360
The Magazine of San Diego State University
Fall/Winter 2003
Welcome to 360 online! To increase the type size for easier reading, change the percentage field in your toolbar or use the settings found under the “view” tab. To jump from one article to another, use the “table of contents” or “thumbnail” links under the tabs to the left. If no tabs appear, click on the navigation symbol in your toolbar to reveal them. International Inspiration. SDSU students are taking flight as citizens of the world. Real-World Referee. FTC chair Tim Muris rules for consumers and fair competition. One Singular Sensation. Musical theatre hopefuls polish their acts. Teaching Teachers. San Diego State’s original mandate remains a top priority.
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The Magazine of San Diego State University (ISSN 1543-7116) is published quarterly by SDSU Marketing & Communications and distributed to members of the SDSU Alumni Association, faculty, staff and friends. Editor: Sandra Millers Younger Writer: Coleen Geraghty Editorial: Colleen DeLory, Jason Foster, Aaron Hoskins, Kevin Klintworth, Shawn Shook, Jennifer Zwiebel Graphics: Lori Padelford, John Signer Cover Design: Lori Padelford SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY
Stephen L. Weber President DIVISION OF UNIVERSITY ADVANCEMENT
Theresa M. Mendoza Vice President Allan Bailey Chief Financial & Information Officer Jack Beresford Interim Associate Vice President Marketing & Communications Jim Herrick Executive Director, Alumni Association Kim Hill Associate Vice President, Development We welcome mail from our readers. Please submit your comments to: 360 Magazine www.sdsu.edu/360 Marketing & Communications 5500 Campanile Drive San Diego CA 92182-8080 Fax: 619-594-5956 E-mail: 360mag@mail.sdsu.edu Periodical postage paid at San Diego, CA Volume 10, No. 3, copyright 2003 San Diego State University Postmaster: Send address changes to: Information Services San Diego State University 5500 Campanile Drive San Diego CA 92182-8035 Opinions expressed in 360 Magazine are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the university administration nor those of The California State University Board of Trustees. Member, Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE)
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One Singular Sensation With ev’ry move that they make, musical theatre students grow as scholars and performers. By Colleen DeLory
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Departments Directions
Alumni Angles
From the President 2
Faculty Montys Winners 35
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International Inspiration Given an open window, more and more students are taking flight as citizens of the world. Provost Nancy Marlin planned it that way. By Coleen L. Geraghty
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Real-World Referee FTC Chairman Tim Muris rules in favor of consumers and fair competition. By Sandra Millers Younger
Teaching Teachers After 106 years, San Diego State’s original mandate remains a top priority. By Sandra Millers Younger
Campus News 6
Horizons Inner Space, Outer Space 12
Philanthropy The President’s Leadership Fund 34
By Degrees International Humanitarian Tom Weismann 40
r pm To gauge the degree of change in a country, study its art. A window on the effects of rapid change in China will open to the public this month at San Diego State’s University Art Gallery. Partnering with several Balboa Park museums, SDSU’s School of Art, Design and Art History has organized two striking exhibitions of photographs and video pieces by young Chinese artists deeply influenced by their country’s rush to modernization. Taken as a whole, the images reflect a new China, saturated by Western media and wrestling with the warring notions of conformity versus individualism, traditional romance versus modern sensuality. The University Art Gallery will display works from the collection of SDSU alumni Eloisa and Chris Haudenschild. Together, Eloisa Haudenschild and Tina Yapelli, director of the University Art Gallery, organized and curated the landmark exhibitions, which will run through April. Haudenschild has also commissioned a new video work by Shanghai artist Yang Zhenzhong during his residency at SDSU this semester. The completed video will debut the evening of Jan. 31, 2004 at the San Diego Museum of Photographic Arts. Earlier that day, the San Diego Museum of Art will host a symposium on contemporary Chinese art, also organized by Yapelli and Haudenschild. Several internationally known curators and artists will serve as presenters. Many artists in the Haudenschild Collection have exhibited in Europe and Asia, but not in the U.S., placing San Diego State in the vanguard of institutions recognizing this emerging genre. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art recently purchased one of Xiang Liqing’s “Rock Never” series of six photographs. A complete series of the “Rock Never” photographs is in the Haudenschild Collection; a detail is shown at right. Haudenschild, who describes the exhibition as “witty and intelligent,” believes it provides rare insight into a mysterious but shifting culture. “It’s reasonable said. “There is a hyperactivity of color and fantasy, as if they are imagining the world as better than it is.” –Coleen Geraghty
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FALL/WINTER 2003
Detail. Artist: Xiang
to conclude that these artists are reacting to the speed of change in China,” she
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Zooming into Focus Sliding into History By Britta Erickson published in the Zooming into Focus catalog, 2005 As the opening of Zooming into Focus: Contemporary Chinese Photography and Video from the Haudenschild Collection at its final venue—the National Gallery in Beijing—draws near, it is time to pause and reflect on the exhibition’s significance. Since its inaugural showing in 2003, at the University Art Gallery, the San Diego State University (U.S.A.), the exhibition has travelled to the Shanghai Art Museum (China), the Centro Cultural Tijuana (Mexico), the Institute of Contemporary Arts (Singapore) and, now, the National Gallery in Beijing (China). During these two years, interest in contemporary Chinese photography and video has mushroomed. When Eloisa and Chris Haudenschild began collecting, only specialists in the field had heard of the young artists whose works so fascinated the Haudenschilds. Now, many of those same artists are in very high demand for international exhibitions and important collections. The Haudenschilds were prescient in their focus, driven by Eloisa’s enthusiasm, and guided by Lorenz Helbling, director of ShanghART in Shanghai. Two years ago, Chinese photography and video was poised on the brink, its sheer energy, mass and quality readying it for launch into an international presence. Just last year, the major exhibition, Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China (2004),i did much to promote Chinese photography and video, with a touring schedule that includes New York, Chicago, Seattle, Berlin, and Santa Barbara. Yang Fudong’s nomination for a Hugo Boss Prize in 2004 signified that the international art arena was ready to seriously consider new media artists from China. In 2005, Oxford University Press added entries on three Chinese video artists to the online reference work, Grove Art Online.ii Clearly, Chinese photography and video has come of age since Zooming into Focus first opened in 2003. As the exhibition of a private collection, Zooming into Focus has had a certain nimbleness and allure. Representing a personal vision, it has not been expected to present a complete or historic view of the field. Nevertheless, it has captured a major slice of Chinese photography and video, representative of a signal moment. Private collections are well suited to capturing the life of a vibrant art movement, driven as they are by passion, unencumbered by institutional impedimenta. The Haudenschilds’ enthusiasm for the field extends beyond collecting: as part of the overall Zooming into Focus program, they have commissioned new works (not necessarily collectible), have sponsored lectures and video screenings, and have supported two symposia focusing on contemporary Chinese photography and video, in San Diego and Hangzhou. Because Zooming into Focus has been exhibited in diverse parts of the globe, its significance shifting with place and time, I have asked people close to the collection and to the exhibition for their thoughts on what Zooming into Focus has meant.
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The haudenschildGarage ON THE COLLECTION Lorenz Helbling Director of ShanghART The collection is a very “open” collection. “Open” may be a strange word here; I mean different things. It a collection of works of artists who are themselves very open, exploring new ways, asking more questions than giving answers, artists also who are still developing. It doesn't aim to fix images people should have of China, or to transmit stereotypes of China. It is not about “signature works” or “trophy pieces”—it's more about a spirit, about involvement. It is an open cooperation between a special collector, artists, curators and a gallery. It is not an overview, it is an entrance. Eugene Tan Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore The Haudenschild collection is, for me, exemplary of good art collecting practices. It is not only impressive for the way the Haudenschilds have built up such a significant and focused collection during a short period of time, it is also exemplary for the attitude they have adopted in their support of the artists whose work they collect. By exhibiting their collection in Singapore, it was also my intention to draw attention to the way the Haudenschilds go about their collecting activities, and raise awareness of the role and responsibilities of collectors. Tina Yapelli Director of the University Art Gallery, San Diego State University The Haudenschild Collection consisted of approximately a dozen pieces when I first proposed the project to Eloisa. In part because of my interest in exhibiting the work at San Diego State University, Eloisa was inspired and encouraged to both broaden and deepen the collection, which is now the most important collection of contemporary Chinese photography and video in the world. ON THE EXHIBITION Lorenz Helbling The most important thing is, of course, that this collection could happen. But it is also very important that such prominent museums here in China were ready to show this kind of art. Eugene Tan As the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore is committed to showcasing significant trends as well as the best examples of contemporary art practice, Zooming into Focus was an ideal exhibition for us to organise at the gallery. Not only does the exhibition highlight a major trend among contemporary Chinese artists towards the use of video and photography, many of the artists in the exhibition are also internationally renowned, thereby providing audiences in
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The haudenschildGarage Singapore a rare opportunity to see their works. . . . [It] was also a ‘first’ for Singapore to have an exhibition of this kind, a major exhibition of contemporary Chinese photography and video. It was an important exhibition for highlighting and raising the level of discourse of photography and video in Singapore. Photography and video are still, as yet, relatively new mediums in art practice in Singapore. It was therefore useful for artists and the public to see how widely used these media are and also the interesting and innovative ways in which Chinese artists are using them. Li Xu, Curator Shanghai Art Museum This exhibition was the first time for the Shanghai Art Museum to exhibit a collection of Chinese contemporary art from the United States, and the first time for a special group show of Chinese video and photography in this museum (although some of the artists or works had been shown here in some other exhibitions). The audience and media were very excited about the exhibition. It seemed as if they had discovered some kind of new cultural environment in one night, but these artists and works had already been in Mainland China for a long time! The importance of the exhibition is in no doubt: it showed some truth of Chinese contemporary art to the public and to the cultural circle, and it prodded the Chinese art museum circle to realize it would be very important to start collecting video and photography works. Teresa Vicencio Alvarez General Director of the CECUT Zooming into Focus was the first contemporary Chinese photography exhibition that took place in the Centro Cultural Tijuana. The fast growth that has characterized our city is also one of the characteristics of the society in which these fourteen Chinese artists have lived, being this a generator of the wide interest from the artistic community, art and design students of the state, as well as an important amount of articles in the local press. Tina Yapelli Working with Eloisa Haudenschild to organize the exhibition allowed me an invaluable opportunity to bring to San Diego (and to southern California) work that would not otherwise be shown in the region. The project was groundbreaking, as it was the first exhibition to feature the current generation of Chinese photographers and videographers, whose work had been featured in Europe and elsewhere, but not in the United States. The artists' residencies were extremely significant for the University, as they provided students the incredible experience of working with two of the artists (Yang Zhenzhong and Shi Yong). In the case of Yang, students were involved in the creation of a new work commissioned by the Haudenschild Collection,
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The haudenschildGarage which premiered at the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego. They also assisted him in the continuation of his ongoing project "I Will Die." Another reason the project was important was because it created a network of collaboration with institutions in San Diego and Tijuana: the San Diego Museum of Art; the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego; the Centro Cultural Tijuana, Mexico; El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Tijuana, Mexico; and the San Diego Chinese Historical Society and Museum. There is the general sense that everywhere, the exhibition was breaking new ground, supporting the development of the field, sparking the interest of local artists, and forging new institutional alliances. The San Diego, Tijuana, and Singapore venues had not previously exhibited Chinese art of this kind; in China the museums had not shown a comprehensive exhibition of photography and video. Perhaps in the latter case, the fact that the exhibition was drawn from a foreign collection gave it a certain attraction, even imprimatur. As Lorenz Helbling commented, “It is an entrance.” Zooming into Focus has served as an exemplary entrée en matière, with lasting repercussions. i
Co-organized by the Smart Museum, University of Chicago and the International Center of Photography, New York, in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and the Asia Society, New York; curated by Wu Hung and Christopher Phillips. ii Britta Erickson, Biographical entries on Song Dong, Yang Fudong, Zhang Peili, Grove Art Online, Oxford University Press, September 2005, http://www.groveart.com/
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Contemporaneity in Experimental Chinese Photography By Wu Hung published in the Zooming into Focus catalog, 2005 Photography became art again in China in the late 1970s and 1980s. Whereas this visual technology was largely reduced to a propaganda tool during the first thirty years of the People’s Republic, it reconnected with individual expression after the Cultural Revolution (1966—1976) was over. The April Photographic Society—the first unofficial photo club in post-Cultural Revolution China—emerged in 1978; the exhibition it organized in Beijing the following year, entitled Nature, Society, Human, attracted a huge audience hungry for images outside the official media. The 1980s witnessed a delayed introduction of the major schools and masters of western photography from before World War II. Their techniques as well as social and artistic aspirations influenced a generation of young Chinese photographers, whose first goal, not unexpectedly, was to regain photography’s credibility as a record of real social events and human lives. The result was a sustained “documentary movement” from the 1980s to the early 1990s, which produced many works with a strong political agenda, either exploring the dark side of society—poverty, deprivation, social stratification, and political injustice—or glorifying an idealized, timeless Chinese civilization unspoiled by Communist ideology. This initial process, which Chinese critics have termed a “Photographic New Wave” (sheying xinchao), lasted about a decade and laid the ground for a new generation of photographers to undertake wide-ranging artistic experiments beyond realism and symbolism. Photography became linked to an ongoing experimental art movement in the early and mid-1990s, employed by avant-garde artists to record performances and staged scenes. Since then, a brand of image-making, often referred to by Chinese artists and critics as “experimental photography” (shiyan sheying), has grown into a broad trend; its continuous, exciting development over the past decade has been characterized by non-stop reinvention, abundant production, multifaceted experimentation, and cross-fertilization with other art forms. While “experimental photographers” find inspiration in performance, installation, and multimedia art, painters, performers, and installation artists routinely employ photography in their work, sometimes even reinventing themselves as full-time photographers. Photography now plays a central role in contemporary Chinese art because of its openness to new visual technology such as digital imaging, and because it most effectively challenges the conventional boundaries between fiction and reality, art and commerce, object and subject, thereby inspiring and permeating various kinds of art experiments in China. Zooming into Focus: Contemporary Chinese Photography from the Haudenschild Collection showcases some of the most recent developments in this experimental art. Most works on display were created in the past five years, while a considerable number date from 2000 to 2002. The exhibition thus has an acute focus on contemporaneity in a twofold sense—the contemporaneity of China as a rapidly changing society, and the contemporaneity of photography as a constantly selfinventing art form. In terms of subject matter, these images demonstrate the artists’ overwhelming concern with their living environment and their own identity. A striking aspect of Chinese cities in the 1990s and 2000s has been a never-ending destruction and construction. Old houses are coming down everyday to make room
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The haudenschildGarage for new hotels and shopping malls. Thousands and thousands of people have been relocated from the inner city to the outskirts; in their place a new “urban generation” has begun to invent a globalized culture for itself. This situation is the context and the content of several works in this exhibition. For example, Weng Fen’s striking photographs of two southern cities, Shenzhen and Haikou, show a young girl sitting on a wall and looking out; following her gaze we see a mirage-like cityscape emerging on the horizon. The wall thus separates not only space but also time; and the girl mediates not only “here” and “there” but also “now” and “then,” extending our view to an alluring future. When we turn to Xiang Liqing’s Rock Never, however, we are abruptly brought back to the (intensified) reality of a “post-modern” Chinese city: the six large pictures in this series represent residential high-rises as paradoxical structures, characterized by their uniform, anonymous architectural style on the one hand, and by abundant signs of human activities on the other hand. The simulated repetition of both types of image brings these two aspects of a contemporary Chinese city into sharp conflict. As Xiang’s pictures imply, the emerging city attracts experimental photographers not only with its buildings but also with its increasingly heterogeneous population. To Chen Shaoxiong, a member of the avant-garde Big Tail Elephant Group in Guangzhou, a heterogeneous city resembles the stage of a plotless tableaux; what unites its characters is the place they share. This notion underlies his series of photographs in this exhibition, which are conceived and constructed like a series of puppet theaters within the real cityscape. Images in each photograph belong to two detached layers: in front of a large panoramic scene are cut-out miniatures—passersby, shoppers, and policemen amidst telephone booths, traffic lights, different kinds of vehicles, trees, and anything one finds along Guangzhou’s streets. These images are crowded in a tight space but do not interact. The mass they form is nevertheless a fragmentary one, without order, narrative, or a visual focus. Representing urban spaces and population, Chen’s photos are linked with another popular subject in contemporary Chinese photography—images of a new “urban generation,” called dushi yidai in Chinese. Works belonging to this category include Yang Yong’s Cruel Youth Diary, Yang Fudong’s Don’t worry, It will be better… and The First Intellectual, Yang Zhengzhong’s Cycle Aerobics, and Zheng Guogu’s A World View Digital Image. Instead of portraying the lives of urban youths realistically, these images deliver constructed visual fictions. Each work consists of multiple frames, which invite us to read them as a narrative unfolding in time. Indeed, such interest in seriality and story-telling may be traced to contemporary Chinese experimental cinema, especially the “urban generation” films of the late 1990s and early 2000s. But the “stories” in the photographs remain non-specific or allegorical. What the artists hope to capture is a certain taste, style, and mood associated with this generation of people, and for this purpose they have created images that are often deliberately trivial and ambiguous. Yang Fudong’s Don’t worry, It will be better…, for example, represents a group of fashionable Shanghai yuppies, including a girl and several young men. The pictures resemble film stills, but the plot that connects them remains beyond the viewer’s comprehension. In a different and more comical style, another work of Yang’s in the exhibition, The First Intellectual, comments on the vulnerability and insecurity of such yuppies—a by-product of China’s social and economic reforms.
