In Depth: Shi Qing
[”All that is solid melts into air” installation, ShanghArt H-Space, 2012]
Text by Lee Ambrozy / First published in ArtAsiaPacific, Issue 80, Sept/Oct 2012.
It is mid-summer in Shanghai. Shi Qing unlocks the door to ShanghArt’s H-Space and small armies of mosquitoes flock to us. Inside the sunless room, the air is humid and heavy with the smell of the overgrown botanical life—all to be expected from a sunless room filled with plants for a month. This is Shi Qing’s latest exhibition, “All That Is Solid Melts Into Air,” a garden of potted plants and geometric sculptures made of raw construction materials, resting on wooden shipping pallets. On the exhibition’s last day, it is now a wilting panorama flecked with neon colors from fluorescent tubes placed inside cardboard boxes, and several sporadic spray-painted Styrofoam scholar’s rocks nestled in the foliage.
Shi Qing’s installations tend to intrigue, or repel, audiences. Born in Mongolia in 1969, he began exhibiting in the late 1990s with the group of artists behind the “Post-Sense Sensibility” exhibition in Beijing (among them Qiu Zhijie, Sun Yuan and Peng Yu) and is currently based in Shanghai. Of modest height, Shi Qing wears boxy-framed glasses, has a sincere demeanor and a penchant for serious discussion. Drawing heavily from critical theory and modern art history, his research-based creative process has traversed documentary film, photography, performance and installation. His latest works resist the label of “art objects,” yet their forms borrow heavily from Modernism.
Reflecting on art history’s local and global narratives, Shi takes on invisible structures such as political economies, belief systems, collective behaviors, and institutionalization, challenging the assumptions supporting them. He sees art production as more than the fabrication of final material objects: to many, he is a prolific intellectual worker, blogging and Weibo-ing with zeal.
Addressing the global economic crisis in his 2009 exhibition “Halfway House,” Shi raised questions about how a nation could pause to reflect on alternative models for social and economic development. His own answers came from exploring local histories. Using his family’s standard-issue furniture from work-units of the “New China” era, he built model factory buildings to the same proportions as the family sofa, bed, bookshelf and other furnishings. These models were lit from inside with neon bulbs and then laid out in a typical factory floor plan. In the same exhibition, Farm (2009) was a wooden greenhouse constructed according to the size of a standard apartment balcony, inside of which he arranged vegetables and even a rooster, recalling the urban farms that were common in the 1970s and 1980s. By looking into the past, he proposed potential alternatives to the present “capitalist” model.
Shi’s references to Chinese traditional art, blended with Western modernist styles, read like an attempt to converge two art-historical trajectories that have hitherto been divorced. For instance, in the sculptural installation Not Long Enough (2010), he mimicked post-minimalist quadrilateral forms with plywood, coating them with a yeast mixture pigmented with Chinese ink, and lit them with white fluorescent tubes arranged in specific angles around the bubbling masses.
At the end of 2010, he held a small exhibition in his studio titled “Bird and Flower Painting for the Proletariat.” The vernacular of the bird and flower painting genre, once a realm for sentimental musings of the traditional literati, is combined with modernist abstraction in objects otherwise known as industrial waste. The result was a room haphazardly filled with sculptural “mountains” built of rebar, Styrofoam, and sometimes tree branches, all covered in globs of paint and occasionally an artificial bird. In the accompanying series of short, manifesto-like statements, he rejects capitalism’s influence on the scale of contemporary art production and the “auto-institutionalization” he believes it causes.
Here, the use of surplus materials from other production processes served as Shi’s strategy for artistic autonomy. As he wrote of their drippy and layered aesthetic: “The form copies modernist aesthetics, they are hand-made imitations of machine processing; ideas imitating geometry. Nothing is more suitable for imitating minimalism because smooth abstract surfaces are always plagued by the traces of labor…” Considering his working definition of “proletariat”—“here it refers specifically to the empty-handed people within the political order”—Shi Qing seems to see himself as in the same social class, or aligned with, the proletariat.
Despite its title, Plant Republic (2011), an installation at the Guangzhou Museum of Art, did not feature a single piece of vegetation. Instead, the notion of “wild” plant ecologies existing in opposition to systematic social organizations served as an institutional critique. As Shi Qing describes it: you can plan a garden, but you can’t control how the plants will grow.” He sees artistic creativity in the same way––you can build structures to contain artists, but you can’t dictate how they will develop creatively. In Plant Republic, architectural idioms such as porticos, arches and columns were extracted from their contexts, reduced to a lexicon of forms, and then reinterpreted in cardboard and industrial steel. The rough and irregular geometric forms hinted at the human touch involved in their manufacture. Shi’s appropriation of elements from classical structures, which he then renders in cheap industrial materials, can be seen as a gesture that ridicules the nature of ideologies––capitalism, socialism, and even religions are merely collections of ideas or words, which can, like other material components, be deconstructed and rearranged, then discarded.
On one level, the temporary nature of his chosen materials is addressed by the title of his latest solo project at H-Space, “All That Is Solid Melts Into Air.” This title is taken from Marxist writer Marshal Berman’s book, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Modernist Experience (1982), and is a line that Berman, in turn, borrowed from Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto (1848).
The installation was realized over a ten-day construction process and based on vague blueprints, it was constructed by the artist himself with the help of a small team. A natural extension of the tropes and ideas he has nurtured over the past few years, the installation featured plywood architectural facades from totalitarian or supremacist societies––all which are no longer extant; 20th-century art historical terms spelled out in both English and Chinese using cardboard signage, what Shi Qing calls “dead words,” such as Letatlin (Vladimir Tatlin’s human-powered flying machine from 1930); and half-finished works or materials brought in from his studio. Shi’s emphasis on process, not outcome, is fundamental to his works, and it deemphasizes the importance of final object itself.
Shi Qing encourages critical approach to art viewing, and does so with formal hints that expose what he calls the “backend” of an exhibition: the deliberate transparency of the installation process, the use of unrefined and inexpensive materials, the inclusion of studio objects, and architectural models that are merely facades. Ambling through the exhibition, there is no front-end, no back-end, just different angles. A tribute to Malevich’s Black Square (1915) in perforated steel hung above a “proletariat bird and flower” sculpture, two lumber posts levered against the floor rest against it––one of the artist’s visual metaphor for “systems.” Nestled among the wilting leaves are art-historical terms such as Gläserne Kette (“glass or crystal chain,” a chain letter that circulated among important German architects from 1919 to 1920) carved into and out of cardboard, some lit from the inside with fluorescent lamps.
Discussing these references from an era when art, architecture and utopian dreams were moving towards the same goal, Shi is matter-of-fact, not wistful. If the wheels adorning the wooden shipping platforms pallets he has integrated into his installation are any hint, he seems to have made peace with the temporary nature of everything surrounding him, from the political and the economic, to art movements and urban development, and even to life itself.
“未来”感动了我
The previous week, one of my oldest and dearest friends sent me the following piece she wrote for her magazine. It’s true that the future holds surprises, but in this piece (titled “the Future”), I was reminded that even the future can move me.
石青的《无产阶级花鸟观》
[”Bird and Flower Painting for the Proletariat,” Paintings and Installation, TOP Studios, 2010]
[”Bird and Flower Painting for the Proletariat,” Paintings and Installation, TOP Studios, 2010]
Accompanying his exhibition in 2012, artist Shi Qing published a few statements regarding his thoughts on his “Bird and Flower Painting for the Proletariat.” The following has been translated from Shi Qing’s blog.
A
这些都是剩余物，是做其他的中途产生的动机，是来自其他“任务”的废料，不是衍生品，和原来的作品概念联系割断了；一条岔路，主干之外的更大更粗的枝条；
Everything here is surplus, produced in the process of making other things, from other “undertakings”, these are not derivative materials, the conceptual relationship with the original artwork is severed. A fork in the road, where the branches are larger, thicker than the trunk.
