INTERVIEW
Qiming Liu: Art Is Noah’s Ark at the Site of Human Catastrophe
CCA: Where have you mainly been living during the COVID-19 pandemic? How has it affected your life?
Qiming Liu: New York is a city with warmth. Between its towers of mirrored facades, mesmerizing churches, quiet cemeteries and pastoral places to live, there is a diverse, restless human landscape. That is the fundamental reason I chose to settle in New York. With this pandemic spreading globally, I think that, as Chinese people, wherever abroad we live, in any country or region, we may face the same predicament. Whatever you do, it is hard to escape that awkwardness.
COVID-19 broke out in Wuhan, China, yet two months later New York in the United States had become one of the world’s hardest-hit places. This was a bewildering, brutal reality and a focus of international discussion. Since the outbreak began, I witnessed Chinese individuals and groups in New York actively buying protective supplies to donate to Wuhan. New York’s pharmacies soon ran out of stock; of course, I participated too. Two months later, when the outbreak surged in the United States, we had no protective equipment for ourselves. Even basic masks could not be bought. Our feelings shifted from concern across the water to immediate anxiety and fear.
There is a saying: “People in China played the first half, those overseas played the second, and overseas Chinese played the whole game.” I do not think this refers only to overseas Chinese giving their all to fight the pandemic. Fighting the pandemic is not the main issue. In today’s internet-connected world, what people in China say and do at home can also, to varying degrees, directly affect how the countries where we live reduce Chinese people to a set of symbols. Take Chinese people’s comments gloating over other countries’ struggles against the pandemic. Or when the words “Chinese virus” come out of Trump’s mouth, you worry that someone around you may harbor hostility toward you. So overseas Chinese are confronting more than the pandemic. What matters most is to resist the damage, persevere and build a better reputation. Even before there was an adequate supply of masks in New York, many Chinese people actively raised funds and donated protective supplies, delivering them promptly to staff at the New York Police Department, hospitals and other public-service institutions.
CCA: The pandemic has disrupted life, forcing many people to look back at the state of everyday life through it. How do you see the relationship between this pandemic and everyday life?
Qiming Liu: The pandemic is still far from over, and today the situation rises and falls across the American states. I believe it will profoundly change the human landscape of a city or a country. Surface changes may be temporary, but the psychological aftereffects will be permanent, however forgetful human beings always are. Although human history is a history of continually creating disasters and adapting to them, I remain deeply skeptical of humanity’s capacity to adapt.
In the experience and understanding of people living in Europe and America, only sick people need to wear masks. So even as infections in New York were increasing explosively, many New Yorkers still went out without masks. Only after the government mandated staying at home and wearing masks when going out did we see pedestrians and supermarket shoppers gradually begin to wear them. Changing that understanding and habit cost America dearly. Of course, in the early stages of New York’s outbreak, in March and April, even those who wanted masks could not buy them. Drawing on China’s experience of fighting the pandemic and on cultural habits, Chinese people were exemplary mask wearers in New York. Of course, most also had some connections in China, which enabled them to buy masks there quickly for their own use.
March 17: Receiving masks sent from China by the artist Li Yongzheng.
Isolation and freedom: that is a question. The most classic lines are these. Chinese people say, “Without life, what use is freedom?” Americans say, “Without freedom, what meaning is there in being alive?” So cultures differ, and values do not align. It is fundamentally impossible for America to implement Chinese-style isolation. For this reason, European and American countries will inevitably pay a heavy price over masks and isolation.
Although the state provided substantial assistance during the pandemic—in the first round, $1,200 per person, while unemployed people could claim unemployment benefits of several hundred dollars a week plus an additional pandemic unemployment supplement of $600 a week—many people’s income was actually higher than when they normally worked. Details of a second round of government assistance were also under consideration. Even so, for people accustomed to living freely, the events in Minnesota became the best reason to take to the streets. The compulsory isolation policy during the pandemic imposed intense emotional suppression on them, and they were bound to find a way to release it. Although these marches under the banner of equal rights quickly spread to Europe, as in any country they would inevitably be accompanied by lawbreakers taking the opportunity to smash, loot and rob, and by extremists launching actions to pursue special privileges. But after the release comes calm: matters are handled according to the law, and what must happen happens. That is America.
CCA: Looking at public opinion in China and abroad, people have not formed a united front against humanity’s common enemy, the novel coronavirus. Instead, divisions have appeared on every level. Many assert that this pandemic will ultimately change the world. How do you see its influence on the world’s future?
Qiming Liu: The virus is humanity’s common enemy. Manufacturing or releasing a virus means declaring war on the whole world and all humanity; it is a crime against humanity. Faced with its spread, different forms of government, stages of civilizational development and habits of life have produced different strategies and methods of fighting the pandemic in each country, although these are not obstacles to international cooperation in researching the virus and developing vaccines. The current governments’ failure to cooperate and form a united front shows that these governments are inadequate. Of course, I have not seen which governments in history were adequate either. But that does not mean there is a direct causal relationship with the conservative forces controlling the situation in many European and American countries today. When Western society criticizes “political correctness” as the root of all evil, modern civilization has reached the end of a chapter.
Of course, the struggle between left and right in the West has never stopped. Both the far left and the far right are slaves to ideas. Conservatism and liberalism, as bodies of thought, are both part of humanity’s intellectual stock. But when put into political practice in governing a country, either extreme inevitably falls into the abyss of idealism. From a practical, material perspective, then, the dispute between left and right is merely a debate over methods among those at the top of the pyramid: how best to protect their shared interests.