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The haudenschildGarage Images of the “urban generation” are further linked to the self-representations of experimental artists, who often identify with this generation. In fact, a strong interest in representing the self sets experimental photography apart from other branches of contemporary Chinese photography. For example, although documentary photographers also take pictures of people and urban scenes, they approach their subjects as belonging to an external, observed reality. Experimental photographers, on the other hand, find meaning only from their interaction with the surrounding world, and customarily make themselves the center of a photograph, as seen in many works in this exhibition: Hong Hao’s Mr. Hong Usually Waits…, Shi Yong’s Forever and You Cannot Clone It, But You Can Buy It, Zhao Bandi’s Zhao Bandi and Panda, Feng Mengbo’s Shot 0074_Q and Shot 0075_Q, Cao Fei’s Beautiful Dog Brows, and Xu Zhen’s Sewer. Shi Yong represents himself as multiple, mass-produced robots; Zhao Bandi employs the style and format of a public poster for his self-portraits; Feng Mengbo turns himself into an action hero in the fictional world of a computer game; Hong Hao imagines himself as the master of an opulent, western-style mansion; Cao Fei transforms herself into a cat; Xu Zhen constructs an abstract picture with images of his body parts. Taken together, these images, the results of masquerade and selfmanipulation, both reflect the crisis in the artists’ self-identity and their urgent quest for individuality in a rapidly commercializing society.
Wu Hung is the Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor in Chinese Art History at the University of Chicago. He has written extensively on contemporary Chinese art and visual culture and has curated several important exhibitions on Chinese experimental art, including The First Guangzhou Triennial. He is currently collaborating with the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art and the International Center of Photography in New York on the forthcoming exhibition New Photography from China.
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When an Experiment Encounters the Classic About Zooming into Focus: Chinese Contemporary Photography and Video from the Haudenschild Collection By Lu Leiping published in the Zooming into Focus catalog, 2005 PART 1 When Eloisa Haudenschild decided to collect Chinese contemporary art mainly in the forms of photography and video, her American colleagues did not show particular interest about her 'adventurous' plan. From a traditional point of view, art works from these young Chinese artists are obviously not 'classical' enough; furthermore, the nature of photography and video is hard to preserve and easy to be duplicated. Therefore, these media forms are generally avoided by collectors. However, when Zooming into Focus: Chinese Contemporary Photography and Video from the Haudenschild Collection came into existence in San Diego, California at the SDSU Art Gallery, with vivid personalities and full of vitality, Eloisa had made her point clear: "never be afraid, always trust your eyes." In fact, Zooming into Focus is not new to the Chinese contemporary art community. On one hand, as a touring exhibition, it was shown at the Shanghai Art Museum last year; on the other hand, these works have traveled to the Venice Biennial, Italy; Shanghai Biennial; Kassel, Germany; Yokohana Triennial, Japan; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, they have been represented in China and also sent to international cultural exchange events. However, the Zooming into Focus re-exhibition at the National Art Museum of China has its legendary and historic significance. It is common knowledge that the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) made a clear distinction with experimental arts since the gun shooting incident of 1989 at the Beijing Contemporary Art Exhibition. Only after the Shanghai Biennial (2000) and the Guangzhou Triennial (2002) the Chinese government started lifting the ban of conceptual arts such as installations and images. However, NAMOC, due to the fact that it is located in the capital, maintained its insistence on "framed" art work. Although the exhibition Era of Opening up in celebration of the opening of the new permanent hall had included a few new media art works as well as 'framed' art works, but they were still main stream compared with 'unframed' ones. The National Art Exhibition and the Beijing Biennial Art Exhibition held by the Art Association also excluded 'unframed' works, although the quality and quantity of new media artists, conceptual artists, and non-government art organizations in Beijing were far out-numbered anywhere else in the country. In fact, 'framed' or 'unframed' have no direct relationship with the quality of the works. Many avant-garde experimental arts had also adopted traditional media such as 'framed' paintings or sculptures; at the same time, art forms like behavioral, installation, photography and video, with decades of history, produced many classical works. Officials at the Ministry of Culture understood the connections, and under the condition Â
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The haudenschildGarage 'to seek common ground while reserving differences', they held many contemporary art exhibitions mainly in the form of new media art as international cultural exchange projects. For example, Living in Time, Hamburger Bahnhof, Hamburg, Germany, 2002; Centre National d'Art et de Culture, Georges Pompidou; and Venice Biennial China Art Hall, with the free and diversified art ecology from both in and outside the country. NOMAC as the symbol of Art Center has lost the need to be a vacuum fortress, the ice has started melting between the so called 'framed' and 'unframed' art. At this moment, foreign collectors have held out olive branch, Zooming into Focus therefore has become the first to hold a Chinese contemporary photography and video exhibition at the National Museum of Art.
PART 2 'Experiments' and 'classics' are not totally opposite concepts. From the tense perspective, 'experiment' is inclined to the continuous tense, while 'classic' belongs to the past tense. However, 'experiments' do not necessarily generate 'classics'; the factors of 'classics' are rather complicated. The word 'classics' has been paraphrased as: works that are authoritative. However, who defines 'authoritativeness'? Not individuals or organizations. In fact, politics, religions, economics or pure art forms can all influence whether a work is 'classic' or not. Therefore, time is the real judge. 'Classics' are those artworks proven by time. Although the Zooming into Focus collection will be exhibited at the National Arts Museum of China (NAMOC), which symbolizes 'authoritativeness', one cannot simply classify these works as 'classics'. The exhibition cannot be considered an experimental art exhibition either. As the history of photography and video works as experimental art has already become the past, one could say their 'experiments' are the past and present tense. So, what motivated Eloisa to collect such works, taking meticulous care of them, and introducing them to people with joy? She is so confident: "the reason I only collect video and photography is because in my opinion it is the media that produces the most interesting works." Similar opinion is held by Per Bjarne Boym, former director of National Art Museum of Norway, when he was the curator of A Facile Task – Shanghai Puzzle (2000-2004) he too selected only videos. When the writer asked him about the reason, he said "most of the best works I have seen in Shanghai are videos". In addition, works shown at Kassel, Germany and Venice Biennial, Italy in recent years, were mainly video or video installations: such as Yang Fudong's An Estranged Paradise and Seven Intellectuals; Chen Shaoxiong's Anti-Terrorism Variety; Xu Zhen's Rainbow; Yang Zhenzhong's Let's Puff; Feng Mengbo's Q4U, etc. Is the Western judgment of 'good or bad' prejudiced toward China? There is no doubt that both opinions have a personal aesthetic, however, objectivity still exists. Looking back at the evolvement of Chinese contemporary art since the middle of the 1990s,
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The haudenschildGarage we have to recognize that photography and video are the most experimental and pioneering media today, it is also the media that more strongly maintains the Chinese characteristics. In fact, after the 85's new tide, pioneer Chinese contemporary artists have gradually become used to Western art forms such as installations, conceptual, behavioral, and political pop, and they have started utilizing this new language in their work. Photography originally was not the prevailing art form, in the beginning, it was used as a tool to record conceptual or behavioral art, the same phenomenon later appeared in video art. Avant-garde artists' experiments have gradually changed from indigenous artist’s groups to artists working independently. Many artists tired of political pop symbols, resisted western culture colonialism and the fast consuming market abroad and started looking for more suitable art languages in which they could express themselves better and more freely. Their progress mirrors the country's progress of modernization, commercialization and urbanization. The prevalence of electronic images, digital techniques, and the rapid proliferation of the consuming culture extend the new life of photography and video as the revolution of art language; more importantly, it has changed the vision, imagination, and the way of narrations and criticisms of the artists. Photography and video have become the media art format growing at the highest speed and the largest in numbers of works produced overnight. Conceptual photography and video have become more independent and mature symbols including, 'sensibility' which has emerged again in works, differing completely from the artists of earlier days, who used photography and video as pure tools of recording. Some artists have begun to consciously use photography or video as the main language of their experimental creations. artists began to connect the relationship between concepts and images, and to challenge photography and video's indigenous characteristics of narrative and authenticity. When 'sensitivity' returned to the language of images, concepts did not disappear, they had been quietly hidden, together with tremendous narratives and prolonged dry preach. Surreal humor and utopia's poetry acquired the new password to open the real world. This is not a new invention; it comes from the tradition of Eastern Lao Zhuang's philosophy and Dynasty We, Jin's spirits of unconcern of fame and wealth, in contrast to the western's rhetoric origin of Greek comedy and tragedy. This might be the ever lasting talisman for the bright artists, once the humor and poetry are lost, art will become tasteless and suffocating. This is how classics were inherited and led to the new experiment: photography and video's new battlefield 'fictitious reality' or 'combined reality'. In conceptual photography, various poses combined with the power of digital composition are no doubt becoming the major weapon. Representative works of this kind can be found in this exhibition: Weng Fen's On The Wall is a typical work which depicts China's urban culture, a young girl riding on a wall representing the boundary between new and old, looking up to mirage-like skyscrapers, with aesthetic fantasy. Zhao Bandi's Zhao Bandi & Panda openly conspires with public media, he and his toy
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The haudenschildGarage panda played the fashion public welfare advertisement series' ghostly appearing everywhere ---- subways, airports and streets, mocking the over – urbanization caused by morbidity, pollution, violence, unemployment, drug addiction, and smoking. In fact, such arrangement has a close relationship with digital combination. The above two works have both borrowed from digital combination. Only with software such as Photoshop, artists could freely modify realities, as magical as wizardry. Yang Zhenzhong attempted to use digital combination to make his Lucky Family photography series as early as 1995. Charmingly naïve chicks were simulated to become different family members, the piece was achieved by using a digital combination technique. Xiang Liqing's Rock Never cloned many stereotyped Chinese city residences and pieced them together to create many surreal pictures. Shi Yong directly cloned himself in his work You cannot clone it, but you can buy it photographs. Is this a game? Or is it a nightmare? Maybe it just like what artist Zheng Guogu said: " I'm using photos to play a game…it has a special charm to me—game is a kind of practice, thinking does not waste any film. I know thinking in this way is only a matter of time to me." With respect to conceptual video art, distinctions are also becoming clear: early stage conceptual video was interested in stony and tedious video techniques, originated by artists' rebellion against the commercialized TV media. While the new generation's conceptual videos are more infatuated with exaggerated, humorous and dramatic expressions, absurdities directly became the structure of narration in order to choke people up. For instance, Chen Shaoxiong's Anti-terrorism Variety installation uses computer animation to suggest the many ways how skyscrapers could avoid being struck by aircraft, using fantasy to mock the chaotic world. Xu Zhen's Shouting and Rainbow videos on the other hand, are endowed with a power that is instantly explosive, Shouting played the devilment of shouting in a crowd, using the violence of the human voice. Rainbow showed a body whipped and gradually turned red by a disturbing sound, the artist has applied free and relaxed appearances to the implication of violence. Yang Zhenzhong's 922 Rice Corns looks at the chicken's instinct (eating the rice corns) and the human's futile efforts (counting the rice corns) sneering at those monomaniacs in real life. The other type of experimental short film came from the film aesthetics experience of non- narrative, utopia's poetic scenes. Yang Fudong's well controlled abstract vocabulary and chaotic space-time turned out ambiguous images in City Light where he is daydreaming and sleepwalking in the city; while Seven Intellectuals was his searching for the password to communicate with ancient scholars their ideal way of living. Lu Chunsheng's The History of Chemistry was built upon images of fathomless, paradoxical esteem and introspection; its irrational and mysterious statements construct an illusory world created by massive truths.
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The haudenschildGarage At the same time, strong wishes of anti-narrative induced the artists to explore the possibilities of photography and video to interfere with space and human activities. Photo installation, video installation, and interactive installation were coming to existence. For example, Chen Shaoxiong's Street pieces together two dimensional street scenes into three dimensional models introducing them into the even bigger urban space; then re-recording it onto photography, wandering freely between two dimensional and three dimensional reality and illusiveness. Another example is Song Tao's The Floor, which also presents ordinary black and white life images on floorboards, clearing up the boredom and reconstructing life's interests. Video installations are easier to be combined with interactions: Yang Zhenzhong's Let's Puff is a multi-screen video interaction. In the city scenes being blown away by the girl, audiences may further experience the 'unbearable lightness' of life. Hu Jieming's Up Up on the other hand, extends the interaction to communicate with audiences. In the 25 televisions vertically installed videos on a steel structure, 25 meters in total height, A little girl is doomed to climbing up her way like Sisyphus, however, no one will be able to see the moment she arrives at the top, since any surrounding sound could make her pause or drop back. Additionally, photography and video art's fast evolvement is directly related to China's economic environment. Before 2000, the entire art market and exhibition market were at a preliminary stage, most artists’ 'unframed' works were fairly poor, and artists needed other jobs as teachers or designers to make a living. Chances of getting sponsorship on making art works or exhibitions were minimal. Therefore, plans of large scale and expensive installation works had to be suspended. Early behavioral art was treated by the Chinese government as evil since it involved pornography and violence. Photography and video gradually became a more convenient and workable new media. Although the equipment was not cheap, it was relatively easy to borrow; the prevailing personal computer and digital technology allowed for a more "Do It Yourself" (DIY) editing and production. In comparison, photography and video the media lowest in cost, became naturally more widespread. Due to the restriction of economic conditions, Chinese artists are used to adjust to low costs and small productions. Film proportion is normally kept very high, such as Ju Anqi's There is a strong wind in Beijing, Yang Zhenzhong's 922 Rice Corns and others, they all kept film proportion at 1:1. It is not rare to see artists become actors for each other. Another feature worth noticing is that all the works in this exhibition come from indigenous Chinese artists' art practice. In fact, considerable differences exist between indigenous and overseas Chinese artists, in terms of ideology and substance of art practice. Overseas Chinese artists under the Western contemporary art environment are more concerned with the origin and success of Chinese culture and the process of globalization. On the other hand local Chinese artists prefer to proceed from China's modern realities and through experimenting with art languages, they want to present a
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The haudenschildGarage more personal opinion on society's explosive change. Therefore, although indigenous art practices utilized common art language --- photography and video, no doubt persists in a realism with Chinese characteristics, particularly bringing up questions and introspections on China's urbanization and fast commercial development.
PART 3 The Zooming into Focus exhibition has recalled some photography and video experiments of China indigenous artists' since the 1990s and at the same time has emphasized on the past continuous tense of these experiments, which is a past tense. I would like to bring us back the topic of this article—when experiments come across classics. There are two arguable statements: the first is whether the assumption of 'experiments come across classics' is correct? Second, if the assumption is correct, how does experimentation continue? In fact, the meaning of 'experiments' and 'classics' are pointing at different subjects. Relatively speaking, experimentation is granted by the artists, however, the meaning of 'classics' is originated by the audiences. Italo Calvino mentioned in his book Why Read the Classics "The classics are the books of which we usually hear people say, 'I am rereading . . . ' and never 'I am reading . . . '" It pointed here that 'classics' is defined by the readers. Pual Connerton made his point in his book How Societies Remember . Therefore, the creator of the work does not have control whether the work will be classified as 'classic'; it also does not have any direct relationship with experimentation. Social memory inevitably influences the creator, as Pual Connerton indicated. The realist is that government permission greatly transformed the original art system. However, experimental art is facing the possibility of systematization and commercialization; this change could be so fast that there will be no time for preparation. Generally speaking, a "classical" work is treated as the standard of aestheticism by art authorities and has become the art market's favorite. However, if getting lost in all of the above and confused by the glory of outside commercial and authority of the "classical", the essence of "classical" will be neglected. This neglect may be the biggest threat to art to rapidly become commercial and systemized – once overly consumed, art experiments and creativity will not be able to differentiate itself from fashion consumption. Let’s keep in mind that in a commercial society, the scope of new and old is not substantive, but only superficial. This is the major difference between art and fashion. We have to recognize the formidable "consumption power" of the art system and the art market. History has already shown us the outcome of this self –contradiction.