B
生产关系的异化，当代艺术的规模生产是与资本主义合谋的：观念一制作一阐释的创作链条是一种生产体制，作品不过是最后终端产品；我们要批判的不是可以交易的生产物质，而是学术体制化的艺术生产关系，剩余品策略也是想绕开这个陷阱；
Once alienated from relations of production (Produktionsverhältnisse), the production scale of contemporary art is a capitalist conspiracy: the creation chain linking concept to production and finally to interpretation is a type of manufacturing system, and art works are but a final product; we shouldn’t criticize the production of materials that can be traded, but art’s relations of production in institutionalized academia. The strategy of using surplus materials is intended to avoid this trap.
C
应当反对艺术家体系化的，这是自我体制化的开始，概念已经成为这种体制化的最重要工具了；它扮演了精英政治的媒体，其实和大众媒体没什么本质区别，平行而已；当代艺术创作最后成为这样的政治关系：你被你的创作消化了，成为一种新的制度来统治你；
One should oppose the institutionalization of artists, which is the beginning of self-institutionalization, concepts have already become the most important tool in this kind of self-institutionalization. It acts as the elite political media, while in fact, is no different from the mass media, these two are parallel. Contemporary art production finally devolves into this type of political relationship: you are consumed by your own creation, which has become a kind of new system that controls you.
D
形式来自现代主义美学临摹，手工模仿机械，思想模仿几何，这没有比模仿极简抽象来的更适合的了，光滑的抽象感总要被劳动的痕迹困扰，我把它叫做“破绽强迫症”；
The form copies modernist aesthetics, and is a hand-made imitation of machine processes, ideas that imitate geometry. Nothing is more suitable for imitating minimalism because a smooth abstract surface will always be plagued by the traces of labor, I call this “breaking with obsessive-compulsive disorder.”
E
无产阶级在中国怎么界定？以前的说法暂时不理，这里专指在政治形态中两手空空的人，左右都是为暂时的体制和美学服务的人，不服气却没有方法的人；
How do we identify the proletariat in China? Temporarily ignoring previous claims on the term, here it refers specifically to empty-handed people within the political system. Everywhere there are people in the service of temporary organizations and temporary aesthetics, they are unsatisfied, but have no other method.
F
花鸟山水，挂一漏万的讲是士大夫阶层的“剩余情感“，颐养性情也好，托物言志也罢，摆明是主体意识下的配菜，但无产阶级？可是当艺术来学的，是战战兢兢来学的，就像兴趣小组、老年大学里的那种情况。
Bird and Flower paintings, perfunctorily speaking, are the “superfluous emotions” of the literati class. Whether they are relishing their moods, or expressing their aspirations, it is clear that these ruminations are mere side dishes to a principal ideology, but as for the proletariat? However, learning art is a cautious undertaking, like a small interest group, or university for the elderly.
（上述说法排序不分前后; The above statements are in no particular order of importance)
石青 Shi Qing (b. 1969) [CV here, photos of his studio here]
谈“创造历史：经典绘画手稿”
Hadrien de Montferrand Gallery, a French-owned gallery devoted to works on paper, is currently exhibiting sketches from more than 20 iconic works, dating from 1950-1980, all master works in the NAMOC collection. Through the display of preparatory studies and sketches by the artists themselves, the show deconstructs the production methods of art in this unique period of Chinese history, and offers a first-hand look at valuable art historical documents. Here, Hadrien talks about his experiences putting the show together, how he developed his unique approach to historical Chinese works, and reactions from the community of artists. “History in the Making: Sketches for Iconic Paintings” “创造历史：经典绘画手稿” is on display in 798 until late June. See gallery website for details.
[Left,Xiao Feng & Song Ren, sketch for “Dr. Bethune,” 1974; Right: Jin Zhilin, study for “Chairman Mao in the Mass Production Movement,” 1959]
My interest in this period was actually sparked over a dinner conversation with Chen Danqing, where he told me a lot of things about the Mao era, like that the wife of Mao didn’t want the painters to sign the paintings, etc., he gave me some “appetizers” that made me wonder what had happened during this period. So I met the first artist, who talked to me about the period, about how artists were perceived, and I really wanted to do a show about it, because I had never seen anything about it, except for the 60 years of drawings exhibition at CAFAM.
So I met with other artists, perhaps 20-30 artists from this period, and it was first a discussion, I also told them about a show that I might be doing. Eventually I found a logical theme that could bring them all together, the first theme was “portraits.” The first show last year featured portraits from 1955-75, and it was a huge success, in the sense that we really had some very high quality people who came, and the artists were really happy; for many it was also the first time they were shown in a commercial gallery. We really tried to do our best to make it happen in a good way, with a nice catalog, a good exhibition layout.
So after the first show I asked, “what next?”, and our team lined up a few other themes, one was, of course, “landscapes” and the other one was “nature morte,” but at on the top of our list was to feature preparatory sketches for paintings in the national collection. And, yes, we worked for maybe a year and a half, to put together forty drawings or sketches for paintings that are in the Chinese national collection.
Like any work in a gallery, I discovered, it’s really a question of human relationships, people earning your trust and earning the trust of other people. Not just the artists, you also have collectors, the press, and they have to believe what you show and believe in your instincts. I could tell thousands of stories from this year and a half of work …. For example Jin Zhilin has been here many times, we have had wonderful talks, he loves France, it was also these human experiences that really taught me a lot about China.
I think that the families and artists were quite interested to see a foreigner doing this exhibition, and they are really, really close to their drawings. I could sometimes feel that after we would sign the contracts, and when I was taking the drawings out of the house, you could see something in their eyes… as if maybe they had made the biggest mistake of their lives. Sometimes you feel quite bad, but on the other hand, you know that you’re going to do something good for the work.
The Dong Xiwen sketches are actually not allowed to leave China, You have ten artists whose production is not allowed to leave China, like Li Keran, Dong Xiwen, etc. And when I was preparing the show, my only fear was that a Chinese museum director, or someone from the Cultural Bureau would come to see it, and there would be some problems because these works are in a foreign gallery. Not in the sense that “he’s cheating” or breaking the law, my concern was that there may be trouble because this is a French gallery. This was my only fear.
[Sun Xizi, sketch for “In Front of Tiananmen,” 1964]
I think that the role of a gallery is to show what you like, perhaps you like it for its aesthetics, or the historical value. I don’t think that it is our role to analyze what we show. In the case of these two shows, I really thought I should get an historian to help me, or to put together a nice catalog, but I want to keep to my role, and I’m here to show what I like. In the portraits show for example, I’m sure that I missed a lot of great artists—important in terms of art history, or historical value—but I could never put together an exhaustive show with a similar train of thought. So, I decided to focus on showing what I liked, and thus put together a show by making the most of the information I have, or can get. We’ve sent 5 students to the CAFA library to see if these images have ever been published, or if the sketches have ever been exhibited before, we do this kind of research, but research based on fact, not based on analysis.
Of course in the show you have artists who are well known, and I know that its very complicated in terms of their ranking or importance––the head of CAFA is important, the head of China Art Academy also, but how do you position them so? Maybe someone else is the son of whoever… so, shall I do it in alphabetic order, starting with the name of the artist? Should I start my catalog with the name of the painting? In both the gallery and the catalog presentation, we had quite a lot of issues in terms of how to present information in the most logical, fact-based way. We decided to go chronologically in the catalog, with the famous image coming before the sketch—first the painting, then the drawing. I was faced with questions that galleries don’t normally encounter.
Through the process, I think I’ve learned more about history than art history, and the most incredible thing has been meeting really great people, and having them share their history with me. It was really amazing. Also, when we opened the show, most of the artists who are still alive came, and some of them haven’t seen each other in 20 years, even though they even shared rooms in St. Petersburg, etc. When they saw each other again, it was really touching. Really touching. I know for a fact that the artists were really happy with the way things were presented, we had a good mix of artists, in the sense that they all belong on the same level. This would have never have succeeded if there had been two or three artists who weren’t famous at all.
What I often say about sketches and preparatory studies is that the painting is like writing your autobiography, you are writing it knowing that people will read it. Doing sketches is like writing for yourself, it’s like a diary. So you are much closer to the artist that any painting or finer work, because you don’t have a filter, it is much freer.
