee or tea). 7.30pm. Riverbank Bar and Café (6506 8277)

Photos: Courtesy of JUE Music + Art Festival and ospop