Art’s Contemporaneity and the Entanglements of Fate — Wu Yongqiang in Conversation with Qiming Liu

Wu Yongqiang (hereafter Wu): a prominent Chinese art critic, doctoral supervisor and professor at Sichuan University.

(Wu Yongqiang, PhD, professor, College of Art, Sichuan University)

Qiming Liu (hereafter Liu): artist, Beijing Qiming Studio.

(Qiming Liu, Chinese contemporary artist; Beijing Qiming Studio)

Wu: Using a magazine as a platform for an interview, I ought to ask some questions readers would want to ask. But I suspect other readers would not agree to be represented without any reason, so I can only ask what I myself would like to know. Given how well we know each other, we could have skipped the first question, but under today’s circumstances I cannot quite resist it. So I will have to ask everyone to put up with being represented this once, and ask about your experience of becoming an artist. You used to teach at a university. Why did you later choose to become a professional artist?

Liu: I graduated from Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 1995, and until 2006 I was a university teacher. I taught first at Aba Teachers College in Wenchuan County, then at Southwest University of Science and Technology in Mianyang. Later I resigned and came to Beijing, settling in Suojia Village, which was facing demolition. In April 2008 I needed a larger studio, so I moved to 318. Now my new studio in Xiaxinbao is about to be demolished too [laughs]. For me personally, this experience is unremarkable, yet in China it is somewhat exceptional. Having a work unit means that, at least, you have a secure basis for survival. I gave up that security, not to go into business but to make art. When I resigned, well-meaning colleagues urged me to think it through. Wasn’t getting into a work unit what ten years of hard study had been for? Why turn yourself into a laid-off worker? I understood everything they said, but did not really agree. I think whether one lives with dignity or without it is a crucial question. If survival does not come with human dignity, it hardly amounts to exercising the right to live; it is merely scraping by. In fact, I very much like teaching at a university, but it is not suitable for me at present, because China does not yet have universities in the essential sense of the word.

Wu: With the financial crisis, the boom in the art market a few years ago seems suddenly to have become a legend. Many artists who migrated to Beijing have confronted reality again, and some are struggling to get by. But as far as I know, your situation is not so severe; in fact, your paintings have sold quite well. So, amid last year’s chill in the market, you were one of those who escaped danger. Do you have any experience worth sharing?

Liu: Is that supposed to be a joke? What experience could there be! The state of the market is not a criterion for judging artistic value. Besides, in a certain sense, choosing to be a professional artist already means choosing to be prepared at any time for the risk of a difficult life. So I think that, as an artist, one should be quite content as long as one’s income does not obstruct making art. Whatever the circumstances, concentrating on one’s own work is what matters most. There are always difficulties. How could everything in life go smoothly? How could everything in the world follow the direction you prescribe? You still have to attend to your own responsibilities. Artists have to make art, just as farmers have to farm and workers have to work. There is a saying, “Opportunity always comes to those who are prepared.” It sounds like a cliché, but there is some truth in it.

Wu: But when farmers farm and workers work, however well or badly, they can always get something out of it: their returns are foreseeable. Artists are different. Working hard and making a lot of work does not necessarily bring a return. Of course, I acknowledge that the work itself is a return, but that is a question on the spiritual level. Right now I am speaking only of worldly things: you cannot eat an artwork. Does this mean that an artist’s profession differs from ordinary professions?

Liu: Of course it does. Treating art as a profession is risky. Things are different now from the past. As long as Rembrandt or Vermeer had good skills, they could open a painting shop and make portraits to earn a living. Their situation is not comparable to that of artists today. So, in contemporary society, it is inappropriate to regard being an artist primarily as an occupation. Before making the choice, you have to think it through and be prepared to make sacrifices. You cannot expect it to secure your livelihood or fulfill a dream of getting rich. Whether art can make you money is beyond your control, and artists need not concern themselves with it. In fact, there can be no simple answer to your question, because it is entangled with the question of contemporary art. In a word, making contemporary art is, from the outset, a spiritual choice rather than a choice about making a living.

Wu: Since you mention a spiritual choice, let us leave worldly questions there and turn to some more professional ones. We know that “contemporary art” is not a concept derived from a temporal attribute. An artist being alive does not make whatever art they are currently producing contemporary art. In recent years the discussion of “contemporaneity” has been intense, with many views put forward. Broadly speaking, there are two positions: one emphasizes responsiveness to particular cultural conditions, the other the properties of the expressive medium. The former advocates freedom to use any means; the latter seems to hold that only new-media art possesses contemporaneity. How do you see this question?