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The haudenschildGarage Realist Futurists and Dadaists who intended to destroy art as a system turned out to make their works 'classics'. It is art experimentation and evolution that formidably pushes art history, the art system and the art market's "self discipline". Under this new environmental language, how will artists confront the temptation of systematization and commercial authorities? How will they overcome the inertia problem of creation? How will they continue with new experiments? Looking forward ...
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Compelling Images of a Distant Life. Video as Expansion of Reality Chinese Video Art in the Haudenschild Collection By Martina Köppel-Yang delivered at the Zooming into Focus symposium "Envisioning the Future of Contemporary Art from Different Glocal Positions", China Art Academy, Hangzhou, China, March 2004 It was in 1988 when Zhang Peili realized his “30 X 30”, one of the first examples of Chinese video art. “30 X 30”, a two hour sequence showing the artist breaking and reassembling a mirror over and over again, with its sobriety and its obvious Chan-Buddhist absurdity – at the time called grey humor – is not only typical of the contemporary Chinese art of the late 1980s, but also shows the main characteristics of early Chinese video art. Fixed camera positions, endlessly drawn out shots, underlying the absurdity and strangeness of the image or performance documented, or again the medium of the video installation, typical of Zhang’s later works, were main features of Chinese video art until the middle of the 1990s. Since 1988, fifteen years have passed, and video art in China today is as pluralistic and colorful as Chinese society. Next to Zhang Peili, Wang Gongxin, Wang Jianwei, Chen Shaoxiong, Hu Jieming, Li Yongbing, Liang Juhui, Song Dong, Qiu Zhijie, Wu Wenguang, Xu Tan, Yan Lei, Zhu Jia, and Feng Mengbo belong to a first group of artists working with video and new media in China. Zhang, once pioneer, is today the head of the first multi media art department at a Chinese academy, the New Media Art Center of the China Fine Arts Academy in Hangzhou. Zhang Peili’s style, once experimental, today rather tends to be academic, still showing the quest to create a kind of universal visual language and to set aesthetic and technical standards. The emergence of this kind of academism within the field of the relatively young Chinese video art guarantees the backing necessary for experimentally working younger generations. Since the mid-1990s, with more easily accessible technical equipment and information, video has become a major form of expression of young Chinese artists. A young generation primarily experimenting with video, film, and other new media has emerged in the urban centers, in particular in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. These young artists, mainly born in the 1960s and 1970s – for example Cao Fei, Jiang Zhi, Jin Jiangbo, Lu Chunsheng, Shi Yong, Weng Fen, Xu Zhen, Yang Fudong, Yang Zhenzhong, Zheng Guogu and others – not only gained immediate recognition in the Chinese art scene but also garnered success on an international level rather quickly.1 Since the late 1990s video and multi media art works of Chinese artists have been selected for numerous international video festivals and have been presented at high-profile exhibitions, such as the documenta X in Kassel in 1997 (Feng Mengbo, Wang Jianwei) or the documenta XI (2002) (Feng Mengbo,Yang Fudong) or again the 50th Venice Biennial (2003) (Cao Fei, Chen Shaoxiong, Gu Dexin, Jiang Zhi, Liang Juhui, Yang Fudong, Yang Zhenzhong, Zhang Peili, Zhu Jia). The Haudenschild Collection is the first collection focusing on Chinese photography and video art, thus giving witness to the importance of these media. The present exhibition features video works from the collection by artists born in the 1960s and 1970s and working in the Southern Chinese urban centers Shanghai and Guangzhou. Certainly, this generation’s enormous interest in the medium video cannot merely be ascribed to the 1
The first national exhibition of Chinese video art “Image and Phenomenon” (“Yingxiang, xianxiang”) curated by Wu Meichun at the China Fine Arts Academy in Hangzhou in 1996 included artists, like for example Zhang Peili, Qiu Zhijie, Chen Shaoxiong, Yan Lei, and Wang Gongxin. It opened up the way for many following shows, such as “Fast Forward” (Hong Kong, 1997) and “Video Art ’97 China” (“’97 Zhongguo luxiang yishu guanmo”, Beijing, 1997) that featured thirty-nine artists from all over China, like for example Chen Shaoxiong, Weng Fen, Yan Lei, Yang Zhenzhong, Jiang Zhi, Qiu Zhijie, Song Dong,and also artists of the older generation like Hu Jieming, Wang Jianwei, Wang Gongxin, Zhu Jia or Zhang Peili.
The haudenschildGarage increasing accessibility of technical equipment and know-how. Having grown to maturity in a society in rapid transition, where the fleetness of change makes an individual’s life’s perspective appear totally unpredictable and where omnipresent media play major roles in determining the perception of what is real and what is imaginary, video (and photography alike) might be a most adequate and direct medium not only to capture the overwhelming changes of personal life, urban environment, and of society, but also to convey the feelings of uncertainty and vagueness felt by the majority of the young generation. Yang Fudong describes these feelings as a distance to life2 that is evident in the videos and films of his contemporaries on a conceptual and on an aesthetic level. Alienation and perception are major themes, and the wish to grasp reality and take hold of this ever-changing life, is at the origin of the quest to integrate art into life, or to consider art a “by-product of life”.3 On an aesthetic level this distance generates a kind of poetic melancholic mood and humor typical of this generation of artists. Yang Fudong (1971) graduated from the China Fine Arts Academy in Hangzhou and moved to Shanghai in 1998. The so-called literati short films, as well as the Chinese cinema of the 1920s/1930s and the Yuefen-style typical of the Shanghai petit bourgeoisie of the early 20th century are important references for Yang. His strongly narrative videos, films, and photographic series can be read as allegories of the alienated city-dwellers’ lives. The narratives enfold sometimes in high-rise apartment and office-buildings, the typical environment of the new middle-class Chinese of the metropolis, the so-called “white-collar” (bailing), like for example in “City Lights” (“Chengshi zhi guang”) and “Honey” (“Mi”) – both part of the present exhibition – sometimes in a dreamlike setting reminiscent of traditional Chinese gardens and the Chinese literati landscape, like for example in “Su Xiaoxiao” (2001), “Tonight’s Moon” (2000), and “Liulan” (2003). “City Lights” (2000, 6 minutes, color) recounts the life of such a white-collar, performing his prescribed every-day ritual, sometimes feeling like standing besides himself and being left alone with his solitary but ready-made dreams of a modern life. The stereotype of him holding and passing on an umbrella occurs throughout the video. “Honey” (2003, color), evocative of some ominous spy-story, similarly is set in some apartment and backyard of high-rise buildings in the metropolis. The image of a young mundane girl moving from one place to another, or in the company of blankly gazing, discreet men in Mao-suits appears throughout the video. Close-ups of her body and dress might hint to the nature of relationship between the protagonists. But the story Yang recounts never gets explicit, only suggesting the possibility of their interaction through the creation of a never fulfilled suspense. Even though Yang Fudong’s works have a strong narrative component their message is never clear. Yang rather creates a filament of allusive images, underscored by sound and text, letting the viewer alone with a multitude of ambiguous insinuations that he calls “abstract imagery”.4 According to Yang, “abstract imagery” can convey the inexplicit feelings of the individual and engender a transformation of perception.5 The transformation of perception is also a concern of Shanghai-based Yang Zhenzhong. Yang (1968) who graduated from the oil painting department of the China Fine Arts Academy in Hangzhou in 1993, started working with video and photography in 1995. His approach is rather metaphorical than narrative. His videos often start from witty ideas, using the repetition of images and the rhythmic coordination of sound, language and image. “922 Grains of Rice” (“922 ke mi”, 2000, 8 min., color) plays with the interaction of the image of 2
Yang Fudong, Interveiw with Chen Xiaoyun, in: “Artist of the Week”, chinese-art.com, vol.4, issue 3, 2001. Yang Zhenzhong in an interview with Chen Xiaoyun in: “Artist of the Week”, chinese-art.com, vol. 4, issue 3, 2001. 4 Cited from an interview with Chen Xiaoyun, in: “Artist of the Week”, chinese-art.com, issue vol.3, issue 4, 2001. 5 ibidem. 3
The haudenschildGarage a cock and a chicken pecking grains of rice and the sound of a male and female voice counting the number of pecked grains. “Let’s Puff” (“Wo chui”, 2003, Zone of Urgency, 50th Venice Biennial) similarly starts from the interplay of two images: a young woman puffing and a busy street. Every time the woman is puffing, the image of the street moves away from the viewer. The rhythm of the traffic and the angle of perception are altered with the rhythm of the woman’s breath. Yang’s often playful videos could be called visual reflections. Individual perception and experience, as for example in his “I Will Die” (“Wo hui si de”, 2000), are the starting point for the transformation of perception, as Yang points out: “Sometimes I feel that if you deal with individual experience on a certain level it becomes universal experience. (…) That's not to say I think theory is of no importance, actually art is also not that important, they are all the by-products of life.”6 Guangzhou-based Chen Shaoxiong (1962) who graduated from the Guangzhou Fine Arts Academy is one of the pioneers of Chinese video art. With him, the concept to lead art back into life, or to consider art a by-product of life takes a more radical and subversive stance. As with other artists of the Cantonese avant-garde, for him the creation of an allusive imagery is less important. Being a member of the Big Tail Elephants Working Group (Daweixiang gongzuo xiaozu), called “urban guerrilla” by Hou Hanru7, Chen searches a direct interaction with his urban environment. The perception of reality again is the artist’s concern. Chen’s early videos of performances, such as “Five Hours” (1993), as well as his “Sight-Adjusters” (1996), installations with split-screen videos, and his “Streets” (1997today), a series of three-dimensional photo collages, tend to reveal perception as a conceptual construct depending on outer conditions, such as the rapidly changing urban environment. “Figure Anti-Terrorism” (“Huayang fankong”, 2003, Zone of Urgency, 50th Venice Biennial), which is part of the present exhibition, is Chen Shaoxiong’s answer to the global anti-terrorism campaign. The computer-generated video installation consists of a chessboard – the figures are airplanes and buildings – and two video projections that show high-rise buildings in the southern metropolis of Guangzhou using different tricks to avoid the impact of approaching airplanes. Chen’s work is not only a witty comment on current events, but also a reflection on how the perception of the urban environment changed after September 11. On a more general level, Chen’s work explores how the real-time mediation of a real event that had formerly only been thinkable as imaginary redefined the limits of perception. Within these newly defined limits, video can act as an expansion of reality.
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Yang Zhenzhong in an interview with Chen Xiaoyun in Chinese-art.com, vol. 4, issue 3, 2001. Hou Hanru, “Big Tail Elephant Working Group”, in Grossschwanzelefant, Kunsthalle Bern, 1998.
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Chinese Contemporary Video Art By Pi Li delivered at the Zooming into Focus symposium 'Predicting the future of art local perspectives on globalization', China Art Academy, Hangzhou, China, March 2004 Video art, though an exotic genre of art, is not merely a consequence of following the trail of western society. The emergence of video art in China or its acceptance by Chinese artists found a happy medium only after certain cultural conditions had fallen into place. Therefore, before we go into the topic of Chinese contemporary video art, I believe it is more necessary and meaningful to review the process of how video art appeared in China. The emergence of video art was first symbolized as an objection to the realistic creative methodology of utilitarianism. The peculiar fate of the Chinese nation in the last century has forced the Chinese society to view art in a way of utilitarianism (for example, the concept of content determining form and art for the sake of politics). Such thoughts were established at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art by Mao Tse-tung in 1942, which were then maintained as the guidelines for the arts. The emergence of Chinese contemporary art initially challenged the guideline. During the 1980s, the work done by Chinese contemporary artists overturned the emphasis on the "socialist realism" of ideological propaganda. Specifically, what they were overturning was not a kind of artistic style; rather it was the cultural authority that this style represented. Therefore, the Chinese contemporary artists nearly repeated the overall art history of the west society within the decade. During the process, the style of conceptual art such as installation, performance and etc began to appear. The political events of 1989 caused artists to realize that within their society there was a power that, at least temporarily, could not be contested, and that they really did not have the ability to carry out their own artistic convictions. Thus, low morale, cynicism and malaise began to spread. On one hand, due to the change of political climate at that time, the style of concept art was animadverted as decadent. All the channels to introduce western concept art were blocked; on the other hand, due to the long existence and education of social
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The haudenschildGarage realism in China, artists began to take advantage of their familiar painting style to satirize the society in a tedious, boring and ridiculous way. They also adopted the popular commercial symbols to amuse the ruling ideology and formed cynical realism and political bop. Compared with 80s, no matter from the angle of cultural aspiration or the artists’ exploring directions, the early 90s was a time of withdrawing. While the cynical realism and political bop, though conservative to some degree regained a different fate in the 90s. Viewed from the angle of economy, 90s was a decade that Chinese market gradually opened to the west. In the past decade, numerous multi-national enterprises set up thousands of representative offices or branches in China. While the opening of China’s market appeared rather slow if compared with the wishes of western investors, multi national enterprises were still willing to spend great amount of money to operate their representative offices in China. People employed by such representative offices with little work to do, foreign ambassadors residing in Beijing and officious journalists from foreign media together formed the channel of the communication between Chinese contemporary art and its international counterpart. As a result of Chinese nationalization process in the last century, there was no economically independent middle class in China. Therefore, there was no chance for the art sustaining power to survive. The fanciers full of political discriminations formed the unique channel between the Chinese contemporary art and the outside world. China as the last socialist country began to draw interests from curious art tourists and collectors. Driven by commercial interests, galleries in the west began to go through such channels to introduce and sell Chinese contemporary art to the outside world. Such non-professional channels enabled Chinese art represented by cynicism and political pop to frequently appear in the west. In 1993, Chinese contemporary art, which features political bop and cynical realism, first revealed in Venice Biennial, which brought Chinese contemporary artists great amount of economic income and chances of international exhibition. In terms of the West, this form of artistic style, which ultimately points towards non-western ideology, established the label and standard for Chinese contemporary art, and initiated the process of cultural understanding and sharing on these foundations. The success of cynical and political art encouraged even more young Chinese artists to embrace the status-giving image of “ political
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The haudenschildGarage dissidents”. If in the past the artists had sensed the danger of art being controlled by politics, then now the cynical realism and political pop would make young artists feel that framed paintings, driven by commercial interests, would be imposed by the west post colonialism. Both above mentioned are based on the old style art medium and creative methodology (realism-utilitarianism). Under such background, the Chinese artists began to introduce and experiment on video art. Young artists desired to find a new art medium which will not be commercialized by west galleries and also poses a strong contrast to the official art. The medium will not only allow the existence of personalized feelings and languages but also be easy to use, spread and communicate. Under such circumstances, video art became their choice. In terms of young artists, the time perceived from the video art leads more deep experience than the traditional medium. The experience will enable the works a strength beyond the literal description, i.e. video, unlike realism paintings, will not be fully interpreted in words. It requires audiences’ real experience in a certain period of time. Meanwhile, the interaction of video installation will invite physical involvement during the appreciation process. In 1996, china held its first exhibition of video art named “ Phenomenon and image”. The title could be translated as “ Phenomenon and image” while in Chinese, the title has more meanings. Video means reflection and image indicates response. The reason why young artists chose video as the medium is that the video art embodies “reflection” which is rather deeper and closer to the nature of art than traditional paintings. The curator of the exhibition and video artist Qiu Zhijie wrote in the preface, “the falsehood of historical determinism is to consider human being as a simple perceptive object, while man not only perceive and sense, but also imagines and takes actions to practice.” Obviously the equation is as follows: Traditional media= reaction= virtual individual = perception= unilateral Video =reflection= real individual= perception, imagination, action= interactive In 1989, a German professor was invited to Chinese Central Academy of Fine art to give lectures. He brought 8-hour video art information, which included Gary Hill, Bill
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The haudenschildGarage Violla and Matthew Barney. Works of those artists enlightened the two-generation artists like Zhang Peili and Qiu Zhijie to access to the complete video art information and realize the possibility of this medium, whereas they chose different ways. Zhang Peili is known as one of the early experimentalists of the Chinese contemporary art and also the first Chinese video artist. In 1989, he completed his first works. Generally speaking, Chinese artists in 80s were mostly concerned with grand narration of society and culture, which made them to apply the language style of logic and conceptualism. To be simple, Zhang’s early works was greatly influenced by Gary Hill and his genre. Such orientation was even more distinctive in his famous works “ uncertain pleasure”. They were going all out to distinguish video art with mass TV programs. Therefore he denied the existence of any traditional measures, sound effects or even the figuration of TV to appear in his works. Zhang’s style influenced many artists, for example, Zhu Jia’s bound video camera on a wheel to conduct shots; Han Xuan and Yang Zhenzhong’s repetition of the daily life. Similar while different to Zhang is one artist named Wang Gongxin, who resided in New York for a decade and was greatly influenced by Violla. The magnification of life subtlety resulted in unconventional experiences. Such means undoubtedly generated many works with strong visual impact. It is perhaps due to the different origin of Chinese and foreign video art. The origin of west video art originated from their rebellions to the system while in China the art derived from concerns on media. Just because of that, younger Chinese artists consider them as “standard video art” or “insipid tradition”. Representative video artist Qiu Zhijie has been concerned about the possibility of video technology and the aesthetic value it brings. For him, the route that Zhang followed was to worship the west video art as classics, while on the other hand he ignored the possibility that the new, inexpensive equipment and techniques have brought. For Qiu, the reasons why the early video art appeared insipid, on one hand is due to their anti-system belief, on the other hand due to financial and technical reasons. Therefore in the second Video art exhibition in 1997, the curator Wu Meichun wrote: ”the problem we are facing is not what the video art is, rather what we can do with video. It is still early to define the video art. Though it appears that a standard video art is coming into being, but it destined to be weary during its shaping. Video with an
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The haudenschildGarage innate media is full of challenges, which is powerful and inexpensive. It is private and easy to duplicate and spread: it is both intuitive and imaginative. Under the instruction of such thoughts, video art began to appear three new development directions, such as documentary, narrative and interactive. Documentary -- In the mid-90s, the movie circle in China launched a large-scale campaign of “New Documentary Movement”. Director represented by Wu Wenguang emphasize the absence of photographer during shoot, and try to exhibit the real state of the objective revealed. Chinese New Documentary Movement is regarded as resistance to the grand narration of the governmental TV programs since the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Such orientation leads them no improvement in the documentary language and method. To be strict, what they created is “real documentary” rather than “New documentary”. While this movement interflowed with the video art in the art circle and combined a “new documentary art” beyond documentary. Wang Jianwei is the unique pioneer in this aspect. In his “Living Elsewhere”, he traced the life of four farmers in an unfinished villa, and disclosed that the function of the villa was never fulfilled. In his works, Wang created a very “nonprofessional” documentary in which some of the images stand still for as long as 8 minutes. While for him, all those are quite necessary because his works is to conduct review of phenomena rather than simple record. Narrative -- As the self-questioning of the video art, narration is brought about as an element. Video techniques enabled video art to share many achievements with the movie aesthetics—all the time disposal measures adopted by classical movies is applicable to video. Moreover, the time disposal in the video has more flexibility with the help of digital measures: various digital stunts created various relationships of time dimensions and greatly enriched the tradition movie language. The involvement of three-dimensioned animation makes every whim possible to become a visual reality. All these endowed many possibilities for younger artists. Representative artists in this field includes Yang Fudong, Jiang Zhi and etc. From these artists, they received more influence from movie aesthetics than the video art tradition. And moreover, they are seeking more chances to shoot film. While from them, we can see a possibility of applying video to conduct personal writings.
