Gao Brothers
previous projects

THE UTOPIA OF HUGGING

As featured on:

RADIO 4 TODAY, 28.04.2006 HUGGING JOHN HUMPHRYS [audio]
RADIO 4 TODAY, letters and emails, 29.04.2006 audio clip
RADIO 5 LIVE, 28.04.2006
BBC NEWS BREAKFAST & BBC NEWS 24, 28.04.2006 article incl. video
BBC NEWS NOTTINGHAM, 02.05.2006 article incl. audio clip
BBC WORLD SERVICE, 01.05.2006
ITV NEWS, 30.04.2006
THE GUARDIAN, 22.04.2006: Chinese Artists Cross the Red Line

Audio links on this page require Realplayer

On Sunday the 30th April 2006 people in Nottingham took part in what is thought to be the first ever mass hugging event staged in Britain and part of the Gao Brothers’ global World Hug Day series of performances. More than 100 visitors gathered in the Arboretum where they were invited to hug a stranger for 15 minutes before joining in a group hug. The event was accompanied by choral music composed by J S Bach.

Commenting on the Nottingham event, the Gao Brothers said that the Britrish people had invented a new form of 'creative hugging'.

A video of the event is online at:

www.world-hug-day.net/Nottingham [QuickTime]

...and on CULTURETV (archive)

Web Photo Gallery www.gaobrothers.net/images

Gao Zhen, 50, and Gao Qiang, 44, from Shandong province were on a government blacklist and unable to leave China until 2003. But they are now part of a new wave of Chinese artists wowing galleries abroad. Famous for the social sculpture: Hug, a work that encourages strangers to embrace, they also use photography to explore social and political topics, such as protesting peasants and sexuality.

Digital Art Projects founded in 2004, is a network of artists interested in international collaboration, for example Field of Vision, a pioneering artwork that fuses photography, performance and the moving image.The group works between the UK and Berlin with its permanent virtual base on the web-servers at the Institute for New Media in Frankfurt a.M. [INM]. The group has initiated projects with artists whose home countries are as far apart as Taiwan, Mexico, Brazil, Finland, Poland, Russia, Turkey, Slovenia, Chile, Nigeria, Senegal, USA, Canada, UK, Germany, Ireland, Australia, Serbia, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Italy and South Africa.

COMING SOON
World Hug Day will continue in Marseille on the 9th of June, running concurrently with an international travelling photo exhibition documenting all performances so far.

The Gao Brothers are now working with Digital Art Projects on 'Field of Vision: Beijing' and are inviting artists worldwide to participate through a 'Call for Submissions' at

www.field-of-vision.net/Beijing

The live event will be held in the Gao Brothers' gallery Beijing New Art Projects which is located in the controversial Dashanzi Art District in September 2006.

This will be followed by Field of Vision: Berlin in 2007 and later 'Field of Vision: London'.

HISTORY
Speaking about their first performance of a group hug THE UTOPIA OF HUGGING FOR TWENTY MINUTES in Shangdong Province, China, in September 2000 the Gao Brothers explain:

"We invited some 150 volunteers, who were previously strangers to each other, to participate. We asked the participants to choose a person at random for a hug, which they would then do simultaneously with hundreds of other couples. We then asked everyone present to cluster into one big group hug. Since then, we personally have hugged hundreds of strangers and organised group hugs amongst strangers in different public locations and in different ways all across China."