Liu: To answer directly, I agree with the former. The latter is not merely a determinism of artistic means; it is also a theory of fashionability. And, to use another fashionable term, it has a somewhat “postcolonial” flavor. Why do I say that? Because you cannot discuss this solely in terms of what happens abroad. You cannot say that, because so many people in the West work with new media, new-media art is therefore contemporary art. There is no causal relationship between the two. How can a statistical result be used to define contemporary art? This is different from science and technology, and different from the distinction between riding in a rickshaw and driving a car. I think that, while people need to consider the nature of their means in other activities, the freedom to use any means is art’s privilege and freedom. Much in the traditional definition of art has been dissolved, but this cannot be dissolved. It is not a question of being traditional or otherwise; it is a universal property of art. The era in which technique determined art has passed. What remains is responsiveness to cultural conditions. Chinese contemporary art has to address the problems of contemporary China. For example, you might use every possible light, sound and electrical effect—your means are indeed new and contemporary—but keep promoting worship of imperial power. Apart from declaring how wise the imperial father is, everyone kneels like an echo chamber, shouting “Long live!” Can you call that “contemporary art”?

Wu: I understand what you mean. This should explain why your practice seems so “mixed”: painting, performance and video are all there. Critics may find it difficult to write a review, because they have become accustomed to classification, to defining an artist as a painter, performance artist or video artist. Without a definition, they find it hard to begin. If your works were classified chronologically, critics who argue that new-media art equals contemporary art might be delighted: they would believe they had found another piece of evidence to support their argument. You used to paint exclusively; performance and video only began in recent years, and now you are also making video installations. It seems that you are not vindicating their logic. But does this also mean that sometimes you feel painting cannot match the expressive power of new media?

Liu: That is a very interesting question. Let me reiterate: artistic creation is free to use any means. With so many means readily available, after using one for a long time you sometimes want to try others. And making art depends on one’s state of mind. Sometimes you feel painting can express you better; sometimes you feel performance or video can. “Following one’s inspiration, setting out alone” is something like that. I have made some performance and video works recently, but have not given up painting. There is no question of replacing painting with performance and video. Of course, I acknowledge that painting, performance and video differ in expressive power, but there is no hierarchy between them. What matters is one’s state of mind.

Wu: All right, let us discuss some specific questions in the work. Your paintings first. In fact, painting is still my favorite part of your work. I feel that, visually and emotionally, your paintings can be described by the two Chinese characters kongmang: a vacant, boundless expanse. Sartre once said of Giacometti’s sculpture, “In the full kneading of plaster, he created nothingness.” Adapting that phrase, your paintings could be described as “creating a vacant expanse through the rubbing and smearing of blue-gray oil paint.” That blue-gray tonality is easily seen as a feature of contemporary oil painting in Sichuan, even calling Zhang Xiaogang to mind… But the sense of vacant boundlessness is uniquely Qiming Liu’s. My meaning, however, does not include the metaphysical element in Sartre’s assessment of Giacometti’s sculpture. I think your vacancy is historical rather than philosophical: it expresses reflection on the fate of Chinese people and is full of a sense of lived reality. How do you see it?

Liu: I completely agree. You must remember A Single Thread—Qiming Liu Solo Exhibition, held in Beijing in July and August 2008, with you and Wang Lin as academic conveners. It was a summing-up of a phase in my recent oil painting. Those paintings concentrated on a theme contained in your assessment. Your Between Passion and Reflection, Wang Lin’s Preserving Personal Historical Memory and Gao Ling’s Life Hanging by a Thread approached the work from different angles, but all, I would say, reached its core and resonated deeply with me. You put it well: I expressed a suspended fate, a fate from which Chinese people have been unable to escape since a certain point in time. But I express it through my personal circumstances, making every effort to avoid grand narratives. I believe that, as a finite individual, an artist can only express their own experience. At the same time, because the artist is not an extraterrestrial, their experience will necessarily have something in common with others’. Expressing personal experience therefore preserves historical memory. Its authenticity is something the grand narratives of historical writing cannot match. Besides, our historical writing was never designed to preserve historical truth; it serves the political opportunities of particular periods. As for the gray tonality you mentioned, let us provisionally call it something Sichuan painters share. For me, though, it is still a requirement of expression. In what I want to express, do you see anything that calls for bright color?