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The haudenschildGarage Interaction -- Interaction actually derived from suspect to video art. Will video art finally be devoured by movie aesthetics and insipid tradition? Will Digital technology bring new aesthetic values except better image quality and convenience? Questioned by that, video installation was emphasized by artists as a “right time, right place” art. Because besides the attribution of video installation and video itself, it also includes the peculiarity of the installation more than the sum of the two. Telecasting of Multi-layer monitors or various reflected images distributed in pre-designed structures have formed a three-dimensional dramatic structure. The Chinese video art will develop into two distinguished video installations, which will focus on interior knowledge and interior experience respectively. Video installations focused on interior knowledge will appear in a specific scene. The video image will have some semantic connection with property and also the images will produce meanings. The property can be used to stand out the topic. For example, Wang Gongxin’s “Cradle” and Wang Jianwei’s “Screen”. In Wang’s “baby talk”, different facial expressions are revealed when playing with the baby. All the milk flows out from the mouth of the image and then circulates from other places. In the video installation ”Screen”, Wang discussed the cultural relationship of secret and disclosure and the truth. It is more like a visual version of “knowledge archaeology”. The indication of the two works are both wavering between vague and clear. The spot visual, audio and kinaesthesia experience sometimes transcend the original enactment of the author to complex and profuse imagination. Video installation focused on interior experience sometimes calculated the trace of the audiences’ physical movement in the interior structure of the installation, such as Qiu Zhijie’s “the present tense” and Chen Shaoxiong’s “Sight Adjustor”. Such works is based on anthropo-engineering, waiting the approaching of audiences from a certain location and route. Audiences’ bodies were pre-designed as a factor that will influence the installation composition and spot scene itself. The phenomena world established when the audiences are passing by was evoked as an interior experience rather than exterior knowledge. Video installation brings interaction to the agenda and artists try to ascertain the possibility of the video art through the pursuit of interaction. While that is more like a bitter choice. The more you seek for interaction, the more you suspect the spaces that the video art is able to provide. Therefore many artists began to seek for other
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The haudenschildGarage interactive mode beyond the video installation. Artists focused on interior experience began to abandon video art and hope to seek the possibilities provided by new technology. More technical and more interactive multi media art then appeared. Artists focused on knowledge try to seek spot and social interaction by breaking the media. In 1999, Wu Ershan together with installation artists, jazz singers, and modern dancers completed “evolved knight”. If Wu Ershan’s involvement was not spontaneous but incidental, Wang Jianwei adopted a more active manner. He invited video artist, puppet players and performance artists to complete the play “Screen” derived from. In this works, the overall stage was a magnificent interactive work synchronized video, installation and performance. Through the development of video art in china, we can see that a new era is approaching. The west video art originated from their rebellion to the system while in china the video art derived from their concern on media. The professionalising of video art was strengthened in the west society since the involvement of foundations since 1968. In the west, people isolated video art with movie, TV and photography and brought it to galleries. It leaded to the combination of video and installation. During this process, video art turned from criticism of informational culture to the combination of social thoughts, which in return bring the validity of the video art itself. It is the duty of video art to criticize the informational culture while that is not all. Personalized manual contemporary art cannot dialogize the commercialized informational media substantially and nor can it rein it. Judging through video art practice before 1968, we will see clearly that the relationship of video art and mass media is like that of a strong fly and a fly flap. Chinese artists like all the other artists in the word begin to realize that they can only find their own territories and manners beyond the scope of the mass media. Pursuit of interaction is a forever dream of contemporary art. While we also witness that during the pursuit of interaction, like all the other artists around the world, some of Chinese artists lost their confidence on the media and finally abandon the media itself and turned to multimedia art, which is more technical and more interactive. Here, I am not saying that I object the emergence and existence of multimedia art, on the contrary, I am so confident about the future of the multimedia. While the reality of Chinese video art makes me ponder: The video art turned from criticism of information culture to the combination with the social thoughts
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The haudenschildGarage  in order to assure the validity of the video art itself. Is it the time to connect video art with movie, TV, photography and a lot more? For Chinese video art, it may be the time to choose. Do we value the video as one kind of media or one kind of culture? Because different choice will result in evolution and multi-polarity, the two completely different results.
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The Museum of the Future: Art, Architecture, Science and Technology By Hans Ulrich Obrist delivered at the Zooming into Focus symposium 'Predicting the future of art - local perspectives on globalization' China Art Academy, Hangzhou, China, March 2004
PART 1: The Museum as Paradox In trying to imagine the future of the museum we cannot ignore the past history of museums and exhibition practices except at great peril. For museums have always been paradoxical things: at once solid, immobile, historically rooted, preoccupied with the seemingly moribund acts of collection and preservation, and in the best of circumstances (as a handful of visionary curators and museum directors have shown us over the decades), potential laboratories for experimentation, bastions for reflection and change, loci of dynamic memory, and vital archives for the future. Looking closely at the paradoxes of this institution-which also means countering the prevalent amnesia about museum and exhibition history-allows us to reconnect the museum's possible futures to its past at the threshold of the present. My own interest in art and artists has developed hand in hand with an interest in the experimental history of museums. I often mention Alexander Dorner, and I think his example bears repeating- and repeating again-not only because his writing inspired my own interest in art and exhibitions, but because Dorner's work at Hannover Museum in the 1920s suggests that from the very beginning, museums of modern and contemporary art (they did not bear that name then, but the Hannover Museum did already show the work of living artists) were places where radical experimentation was possible, even central. Dorner invented radical display features for the museum, collaborated with artists such as El Lissitsky and Malevich on exhibition rooms, and also developed extremely innovative models for mobile exhibitions and exhibitions of facsimiles. The fact that he envisioned the museum as a place where artists intervened and re-thought the displays was radical for its time. He defined the museum in terms of the process possible within it; he saw it as laboratory, as a "Kraftwerk," and
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emphasized in his writings The Way Beyond Art that he intended to dynamize the traditionally static museum and to transform the supposedly "neutral" white cube in order to help construct a more heterogeneous space. Collaboration was one of the things Dorner already understood as vital to the museum decades ago. "We cannot," as he wrote in The Way Beyond Art, "understand the forces which are effective in the visual production of today if we do not have a look at other fields of modern life. "His lesson has not much been heeded in an epoch when the exterior spectacularity of museums (what has been called the "Bilbao effect") too often overrides an attention to the more subtle interior complexity of an exhibition. This interior complexity is the result of different elements, one of them being the openness to collaboration. One of the most important possibilities for the museum today is to think about how bridges can be made between fields of knowledge. There is a great deal of potential, for example, that could be exploited by linking art institutions at universities with other fields and other institutions of learning and research- including science, architecture, design, etc. Museums for their part could invite people from various disciplines to take on an active role in the museum's production of cultural meaning. The enduring impact of Jean-François Lyotard's exhibition, Les Immateriaux, is a perfect example of the potential that lies in such unexpected curatorial ventures. As another way to collaborate, the museum could work more actively with artists to develop exhibitions, programs, permanent displays, and other museum structures. Some of the most far reaching and experimental of exhibitions of all time were organized by artists, including Herbert Bayer, Walter Gropius, Marcel Duchamp, Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky, or architects such as Frederic Kielser, Mies van der Rohe or Lilly Reich. Dorner saw this potential in the 1920s. More recently, inspired curators and museum directors including Willem Sandberg, Pontus Hulten, Walter Hopps or Johannes Cladders worked closely with artists at a moment when museums were otherwise increasingly disconnected from the actual producers of culture. These curators developed collaborative artistic projects, but also pushed the exhibition's form, and made sure that their respective institutions collected some of the most difficult or thoughtprovoking works of their contemporary period. To return to the notion of the museum as paradox that I began with, let me mention Â
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that another way in which museums can attend to the interior complexity of exhibitions is to incorporate the possibility of change at the very heart of the institution. The museum has indeed been long defined by its monumental immobility and by its historical roots, but the late visionary architect and urbanist Cedric Price (from whom I learned much about redefining the museum) offered another possibility for the institutions of culture. In his Fun Palace project from 1961, he responded to the necessity of preventing institutions from sitting permanently and concretely in place. He proposed a building that would, by definition, not last forever-it would disappear after a limited life span of ten to twenty years. But more than simply disappearing, it was to be a flexible structure in a large mechanistic shipyard which, according to changing situations, would be continuously built from above. Radical in its implications, Price's proposed Fun Palace was a building that could be responsive, it could be altered whilst it is occupied. Price's ideas envision a new kind of cultural centre for the twentyfirst century, one that utilizes uncertainty and conscious incompleteness. Installation view of Cities on the Move at the Vienna Secession, 1997. Photo credit: Margherita Spiluttini. Courtesy of the Vienna Secession Museums should consider Price's urgent message and conceive their exhibitions as complex, dynamic learning systems with feedback loops, so as to renounce the paralyzing homogeneity of exhibition master plans. An exhibition thus might be under permanent construction. Price was extremely present in the concept that I developed with Hou Hanru for Cities on the Move. Rather than producing a transportable, repeatable exhibition-as-product, we thought of the exhibition as a process, as a laboratory. The result was what you could call a three-year ongoing dialogue in the form of a traveling show. The show would not only change in every city it went to but it learned from every city in which it took place. The show became a procedure of sedimentation: building up in layers with each edition. It thus resisted the too common tendency to either send a show to travel exactly the same way no matter its context or, conversely, to put up a show and then erase it with a tabula rasa once it is over. Here, there was never a fixed artist list, fixed exhibition architecture, or fixed number or kind of works, so that each version of the show reflected something of the new situation (cultural, institutional, geographic, social) in which it was presented. And, little by little, very interesting things started to occur which go beyond the scope of the display of finished works. Artists involved in the various editions started to collaborate with other artists. Many projects were triggered Â
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that existed beyond the exhibition itself. And the exhibition in this sense truly became "on the move." I mention this project just briefly here to underline the lesson Cities on the Move learned from Cedric Price, which also suggests the radical potential of the museum: to, in destabilizing itself from within, inspire new artistic practices from without. To envision the museum of the twenty-first century, we thus must urge it to be less stable, more open, more collaborative, and less definitive in its articulation of history. We must use different models and allow disparate conditions to co-exist so that it can, as Price so eloquently said, "thrive through both protection and exposure." Part 2: The Museum Becoming A Program I think a key is the need for several representations of the knowledge, such that when the system is stuck (using one representation) it can jump to use another. -- Marvin Minsky in an interview with David G. Stork, published in Hal's Legacy, 2001's Computer as Dream and Reality (1997) One Way or Another, We Are Going to Live in a Fluid Universe When I try to sum up what, above all else, I have learned from grappling with the sprawling prolixities of Philippe Parreno's artwork, what I come up with is that his thought and practice are precisely impossible to summarize, a resistance to this very act. Perhaps, then, the best way to introduce Parreno's exhibition Alien Seasons at the MusĂŠe d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris (ARC), which I co-curated with Laurence Bosse and Angeline Scherf, is to reflect on its process, to make it as transparent as possible. Therefore, this introduction echoes conversations I had with Philippe Parreno, and even if it tries somehow to contextualize different fragments of these conversations, it does so in a way that approximates a notebook exercise rather than a comprehensive writing practice. Mulholland Drive/Pop-Up Books In a recent interview, David Lynch said that the only thing he was sure about with Mulholland Drive was that the film would start with an image of the road sign, "Mulholland Drive," under the headlights, and then that a series of small stories would be linked together. So he had no idea of where the film was headed. "Well, that's exactly where I am now," explained Parreno in the early
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stages of organizing the exhibition: "I would like this exhibition to be also a set of small bifurcations that will create in the end a kind of narrative cloud."1 Parreno's starting point-this road sign-was the idea that the exhibition would stem from a book (like in a Walt Disney movie, it always starts with a picture of a book, then you enter into the page and the animation begins); an exhibition as a pop-up book. This first implies that the book is the precise place of the monographic, and then, on a practical level, that the exhibition would evolve out of, and exist almost only on paper. The press invite, the poster, the catalogue, and probably even the space itself will be on paper. For Parreno, the idea of the exhibition as a pop-up book seemed to have the potential to resist the habitual stable framework of the monographic / retrospective exhibition and, more specifically, the potential to resist the possibility of apprehending his own practice as a definable resolution. During the preparation of this exhibition, Parreno sought an experimental model which could offer multiple takes on his work, trigger a variety of links between different issues, and reflect (not summarize) his non-linear practice. The Chain is Beautiful "The images are no longer beautiful, but chains are." This somehow cryptic, yet succinct, statement-which also popped up during our conversations-was another possible starting point Philippe Parreno, Alien Seasons, 2002, installation at the Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris. Courtesy of the artist on which this monographic exhibition could have been built. In Parenno's artistic vocabulary, the chain is the dynamic structure that leads to the production of forms. It is the process that, for example, in the making of a project (be it a film, a building, or an exhibition), links pre-production to production to post-production. All too often, the narrative is narrowed down to one of these sequences, Parreno explains, "however sense and narrative come from the whole series of events that occur in, and even inbetween, these sequences. Sense and narrative come from the whole continuum of the chain." A film does not only tell a story. It is part of a story. Perhaps this is all too obvious but why is it that we cannot find novels inspired by films? We only find novels based on film scenarios, which is completely different. Through this example, Parreno expresses his extreme suspicion toward the idea of the scenario as an object (which can, in some cases, be turned into a book), but also toward how we apprehend images as
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objects, as the sole and ultimate result of the production process. "I don't believe in a projective model," Parreno explains. Does everything always start with a scenario and end up as an object? In this retrospective exhibition, the different objects Parenno has previously produced are not on display and can only be seen in the book. In some ways, there are no objects left. Though, with the metaphor of the chain, it is also possible to rearticulate or to connect the different projects produced since the early nineties with current ones. From Réflexion sur le Mont Analogue, a project based on René Daumal's book, the film rights of which have been temporarily acquired by Parreno, to El Sueno de una cosa, a one-minute film shot in the North Pole as part of a pseudo-scientific expedition, most of Parreno's projects or propositions address these issues in different ways, through different angles and hypotheses: Bruno Latour speaks about experimental anthropological expeditions of uncertainty. An Infinite Conversation Through collaboration, Parreno seems to have found a means for rendering the chains of production and moments of irresolution more visible, more legible. "The projects I am interested in are those that brim over," he explains, "either because they contain many more ideas than forms, or many more forms than ideas. These are moments of irresolution, moments of imbalance that continue to fascinate me. In fact, I am much more interested in proceedings than in resolutions." For this Philippe Parreno, Alien Seasons, 2002, installation at the Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris. Courtesy of the artist exhibition, Parreno decided that he wanted to trigger such a proceeding by working with someone he has never worked with before, and without any pre-established idea of what might come out of the encounter. He chose to work with Jaron Lanier, who is considered to have coined the concept of virtual reality. Even if the outcome of this procedure as it pertains to the exhibition is still not clear at the moment the catalogue goes to print, Lanier and Parreno rapidly found common ground for discussion in the conflict between resolution and irresolution of images. (PP "Noresolution." JL "Yeah. Resolution is an idiot's game.").2 "One of the things I do," Lanier first said after accepting Parreno's proposition to collaborate, "is work with neuroscientists by inventing computer models for how the brain works. Usually the work takes a long time, and it is very hard to point to anything
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specific. However, in the last few years there have been extraordinary advances, such that we are now pretty sure we have come up with a computer model of how visual memory works.We think we understand the signals that neurons exchange for creating a new visual memory as well as for recognizing something seen from an old memory."3 And, incidentally, during this first conversation they had, Lanier even produced a statement which corresponds to the loose conceptual structure, or narrative cloud, Parreno was aiming for during the initial preparations for this exhibition: virtual worlds are shared. Virtual worlds are the first kind of reality that is both very malleable, and very flexible, like a dream, but also shared by other people. That is what is so special about it. So, if we had this ability to quickly create what exists in a virtual world, we could also have the potential for a new form of communication. I like to call this form of communication "post-symbolic." This means that instead of trading symbols that refer to things or evoke things, you would actually make the things. Instead of using the word house or museum, you could just suddenly make one. You could imagine this form of communication having some of the qualities of a dream, in that it might be fantastical, moving through many places and through many associations. But, at the same time, it would have conversational elements, with multiple people contributing, a back and forth quality and a collaborative continuity. And obviously it would be under human control, so would not involve the loss of control like a dream, but would be guided more like a conversation. ------Notes 1 All Parreno quotes from interviews between the author and the artist from 1999 to 2004. 2 From conversation recorded by the author. 3 From interview with the author.
