Performative strategies in contemporary Chinese avant-garde poetry

The paper presents an attempt to explore the problem of mediality in Chinese poetry of the last thirty years. New Chinese poetry is particularly susceptible to the influence of the latest concepts of modern art and now more than ever needs a clear contextualization in relation to other forms of culture and avant-garde practice. This can be achieved through applying an analysis paradigm for performative word art developed by Dr. Tomáš Glanc in the context of Czech and Russian neo-avant-garde. It perceives experimental poetry as a form that fulfills a shift of the word thus making it labile. Examples of this phenomena can be found in Chinese poetry in the works of Ouyang Jianghe, Yang Xiaobin, Ouyang Yu, Xia Yu, Chen Li, Xu Bing, Wuqing and many more experimental artists. Their creative use of word shift principles shows how performative strategies are adapted in contemporary Chinese poetry keeping in mind the specific hanzi (character) medium that it is based upon. It seems both a continuation of a long-existing tradition and a radical exploration of the ‘iconic turn’ in the field of language.