Wu: What we now call “contemporary art” used to be called “avant-garde art.” In fact, avant-garde art underwent a transformation from the social or political avant-garde of Courbet’s time to the art-historical avant-garde of Greenberg’s. Briefly, the former sought to make art an instrument of social criticism; the latter sought to create new visual forms within art history. I remember you saying in an interview that you did not place much emphasis on a work’s narrative function, nor on visual shock and the like. You wanted instead to put forward your views on certain problems in this society, express an attitude, and intervene in social criticism through your work. In that case, you advocate a Courbet-style avant-garde, and your works—painting, performance and video—show this conception of the avant-garde in practice. Could it be said that Arthur Danto’s “end of art” and Hans Belting’s “end of art history” constitute a background influencing artists like you to return to a Courbet-style avant-garde?

Liu: Artists and theorists really do think differently! Whether theories of the “end of art” or the “end of art history” hold up or not, as an artist living in the realities of Chinese society, if you follow the call of your conscience, you will inevitably be sensitive to many issues. The history and influence of the Cultural Revolution, for instance, or today’s gulf between rich and poor, forced demolitions, corruption, mining disasters, pollution… More specifically, the collapse of school buildings in the May 12 earthquake, and so on… How can you remain unmoved? At such moments, you feel that the so-called “art-historical avant-garde” is unimportant. Not only unimportant: for Chinese artists, it is practically a luxury. Besides, it is hardly your turn to be “avant-garde” in art history. What tricks have others not already tried? The resources were exhausted long ago. Do you really think you can still create some “new visual form”? If someone assesses their own work in that way, they are either arrogant or ignorant. And if you believe you have created a new symbol, then repeat it day after day for more than a decade, pretending not to see real suffering, how are you different from a traditional literati painter who spends a lifetime playing with the pleasures of brush and ink, painting landscapes, flowers and birds, or the Four Gentlemen over and over again?

Wu: Yes, it seems it is time to question the use of symbols in artistic creation. This is a crucial issue for Chinese contemporary art. From one perspective, Chinese contemporary art since the 1990s can be described as an art of increasing symbolization. Cultural Revolution symbols, Cynical Realist symbols, Gaudy Art symbols, female symbols… Each has its category, and much has become formulaic. Cultural Revolution and Mao symbols, for example, seem particularly formulaic, overused and excessive. How do you see this phenomenon? In particular, it is easy to find these symbols in your work as well. What is their value?

Liu: A symbol’s original function is to express a meaning. In my view, any symbol suitable for expression is usable. Of course, using symbols in art also involves the question of their artistic combination. There is no one-to-one relationship between symbol and meaning. Combining them is a skill, a place where an artist’s talent is expressed. My use of Cultural Revolution, Mao and other historical and political symbols comes naturally. In relation to the sense of fate I want to express, they exist as a background. You may also have noticed that these symbols are not used in isolation. There are also red cords, underwear, little figures and so on. Together, they create an interweaving of history and the present, suggesting a history powerful enough to affect the present, and a present under history’s influence. Whether symbols are new or old is really not the issue. The issue is how you make them into a personal expression arising from genuine feeling.

Wu: Let us discuss your performance and video works. I notice that these two forms are sometimes related in your practice: video serves as a record of a performance, as in Selling Discs and Such Art Today. Flying, Wounded Image and 5·12, on the other hand, are purely video works. Let us discuss these works by category. Selling Discs first. As I understand it, what you “sold” was another video work of yours, The Day After Tomorrow. What was that work originally, and how does Selling Discs relate to it?

Liu: The Day After Tomorrow is a story about memory. The entire film narrates its subject in a single long take, without any editing. It records a moment in the lives of a group of elderly people in my hometown, Mianyang, a city in northwestern Sichuan known as “China’s Science City.” These elderly people regularly come to the artificial lake in the Municipal People’s Park to meet through song… Without being told the date, one would hardly know that this scene took place two days before the first anniversary commemorating the May 12 earthquake. Once the date is given, however, “The day after tomorrow, we will meet again at the same time!” becomes a theme everyone understands without explanation. Its later transformation into Selling Discs happened by chance. I had originally intended to show The Day After Tomorrow in Let’s Play Together, an exhibition curated by Shen Jingdong. But on the day I went to the gallery in 798 to install it, I found there was not enough space or the necessary screening equipment. Faced with that, an idea struck me: Selling Discs. Following the characteristics of China’s video market, I made four versions of The Day After Tomorrow: one authorized version and three pirated versions. The pirated copies were divided into high, middle and low price levels according to what consumers were willing to pay. Apart from their packaging, the three copies had essentially no differences in disc or image quality. Authorized and pirated versions were mixed together, making authenticity hard to distinguish. Let’s Play Together itself worked with the Creative Commons China Mainland project, intending to promote intellectual-property protection and combat piracy. Thus, the original concept of The Day After Tomorrow was overlaid by a concept of intellectual property, and Selling Discs was born.