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The Future: In Whose Hands By Karen Smith, delivered at the Zooming into Focus symposium "Envisioning the Future of Contemporary Art from Different Glocal Positions", China Art Academy, Hangzhou, China, March 2004 My perspective on the future of Chinese art in either the local or global context has been directly informed by my experience as a foreigner living in China, within the local context, for the last eleven years. The conclusions I will offer are thus drawn from the rather odd position of being non-Chinese, with unapologetically western values, yet pointedly with the complexities of the local situation in mind. On one hand, by being an outsider present in China and directly involved with its contemporary art circles, I have had an unobstructed insight into the challenges that have, and continue to face Chinese artists in the global context. On the other, this role of "foreign witness" afforded an unbiased position from which to appreciate the significance of what is happening locally, in China, now. The title of this symposium "Envisioning the Future of Contemporary Art From Different "Global" Positions" sets up a daunting proposition: the subject is huge and certainly demands a commensurate vision. To date, the evolution of contemporary Chinese art has been dogged by small, complex issues of both global and local origin that have exerted disproportionate impacts. Where it takes time for sleeping dogs to be let lie completely, what does the impact of these issues indicate for the future? To look at the future does first require an examination of the past. In terms of China, the past has been clearly divided between "global" and "local": the situation in one being a catalyst for activities and responses in the other. Here again, to look to the future demands an analysis of these variant environments. The intersecting, interaction and even repulsion between the "global" and the "local" has been chaotic. As time passes, it will of course diminish in importance. But that is the future, and we have first to consider how the past has resulted in the present climate. In regard of contemporary art from China, to date, the global and the local arenas could hardly be spoken of in the same breath. When the New Art Movement emerged in the mid 1980s, these arenas existed in apposition to each other, were diametrically opposed in many ways, and, at times, almost irreconcilable. Until very recently, this remained the case. Who, or what, is responsible and why? In regard of the big picture, the short answer is the China situation, specifically the socio-political history, against what that history, specifically the latter communist era, represented to the outside world. On a more microcosmic level, within the sphere of contemporary art in China, the stimuli and standards governing the New Art Movement and all it spawned were in turn governed by the ambitions and the goals that the artists chose to formulate for themselves. Where the local situation was culturally restrictive, these goals were much in line with perceived global agendas. Initially, through the 1980s as Deng Xiaoping's policy of opening and reform got underway, the primary goal was, to paraphrase Mao, to have the best of the West and be better. Artists felt this applied to art as much as any system of economics or social reform. It was a concern inherited by succeeding
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The haudenschildGarage generations, which although might not subsequently be associated with a Maoist ideal, was certainly invoked to make China as culturally cool as any other first-world nation. The 1980s were bewildering times, full of uncontainable excitement and then, in 1989, a monumental depression. Yet, even though the moment in which the art world in China morphed into a movement came at the tail end of an era characterized by political division and limited cultural understanding, by the early 1990s, there was almost a rush of grand-scale "China" exhibitions abroad. Each proclaimed itself a comprehensive survey of developments to date and was presented in a manner that paralleled an anthropological discovery. As one journalist puts it, this approach was "… probably the way one can best disarm the unpredictable fantasies that people in any country may harbor concerning others speaking unknown languages and living thousands of miles away".1 The "tail" end of this era proved to be very long: the journalist in question was, in fact, speaking of "Alors, La Chine?" shown at the Pompidou Centre in 2003, which in launching the year of Frano-Sino cultural exchange was required to both disarm and give credence to the fantasies – or reservations – the local population might have about contemporary China. In the event, it merely highlighted how little these had unchanged from the previous decade. However, initially abroad, this approach was a necessary means of inciting global interest. On the whole, it was born of genuine interest too on the part of curators and host venues. The universal problem was how to broaden the curatorial interest by selling new Chinese art to the public. The assumed prejudices of China's political regime against the rapidly changing socio-economic advancement offered exactly the right kind of exotic allure. It is hard to imagine how interest in the art could have been captured and sustained so effectively without the especial nature of the local sociopolitical and economic situation in China: hence the diametric opposition – East/China against West/First World - which was invoked as so intriguing a conundrum. This symposium then, comes at an interesting moment. To have attempted a discussion of the future for contemporary art from China even five years ago would have revealed the limited nature of its existence in China and its global profile. First is that fact of the conference being held in China. We are here not only because of an exhibition, but to celebrate an exhibition of contemporary photography and video art: one that is taking place in the Shanghai Art Museum. It is also an opportunity to grasp just how different the work in the exhibition is from the approaches and styles which prevailed ten years ago, or even those which were present in the works created for the first show of video art, here in Hangzhou, at the National Academy in 1996. Although numerous independent events have been held in China since the mid 1980s, contemporary art only began to nudge the public consciousness in 2000, with the Third International Shanghai Biennale. To date, this art has been almost entirely nurtured and supported by a non-Chinese audience outside of China. This was not without its problems. But until recently, without serious opportunities to speak to a 1
Michael Gibson, China Goes on Display Through its Artists, International Herald Tribune, Saturday, August 2, 2003.
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The haudenschildGarage local audience in a culturally-specific local language, the work produced by China's avant-gardists was honed towards a global consciousness in form and vocabulary. This brings us to the first of those "small, complex issues" that have shaped attitudes and practices amongst China's avant-garde art community. As has been heard in recent years from numerous local critics, all too often this art was further accorded just enough oriental and/or political exotica to fulfill rather than to disarm all those unpredictable fantasies about China. The result is that where western critics were not convinced of the work’s individuality or style, critical discourse, so important for lending credibility to the work, to validating it for audiences and keeping it in the public consciousness, was restricted. A point I will come back to in a moment. First to take a more positive stance, today, with particular regard to the local context, the situation is quite different, and thus suggests great possibilities for the future. To discuss the future in regard of China, however, is abstract at best, and encourages circumspect projections the only tangible basis of which lies in the past and the present. As just indicated, the present is already far different from the kind of projections that could be made in the 1990s, but in looking to the future from the present, we are being asked to speculate on possible scenarios over which even the artists have limited control. Locally, much of the future’s brightness depends upon political and economic currents; more depends upon achieving broader levels of cultural education and awareness among the urban populaces. In the global context, the situation is complicated by the fact that interest has proved subject to trends and hype and, in terms of museums and the market, attendance figures and profit margins. Each of these elements will affect the future for Chinese art outside China. Even so, given the enormous changes that have taken place within China through the last decade, and the equally significant changes in western attitudes towards China, then surely, at least for the time being, we can anticipate the future for China’s contemporary art to be very bright indeed. Especially the future of the art locally, in China. Logically, in boosting local confidence, the fact of a vibrant local scene should also serve to bolster and sustain the future globally, and foster a profounder aesthetic engagement, as we are already beginning to see. Increasingly, from the late 1990s, there has been a move away from the emphasis upon "China" as a theme. Increasingly, curators are looking to what individual artists offer in terms of personal expression and aesthetics, and how these contribute to international shows that ostensibly bring together the voices of varying "locales" to explore "global" issues. As might already be clear from the gist of my argument, seen through the prism of China's dramatic rise through the last twenty years, there is much to be excited about in terms of culture. This period of opening and reform saw the emergence of the avant-garde - the New Art Movement, which will celebrate a twentieth anniversary next year - and its protracted struggle to become the dynamic scene that exists today. Here, under a debilitating cloak of invisibility, it managed to evince a high degree of activity, albeit confined to the tight circles of the art world. In particular, since the late 1990s, artists and curators have produced an enormous number of events in non-art spaces, public places and myriad disused buildings in urban areas. (A comprehensive list of these activities can be found in the catalogue of the First Guangzhou Triennial.)
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The haudenschildGarage More recently, in terms of the State, we are beginning to see the slack in the cultural sphere that was allowed to form through the Deng era being taken up by the introduction of real hardware. New art schools are being built, museums are being refurbished, the government is providing some degree of support and, more importantly, demonstrating a quiet awareness where it counts – at the top – that culture is vital to the credibility China wishes to attain as a holistic nation amongst the leading global powers. Here, the quality of the future is inalienably tied to the experience that is being accrued now, and how that feeds into an appropriate local system and infrastructure. A number of foundations have already been laid: biennials in Shanghai, Chengdu and Beijing; a major public art biennial in Shenzhen; a triennial in Guangzhou. All these cities now own independent art spaces and a number of commercial galleries that operate within greater and lesser spheres of influence and success. Increased media coverage across a range of magazines, published in the big cities, is also encouraging a flourishing proletarian audience interest, per force contained within small pockets of urban society. In addition, urban residential architectural projects like Soho New Town in Beijing are taking works of art by contemporary artists into the public arena. Contemporary art, thus, has the beginning of a tangible profile within the current cultural framework in China. When compared with the public face of ten years ago, the significance of this should not be underestimated. So, to return to the future for a moment, my initial conclusion was simple: contemporary Chinese art is assured a future by virtue of the good future that seems certain for China in the wake of its continued economic development and deepening reforms. This brings us back to the issue of global and local, and the rift between the two, if for no other reason than because it still exists. Yes, it will diminish with time, but parties on both sides of the East-West divide need to consciously re-examine their thinking if they are going to make it go away entirely. We know that this "rift" owes its origins to the local political context and certain historical hegemony on the part of the global community. Let's take a specific example: Through the twenty years since 1985, when the New Art Movement began, the China-outside world situation encouraged contemporary artists to take on an enormous range of ideas from the West. If discussing this process from a western perspective about western artists nothing could be more natural than for artists of each new generation to devour, absorb, dissect and reinterpret what has gone before. In broad terms this is exactly what the Chinese avant-garde did. The results proved enormously successful - like those of the Political Pop school and the Cynical Realists. It is interesting to note that there was little interest in styles of art that seemed to come too close to those established by western artists. Here, by example, Zhang Xiaogang's early Expressionist / magic realism work is almost unknown, whilst his "Big Family" paintings have subsequently become the most recognized motifs of contemporary art from China. Such were the aesthetic dilemmas that recognition and, importantly, commercial success abroad mitigated. But as China changes apace, so has the style and content of the art being produced. As suggested previously, outside of the acceptance awarded to a handful of individual bodies of work from China, international critical acclaim still clings fast to reservations as to the originality and authenticity of the work. Within the global context, contemporary art from China still contends with a number of non-art issues that if not addressed – or laid to
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The haudenschildGarage rest - set the future in a delicate balance. The first is to challenge received impressions of China. Initial interest in contemporary art from China clearly had political overtones. It was fed by the political conflict that was inured in the Cold War, and its conclusion: in simple terms, bye-bye Red Square, hello Tiananmen. The insistent facts of political events and the interpretations of them served to inform cultural outlooks: why else was the cause of the Chinese avant-garde embraced with such enthusiasm by the US media, making the cover of the New York Times, and several issues of Time magazine and Newsweek? when all US artists know how difficult it is to be featured in such mass market publications. With human rights on the agenda, Chinese artists were seized upon as the obvious champions of the individual and freedom of expression. This was a separate issue to "selling" the art as an exhibit to audiences. One example is demonstrated by the headlines accorded Andrew Solomon's 1992 article in the New York Times magazine: On the cover was what is now Fang Lijun's most recognized painting - largely due to the publicity it garnered courtesy of the New York Times magazine. Ascribed to the image was the line: The Howl that Could Free China. It is one of many instances where the art was applied to politicized ends, clearly intended to manipulate the impression of China politically that readers took away with them. A howl of presumed pain, issued forth by these artists, and yet even the editor could not ignore the fact that this "howl" was a yawn: a fact that was noted as a tongue-in-cheek aside. This of itself might be easily forgiven as an efficient means of grabbing reader attention, but the article was titled: Their Irony, Humor (and Art) Can Save China. The word art, being bracketed, was clearly relegated to the status of an aside. I make this point not as a criticism –an act of naïve petulance given the benefit that such publicity engendered overall - but to illustrate a situation as it pertains to Chinese artists attempting to engage with the West. It was exactly this kind of reporting that prompted the artists to adopt a deliberate "playing the West at its own game" strategy in making art: drawn into a game of political posturing that was more about restoring national pride than producing good art. And this wariness in foreign attitudes towards "Chinese avant-garde" artists are not a thing of the past: The frustration it inflicts was reaffirmed recently when Wang Jianwei returned to China following a six-week residency in the US. For every one question he was asked about his work, twenty were posed in regard of the political situation in China, of freedom, repression and censorship. This illustrates that which western audiences have been encouraged to extract from an engagement with Chinese art. In broader terms, it invokes the question of the role art is there to serve: An interesting study would be to ask local artists, curators, museum directors, gallerists and the public-at-large what purpose they believe art serves. Especially artists: Why they make art and who they believe should see it. Is it an expression of national heritage and patriotic alliance? Or simply creative expression informed by a cultural framework but that does not seek or need to illustrate that situation? This issue is particularly relevant as China builds a system for art within the local cultural framework where one did not exist before. Naturally, and unavoidably to date,
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The haudenschildGarage much of the thinking about this has taken its lead from the West, but does that mean that the western system can be suitably applied to the China situation? The answer is that it does not. Here, at a challenging juncture within the western system as timehonored institutions struggle to adapt to the new formats and mediums of contemporary art, China actually has an opportunity to circumvent the immovable structure of "the museum" and its burden of historical role in public life, and create a cultural intermediary relevant to the immediate local context. There will always be a role for a museum as a repository of art, but in a society that lacks the funding to achieve multiple significant collections, there is a justification for rethinking the approach. All these issues are paradoxical. There is no right answer and no road map that might be followed to arrive at one. That should be the most exciting part about the entire future. Rem Koolhaas recently said: "The future of China is the most compelling conundrum; its outcome affects all of us, a position of resistance seems somehow ornamental …" Ornamental is an interesting choice of word. It points to historical contingencies and manages to suggest that "a position of resistance" indeed says more about naivete of the external global arena concerning the local world of China, and where its future significance lies. This throws up a big challenge to Chinese artists in terms of their "glocal" future. On one hand, as China shrugs off its mantle of Cold War opponent and moves towards becoming a major power, the art has been able to effect a distance from politics per se, which overshadowed perceptions of it in the early 1990s. On the other, the diminishing of "China" as its own self-contained and – explanatory cache is being replaced by the growing need for compelling art that goes beyond superficial self-referencing, and extols deeper, more fundamental human issues: local context made global. The second point of significance, therefore, is for artists to place more emphasis and energy on their own personal agendas, without any thought to context other than their own. In recent years, artists of both the early and younger generations have grown up in a more liberal atmosphere, have demonstrated that they have a lot to say, and about their own situation. Interestingly, as they have done so, the bulk of the China iconography, the Chinoiserie, has receded from the art. But, in this regard, the change in timbre of the interpretations of contemporary Chinese art abroad is proving a double-edged sword. Without the "Chinese" motifs a large segment of the foreign audience finds it difficult to locate some of the better examples of contemporary art from China within the context of a current Mainland culture or cultural scene, or to perceive it as being distinctive from their own. Where audiences can't "read" the linguistic vernacular, accusations of imitation arise. Going back and forth over possible future scenarios, long term as much as short term, global, but particularly local, it is clear that any discussion about the future is only really served by exploring the needs of the local community now, and the best means via which to address them. On the whole, China's recent prosperity has been good for contemporary Chinese art. In practical terms, it has. Yet the initial impetus among the artists to create in a "contemporary" fashion did not arise within prosperous circumstances. In fact, when the New Art Movement emerged in the mid 1980s, the economic circumstances of China's avant-garde artists were nothing less than dire. This did not prevent the leading artists of the New Art Movement from producing
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The haudenschildGarage substantial and enduring works under the idealistic banner of "art for art's sake" and wrestling with enormously complex - and often irresolvable issues. In the 1990s, against the tide of foreign interest, many Chinese artists saw their impoverished circumstances inverted beyond their wildest expectations. Naturally, prosperity was of enormous benefit to all concerned, for it was instrumental in sustaining the artists' practice when they and their art went unacknowledged in their locality. But now we can see the benefits of local economic growth on the art scene and the system in general, does this mean that a good economy is good for the future of Chinese art? Money certainly greases the wheels of society; opening and reform and economic development have oiled cultural awareness. But when all flows so smoothly, where do artists go to get an edge in their work? One only has to look to BritArt to witness the effects of too much prosperity, business and hype on creative innovation. This is particularly relevant to China where so many younger artists have, in recent years, taken their lead from Damien Hirst, Tracy Emin etc. Increasingly, the ways in which Chinese artists choose to express themselves do not always conform to the structure and vocabulary of western constructs. If Chinese art is to have its own tangible future, then artists should not feel coerced into conformity. Equally, vacuous, shocking or superficial dalliances with western models and "China" motifs should be written off as extravagant or frivolous distractions. Especially where they do not further human experience, in a global or local sense, or challenge the emotions, rational thoughts, and general experience we have of the world in whatever small or seemingly insignificant a way. So what is the right balance? Artists previously dedicated so many years to the global environment, but now it is the local context that currently has more allure, and possibilities. What shape is the local cultural framework in now to act as a seedbed for the future? Certainly in the wake of reform and opening, in recent years, "now" has offered artists a rich array of seductive subjects and topics: socio-political change; consumerism; consumption; indulgence; sexual roles and identity; corruption; youth culture; status and personal space. If artists are truly exploring such subjects in relation to China, their art should speak clearest to a local audience? As foreign people come to know more about China, this art will certainly speak to them too, just as western art has "spoken" to local Chinese artists. Globally, Chinese art excites because China excites: there are few more exciting places in the world than Hong Kong yet creatively its artists struggle to maintain a dialogue with the international art world, a dialogue which came to China’s contemporary artists so effortlessly. But this is not something artists can afford to be complacent about. The question is how to address this intelligently? How to go beyond the constraints of verbal language, beyond East-West, Trend-Fashion? With a pressing need for open dialogue and communication, much of the future depends upon the agendas that are set now, today. Previously I suggested that artists have little control over that future. In broad global and local terms they don't, but they do have a monopoly over the type of work they create. When they have got that right, no one will ever have reason to put brackets around their art again. The question of the future, global or local, really hinges on how they proceed, to what ends and on whose terms? Perhaps, by putting the past behind
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The haudenschildGarage them and focusing their energies on building upon what is plausibly the most dynamic present position any “glocal” context we could name.
