Ö1 Mittagsjournal (in German) from 02.11.2022 with Wolfgang Popp and an interview with Daniel Birnbaum about Cao Fei's "Safety Curtain" at the Vienna State Opera.
Ö1 Midday Journal: Since 1998, the Safety Curtain at the Vienna State Opera has been designed each season by renowned artists. This year, for the first time, a Chinese artist was invited. “The New Angel” is the title of the work by Cao Fei, who lives in Beijing. Wolfgang Popp reports.
Wolfgang Popp: The head of the young woman fills the entire curtain. Her hairstyle with side buns is traditionally Chinese, but her figure is a being from the digital world. Her skin is silver-grey, and so is the gaze with which she fixes the audience. A gaze that seems to come simultaneously from the past and the future.
Daniel Birnbaum: There is something uncanny about it. She looks at us – you feel watched. I'm very curious how people will react. It's not exactly comfortable.
WP: Says Daniel Birnbaum, who has been a member of the Safety Curtain jury for over 20 years. The artist Cao Fei was unable to attend today’s unveiling due to strict COVID restrictions in China. Her “New Angel” is an avatar she created herself and named China Tracy. Compassionate like a Buddha statue, China Tracy observes the real world without offering any answers, Cao Fei wrote in a statement. Daniel Birnbaum:
DB: Cao Fei is known for her digital experiments. She works with virtual reality. As early as 15 years ago, she was working with Second Life. That might not be widely remembered today – it was a kind of proto-metaverse project.
WP: Back then, Cao Fei created a virtual city whose guardian deity was this China Tracy. A city where the days lasted only four hours and where it was always full moon. A city in which, in a wild collage, architecture from imperial China, the Mao era and the turbo-capitalist decades of recent history stood side by side.
DB: It’s a strange mix of optimism and pessimism. A utopian and dystopian world. On the one hand, amazing – with fragments of China that people will recognise: classical, historical buildings, but also the stadium and the Rem Koolhaas building. It’s a socialist-capitalist, utopian-dystopian vision.
WP: In 2007, the founding year of her virtual city, Cao Fei was invited to the Venice Biennale, where she created the inflatable China Tracy Pavilion, allowing the audience to interact with her avatar. Invitations to the MoMA in New York and Tate Modern in London soon followed. The city that gained her international acclaim was named RMB City, after China’s currency, the Renminbi.
DB: So what is this really about? Is it just about money, or about other utopian possibilities? I’d say she is a critical artist – but not a political one who couldn’t work in China.
WP: With her silent gaze, Cao Fei’s New Angel will look out at the audience of the Vienna State Opera from today until June 2023.