Interview with Lee Ambrozy; A Chinese version of this interview was posted here, on artforum.com’s Chinese edition.
现代冲突资料库，北京分部
这次采访的整理先由artforum的中文版登出，请参考链接。
The Archive of Modern Conflict is a photographic archive based in London and curated by Timothy Prus and Ed Jones. As a part of Caochangdi Photospring 2012, highlights from its collection and a selection of the AMC’s publications are featured in a rare exhibition organized by head of the Beijing office Thomas Sauvin 苏文. Here he discusses his work for the archive in Beijing, the exhibition, and their recent publication, Happy Tonite, which features the work of 12 contemporary Chinese photographers.
[Gordon Earl Adams and his Time Machine, UK, Twentieth Century © Archive of Modern Conflict]
“From 2006-2010 we were focusing on Contemporary Chinese photography, it resulted in the Happy Tonite publication that only showcases a tiny facet of the collection, 75 prints from 12 photographers. The collection now counts 55 Chinese photographers and a little more than 4000 prints. The AMC collects photographers from all over the world, although contemporary works are not the core of the collection.
But the AMC is open to any type of work, as long as it surprises them. I guess the game is how to surprise them. It’s not that easy, as they have been looking at images everyday for 35 years. Photography can be an amazingly boring medium. A lot of Chinese works, especially from the early 2000s, convey some sort of strange, twisted, dirty fairytale style of photography. It’s pretty unnatural, so the game was to put them together and see what happened. The photographers in Happy Tonite are all mixed together, its very hard to tell who took what.
Nein, Onkel: Snapshots From Another Front 1938–1945 is definitely their most important publication, it is actually why the AMC is called so, because in the beginning they were collecting material related to WW2. From 1993-2005 they were gathering private photo albums from German soldiers all around the world, the idea was to challenge the notion popular in that period, the “German killing machine,” and to challenge the collective memory with authentic images from the same period.
The Beijing office of the AMC has a physical space, and I’m pretty proud of it because it finally smells like Panjiayuan in there. I have bought enough dusty books, period publications, photo albums and all kinds of stuff. The archive is not public, but if I had to divide the archive into three branches, there would be the contemporary, which is still growing, period publications (mostly books), and personal photographs and albums. Two albums showing in the exhibition are the PLA clothes factory sample album, and the special effects make up artist.
If we want to build up a visual chain from 1949 to now, the only way to cover 1949-79 is through official propaganda period publications, and one must admit that pretty amazing books were made. A lot of time, money, energy and talent were spent on these huge publications, especially publications in 1959. Martin Parr is focusing on Chinese publications now, he is working with the Dutch photographer Ruben Lundgren in Beijing.
I try to go to Panjiayuan every week, but the main problem with Panjiayuan is that the sellers always think they know what has value. They have great things, but they never show them to me, because, being a foreigner, they think that I’m only obsessed with Mao or the Cultural Revolution, etc. AMC doesn’t try to dig out sensitive material, or to press where it hurts. A lot of people like to do that, especially in photography.
[Beauty and the Fridge (left); Lucha-Libre © Archive of Modern Conflict]
There are no themes that we collect by. We like to have something amorphous. You never know if something is the right thing to collect, but anything that generates an emotion, surprise, nostalgia, melancholy, amusement, is probably worth keeping. Things emerge organically. We don’t have a purpose that we try to illustrate. We try to take interest in all kinds of people and different visual universes. The best photo album I could imagine is by a real estate agent, he’s not an artist, but for years he’s been taking simple snapshots in a hardcore way—what is the price, what is the size (of real estate). I like when images are not taken for an artistic purpose, but when you decontextualize them and put them in such a space, they have another meaning.
We tend to like funny people and funny work, and a little bit of humor is very nice to find in photography. Photographers often try to convey very sad feelings and melancholia, and somehow it’s very hard to find funny work, but people really like it. So if there were one rule, it would be not to take photography too seriously, and not to pay too much attention to technique.
Most important is the history behind the image, and perhaps the great masterpiece of this exhibition is Gordon Earl Adams’ time machine. The images are not spellbinding, but the story behind them is: in the 1920s Adams’ started to build a time machine in his basement, and now both the time machine and the guy are impossible to find. So maybe it worked. We don’t know. I didn’t actually do the research myself, but AMC ended up with this huge manuscript he worked on, a huge photo album and handwritten diagrams based on Indian mythology on which the design of the machine is based. Adams was an engineer, a seeker of spiritual truth, and an unusual character. And that is all that’s left of the story. The machine––and you’ve seen it’s no small machine—and the man disappeared. Nobody seems to know, there are no records in cemeteries, and no one kept the machine. In this case, if you take the images individually they don’t say much, so we also wanted to feature his diagrams prominently in the exhibition. They were maps on how to build the machine, and showing the connection between infinity and eternity, the material universe and spiritual universe, hell and heaven.
Its always very hard to define the archive, the best way is to define what it is not. It is not a photo agency, it’s not a gallery, and it’s not a museum. It doesn’t look like anything we know.
“Photographic Oddities from The Archive of Modern Conflict” is on display from April 14 to May 6, 2012 at Chamber’s Fine Art in Caochangdi. A Chinese version of this interview was posted on artforum.com’s Chinese edition.
Things I’ll Never Understand, or, Deplaning at T3 with Air China
I no longer mind 12 hour Air China journeys with no personal mini screen; I can now laugh at the CA flight where I watched “Mamma Mia” three times in a row; and then there’s the horrible in-flight meals…. But I’ll never forgive Air China for not making use of that fabulous new *Norman* Foster airport. Every single time I’ve landed at Beijing’s new T3 with Air China, I’ve never been granted permission to deplane at a proper gate. Even if we stop a few meters from one.
评论“小运动”
Little Movements [from January 2012 Artforum]
SHENZHEN, CHINA
“Little Movements”
OCT CONTEMPORARY ART TERMINAL OF THE HE XIANGNING ART MUSEUM
评论“小运动”的中文译文发表于artforum.com.cn
“Little Movements: Self-Practice in Contemporary Art” is an ongoing project initiated by curator and critic Carol Yinghua Lu and her husband, curator and artist Liu Ding. Because the endeavor encompasses so many ideas simultaneously and has appeared in many incarnations, ranging from artworks to publications to exhibitions, its concept is perhaps best approached in terms of what it is not. The “Little Movements” of the title are not political movements, nor are they mini art movements. The practices referred to are not linked by a common ideology, and the curators don’t attempt to draw parallels between them. “Little Movements” is a collection of art practices whose autonomy is itself grounds for inclusion.
Some of the participants are engaged in work that speaks to the general public, such as the e-flux project unitednationsplaza, but others address very specific contexts. The “Zhuhai Meeting” organized by Wang Guangyi and Shu Qun in 1986 exemplifies this: Laying the groundwork for the 1989 “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition, this gathering brought together avant-garde groups across China to discuss their nascent practices for the first time. Represented here by a detailed chart of the participants and a 1986 newspaper report displayed like a relic in a glass case, it provides a necessary counterpoint to the fetishization and mythologizing of the birth of the Chinese avant-garde.
As an extension of Liu’s series of “Conversations,” 2010–, in which private discussions with artists, curators, and critics were recorded and then exhibited in the form of written, photographic, and sound documentation, the contemporary participants in “Little Movements” are featured in video-recorded roundtable discussions, one for each group, with the two curators, assistant curator Su Wei, and several others. In this exhibition, these recorded conversations were presented along with photographs and other documents. These discussions, recording the curators’ attempt to capture what they call a “spirit of self-practice” in art today, explore how each group in “Little Movements” maintains a sustained sense of self-questioning and reflexivity that allows it to exist in a self-sufficient enclave.