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Where is the space for art in the age of globalization of technology? By Mo Zhelan delivered at the Zooming into Focus symposium "Envisioning the Future of Contemporary Art from Different Glocal Positions", China Art Academy, Hangzhou, China, March 2004 Ladies and Gentlemen, The subject of this symposium is “Predicting the future of art – local perspectives on globalization.” I am not an optimist to talk about the subject. Honestly, every keyword included in the subject – predicting, art, future, globalization and local perspective – has made me nervous, and I do not know how to take a stand. “Art” appears to be the subject word, but “globalization” is the headword. “Local perspective” is simply in response (answer) to the possessive headword. Only when you are aware of the relations among those three words, it is then possible to offer “prediction” about the “future” of “art.” In the subject, what does “globalization” imply? Does it mean “the future of art being globalized” or “the future art in a globalized context?” The two implications share one thing in common, that is, we need, first of all, to make sure what “globalization” refers to. Globalization is an index concept that emerged toward the end of last century with the advent of the networked information era. It originally refers to the “technology” on a normalized scale. The so-called “global integration of technology” or “globalization of technology” serves as an index rating the degree of global penetration of technology. Technology has its own scale and space. For example, oxcarts – motorcars – rockets are the most apparent indicators that extend time and space. Among water-powered mills – steam engines – nuclear power stations, the first two were recognized by Karl Marx as material evidence of the social evolution theory of historical materialism stating that productivity determines the relations of production. Scrolls and bamboo slips movable-type printing – digital images are viewed today as measures of civilization which retell the evolution of means to deliver historical and cultural information. All these different forms of technologies have their own scale of time and space. The time and space where they exist or which they measure differ completely. That explains why Martin Heidegger made those odd statements about technology and space such as “the world worlds” and “the scale scales.” Obviously, only in an era of satellite TV, networked information, and automobiles and airplanes, it is possible that the globe shrinks to a “global village.” The prevalence of technology has generated commercial profits which have promoted “technology” to a leading position in relation to “science.” Much of today’s “science” is in fact played out by technology, which is spurred by profits. In essence, it is driven by “desires.” The alliance between technology and desire, therefore, constitutes the foundation or essential requirement of modernity: technology and desire are means of self-fulfillment for one another. “Technology as desire” or “desire as technology” expresses the same idea.
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“Desire” is a sensibility that drives and consumes, while “technology” is simply the sensible fulfillment of “driving-production-consumption.” Naturally, this demands technology to be “sensible” or “artistic.” In theoretical terms, it is “the disappearance of the boundary between life and art,” or “the modern romanticism” which “saves human nature by making technology artistic in an age of technology.” For example, globalization of technology comes with a uniformity or homogeneity in life style, making the quality of desire homogeneous. Computers, networked information, videos, rock’n’roll, automobiles, MacDonalds, fashion models and beauty pageants have become the symbols of modernity of a nation or a city. Under such symbols, everything can be shown on the stage, from personal privacy to election campaigns. “To show” is to make desire a technology that is artistically presentable. Art is returned straight to stimulative sensibility or sensible stimulation. Technology has also been extended in meaning. Technology derived from natural science or based on the level of skill and precision required in daily work should be the original meaning of technology. In ancient times, the word “technique” was used more frequently until replaced with the word “technology” which weighs more on science. Then it kept extending into the realm of means to all ends, where measures, procedures, modes all became part of technology. Eventually it ended up as a way of thinking that takes in utility and utilitarian. Everything is “calculated” or “measured.” In this sense, we may say, almost without any exaggeration, that a modern person is a “person of technology.” Under the assumption of this kind of extension of meaning, it appears natural that art will be globalized along with the globalization of technology. Is it true that today’s dream fabricators in Hollywood are leading the trend of globalization of the film industry? To support this view as evidenced by “new media visual art” that relies heavily on new technologies, there is another cognitive “principle of sufficient reason” which argues that: Globalization does not equal conformity. As long as it is not conforming, “national art” will not be harmed. In fact, new technology such as “visual media” only offers a common platform of expression for national art. Form is separated from content. It is merely the container or package of content. If the content is national, a globalized or even conforming form makes no difference. Rather, it is a must for national art to step out of tradition, to move into modernity, and to join in the global cultural exchange in a globalized trend. We are revisiting an old issue. That globalization does not equal conformity has extended the specific concept of “globalization of technology, ” which, in its original sense, should mean “globalization” is “conformed” by technology. This is determined by the inherent nature of technology, as illustrated before. What really holds up the “principle of sufficient reason” of globalization is the dualism of “form and content”. It looks like a “sure thing.” I would like, first of all, to raise a question: Why the “West” represents the “world” and the “non-West” is confined to the “national?” This type of
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The haudenschildGarage mindset is nothing but the product of the “modern expansion” of Western technological supremacy. It has crept into the surface level of our consciousness to set up an assumption that predetermines a “hierarchical scheme of superior over inferior” and compels us to accept it. In fact, the Japanese, who believe that they are quasi-Westerners, have made little attempt to conceal the idea. This made me recall a 1953 conversation between Heidegger and Tezuka, a professor from the Tokyo Imperial University. Heidegger doubted the possibility of interpreting Japanese art with Western concepts as attempted by Kuki Shuzo. Tezuka strongly agreed with Heidegger in his criticism of the “metaphysical nature of Western concepts.” On the other hand, however, he was puzzled by the inability to explicitly explain Oriental art for Western people to appreciate it. He also stated that, in movie guru Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, “the Japanese world was eventually caught in the object range of photography, and was purposely manipulated for the art of photography.” “If I heard correctly,” Heidegger asked, “you are trying to say that the products of technological aesthetics of the film industry do not fit into East Asia at all.” The Japanese professor replied, “This is exactly what I thought. The fact of photography has driven our world into your so-called object realm. The objectification of film has been an outcome of the ever expanding Europeanization process.” In other words, “The Japanese world appears to be European, or American.” (see Heidegger’s A Dialogue on Language, from the Selected Works of Heidegger (Volume B), compiled by Sun Zhouxing, Shanghai Sanlian Publishing, 1996, p. 1021) Some fifty years have passed. This dialogue, however, could be happening today almost exactly in the same way as it was then. The only change necessary is to put “world being Americanized,” or, to be self-deceptive, “being globalized” in place of “world being Europeanized.” What Heidegger meant to convey was that the conceptual system of Western technology reasoning was, by nature, technological. To Westerners, it was not even artistic by nature. Rather, it tore down the nature of art, let alone Oriental art. In today's world where people are accustomed to all forms of “technology,” who cares about the ethos of art! As long as an inspiration is presented with the state-of-art technology and achieves the greatest sensational effect and creates the highest exchange value, it is successful as an “art” piece! Two hundred years ago, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel defined beauty as “a manifestation of the idea in sensuous form.” I would like to restate this by saying that “art is a manifestation of technology in sensuous form.” This should sound elegant and refined. Or, more baldly, we can say: “Art is a sexual manifestation of technology.” I am not quite sure if this could serve as a prediction as to the “globalization of future art” or “future art in a globalized context.” Ladies and Gentlemen,
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The haudenschildGarage I have no intention to disrespect art, just as I have no intention to disrespect a flower when I say “the flower is yellow.” Today, art is linked to “technology-desire” at one end, and to “populace-money” at the other. For something as splendid as art, I have not gone insane to the extent that I would dare to disrespect it. While defining beauty as “a manifestation of the idea in sensuous form,” Hegel concludes that beauty tends to disappear after passing through its three forms – symbolic, classic and romantic. An enigma about the perishablity of art was left for succeeding generations to resolve. Today, it is true that art as “a manifestation of the idea in sensuous form” has vanished into art as “a manifestation of technology in sensuous form.” This is a fact as clear as daylight. The only thing left for people to do is to comment on it: Is it “good” or “not good,” “progressing” or “backsliding.” If the existence of art will disappear eventually, what is the purpose of making value judgments about its current function as the “packaging” of technology? I need to pause for a while to reflect on an issue: Modern romanticists expected not long ago that art could be used to save human nature in the age of technology. Why all of sudden is art resigned to be a “servant-girl” or an “apparel” of technology? Did we make a mistake in judgment or logic? Even if some kind of art, or a branch of art or a section of art has gone down the road of “sexual manifestation of technology,” we may not jump to the conclusion that all kinds of art, or art per se or art of the forever future will inevitably take the same road. Prior to any conclusions being drawn about the future of art, it is better to revisit the modern nature of technology and the true relationship between technology and art. Technology is a process of implementing the scientific way of thinking as part of technological reasoning. In a very laconic way, Heidegger once epitomized technology as “the world as a picture.” The world was first incorporated into a “sectional view” which can be produced, and then it was “reproduced” as a world based on the view. Therefore, this age of technology is called the “Age of the World Picture” (Zeit des Weltbild). The German phrase “Im Bilde sein” (be in the picture) means “to be in the know, to be ready, or to be prepared for something.” And, the “Age of the World Picture” indicates that the world as the entirety of existence is grasped as a picture, and placed in an objective process to be understood and reproduced. Although the “picture” is a “composed view” for reproducing the world with specified purpose, production process, testing measures and security systems, it is visible after all. It needs to appear aesthetically pleasing, in order to re-enter the circulation process to realize its exchange value. Even if corporate or business behaviors from R&D to production such as planning, design, manufacturing, sale and consumption are still in progress or unfinished, they are in fact already completed in the “composed view” which is clearly presented at a glance. Naturally there will be unexpected accidents
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The haudenschildGarage which in principle must be excluded, either as errors or updates. This is the logic of “inevitability” in the age of technology or the age of the world picture. Heidegger refers it as “two dimensional” logic. Who can assert that this process is not used in the production and consumption of “artistic pictures?” Picturizing this age of technology or grasping the world as a picture is not limited to the straight technical level, but also applies to people’s way of existence, their way of perception, thinking, and expression, before penetrating into various spheres, primarily political, artistic and religious spheres. Everyone knows why Hollywood is called “the dream factory?” What cannot be produced in a factory that can manufacture dreams? The operation of the Hollywood dream factory symbolizes and foretells that the life of the entire human race has been grasped as a “pattern” or “picture,” and each pattern can be broken down into elements for easier composition and assembly and for quantity production. Such pattern elements as violence, sex, extravagant luxury, duplicity and abnormality sell well, don’t they? What about politics? The life of the human race is first historicized, and then the history is rationalized as a “theory of progress,” which is further labeled as historical idealism and historical materialism, or democratic progression under the principle of equity or freedom, or “eternal recurrence” under the principle of “the will to power.” We have lived through the “theory of progress” under historical materialism. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, however, the historical conclusion seems to be proved that the spirit of freedom finally prevails. It is said that the United States, in which God dwells, is the brightest beacon of the freedom spirit in this world. The United States unarguably becomes the chief of the global city-state federation, who decides between “the civilized and the barbarian” and “the bright and the dark,” and on the security borders of the world and who are “rogue nations” or “axes of evil” or “terrorists” that must be punished or attacked. All these decisions are made beneath the most glorious flag of “freedom, democracy and justice.” The way the politics work is determined by the foundation of political philosophy, the power of wisdom and force, which decides the value hierarchy. Being globalized, technology is the condensed manifestation of this power of wisdom and force. Is there any other logic that reasons more clear-cut and inevitably? If the present and future of globalization are and have to be so, what kind of energy does “local perspective” have to shake the world? Not long ago in Europe, seven intellectuals including Juergen Habermas, Jacques Derrida and Richard Rorty published a statement to voice a different opinion by calling on intellectuals throughout the world to unite against the American hegemony and for an overall revival of Europe. As a reader, I wrote Today’s Illegally-enthroned New Chief of the Global City-state Federation (see Open Times, Issue 5, 2003) to express my own different opinion.