Wu: What kind of work is Such Art Today?

Liu: This work touches on the assumption that a historical event has already been forgotten. You could call it a performance or a happening. On that particular day, without prior planning, I suddenly felt the impulse to carry out this action. Its content was simply living and working as usual. It involved moving from one location to another: from my studio in 318 International Art Garden to Ai Weiwei’s studio in Caochangdi. I used a Duchampian method of textual assistance, also making use of whatever pictures and videos happened to arise, keeping notes of what I was doing, where and when, including sending text messages to friends about what I was doing that day. In fact, going to Ai Weiwei’s studio that day was part of my ordinary schedule, because at the time I was volunteering to investigate for his List of the Dead. In form it was a little like setting up a punchline in xiangsheng, Chinese comic dialogue: when friends received the messages, they began to anticipate something, only to be deeply disappointed at the end. “You said there was such art today, but today was really quite uneventful!” That was exactly the effect I wanted.

Wu: The May 12 earthquake will inevitably leave a profound mark as a major event in both natural history and Chinese history. It has also become an important source for your recent video work. The Day After Tomorrow and other works relate to it indirectly, whereas 5·12 addresses the event directly, from its title to its content. Could you discuss that work?

Liu: This video compiles various circumstances before, during and after the collapse of Xinjian Primary School in Dujiangyan in the May 12 earthquake. It includes rescues undertaken by students’ parents, teachers and members of the public, and relief efforts by officers and soldiers of the People’s Armed Police. It covers three days. It brings together unofficial on-site records I collected myself, official reports, related videos and images downloaded from the internet, and so on. Using montage, I assembled a multidimensional narrative whose parts could serve as points of reference for one another. On one hand, I wanted to reconstruct the truth of the event as closely as possible; on the other, it also raised questions about the various possibilities at the moment disaster struck. This work aims at objective documentation rather than stating a subjective judgment, including records of rescue efforts and the different kinds of reporting. I am concerned with the different perspectives from which an event is narrated and their truthfulness. This involves historical memory. The film readily shows that selective memory began in the earliest news reports, without even waiting for the subsequent construction of history. This is precisely the root of our inability to escape a certain tragic fate.

Wu: If your works have a strong tendency toward criticism of reality, that is easy to understand from the works we have discussed. But videos such as Flying and Wounded Image seem to consist only of technical manipulation of existing images. Apart from showing Pop methods under the conditions of digital technology, where does their critical character lie?

Liu: An artist is not a politician; intervening in reality requires artistic means. I advocate art without fixed categories. That might sound like a rejection of form, but how could art exist apart from form? Flying is a five-minute video of an airplane landing, seen by someone inside it. Only the wing remains visible; the space and viewpoint are altered. A familiar representational scene from everyday life is thus transformed into an abstract image. Together with the unprocessed sound recorded on site, it produces impressions we do not ordinarily notice. In other words, when form is discovered, life becomes art. Wounded Image superimposes material that Lust, Caution was forced to cut with scenes from the film about the assassination attempt on Hitler. I processed the images with computer software, using effects such as sharpening and red, yellow and black coloration. You are quite right: they use Pop methods under the conditions of digital technology. But when we think about how different the versions of Lust, Caution seen in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and abroad are, we have to ask: are the images alone what has been wounded? That thought leaves us sighing over our own fate once more!

Wu: There are many questions I would still like to discuss, but unfortunately these pages were not reserved exclusively for the two of us, so we should stop while we are ahead. By “ahead,” I mean that I have confirmed here an honest understanding of contemporary art’s “contemporaneity,” rich in Chinese experience, and have greater confidence in maintaining my skepticism toward medium determinism. Your artistic practice, continually questioning the fate of your compatriots, gives this view a humane value. I believe this is the only ground on which art and artists can attain dignity. Besides, without humanity, where would the humanities come from? This art of yours, acquiring contemporaneity through the entanglements of fate, might perhaps be called critical realism: painting, performance and video alike. Of course, we understand that this is not a concept defined at the level of materials and expressive means.

Date of conversation: April 10, 2010

Location: College of Art, Sichuan University