The curators seem concerned primarily with how new value systems can be established independently of existing power structures and, ultimately, how self-reflexive practice can engender new creative directions. Yet working within existing power structures wouldn’t disqualify these varied art practitioners from being seen as autonomous or critical. And though it includes artists’ groups ranging from Beijing’s HomeShop to Copenhagen Free University, the exhibition does not purport to be an all-encompassing examination of collectives today. In fact, Lu and Liu reject the notion of linear history altogether, as well as any pretense of objective methodological investigation; as the curators informally stated, the artists involved here are simply some of those they have come in contact with through their travels. But such a naked subjectivity, as it gains momentum and inevitably snowballs toward self-institutionalization, seems to come with its own trappings of power. How will “Little Movements” maintain the continuous critical self-inquiry and reflexivity that it esteems?
Although a museum show on the Chinese mainland (as opposed to Hong Kong) necessarily eschews overt politics, the curators seem to have subversive goals, searching for alternatives to existing art-world power structures or historical narratives, yet they are awkwardly aware of the pitfalls of establishing anything in its place. “The Anxiety of Self-Definition,” one of the four broad categories of “Little Movements,” encapsulates the ambiguity surrounding the exhibition itself, a work in progress, one that resists classification. (The other categories are “Individual Systems,” “Away from the Crowds: Unexpected Encounters,” and “What Is Knowledge.”) The exhibition at OCT was more like a tool kit than organized research, charting a loose theoretical framework that informs art practice, but is defined only through outside references. This collection of movements seems poised to legitimize certain practices, or to give way to something else entirely.
—Lee Ambrozy
Bedazzled Jaguar Hood Ornament
…spotted in 798. Some good things can get better.
“图像·历史·存在” 评泰康人寿收藏展
中国美术馆｜NATIONAL ART MUSEUM OF CHINA (2011.08.21–2011.09.07)
(Chinese version is posted on artforum.com.cn, 中文版 here） 
[马秋莎 ，《黎明是黄昏的灰烬》，2011，单频录像 ，3′15″ ]
今年夏末，泰康人寿保险公司的艺术收藏占领了中国美术馆的整个三楼，从评论角度上讲，收藏展不一定能够吸引评论家产生太多的言说，但是由于泰康空间最近举办了“51平方米”的系列，给批评家提供了讨论新兴艺术家与实验性创作的机会，所以，北京的艺术界对这场展览还是心怀期待的。收藏中有不少现当代的里程碑式之作，而展出的作品涉及了近期艺术市场里所有的重要名字，同时也展现了中国不断发展的前卫艺术，这些都是当代美术史常规叙事里的关键点。但此展览把故事的起始部分推到比一般叙事里的“1978年为中国当代艺术的诞生”更早的位置：20世纪的60年代左右，甚至还更往前一些。
肖鲁的双电话亭装置，与1989年“中国现代大展”的开枪行为的背景，都出现在场馆里，那场声名狼藉的《对话》，在这里胜利地回归到“犯罪现场”。在这里这件作品毫不含糊地归于肖鲁一个人，当年与她同谋的唐宋的名字不见了，这也算是20年之后历史修正主义的一场有趣的小事件。也许美术馆馆长范迪安对此倍感不适（听说他开幕那天紧张地避开了作品），这场静态的《对话》再度回归到美术馆，产生的效应却已不复当年。这个“事件”虽然重要，但受到的反复关注却已掩盖了同一个展览上其它的具有历史价值的作品。
[ 肖鲁,《对话》Dialogue, 1989, 装置，2011年在美术馆的场景 ]
电话亭旁是‘85新潮思想的代表画面：孟禄丁与张群的具有超现实主义美学的油画《在新时代－亚当夏娃的启示》（1985），与它毗邻的则是陈逸飞和吴冠中的作品。还有两件很少列入当代艺术史叙述里的作品，它们是新中国美术时期的代表作：其一是靳尚谊的《毛主席全身像》（1966），它在展览中所居的标志性重要地位，只有毗邻的吴印咸的摄影作品《艰苦创业》（1942）方可与之匹配；《艰苦创业》确定了延安文艺座谈会时期毛的典型形象，也是延安时期以来毛最知名的一个形象。虽然今天的艺术创造与世纪的60年代的艺术之间有巨大的心理差距，这张照片好像在潜意识里提醒我们文艺座谈在今天的艺术生产语境里仍然不可小觑。在展览的语境里，毛泽东肖像的反复出现形成了一种异样的、不那么明显的具有自我反省意识的历史反思演习。展览创造了特殊的历史空间，就好比说，历史是一张A4纸，在中间叠成一半，而虽然很多问题在中间还未必解决了，展览空间恰恰是两端触碰的位置。
遗憾的是没有看到更多早期的、在熟悉的历史以外的藏品，展览的意义在于它给普通观众提供与当代艺术时碰处与互动的机会。此次展览，不仅让广大市民了解了企业的文化责任意识，通过广博的收藏，给非专业的市民、游客、老人和孩子提供一个领略当代艺术的机会。
［吴印咸，《艰苦创业》，1942，黑白照片］
保守的人很可能会摒除“当代艺术”，因为它的大部分存在于已被“批准”的艺术范围之外； 观众们有幸领略到当代艺术界最先锋的艺术创作，偷偷地吸收了当代艺术中的最先锋的艺术思考与实践，黑桥艺术工作室的作品直接踏进国家美术馆。无疑，很少的观众会判断毛泽东美术的典范作品与当代艺术作品是否意味着后者是“好”，甚至说，新中国美术中有意义的艺术究竟又是什么，但是除此以外，又怎么可能有机会看到陈逸飞的《黄河颂》（1972）与赵赵的《5113》里的鼠粪出现在同一个展览场所？
在第一个展厅“革命与启蒙”里逗留的观众并不多， 近代美术史上那些响当当的名字也许只对“专业级”的观众有兴趣。而在第二部分“多元的格局”里，虽然能够看到“当代艺术明星”的名单，但大家也没有停留太久。第三展厅里，“延伸的视界”展出的是部分参加51平方米项目的年轻艺术家的作品，这里气氛似乎舒适了许多。也许是由于数字视频的平凡性质，或者是人类对闪烁屏幕的习惯性注意，有两个录像作品迷惑了观众：第一件是刘窗的《无题（舞伴）》 (2011)：两辆汽车在北京的环形道路并行行驶，从不超速、从不减缓，而通过简单的一致姿态，决定着周围的交通流量；第二件是马秋莎的大屏幕播放的《黎明是黄昏的灰烬》（2011）；虽然对待国家的图像带有挑衅性的态度，观众依然舒适地徘徊在从地板到天花板的投影前。成人们好像全神贯注、儿童反而跳着舞着，把自己的阴影投射到那些熟悉的街道和广场周围的扩音器载货灯柱上。虽然用“当代”的模式呈现它，而且当代中国的政治中心依然有着令人驻足的力量，即使此时，艺术生产模式与时代已经全然改变。本文也在《艺术论坛》发表，在这里
胡向前《速度图》
Artist Statement:
There is distance from A to B.
From turning on the switch to the light going on is a distance. Electricity arrives in its own speed. This notion of speed captivates me and there is a beautiful sensation in it.
I arrive in my own speed from scratch line to end point.
What is the connection between these speeds?
I attempt through my own speed to feel and catch the speed of electricity. I don’t compete with electricity but I try to find an intersection between my speed and the speed of electricity.
The following are images from Hu Qiangxian’s performance at Shanghai’s Rockbund Museum of Art on August 6th, a part of the “Taking the Stage Over” series, curated by Biljana Ciric. All photos are courtesy of the curator, to read more about the year-long series, check here.
It’s clear, the light illuminates even before he has taken his first step. The action of so ferociously attempting this futile race against electricity exhibits a strength that seems increasingly admirable in our age of apocalyptic fear-mongering.
It seems to be the epitome of what I find fascinating about Guangzhou artists in comparison to Beijing artists. Painter and intellectual Chen Tong, founder of Libreria Borges, calls it the “acte gratuite” (无动机）after Duchamp, and in her article “Accidental Conceptualism,” (e-flux) independent curator Carol Yinghua Lu uses a similar tone to discuss Hu Xiangqian’s controversial work, The Sun (2008), in which the artist tans himself over a consecutive two months, stopping at ”the point at which he became a black-skinned man.”