Every human catastrophe inevitably changes the world profoundly, but whether it moves toward better or worse is not predetermined. This pandemic will not change the existing international order. It will merely deepen the fissures already opened several years ago.
CCA: This pandemic has brought a rise in conservatism across countries, and many worry that this conservatism will seriously harm globalization’s future. What influence do you think it will have on the global art world?
Qiming Liu: Conservatism and liberalism are two sides of the coin of modern European and American politics. Essentially, they are two paths in the same direction, rather than paths heading toward one another or in opposite directions. Although each tells its own story and even denies the other, by now each contains something of the other. The rise of conservatism in Europe and America began when Europe’s acceptance of large numbers of Middle Eastern refugees caused certain social problems, but this pandemic has indeed accelerated the consolidation of conservative forces in these countries. Conservatism does not resist globalization. It will merely redefine it, equivalent to upgrading globalization’s version with virus protection.
Strictly speaking, the upgrade of “globalization’s version” had already begun on the fifteenth anniversary of China joining the WTO. This pandemic is only a catalyst. I call the period before the pandemic “globalization version 1.0” and the period after it “globalization version 2.0.” The pandemic has made more countries and people aware of how participants with different levels of civilizational development and different values harm one another. When countries or regions with different values operate under the same rules of the game, the conflicts and harm far outweigh the benefits they can gain. The losses outweigh the gains. This is the fundamental reason for comprehensively ending globalization 1.0.
If version 2.0 is a victory for conservatism, what kind of face will it give the art world? In fact, in European and American societies with relatively well-developed state institutions, the influence of political conservatism or liberalism on the artistic ecology is limited and subtle. Art has its own patterns of development. The pandemic is changing people’s accustomed ways of living and thinking, bringing a wholly new opportunity for revolution within the artistic ecology. At present there is no standard answer to this revolution’s uncertainties. That is what we must focus on.
CCA: History offers many examples of artists expressing the disasters they have experienced. Recently, some critics and public accounts have been presenting cases from art history. Among these works relating to catastrophe, are there artists or works that particularly interest you?
Qiming Liu: I have not noticed the examples you mention. I know many artists who reflect on catastrophe; that is a natural response for any intellectual. Relatively speaking, I like Christo Vladimirov Javacheff, Joseph Beuys and Anselm Kiefer for their reflections on war. Sadly, Christo died at his home in New York City during this pandemic, on May 31, 2020.
CCA: What insight can these historical artists’ thinking and expression about the disasters they experienced offer for the viral catastrophe we are living through?
Qiming Liu: Artists in different periods, and artists with different ways of thinking in the same period, respond to catastrophe differently. It is difficult to say what insight this offers.
CCA: Faced with the virus and the threat of death, many people also speak of art’s powerlessness. How do you see art’s meaning in such a catastrophe, or respond to the claim that art is useless?
Qiming Liu: Only by properly understanding the words “After Auschwitz, writing poetry is cruel” can we understand that art, whose usefulness lies in its uselessness, is in fact Noah’s Ark at the site of human catastrophe.
CCA: As a contemporary artist, will you express through art your experiences of this global COVID-19 pandemic?
Qiming Liu: As long as a person is alive, there is a need for expression. Art is one way of doing so. Artists can also take more kinds of action. Art’s intervention in society requires multiple levels and perspectives; political means are also important.
My work in this exhibition, New York COVID-19 Color Diary, is one expression of my responses to the pandemic over the preceding months: my color video diary. I assembled footage beginning on February 6, 2020, the date of the first COVID-19 death in the United States, and then a short video each day from March onward. I made it into a very restrained, atypical documentary. The entire film consists of videos limited to fifteen seconds by WeChat Moments. The fragmented footage presents what my eyes and feet could reach: from attention to the global pandemic and changes in New Yorkers’ lives to events and states after being confined at home—fear, resistance, helplessness, boredom~
CCA: If you have made your own expression of this pandemic, does it continue your earlier methods, or adopt a particular form of expression under urgent circumstances?
Qiming Liu: The global spread of this pandemic has encompassed every member of society. No one can remain outside it. Watching the daily death counts from countries around the world feels as though I myself have died many times. It is deeply painful. In America, you hear of many large companies, including century-old businesses, declaring bankruptcy because of it. I always want to do something, however insignificant it may seem. As people’s voices, pictures and videos convey confidence and hope through the internet, I try to treat myself as an atom, entering social events and letting that atom interact and grow within them. I like this form of social sculpture: action is the content of the work. Such action also includes some of my volunteer work. Each experience feels different. The most memorable was March 24, when I delivered protective supplies donated by the “Chinese Community Passing on Care” team to Elmhurst Hospital. After returning home that afternoon and seeing the news, I felt quite unsettled. Thirteen people had died of COVID-19 at that hospital that day—the first time before New York’s lockdown that so many people had died in a single hospital in one day.
CCA: In our social environment, such reflective forms of expression always encounter a social effect beyond the virus itself, which may bring unknown dangers. Are you aware of these potential dangers, and prepared to face them?
Qiming Liu: There should be no forbidden zones in thought and expression. We have to do what is right, however dangerous it may be. In fact, a human life is spent on the edge of danger. There is no permanently safe zone in this world.