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The haudenschildGarage To sum up, globalization of technology should be a concept requiring introspective reflection. In particular, the concept of technology itself requires reflection. Even if technology is actually globalized, it does not give us a basis to make a judgment call or reach the conclusion that politics, art, religion must all be globalized. Unlike technology, politics, art and religion cannot satisfy the indicative requirements of global or universal applicability. If they could, globalization of politics would mean the globalization of American-style democracy, globalization of art would mean the globalization of American-style Hollywood art, globalization of religion would mean the globalization of Christianity, and so on. The universal applicability of the “utility” of technology would become the universal applicability of “power” in the general sense. In other words, the principle of “power worship” would prevail. As a result, it would lead to, at least by logic, the conclusion that the most powerful nation in today’s world, the United States, should be the “monarchical ruler” of the world. In fact, we never doubt the appropriateness of this way of thinking to which we are accustomed: The Western modes of reasoning, technological reasoning and the culture it supports are, of course, “universally applicable,” while non-Western cultures can only be regarded as local cultures which are “specific” and “ethnic.” At most, we can comfort ourselves by declaring, “the more ethnic it is, the more universal it is.” The sentence has two layers of meaning. First, as a non-substitutable type, anything ethnic stands as a unique “special case” in the world, such as the Parthenon Temple in Athens, the Pyramids in Egypt, and the Great Wall or Terracotta Warriors in China. Second, anything ethnic that is appreciated everywhere also includes, in addition to scientific and technical inventions, things like religious teachings of Judaism, the philosophical works of the Ancient Greeks and the wise sayings of the Chinese. So long as you believe in them, these ethnic contents perhaps can at least be accepted by the world as a “pattern of existence” for adoption and selection, such as tea and ink paintings from China, wine and Impressionist paintings from France, sushi and ukiyo from Japan. All these cultures were originally equal. Due to the later-developed superiority of Western technology, however, a seriously skewed view has emerged: Anything Western is universal, whereas anything non-Western is specific. With this kind of mindset, we are for certain predetermined to view and think from an inferior perspective - “the local perspective,” even before we start thinking. In philosophy, the issue involves the ever-existing worldwide quarrel between the Ancients and Moderns and its underlying quarrel between the Gods. So-called Orientalism is, in essence, an Oriental perspective determined by the West, and a resentful expression of the quarrel between the Ancients and Moderns and its underlying quarrel between the Gods. We have taken and followed it as a fashionable idea. It is not part of the subject under our discussion, but it has to be part of the background of our discussion. As we all should know, this is what globalization as an indicator of universal applicability, both temporal and spatial, is (or may be) all about. Let us return to our subject of art. The similarities between “globalization of technology” and “globalization of art” have been discussed. I would rather look at them as partially similar, if I can differentiate the dissimilarities between them that are not overlapping or identical. Now, we must focus on their dissimilarities that are not overlapping or identical.
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The fundamental distinction between art and technology is that they do not exist on the same “plane.” If they did, it would be impossible for art to escape from the logical net of technological inevitability. Even if the “plane” ruptures and forms ravines, valleys or rivers, technology would offer all possible “ferry” connections (logical reasoning) to keep the “plane” connected and extended. Fortunately, politics, art and religion do not, by nature, exist on the same “plane” with technology. In other words, the spaces of politics, art and religion are not covered by the “plane” of technology. The questions now are: where does the space of art exist? What effect does the space of art exert on the plane of technology? Where does the space of art exist? In Art and Space, Heidegger describes space in his usual visual way: 1. A space means accommodation-placement and congregation-shelter, while spatialization means exploration which involves “Ereignis” or appropriation. This kind of appropriation always displays a double character, which is open and closed at the same time. 2. Spatialization opens up a place which is constantly in a changing and divided state: either welcoming the human’s fate as “a return home,” or being left desolated as “not returnable” or indifferent toward being homeless or domiciled. 3. Finally the space leaves room for a deity, which is quite hesitant. As “one God” stands out, “many Gods” flee away; as “many Gods” stand out, “one God” flees away. It has been long since this deity has hesitated or strayed. (see Heidegger’s Art and Space, from the Selected Works of Heidegger (Volume A), compiled by Sun Zhouxing, Shanghai Sanlian Publishing, 1996, p. 484) These three points are my selected rewording. the first point describes the attributes of space. The second point explains the relationship between the state of space and human beings. In the third point, “deity” has already referred to the status of “many Gods” behind cultures in a worldwide context. If “one God” is given prominence, where should “many Gods” of other cultures be placed? If “many Gods” are given favor by returning “one God” to “many Gods,” how can the real, invisible spirit of God be manifested? Without this manifestation, will “many Gods” be entangled in an everlasting dispute? (Please note that the God here does not specifically refer to the Jehovah of Judaism, or the Jesus of Christianity or the Allah of Islam. I have to state that my explanation is not what Heidegger originally meant. It is rather my own derivative comments. In his minds, the “God” and “many Gods” may only be compared in the context of the Hebrews and Greeks. He may not sense the worldwide hesitation in recognizing that each “God” behind each ethnic culture is part of “many Gods.” There is no “one God,” or, in reality, “one God” stands for “many Gods.” In religious form, “many Gods” can be seen in a sense as “the hiding of God,” which are idolized to represent the need of
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The haudenschildGarage national interest. In a post-religious era, what is revealed through catastrophes is the approaching by “many Gods” to their own boundaries to listen to the call of the “Invisible God” and take the road of religious neutralization.) Heidegger specifically differentiates the space of art and the space of technology. He stated that the ever expanding technology and technology reasoning have nurtured a concept, which looks at the “manageable and usable” space as the only real space. Human beings are dwelling in this increasingly “demanding” space of technology. In response to this idea, Heidegger points out the availability of other spaces, such as “the space of art” and “the space of daily action and interaction.” Citing sculpture as an example, he describes the three-layered space presented in sculpture: the space of the imitated object; the space of the sculptured shape; the space existing as a “void” internal or external of the sculpture. “Are these three spaces, unified in their interplay, always simply a derivative of some physical or technological space?” Heidegger asked. (Ibid p. 483.) I would like to present it in a different way. “The space of the imitated object” can be called “the space of nature,” referring to the “imitated form of the object.” It is not the “object,” nor just the “imitation” per se. Rather, it is an established “interplay.” “The space of the sculptured shape” can be called “the space of shape” or “the space of inner shape,” referring to the “interplay” of artistic factors related to sculptural art itself. “The space existing as a ‘void’ internal or external of the sculpture” can be called “the space of freedom,” primarily referring to the “interplay,” other than the abovementioned, with “implication of sensitivity” or “sensitivity and implication,” including the self revelatory “game of hearing” in relation to the transcendent “realm of deity.” To be frank, each layer of space only opens to perceptive beings. As for the flow of perception, it totally depends on personal fate, as initially illustrated by Heidegger in terms of the “attributes,” “state” and “deity” of space. Anyone who is perceptive to films and videos should have no difficulty in perceiving Heidegger’s theory of space. Let us take Heroes directed by Zhang Yimou as an example: The sword is a metaphor of “war’ and “the will to power.” Incidents involving the sword – space of nature Self-manifestation of the sword – space of shape The art of swordplay – space of freedom
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The haudenschildGarage Where shall we draw the boundaries of the realm of the art of swordplay? Along the line of vassal feudalism such as the six warring states including Yan and Zhao (“many Gods”), or along the line of unified monarchy ruled by a heavenly son such as Qin (“one God”), or along the line of “the invisible void” (the “Invisible God” that neutralizes many Gods – “The invisible governs the visible, and the causeless tells the truth of everything.” – This is my local perspective)? It all depends on how far the fate of perceivers could, or be allowed to, go. Someone’s fate might be superior to others, but within a specific environment or historical context, people might have no choice, but have to do what they have to do. As an individual, one could be detached from reality. As a nation and a country, one sometimes has to face the very basic choice between existence and non-existence, for example, the Anti-Japanese War that China had to fight. Can today’s world accept and worship one of the “many Gods” as the “one God?” If not, does it suggest that the discord between “many Gods” will go on forever? Or, alternatively, will they take the ultimate revelation of the “invisible deity” by going down the road of neutralization? The three-layered space opened by the art of swordplay definitely implies more leeway. Whether people gave negative opinions of the film Heroes as they viewed the first Emperor of Qin as today’s “dictator” or applauded the film for their belief that today’s “reunification” is China’s ultimate destiny, they might have confined the space of art the film should have. Similarly, in today’s world, any country, nation or culture can only be one of the “many Gods.” All three great monotheisms are simply part of “many Gods.” To end the conflicting situation caused by the discord between “many Gods,” the solution cannot be obtained by some nation believing that they have the power to make people worship “one God.” A neutralized solution that keeps the world “in harmony but not uniformity” is only possible if each of us walk to our own boundaries to listen to the revelation of the “Invisible God” in a self-disciplined way. This is called “penetrating its height and brilliance to follow the course of the actualization of the Mean.” In China’s space of art, there exists, of course, the realm “penetrating its height and brilliance” to reach the way of Heaven. It should be able to meet the other “many Gods” at its boundary and exist “in harmony but not uniformity.” What effect does the space of art exert on the plane of technology? If we let the inevitability of technology get its way, the “demanding” space of the world will be driven to a dead end. A German professor once told a story: An automobile traveling on a highway somehow resembles the way modern people live. The driver is a natural scientist that controls the destiny of today’s human race. The highway represents the direction toward which the
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The haudenschildGarage modern technology is accelerating. The entire human race is riding in the automobile as passengers. The question now is who should sit next to the natural scientist that is behind the wheel. The professor thought the person should be a philosopher. I would like to make a small change and add the process of “election.” A theologist? No. He subjects the ultimate destiny of human race to the last judgment of God, who is not in control now. A politician? No. Today’s politician relies on the speed and power provided by science and technology. He is too anxious to be the number one in the race to establish unilateralism worshipped by the entire human race. The only ones left are an artist (including philosopher of art) and a philosopher (including philosopher of politics). As long as the artist is not into “sexual manifestation of technology” and the philosopher not into metaphysics, it is better if they can blend together. What if they do blend? Ladies and Gentlemen, We may have no better alternatives for the time being, except to keep reminding ourselves.
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The haudenschildGarage Zooming into Focus By Tina Yapelli published in the Zooming into Focus catalog, 2005 Contemporary art in China reflects the country’s rising influence as an economic, political and cultural force in the global arena. Chinese artists are gaining international recognition for their potent artworks that address a rapidly changing society; influenced by Western ideals and art practice, their creative production nevertheless remains distinctly Chinese in its content and aesthetic. Several of these artists have exhibited their work in major exhibitions such as documenta in Germany, the Venice Biennale in Italy, and the Shanghai Biennial and Guangzhou Triennial in China, but have had little exposure in the United States. The first project of its kind in this country, Zooming into Focus: Contemporary Chinese Photography and Video from the Haudenschild Collection features the work of many of the most noteworthy Chinese artists working today, including Cao Fei, Chen Shaoxiong, Feng Mengbo, Hong Hao, Shi Yong, Weng Fen, Xiang Liqing, Xu Zhen, Yang Fudong, Yang Yong, Yang Zhenzhong, Zhao Bandi and Zheng Guogu. In two exhibitions, the project highlights the extraordinary photography and video being created by these artists in a country that is undergoing tremendous growth and development. This swift transformation of Chinese culture is reflected in the work of each of the artists, who comment on contemporary Chinese life with intelligence, wit, anxiety and nostalgia. All of the works in both exhibitions are presented at the University Art Gallery through a generous loan from the Haudenschild Collection. Noted art collectors and alumni Eloisa and Chris Haudenschild have created one of the largest and most significant groupings of contemporary Chinese photography and video in the world. Focusing on the work of experimental artists from China’s lively urban centers, such as Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai, the collection has become a landmark contribution to the field of international contemporary art. In addition to lending their collection of new Chinese works, the Haudenschilds have commissioned a performance by Shi Yong and a video installation by Yang Zhenzhong that will premiere in San Diego. In conjunction with Zooming into Focus, an extensive educational program that consists of a keynote lecture, a symposium, a screening and three artists’ residencies will be presented at San Diego State University and partnering institutions in San Diego. A complete listing of the program, as well as related events in San Diego, Tijuana and Hangzhou, is found on pages 76 and 77. Together, the exhibitions and educational program comprise a comprehensive project intended to showcase contemporary Chinese art, and to encourage viewers to appreciate today’s China with new insight and perspective. In November of 2002, at the invitation of Eloisa Haudenschild, I had the opportunity to view the first works of contemporary Chinese photography that she and Chris had collected during a visit to Shanghai. Overwhelmed by the power and vitality of the images, I immediately declared my desire to exhibit the photographs at the University Art Gallery. Eloisa responded with equally-instant enthusiasm, and our adventure began. With Chris’s and the University’s blessing, we traveled together to China in January of 2003. We met with artists, curators and gallerists in Guangzhou, Shanghai and Hangzhou, and viewed two major exhibitions, the First Guangzhou Triennial and the 2002 Shanghai Biennial. Following this trip, during which the collection grew, we
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The haudenschildGarage began to discuss the exhibition, possible educational events, and a modest brochure that would document the project. As the Haudenshilds continued to collect photographs and video works during the first several months of 2003, it became clear that their impressive collection warranted two exhibitions at the University Art Gallery and a substantial catalogue with scholarly essays. And as Eloisa met with relevant artists, curators and collectors in Paris, New York, Venice and San Francisco, she planted the seeds of a broad-based series of educational programs featuring international participants. Finally, through recent meetings in Shanghai and Guangzhou, and with colleagues from Tijuana, Eloisa successfully paved the way for the photography exhibition to travel to museums in China and Mexico. On behalf of those who view the exhibitions, partake of the educational programs, or read this book—both here and abroad—I am grateful for the generosity of Eloisa and Chris Haudenschild. Their joyful willingness to share their collection is a special gift to us all. I also would like to express appreciation for Eloisa’s collaborative commitment to the project and her passionate devotion to art. Her dedication to the work of young artists has made a difference in their lives, and has benefited the world of contemporary art. My personal thanks are expressed to Eloisa Haudenschild for her inspirational spirit and her absolute trust. Tina Yapelli Director, University Art Gallery, San Diego State University
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The haudenschildGarage Contemporary Chinese Photography and Video: FOCUSING ON URBAN TRANSFORMATION IN CHINA By Lim Jen Erh for zbNOWSingapore August 15, 2005 No longer for the sole purpose of documentation, photography and video in art has become a popular medium in contemporary Chinese art. Zooming into Focus: Contemporary Chinese Art and Photography, on show now in Singapore, offers an insight into the development of contemporary Chinese photography and video in the last 10 years, at the same time, examines the rapid urban transformations in China. Some western critics remarked that in the last two years, photography and video works from China has quickly replaced performance and installation art to become the most popular forms of contemporary art making. You may not agree on this but if you are keen on understanding contemporary Chinese photography and video, there is now an opportunity to do so. LASALLESIA’s Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore’s current exhibition, Zooming into Focus: Contemporary Chinese Photography and Video showcases the works of Chinese artists Chen Shaoxiong, Weng Fen, Xiang Liqing, Xu Zhen, Yang Zhenzhong, Yang Fudong, Yu Youhan and Zheng Guogu. Contemporary Chinese artists have, in recent years, received international acclaim. Increasingly, works by artists dealing with photography and video are represented in international exhibitions, next to painting and installation works. Artists like Chen Shaoxiong, Xu Zhen, Yang Zhenzhong, Yu Youhan and Zhen Guogu have all participated in the Venice Biennales and the works presented in this exhibition are emblematic of Chinese photography and video art. A Significant Collection The exhibition is presented through a generous loan from US-based art collector, Chris and Eloisa Haudenschild. The couple started collecting contemporary Chinese photography and video works four to five years ago. Compared to painting, this is a relatively unpopular medium for collection. Especially so in China, where collectors will spend huge amount on paintings but turned away from acquiring video works. As such, the 100 over works collected by the Haudenschilds is undoubtedly one of most significant single collection of contemporary photography and video. In an interview with Mrs Eloisa Haudenschild, who was in Singapore for the opening of the exhibition, she remarked, “To me, collecting art is not only for pleasure, it involves participation and bearing witness to the development of an art form. That is why I personally know the artists whose work I collect. Some even became good friends. The most valuable experience comes from discussions and exchange of ideas with them.” She has a Chinese name, given to her by her friends in the Chinese art scene. It means “like the wind”.