赵要: 我是你的黑夜
带有儿童般的色彩与几何形体的布面作品《很有想法的绘画》（全部作品均为2011年所作）在命名上具有嘲弄意味，讽刺了当下这些以绘画为起点的年轻观念艺术家日益追求深刻性的倾向。并且，这当中的很多艺术家都在赵要做展览的同一家画廊展出，如今这里被他填满了“欲滴”的电线或尖利的木头、阵阵传来现场弹舌头声音的闪屏电视机，他的“有想法的”绘画则直接取自视觉思维训练题与图片，这些图案就这样被搬到了格子布上。他选择的粗陋审美和对空间的通盘介入几乎成为了一种具有魔力般的尝试，试图戳穿展览空间的神圣，打破绘画过程的神秘。他将自己颠覆性的倾向付诸于对绘画有效性和观众期待性的挑战上，成功地将观众带入到现实存在中。整个展览场景就如居伊·德波（Guy Debord）所说的那种构建的“情势”，在此处，在令人惊叹的雕塑的纠结中，我们评判性的自我意识止于脱口而出的“啊啊”声，交叉斜穿过地面长长的对角线。赵要其实也强调艺术家的动手能力，所有的作品都是亲自动手完成的。虽然，他的粗粝美学手法体现了一种对精良手工技艺或绘画过程以及它们相应而出的复杂的意识形态的抵制。艺术家试图拿掉它们的伪饰和独断性，但每件作品依然是制作精细，恰到好处。赵要仿佛遁入了一种可辨识的风格中，让前辈艺术家们认为，他意图让他们走下神坛，却被认为是在变戏法，而非从滋养了个人美学的熏陶中真正脱离开来。来源，艺术论坛
拜访没顶公司总部
While the art world mourns the detention of one major artist, there seems to be only time enough for distraction. Following their opening at Long March last week, here are some photos of Madein’s corporate headquarters in Shanghai, I hope to follow soon with more on the Physique of Consciousness show, this is just a small primer to say, you have been warned.
[Looks as if the MadeIn staffers are putting in some long days.]
[Where MadeIn’s felt objects are realized… a crafter’s dream.]
[Piecing together large, tactile collages from a print-out image.]
[”What is the most common site in this nation? Temporary difficulties. What is advantageous about this nation’s institutions? Successfully overcoming difficulties that wouldn’t exist in other social institutions.” Oil on canvas.]
[Small editions of felt creations on sale; this little guy was not priced at $1.]
[Another US dollar makes a cameo, a ‘Dead President’s Coupon,’ MadeIn style.]
《第八届上海双年展》artforum杂志的评论
8th Shanghai Biennale [from February 2011 Artforum]
The Shanghai Biennale is charged with a significant task: to harmonize the expectations of professional and international audiences with the tastes of a broader local public, all while conforming to Ministry of Culture’s requirements. By the time its eighth incarnation opened last year, the biennial had a reputation as China’s most significant international art show, the most important benchmark for China’s role in the global art-cultural sphere. This prominence was reflected last year in a new opening date, in October, that intentionally distanced the biennial from the commercial influence of the city’s art fair. This incarnation of the event bypassed “foreign” curators; it was curated instead by a team led by Gao Shiming, a young theoretician at the China Academy of Art and a cocurator of “Say Farewell to Post-Colonialism,” the final Guangzhou Triennial (the event is now defunct), in 2008. Gao’s thesis for the show was based on Brechtian notions of theatricality and the idea of the exhibition as a site of cultural production, facilitating multiple possibilities, with the ultimate aim of confronting the discursive dominance of global capitalism. The presiding metaphor of “rehearsal” lent the biennial its title.
The strongest feature of “Rehearsal” was, in fact, its theoretical basis—Gao’s earnest attempt to establish new ideas uniquely situated in an ascendant Asia. Also of interest were the preliminary events that took place across geographic-temporal boundaries, including installments in Vietnam and New York (via Performa) and projects with Indian artists and social thinkers as well as the Croatian curatorial collective WHW. The schizophrenic main exhibition at the Shanghai Art Museum was arguably the Achilles’ heel of the biennial; here, the clarity of Gao’s curatorial strategy was diluted by incongruent inclusions that can only be explained as results of coexisting agendas less noble than his attempt to advance Chinese art theory in the international sphere.
The exhibition was divided into four “acts.” Act 1, the Ho Chi Minh Trail project, was treated like a star-studded miniseries within the biennial: It involved several artists—among them MadeIn Company (represented by their “CEO,” Xu Zhen), Wu Shanzhuan, Chen Chieh-jen, and Wang Jianwei—walking the historic trail with Gao, discussing theory and collectively examining their own artistic practice in daily struggle sessions. The group of artists presented their artistic-intellectual output in Beijing’s Long March Space last September, and they were allotted the entire first floor in Shanghai, where they showed new works, made for this show, spread across the floor; the surrounding walls were hung with blown-up slogans such as we have yet to thoroughly examine the essence of action and taking on the burden of history is not an act of retracing historical memory, but a restless attempt to position the present in history. Prominent among these works, MadeIn’s forest of found images transferred onto canvas and displayed on wooden pickets made the most sense for me when I spied a visitor smiling for a head shot in front of a canvas painted with a pile of US dollars. Elsewhere, the sprawling polyhedronic wooden armatures of Liu Wei’s Merely a Mistake II, 2010, continued the artist’s formalist aesthetic, although a more striking prequel had previously been installed at the Long March Space.
Raqs Media Collective’s Fragments from a Communist Latento, 2010, neatly encapsulated this biennial’s impotent thrust: In this work, light boxes showing fragmented statements, as an antonym to the manifesto, were displayed in tandem with texts and diagrams contributed by Chinese intellectuals and artists (along with an introduction by Gao), the most fascinating of which was a contribution from Chan Koonchung, the author of the 2009 dystopian science-fiction novel Shengshi: Zhongguo 2013 (The Prosperous Time: China 2013). It begins: “Irony with Chinese characteristics—not only could contemporary art play safe by playing ‘revolutionary,’ it could also conveniently become a public relations ally to the official ideology.” His remains the keenest critical observation on “Rehearsal” in any language so far, and it hung in plain view amid the curatorial imbroglio, in English only.
—Lee Ambrozy
《三部曲：刘韡个展》媒体资料
On March 20, the Minsheng Art Museum in Shanghai threw open its doors on Liu Wei’s solo show, “Trilogy” 《三部曲：刘韡个展》. Who said there were no local art museums? Although I couldn’t make it for the show, and I can’t offer any critical analysis or interesting commentary, I decided, considering the popularity of previous posts on his works, to post the press images that arrived in my inbox. Here’s a link to a (very poorly translated) English press release. Qu’ils mangent de la brioche!
The above installation, “Merely a Mistake” 《仅仅是个错误》gets the gold star prize from me, find the rest of the images after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
三月份：真tmd冷！
Late March. Public heat has ceased for eight days now. With concrete walls for insulation, my hands are freezing!It just might be warmer outside….I’ve been doing some research lately, and when I came across this cartoon from the May 1955 issue of Meishu 美术, I thought it should be shared, if only to show how much has remained the same.The title is “Four Seasons in one Building.” When this was drawn, urban dormitory dwellings were under construction en masse, according to the caption, the four season phenomenon was caused by irregular water pipes.I ran into a friend yesterday who hasn’t had hot water in their 15th floor apartment for three days, their building was built in the 90s. I’d rather be cold!At Beijing University, I lived in a dorm room which looked like the 3rd in the cartoon below (ah, Shaoyuan!). Now, as I write to you dear readers, I look like that huddled mass on the first floor, with just my hands sticking out from the folds….
Sino-Semiotics Test #3
“Hope” in the Beijing springtime…
丁玲的《三八节有感》
Ding Ling （1904－1986) was a writer whose career took off in 1927, during the Republican era. She was eventually imprisoned by the Guomindang, who tried to convince her to use her popularity to fight for their cause, which she did not. She eventually escaped and made it to the Communist base at Yenan, where intellecutals were gathering, and she became an important writer advocating, in some cases criticizing the communist organization that had formed there. In this particular instance, she was criticizing the hypocrisy and double standards for women that she saw in Yenan. As to be expected, she was criticized heavily for this, the criticism was her putting women’s rights before the “more important goal” of political rights for the proletariat. She was sent away for re-education from the peasants. So much still rings true today. (To switch between Chinese and English versions, click language preferenceat right)
“妇女”这两个字，将在什么时代才不被重视，不需要特别的被提出呢？
年年都有这一天。每年在这一天的时候，几乎是全世界的地方都开着会，检阅着她们的队伍。延安虽说这两年不如前年热闹，但似乎总有几个人在那里忙着。而且一定有大会，有演说的，有通电，有文章发表。
延安的妇女是比中国其它地方的妇女幸福的。甚至有很多人都在嫉羡的说：“为什么小米把女同志吃得那么红胖？”女同志在医院，在休养所，在门诊部都占着很大的比例，却似乎并没有使人惊奇，然而延安的女同志却仍不能免除那种幸运：不管在什么场合都最能作为有兴趣的问题被谈起。而且各种各样的女同志都可以得到她应得的诽议。这些责难似乎都是严重而确当的。
女同志的结婚永远使人注意，而不会使人满意的。她们不能同一个男同志比较接近，更不能同几个都接近。她们被画家们讽刺：“一个科长也嫁了么？”诗人们也说：“延安只有骑马的首长，没有艺术家的首长，艺术家在延安是找不到漂亮的情人的。”然而她们也在某种场合聆听着这样的训词：“他妈的，瞧不起我们老干部，说是土包子，要不是我们土包子，你想来延安吃小米！”但女人总是要结婚的。（不结婚更有罪恶，她将更多的被作为制造谣言的对象，永远被污蔑。）
不是骑马的就是穿草鞋的，不是艺术家就是总务科长。她们都得生小孩。小孩也有各自的命运：有的被细羊毛线和花绒布包着，抱在保姆的怀里，有的被没有洗净的布片包着，扔在床头啼哭，而妈妈和爸爸都在大嚼着孩子的津贴，（每月25元，价值二斤半猪肉）要是没有这笔津贴，也许他们根本就尝不到肉味。然而女同志究竟应该嫁谁呢，事实是这样，被逼着带孩子的一定可以得到公开的讥讽：“回到家庭了的娜拉。”而有着保姆的女同志，每一个星期可以有一天最卫生的交际舞。虽说在背地里也会有难比的诽语悄声的传播着，然而只要她走到那里，那里就会热闹，不管骑马的，穿草鞋的，总务科长，艺术家们的眼睛都会望着她。这同一切的理论都无关，同一切主义思想也无关，同一切开会演说也无关。然而这都是人人知道，人人不说，而且在做着的现实。
离婚的问题也是一样。大抵在结婚的时候，有三个条件是必须注意到的。一、政治上纯洁不纯洁，二、年龄相貌差不多，三、彼此有无帮助。虽说这三十条件几乎是人人具备（公开的汉奸这里是没有的。而所谓帮助也可以说到鞋袜的缝补，甚至女性的安慰），但却一定堂皇的考虑到。而离婚的口实，一定是女同志的落后。我是最以为一个女人自己不进步而还要拖住她的丈夫为可耻的，可是让我们看一看她们是如何落后的。她们在没有结婚前都抱着有凌云的志向，和刻苦的斗争生活，她们在生理的要求和“彼此帮助”的蜜语之下结婚了，于是她们被逼着做了操劳的回到家庭的娜拉。她们也唯恐有“落后”的危险，她们四方奔走，厚颜的要求托儿所收留她们的孩子，要求刮子宫，宁肯受一切处分而不得不冒着生命的危险悄悄的去吃着坠胎的药。而她们听着这样的回答： “带孩子不是工作吗？你们只贪图舒服，好高骛远，你们到底做过一些什么了不起的政治工作？既然这样怕生孩子，生了又不肯负责，谁叫你们结婚呢？”于是她们不能免除“落后”的命运。一个有了工作能力的女人，而还能牺牲自己的事业去作为一个贤妻良母的时候，未始不被人所歌颂，但在十多年之后，她必然也逃不出 “落后”的悲剧。即使在今天以我一个女人去看，这些“落后”分子，也实在不是一个可爱的女人。她们的皮肤在开始有折绉，头发在稀少，生活的疲惫夺取她们最后的一点爱娇。她们处于这样的悲运，似乎是很自然的，但在旧的社会里，她们或许会被称为可怜，薄命，然而在今天，却是自作孽、活该。不是听说法律上还在争论着离婚只须一方提出，或者必须双方同意的问题么？离婚大约多半都是男子提出的，假如是女人，那一定有更不道德的事，那完全该女人受诅咒。
我自己是女人，我会比别人更懂得女人的缺点，但我却更懂得女人的痛苦。她们不会是超时代的，不会是理想的，她们不是铁打的。她们抵抗不了社会一切的诱惑，和无声的压迫，她们每人都有一部血泪史，都有过崇高的感情，（不管是升起的或沉落的，不管有幸与不幸，不管仍在孤苦奋斗或卷入庸俗，）这在对于来到延安的女同志说来更不冤枉，所以我是拿着很大的宽容来看一切被沦为女犯的人的。而且我更希望男子们尤其是有地位的男子，和女人本身都把这些女人的过错看得与社会有联系些。少发空议论，多谈实际的问题，使理论与实际不脱节，在每个共产党员的修身上都对自己负责些就好了。
然而我们也不能不对女同志们，尤其是在延安的女同志有些小小的企望。而且勉励着自己。勉励着友好。
世界上从没有无能的人，有资格去获取一切的。所以女人要取得平等，得首先强己。我不必说大家都懂的。而且，一定在今天会有人演说的：“首先取得我们的政权”的大话，我只说作为一个阵线中的一员（无产阶级也好，抗战也好，妇女也好），每天所必须注意的事项。
第一、不要让自己生病。无节制的生活，有时会觉得浪漫，有诗意，可爱，然而对今天环境不适宜。没有一个人能比你自己还会爱你的生命些。没有什么东西比今天失去健康更不幸些。只有它同你最亲近，好好注意它，爱护它。
第二、使自己愉快。只有愉快里面才有青春，才有活力，才觉得生命饱满，才觉得能担受一切磨难，才有前途，才有享受。这种愉快不是生活的满足，而是生活的战斗和进取。所以必须每天都做点有意义的工作，都必须读点书，都能有东西给别人，游惰只使人感到生命的空白，疲软，枯萎。
第三、用脑子。最好养好成一种习惯。改正不作思索，随波逐流的毛病。每说一句话，每做一件事，最好想想这话是否正确？这事是否处理的得当，不违背自己作人的原则，是否自己可以负责。只有这样才不会有后悔。这就是叫通过理性，这，才不会上当，被一切甜蜜所蒙蔽，被小利所诱，才不会浪费热情，浪费生命，而免除烦恼。第四、下吃苦的决心，坚持到底。生为现代的有觉悟的女人，就要有认定牺牲一切蔷薇色的温柔的梦幻。幸福是暴风雨中的搏斗，而不是在月下弹琴，花前吟诗。假如没有最大的决心，一定会在中途停歇下来。不悲苦，即堕落。而这种支持下去的力量却必须在“有恒”中来养成。没有大的抱负的人是难于有这种不贪便宜，不图舒服的坚忍的。而这种抱负只有真正为人类，而非为己的人才会有。
附丁玲后记：文章已经写完了，自己再重看一次，觉得关于企望的地方，还有很多意见，但为发稿时间有限，也不能整理了。不过又有这样的感觉，觉得有些话假如是一个首长在大会中说来，或许有人认为痛快。然而却写在一个女人的笔底下，是很可以取消的。但既然写了就仍旧给那些有同感的人看看吧。
原载1942年3月9日延安《解放日报》
一种新的世界观
Last week, at a “regular news conference at the Foreign Ministry, Jiang Yu, a spokeswoman, suggested that some reporters were trying to stir up unrest, not report on it. ‘Law-abiding people will be protected by the law,’ she said. ‘But people who are trying to create trouble in China, I can tell them that they have made the wrong plans.’” (via NYT, read full text here)
Veiled threats from the “ministry” hint that harmony threatens the free world. This means that you too, white journalist, will have to abide by the rules. Or at least appear to abide by them. Covering the career-boosting “China in unrest” story has become even more valuable.