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The haudenschildGarage Eloisa was collecting Latin American art when in 2001, she chanced upon some contemporary Chinese photography and video works at a gallery in Shanghai. Astounded, she bought many pieces that started the collection. The Entire Collection in Beijing Back at home, Eloisa started reading about Chinese photography and video, at the same time meet many Chinese artists and art critics, to gain an understanding of the subject. She now travels to China every three to four months as she felt the need to keep up with the speed of transformation there. Zooming into Focus: Contemporary Chinese Photography and Video has travelled to many countries, including San Diego (USA), Shanghai (China), Mexico and now Singapore, after which it will travel to Beijing (China). According to Eloisa, the exhibition in Beijing will the largest and will present almost all of the 100 over works in the collection. While on show in Shanghai Art Museum last year, the Museum’s introduction to the exhibition reads, “Zooming into Focus: Contemporary Chinese Photography and Video from the Haudenschild Collection will present the works of many of the most noteworthy Chinese artists working today, and will highlight the remarkable photography currently being created in China, a country that is undergoing tremendous development and growth. This swift transformation of Chinese culture is reflected in the work of each of the artists, who comment on contemporary Chinese urban life with intelligence, wit, foreboding and nostalgia.” Looking at this exhibition, one experiences the metamorphosis of contemporary photography and video works - from being just a tool in documentation, to a ‘canvas’ for a myriad of artistic expression.
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City Report: Beijing By Waling Boers and Pi Li for Frieze.com, January-February 2006 Despite Shanghai's leading economic role, Beijing is still China's political and cultural centre. As capitalism thrives, and state paternalism continues, artists juggle the pitfalls of exoticism and international success. Waling Boers and Pi Li discuss the rapidly changing scene of the Chinese capital. --Waling Boers A curator, writer and founding Director of BuroFriedrichBerlin and UniversalStudios-Beijing When the cab driver dropped me off in a crowded Beijing business street in front of a company called 'Great Prospect Co.', a recent headline from a German weekly popped into my mind: 'Attack from China' Germany fears the Yellow Danger.' It is, of course, a question of perspective, but instinctively I felt more at ease in Beijing than in Berlin at that moment, even though I could communicate with the driver only by giving him my mobile phone, so that my host could explain where to take me. Seen from the other side of the globe, the emotional housekeeping of the West seems all the more in peril. Is this because the fear of losing economic and cultural dominance dictates the dynamics of everyday life? In contrast, the new Chinese attitude clearly gets its positive energy from accelerating expectations. This fundamentally different mindset has modeled the current art scene in China's metropolises. In a hectic dialectic involving artists, critics, curators, collectors, gallerists and officials, over the past few years contemporary Chinese art has launched itself into Western art history through international group shows, record-setting auction sales and annual discoveries of new art movements: Mao goes Pop, Cynical Realism, Bad Painting, Shock Art, Meat Art and New Measurement. Recently, Chinese art, however diverse in itself, has become a must-have brand, like those other nation-state-labelled commodities (such as Young British Artists, German Art or Art from the South Pacific). One headline in the Wall Street Journal this July read: 'New art from China attracts Big Money from Collectors.' As if everybody must have it now. Meanwhile the first private 'Chinese Collections' have become publicly accessible outside and inside China: the Sigg Collection in Switzerland and the Haudenschild Collection of Experimental Art in Shanghai and Beijing. In the case of the substantial collection of the Belgians Guy and Myriam Ullens, their lucrative investments returned to China packaged with a foundation, and will be included in Beijing's art park Factory 798. Although this act of reciprocity is, of course, injected with the post-colonial idea of balancing the cultural exchange, these events are important in Beijing's artistic landscape. For those involved in the field, these intensified activities involving foreign collectors have provided reason enough to question the ethics of collecting. At this year's Art Basel Conversations, Guan Yi, one of the most engaged collectors in China, stated: 'I think Western collectors are not always interested in the cultural value of Â
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The haudenschildGarage contemporary Chinese Art; they pay more attention to the commercial relationship between politics and art.' Although many people are talking about this branding phenomenon, artists are less impressed than amused by it. The sardonic Beijing artist Yan Lei responded to the questionable role of auction houses, an important market instrument in the Chinese art upheaval, by creating an 'industrially produced' series of paintings featuring banknotes, Picassos and a so-called 'artistic expression' created by a chimpanzee. Besides commenting on the superficiality and anonymity of the international art market, Yan Lei addresses Chinese artists' increasing dependence on the market and the pressure to produce art works as market-fitting commodities, a dependence imposed by the lack of an alternative. There are no grants in Beijing, no commissions, no museums for contemporary art, no political elite that acknowledges its cultural responsibility. Not that this is such a big problem under the current circumstances. The Chinese cultural elite knows only too well what it is to have Big Brother watching you, although everyday surveillance is lessening. While some specific acts are forbidden by law, such as the consumption of human tissue, which has featured in some works, exhibitions are no longer being closed down. While in its first years the Beijing Art Fair was a state-subordinated affair, it is now a privately run organisation that will soon be the largest contemporary art event in Asia. In other, traditionally more state-controlled branches of the arts, like film and literature, changes are also taking place. Censorship is turning into a form of advisory supervision, as the independent filmmaker Wang Xiaoshuai discovered when getting his film Shanghai Dreams (2005) officially distributed. After a process of negotiation he had to change the ending of his film by reducing the number of audible gun shots, which referred to public executions. But such interventions from the Ministry of Information are not taken so seriously any more. Within the ideological framework encapsulated in the new slogan 'Build a Human-centered Harmonious Society' people play sportily with the rules of mainland China, as former 'underground' filmmaker Jia Zhang-Ke did when he accepted the position of chairman of the jury at last year's Shanghai Film Festival. In practice, the relation between Government officials and the art scene has become a kind of Cold Peace. State censorship is becoming self censorship of all those involved (artists, curators, producers, publishers, etc). As in the West, the 'underground' is becoming more and more like a waiting room for the mainstream. The best place to feel this cool breeze is in China's cultural centre, Beijing, which has the ambivalent reputation of being more ideologically sympathetic than other cities such as mondaine Shanghai or hard-working Guangzhou. In Wang Wei's latest installation, Trap (2005), realized at Platform China in Beijing's new art area the East End, birds flew around, caged in a huge labyrinth of sticks. Only a few small windows were opened to extend their territory. Rethinking the political-cultural situation in a similar way to Wang Wei, one of the few programmatic galleries in Beijing ironically named itself Long March, leaving little room for misunderstanding about the remaining ties between the new cultural upheaval and the past. Looking at the international success of the older generation of painters (strongly
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The haudenschildGarage Beijing-based) and the endless repetition of its predictable Socialist Realist vocabulary, the younger generation of artists is especially aware of being trapped by the pitfalls of exoticism: the ironic use of the imagery of Mao's propaganda machine is good for a Western sale because it is easily recognized as typically Chinese and therefore satisfies contemporary sentiments among the post- or anti-communist '68 generation. But it is a vocabulary that isn't current any more in daily life in China, where it arouses only a meaningful smile. Transcending the boundaries of the traditional, the Chinese and the market is not easy but is apparently a challenge that stimulates younger Beijing artists such as Liu Wei, Kan Xuan, Cui Xiuwen and Liu Xiao Dong. Their work uses the current situation as the basis for a substantial contribution to a more subjective experience and understanding of contemporary life. In humorous attempts to exorcize her fears by accepting them Kan Xuan put herself in some uncomfortable positions: running against a stream of people in a subway corridor (Kan Xuan yes!, 1999) or standing naked on a public pedestal (A happy girl, 1999) or allowing spiders to crawl over her (Looking looking looking for!, 2001). The problems Cui Xiuwen tackles are also connected to women's lives in society today, problems that derive from the conventional female role of supplying services to the male population. From the perspective of a hidden camera Ladies' Room (2000) shows a group of 'night service' women in the rest-room of a night-club. In their effort to show that they aren't scared of the Red Dragon, European cultural organizations, and in their trail artists, writers, scientists and others, are visiting China more frequently than ever. The Beijing Case, a somewhat conventional exchange programme organized by the Cultural Fund of the German Republic, brings together artists, film directors and writers from the two countries, among them Thomas Bayrle, Antje Majewski, Ma Yinglis and Cao Fei. Although the make-up of Cao's work is extremely surreal, on the level of meaning and action it deals with completely ordinary experiences. Her film COSplayers (2005) is both challenging and chilling: it juxtaposes the fantasy world of video games, in which young urban people in China spend their days, and the increasingly alienating expectations of society and family life. The piece sends a clear message about the management of fear among young people in China's big cities. Welcome to the club. --Pi Li An art historian, critic and founding Director of UniversalStudiosBeijing. Until the early 1990s the 'art world', in the sense of a system comprising artists, critics, dealers, curators, collectors and academics, simply did not exist in China. There were no commercial or non-official art spaces, and the China Art Gallery (and large official exhibitions in other venues) mostly displayed works in the approved Socialist Realist style. Beijing is, of course, China's political centre and the main focus of international attention. As a result artists there have been able to enjoy periods of relative freedom. From the late 1970s a circle of talented amateurs started to emerge in the city,
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The haudenschildGarage supported by a coterie of diplomats from foreign embassies, curious international journalists and representatives of international corporations who were kept idle by China's planned economy. In the early 1990s, while artistic innovation was again being suppressed by the state, these people acted as a conduit between Chinese art and the international contemporary scene and held a number of unofficial exhibitions in offices and apartments, so that gradually a small market, albeit not exactly as that word is understood in the West, arose. Although standards were variable, this market was lucrative, and some artists resigned from their official state posts and moved to Beijing, where they rented cheap houses from local farmers to use as studios. Most gravitated to Yuanmingyuan (the old Summer Palace) in the north-west of the city, an area that soon became known as the 'artists' village'. China's move towards a market economy more generally in the early 1990s and changes in the political situation were reflected in the way Cynical Realism and Political Pop became the dominant artistic styles. Those artists who committed themselves to 'exposing the suppression of human nature in China's society' were praised in the West and frequently exhibited there, earning substantial incomes that enabled them to enjoy the good life, becoming China's nouveaux riches. Western tourists took these styles, which clearly alluded to a non-Western ideology, as representative of contemporary Chinese art. Other artists meanwhile were inspired to elaborate on these 'internationally best-selling' styles, giving them more of a political emphasis; many younger ones, however, were encouraged to join the ranks of the supposed 'dissidents'. While the West looked on more or less approvingly, the new art went hand in hand with a form of cultural nihilism and was finally reduced to little more than a roguish form of Cynical Realism. Outside China itself most exhibitions of contemporary Chinese art adopted one of two approaches: the 'impact versus response' approach, which held that the salient factor in the development of modern Chinese culture was Western aggression, or the 'tradition versus modernity' approach, according to which modern Western society provided the benchmark for the rest of the world. Both of these represent Westerninfluenced views, believing that the industrialization of the West had been a good thing and that conditions in China could never favour a similar process of modernization. Following this logic, experimental Chinese art basically became a kind of folk art. The 'export-oriented' system of the mid-1990s did give rise to a whole new crop of curators, but it did nothing to promote academic research or theoretical writing. In several cases exhibitions were held purely for international journalists and were actually intended to be closed down by the state. 'Curator-oriented art' created a false impression of prosperity while covering up deficiencies in scholarship and criticism. This not only hampered the development of contemporary art but also allowed the status quo, and Western-derived values, to go unchallenged. Another factor in the shortage of home-grown theoretical art writing was China's flawed academic system. With Chinese educational institutions ill-equipped to serve as an information resource, and with the mass media incapable of providing an objective assessment, any information about contemporary art in the West had to be passed on by word of mouth or culled from catalogues brought back by artists who had travelled abroad. And as most young artists were not able to read the catalogue texts, the only information they could glean came often from illustrations measuring just a few square centimetres.
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The haudenschildGarage During the first half of the 1990s painting remained the dominant medium. However, from 1995 the most fundamental change in Chinese art was the use of a broader range of media, with video and photography finding their way into a number of exhibitions in Beijing. This was a reflection of the dissatisfaction felt by younger artists towards a system focused purely on works that were collectable. Within a short period of time Chinese contemporary art had been galvanized. Almost immediately a new controversy sprang up in 1996, when a debate on 'meaning' highlighted differing approaches taken by young artists to the relationship between contemporary art, Realism, and a utilitarian understanding of art's function in society. Some, most notably Qiu Zhijie, argued that 'art cannot help us approach truth' or, in more 'academic' terms, that 'art is just pre-thinking, a preparation for a process, but it refuses to become any finished thought'. The original intention behind this line of argument was to reverse the tendency towards 'vulgar sociology' and 'non-art', which these artists argued were hindering the development of contemporary art. They also wanted to counter the proWestern bias inherent in Cynical Realism, Political Pop or the kind of flashy, over-thetop kitsch work that has been dubbed Gaudy art. Qiu's views, which were embraced mainly by artists from southern China, had a fundamental affinity with the political Enlightenment of the 1980s. In this context it is worth bearing in mind, however, that contemporary Chinese art cannot call on an extensive tradition of analytical discourse. Many young artists believe that artistic innovation simply means discovering original motifs. They regard the relationship between art and society as purely inimical. Art becomes a simple search for novelty, a view that has been described as a 'Modernist cliche'. The result has been a variety of deliberately shocking works using the human body not so much to reflect on the implications of Modernism and Postmodernism within a post-colonial context as simply to provide novelty and titillation. In the view of most of the more innovative artists the 1999 Venice Biennale (curated by Harald Szeemann) did not provide a representative survey of contemporary Chinese art because the artists included seemed to be mainly those who had achieved some degree of commercial success, again revealing one of the drawbacks of 'exportoriented' art. However, against that, the development of an art market in China has made it possible for not-for-profit or alternative, artist-run spaces to emerge, such as the Loft New Media Art Centre in Beijing and BizArt in Shanghai, complementing the commercial galleries and state-run museums. As contemporary Chinese art has received increasing international exposure, spaces such as these have attracted more and more critical attention; this, coupled with the fact that an increasing number of Chinese artists now receive at least part of their education abroad, means that experimental art has begun to look much healthier. The growing market value of the new 'commercial avant-garde' has also aroused the interest of local dealers and the mass media, giving a further boost to innovative art by raising its profile. A number of private, Chinese-run commercial galleries have emerged, such as the Upriver Gallery in Sichuan and the Dongyu Gallery in Shenyang. However, with no state funding for the arts, and no tax concessions to encourage sponsors, their situation remains somewhat precarious. Perhaps the most notable change in Chinese society as a whole in the 1990s was the sudden proliferation of the mass media. The lifestyles of the Cynical Realists and Political Pop or Gaudy artists became a recurrent topic in popular magazines, gradually
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The haudenschildGarage making new art seem 'harmless' to society and again raising its profile. By the late 1990s younger figures were being promoted to important positions in government, helping to create an artist-friendly environment. The Central Academy of Fine Arts and the China National Academy started running courses on the new media, and a number of experimental artists were invited to give lectures. At the same time the Shanghai Art Museum, Guangdong Museum of Art and He Xiangning Museum in Shenzhen all began holding regular exhibitions of new work, such as the Shanghai Biennial, the China Contemporary Sculpture Annual Exhibition and the Guangzhou Triennial. And by 2000 there were numerous opportunities for artists in the form of cultural exchange programmes with other countries. Nevertheless, such measures have usually been the result of one-off decisions made by individual officials, rather than being built into China's political or legal structure, and so the situation remains somewhat unpredictable. Even so, the rise of local museums and the emergence of 'alternative art spaces' does reflect a move away from an 'export-oriented' system to something more 'local-oriented', effectively transforming contemporary art and its social context. The 'export-oriented' art system had led to a logic based on the manipulation of ideological differences and antagonisms between China and the West, but these differences and antagonisms obviously cannot provide a permanent basis for new art in China, which needs to establish its own identity. One lesson to be learnt from the new work coming out of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe is that a redundant ideology alone cannot provide a permanent raison d'etre for art. With China's entry into the World Trade Organization the need to come to terms with the new world order is increasingly urgent. Young Chinese artists must prepare for an era when pressure from different ideologies gradually disappears: they will have a future only if they turn their attention to deeper issues within society. In the meantime the increasing acceptability of new art has raised some interesting problems. For example, when artist Zhao Bandi appeared with a toy panda in a series of posters throughout Beijing and on CCTV (Chinese Central Television), critics and theorists were uncertain how to react: 'When an artist gets into bed with the system, what moral obligations are incumbent on him or her?' By borrowing Habermas' notion of 'commonness', art theorists had been looking for a way to seize art from the clutches of international biennials and return it to its local context. They assumed the essence of new art was to be anti-establishment, but without support from some form of establishment that new art lacks roots and is vulnerable to manipulation. This paradox had already been apparent with the 'export-oriented' art of the 1990s. Innovative art is increasingly found in public spaces, but only on the condition that it avoids sensitive issues. Can interesting new work continue to be produced if artists allow themselves to be restricted in this way? And what will happen if they don't?
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