Evan Osnos asked recently on the New Yorker blog, “Is China giving up on Western Rule of Law?” (link here) And physical attacks on foreign journalists in China also hint that this ain’t, and never will be, the proverbial “Kansas.” But while “strolling protests” and other news are afforded major coverage outside the Great Firewall, various ministries quietly assert their point of view through other subtle messages. Here, that point of view is literally with the prominent Pacific-centered political map as a background.
The white lines on a blue field contrast starkly with the red and yellow of the Chinese flag, and the stylized rendering of this map, as well as the unfamiliar projection (most common is the Mercator projection) seems to state the Ministry’s position perfectly. The image above seems the quintessential inclusion of the three primary colors, and against the blue, the flag’s prominent color seems distinctly non-conservative. The red logo on the very center of the podium also looks striking, it seems to be in the cusp of the “bending” African and South American continents. China has rendered itself as a supporter of the developing nations since the 1950s, the theme can be found in both “fine” art and poster arts since 1949. The image the Foreign Ministry projects here is not too different from what we might see at a US, or UN press conference, it seems to suggest we are looking at a power equal, but alternative, to the current world order.
I’ve written briefly on the mathematical symmetry and stern aesthetic in news images from the DPRK (link here), and the stark image above bears a certain resemblance. But to be fair, its symmetric composition should be credited to David Gray for Reuters. Thus, this image is not the product of any “propaganda machine,” although its staged element are surely homegrown. This fact also adds a new, more interesting layer to its analysis––how much of this representation is based on the photographer’s preconceptions of authority as stiff and dictated from the center? But, never having consciously seen other images of this “regular new conference,” I can only make limited comments.
If we take these types of background images seriously (and we have every reason to believe that ALL nations do), it is clear who’s projecting a unique world view.
Read more on journalist restrictions in the IHT here.
老艾、周翊 与 其他
The above artwork, taken from Zhou Yi’s blog (that is “Yi” pronounced like hard “e”) seems to encapsulate many central and interlocking themes in my life right now.
In Zhou Yi’s “Brush Diary November” above (first page only, complete version here), “Lao Ai” maintains his likely pose, tweeting from his computer terminal, holding watch at the very spot where he sits for hours every day. Zhou Yi worked as his assistant until he left last year to work on his solo show.
On Lao Ai’s writings in cyberspace, at long last, his book will be out soon. Find more details on the publisher’s site, and see clips of the anticipated documentary on the man here: “Never Sorry“.
These days, also working on analysis of a recent show that Zhou Yi also participated in, called “Will You Miss Me When I Burn“. This originally brought me to his blog. I have previously mentioned his work on artforum.com, as one of my favorite shows in 2010. A brief discussion of his solo show, “We are all wooden people” can be found in their archive here.
An interview with Zhou Yi on his recent book on Josef Albers’ color theory was also just posted on artforum.com.cn, (Chinese). The book is the first of its kind in Chinese, and he is actually the result of his teaching a unique color-theory class at CAFA.
没顶公司：不要把信仰挂在枪伤
In June last year, Long March mounted a solo exhibition for MadeIn Co., integral to which was a bit of media trickery. Its been a long time, but I thought it worth to write about here. The show was an interesting ruse best appreciated from within the local art machine.
The press release went out to press folk and mailing lists around the world, its photograph included what looked like a mud statue of Neanderthals mimicking the soviet realist frieze statues that sit outside the Mao mausoleum. It was photographed in a generic art space, with white, lofty ceilings. The image leads you to believe that there will be similarly shocking works, making similarly straightforward statements, on display. (Press release below)
When you walk into the hall, however, instead of epic sculptures, large photographic print images line the wall. The sculpture that expected, is missing, save of its “reproduced” image on the wall.
There are roughly three groups of images, the first look like digital paintings, in a frenetic aesthetic style similar to MadeIn’s fabric collages. A second type creates a double illusion in which classical Western sculptures appear to be sinking into an unstable ground, their “marble” appearance appear almost fleshy by the way their genitals contour to the floor. The third type shows improbable freestanding sculptures, “photographed” in generic, white spaces, and whose believability and existence seems to exist in a grey zone somewhere between the other two. The classical sculptures hint at the cultural mutability of fine arts traditions, the digital paintings invoke the “cheapness” and easily reproducibility of digitized images in a globalized anonymity. The trick with the images is, they are photographs of what purports to be an acrylic painting. (Effects not visible via digital photos.)
《团结化是一个减损的过程多于增益的过程，“忠诚信徒”永远不会觉得完整，永远不会觉得安全。》系列作品4, Solidarity is more a process of loss than a process of gain, “faithful believers” will never feel complete, never feel safe. Series #4, 绘画，布面丙烯，painting, acrylic on canvas, 150*212cm 
《一只花花绿绿的巨兽——平民。它不知道自己的力量，只知道绝对服从。》作品 2, A colorful beast––civilian. He doesn’t know his own power, he only knows absolute obedience. #2, 装置，大理石, installation, marble, 140*70*50cm。
These sculptures, according to the oral explanation delivered to me by the gallery, and who we assume complicit to the “work,” were all physically realized, photographed, but then destroyed. Not only do we become suspicious of the photographic “evidence”, somewhere between visual and cultural perceptions, one might further question reality, a theme of Xu Zhen’s work prominent since he cut off the top of Mt. Everest (sorry, Mt. Qomolangma) in 2005.
These images raise interesting questions on the simulacra, authenticity, national stereotypes, and more. I’m sorry that the images here cannot fully capture the meaning of the works, or their environment. Hopefully this short synopsis offers something.
Please note, all image captions, images, press release, are taken from press materials from the exhibition. A few of the image English translations are my own.
《诗是生活的表现，或则说得更好一点，诗就是生活本身。还不仅此，在诗里生活比在现实本身里还显得更是生活。》Poetry is the expression of life, or better put, life is poetry itself. Not only this, living in poetry seems better than reality. 装置，黑色大理石、旋转灯、早餐, installation, black marble, barber shop poles, sunny-side up eggs, 300*500*300cm。
《民主是我们的目标，但国家必须保持稳定》Democracy is our goal, but the country must remain stable， 装置，钢制弹簧、花岗岩，installation, spring steel & granite, 1000*500*500cm
《理论与实际越是矛盾的群众运动，就越是热衷把自己的信仰加诸别人。》In mass exercise, the greater the conflict between theory and reality, the stronger its eagerness to impose beliefs on others, 装置， 蜡、军帽，installation, wax & military caps, 300＊800＊300cm
Sino-Semiotics Test #2
Master Yoda speaks …
Why Top Gun Footage Does Not Equal Homer Simpson’s Brain
Recently, CCTV aired “footage” of the new Chinese-built J-10 fighter plane. The clip in question, which featured air-to-air missiles destroying a enemy fighter plane, was recognized by some shrewd-eyed movie buffs in China as footage from Top Gun, the 1986 Hollywood blockbuster featuring Tom Cruise. In these final scenes, pictured here in CCTV=Top Gun equivalencies (via the Chosunilbo) Cruise’s F-14 fighter jet destroys a Russian F-5. The footage was quickly pulled from circulation and requests for commentary denied.
This fascinating example of Chinese copyright infringement and corrupted journalistic integrity has been compared in numerous news clips and blogs to the 2007 incident of an illustration of cartoon character Homer Simpson’s x-rayed brain used as an illustration for a scientific article on multiple sclerosis. Both incidents prove that CCTV “borrows” images on a regular basis, both further suspicions about government-backed media’s lack of credibility, and both are quite humorous. The fact that both Homer Simpson and Top Gun are images originating from US popular entertainment brings an end to their similarities.
Without a thorough examination of why the phenomenon of poaching images (and text) occurs, these two extreme examples should be enough to assure us that similar forms of copyright infringement is happening with regularity, but is just not as entertaining for western readers. (The Onion news debacle of 2002 was another hilarious instance.) There must be literally millions of images that been inserted, completely out of context, in countless news reports over hours, months, years of CCTV news. Low operating budgets (unlike those for abalone banquet for officials) preclude the updating of archival footage; on CCTV News last week, the “file” footage aired for a spot on computers was so outdated, I’m impressed they avoided showing floppy discs. This reality of television news is probably another reason why Chinese netizens were so quick to suspect the visually stunning images of this military maneuvering last month––only Hollywood would have a budgets capable of producing such footage. And anyone familiar with Chinese media and toting basic critical thinking skills could deduce that.
Unlike the Top Gun incident, the photo of Homer Simpson could only be earnest humor. There was an image slot in somewhere that needed to be filled, and instead of the trite stock image of a double helix, someone inserted Homer Simpson’s head. You don’t have to be a fan of the Simpson’s to recognize that the x-rayed cartoon of Homer’s brain is not authentic, nor is it scientific. No one “mistook” the image for real, it seems like a good-natured joke from the over-worked, underpaid offices of the Xinhua newsroom. But Top Gun footage is another story.
Compared to web-based media, where one or two individuals can be held responsible (the Homer image also appeared on the English version of Xinhua, much less traffic, different departments than its Chinese-language counterpart), more editors are accountable in the Top Gun footage incident, this was television news, and broadcast to a mainstream Chinese audience.
Whether or not you take stock in the images the news media, Chinese or otherwise, they reflect more than one lazy editor’s decision making, they reflect to some degree the expectations of the audience. And despite the many suspicious viewers who tune into CCTV daily, the simple choice in what news sources chose to pirate belies a shift in viewers’ attitude. Homer Simpson might be that lovable underdog, but Top Gun is awesome military might! They are stealing the master’s guard dog. The message here is rising confidence.
Western commentators on this incident are likely sub-consciously aware of the threat, but do the millions of viewers who saw it really care where the footage came from? For a population accustomed to hidden agendas in the news, all that counts is that Central Television aired it. It could be considered irrelevant whether viewers believe it or not.
The Top Gun incident is brilliant in the sense that it illustrates perfectly how modern China has crafted its image of military might in emulation of the United States. Not the US as its citizens might know it, but the “imagined West,” the one most Chinese know, and that we call Hollywood. Instead of boo-hooing over copyright infringement, or laughing at the silliness of “Chinese ‘journalists’” we should step back, and begin to appreciate ourselves reflected through this crazy lens we helped create.
当代门神
Belated New Year to all, and apologies for the protracted absence. Lots of travel in the late months of last year, and busy updating artforum.com.cn leaves little time to blog. But hopefully, this spring will afford more time to post, more love from the archives. For now, despite the danger of blocking Sinopop behind the firewall, I’d like to wish sinopop readers a happy new year, 拜年拜年 with this, a most inspiring piece of contemporary folk art, door gods designed by Ai Weiwei’s FAKE office in Caochangdi.
Read about the door gods here, on the Epoch Times site. Truly auspicious protectors for 2011, (protection from censorship and littered with Grass Mudhorses and River Crabs) I’m glad that I hung mine on the inside of my door!
第八届上海双年展的策展思考
何谓“排演”？
第八届上海双年展的策展思考
第八届上海双年展策展团队
为什么排演？
在过去的两年中，全球资本遭遇了它的最新危机并又一次绝路逢生。与之相伴随的是，在两届双年展的间隙，当代艺术也陷入了一场全球性危机之中。这不是现代主义者那种创造性个体深处的精神危机，而是一种瘟疫般的世界性疲软，或者说，这是一种“系统病”——艺术体制的生产力远远大于个体的创造力，艺术家无法摆脱被艺术系统雇佣的感觉和“社会订件”的命运，到处是仿像和角色扮演。2010上海双年展将致力于追问：在当代艺术的政治经济学网络中，是什么在抑制着心灵的力量？是什么在阻挠解放的步伐？是艺术系统那只无所不在的“看不见的手”？还是国际艺术市场的“行情”？是千篇一律的国际大展？还是渗透到我们身体深处的大众文化？艺术家的个体正变得越来越健康而空洞，我们莫名其妙地进入一种“后历史”状态。如何来清晰地描述这种状态？在现行的由国际话语、国际大展、世界博览会以及跨国资本所构成的无限-无缝链接的艺术系统中，如何摆脱这种艺术创造之僵局？如何在这个被全球资本主义俘获的“艺术世界”中发现其内在边疆？在“体制批判”（Institutional critique）和“社会参与”（participation）之外，当代艺术实践是否能够开拓出一种新型的生产关系？
第八届上海双年展的主题词是“排演”，强调展览作为一种文化生产的实验性和开放性。“排演”是排布与推演。“巡回排演”是开放性的和流动性的，强调展览的策划情境和展开的过程，强调展览的创作与生产意识。在巡回排演中，展览空间不仅仅是艺术品的陈列场所，而且是生产性的、变化中的、反复试验的感性现场。正如布莱希特所指出：“排演者不希望去‘实现’一个思想。他的任务是唤起和组织他者的创造性。排演就是试验，就是发掘出此时此刻的多种可能性。排演者的任务是揭露一切模式化的、俗套的、习惯的解决方案”。今天，每个展览都呈现为剧场。展览的“剧场化”与奇观化甚至已经成为当代艺术领域的一个备受质疑的问题。对于双年展而言，“剧场”和“排演”不仅是一种展览效果，更是一种创作、展示和交流的方法。排演中的“剧场”首先是一群人，是一个知识共同体的构造，剧场中人在彼此合作与响应的关系中工作，在排演中，当代艺术创作的个体性被改造和修正，艺术家成为一个开放的主体，一个创作-交往中的“跨主体”。本届上海双年展将从剧场、排演的这种跨主体性出发，强调创作的群体互动性，推动当代艺术家集体现场的探索和呈现。同时，“巡回排演”以“双年展剧场”作为现场，旨在呈现当今艺术语言形态的综合性与实验性。近年来，现场、情境、叙事和社会参与逐渐成为当代艺术与视觉文化中的最前沿话题，本届双年展将以“巡回排演”的形式，争取在这一前沿领域有所推进，将双年展剧场打造成一个多领域、跨媒介的公共现场。
作为艺术与公众的交往空间，展览是超脱于日常生活世界的一块飞地，它坐落于日常之中，又超出日常领域，它的存在方式与剧场相类。就当代艺术而言，展览就是其剧场。展览不但是艺术对日常世界进行表述-再现的剧场，也是艺术界自身的代议剧场。同时，展览首先是艺术之自治领域。在这个自治领域中，艺术家成为立法者，这是现代主义留给我们的最珍贵的遗产。但是，为什么艺术家对展览既渴望又心怀疑虑？为什么艺术家对展览的依赖令我们忐忑不安？对艺术家尤其是装置和影像艺术家来说，展览正在成为创作的第一现场，艺术家的工作被展览绑架为一种机制化创作。最近十年以来，甚至机制批判也早已成为一种机制化创作的套路。更有甚者，展览这个艺术自治领域、这块公共领域中的飞地已经成为全球资本生产、展示和消费的集散地……
另一方面，如果艺术果真是一种“日常生活的实践”，那么，展览的必要性何在？
葵花粉
Closing Ai Weiwei’s “seeds” to the public, for which it was intended, was the depressing sterilization of a great art work. (See report from the Independent here.) I’m torn between being a crabby Beijing resident who breathes similarly noxious air every day and says, “they ruined it,” and being a responsible, compassionate person. But looking through my photos of last week’s opening of “Sunflower Seeds,” I realized there was indeed quite a bit of particulate matter kicked up as guests happily crunched on the porcelain seeds. The dust was captured reflected in the flash of my Canon G11.
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