Qiming Liu in Conversation with Art Data Network

Wang Zhiwei: Hello, everyone. I am Wang Zhiwei from Art Data Network. We are at Caoba Art Commune in Beijing’s Caochangdi art district, with Qiming Liu beside me. Today we will talk with him about his practice, his understanding of artistic language, and some of his works. Welcome, Mr. Liu.

Qiming Liu: Thank you.

Wang Zhiwei: You have been in Beijing for some time. Why did you originally choose to come here?

Qiming Liu: Thank you. In a way, it is hardly a question. Around 2006, many artists from elsewhere chose to come to Beijing to work and make art. There must have been a shared, important reason: Beijing is China’s capital. It has to do with the country’s political structure, which remains centralized. Wherever the political center is, the cultural center is too, and that is where conflicts and contradictions are greatest. That is one reason so many artists chose Beijing. Before coming in 2006, I had taught at universities for more than ten years after graduating. By 2006, I felt that if I wanted to continue making art, and Beijing had already developed a substantial artistic environment conducive to exchange, coming here could be an interesting choice.

Wang Zhiwei: So Beijing’s status as a political center also makes it a cultural center. That explains the geographical move in 2006. Looking at your work, you mainly painted before 2009; afterward, you introduced performance, installation, video, and new artistic languages involving online interaction. Why did that change happen?

Qiming Liu: Every artistic language has a reason to exist and its own value, but also its limitations. Painting has its limitations too. My change in direction in 2009 may look like a simple choice, but it had actually been in preparation for a long time. With any art form and its language, there is a process of becoming familiar with it, developing it, and using it. I had always followed video and installation closely and wanted to express myself through them. I had been researching and experimenting beneath the surface. By 2009, there was a more obvious turning point: I began working more extensively in several directions and made relatively fewer paintings.

Wang Zhiwei: You made a performance in 2009 as you began that transition. A few days ago, here at Caoba, you made Sunbathing, again using the naked body as a language. Could you talk about your understanding of performance, or of the body as an artistic language?

Qiming Liu: Yes. With performance art, being naked or clothed is simply a question of the human body; it is not so complicated. The body is also a tool, a means of artistic expression. There is a process of understanding and developing its use. Let us leave nudity aside for a moment and begin with the body. All performing arts involve using the body; that is not a problem. What people eventually find difficult to understand or accept is nudity. Why take your clothes off? For shock value? Many people understand it from that angle: are you trying to achieve something by doing this? That is the greatest misunderstanding of performance art. Whether a performance requires taking off your clothes depends on the work. If the work requires it, then yes, you must. If it does not, there is no need. Our bodies are our own, and we have the right to control and use them, do we not? Performance has many rich modes of expression: lyrical, violent, and all sorts of other possibilities. An artist uses them according to what they wish and need to express in the work.

Wang Zhiwei: There is also a string of numbers in the title of Sunbathing, like precise coordinates. Is it a location?

Qiming Liu: Yes.

Wang Zhiwei: What was your thinking? Why do that?

Qiming Liu: This particular work is an independent project within the Caochang Art Movement initiated by Huang Yan. When we discussed the project, we chose this form of expression in consideration of the factors involved in my work. Why put the precise latitude and longitude in the title? Those coordinates identify Caoba, the place where I carried out the work. I think there are differences between Eastern and Western understandings and expressions of art. Beyond its cultural background, a work’s emergence is inseparable from the particular artist’s time and place. Every language and every work arises in a particular context. The same action in different contexts will produce different opportunities and responses. Defining the coordinates therefore encompasses the space and the process of carrying out the action. As a work of “anthropometry,” it also relates to a performance by Klein in Western art history. There is a point of reference, but reference is not the purpose. We address the same concept through different methods and forms of expression. During the performance, we recorded humidity, temperature, precise times, and geographical location. All these affect what can happen as we carry out the work. This is in fact a Western way of thinking, yet we are artists who grew up in a Chinese cultural environment. We live in China. The reasons for how and why I make a work are necessarily different, as are the pressures of survival.

Wang Zhiwei: So it still has to do with the context of “being in China.”

Qiming Liu: Yes, absolutely. China is very large, but each place is different. Here, for instance, we are in a typical area where city and countryside meet. For this work, we bought the scale at the local supermarket. As I took off my clothes, drank one bottle of water after another, then went to the chosen site to expose myself to the sun—to lose moisture and expend energy—I noticed something interesting about the changes in weight through this process of intake and expenditure. After drinking a bottle, my weight actually went down. Why? Had my body weight decreased, or was there a problem with the scale? But that was the scale we bought at this supermarket.

Wang Zhiwei: It is entirely related to that particular environment.

Qiming Liu: Yes, we bought the scale here. Somewhere else, perhaps it could never have reached the market, but it was available here. It is something people in this area buy. The five drinks—mineral water, cola, milk sold as a breakfast drink, coffee, and green tea—were also things available here that local people consume every day. Whether there is a problem with them is something we can measure or test through our bodily responses after drinking them. That may be a long-term process, however.

Wang Zhiwei: All five drinks were different. Was there a reason for that selection?

Qiming Liu: I chose products commonly used in our everyday lives: things available in this environment that people routinely consume and accept in large quantities.

Wang Zhiwei: Again, it relates to the surrounding environment?

Qiming Liu: I am just an ordinary person from this area. I eat what they eat. Right?

Wang Zhiwei: Right. You also have a work in progress, Giving You My 272 Days and Nights, involving an Apple phone. Could you briefly introduce it? It uses online interactive technology.

Qiming Liu: I may have been relatively early in paying attention to the internet’s influence on everyday life. In 2006, I began using a blog to express opinions or show things that interested me. I treated it as a relatively private space, but it was also open. That was interesting, because people would pay attention and come into your space to interact. I liked it more and more, and later microblogging emerged. Twitter is inaccessible in China; this most interesting platform for online interaction cannot be used here. So Sina Weibo emerged in China—fortunately, we had that. Microblogging soon became a very important part of daily life. When a platform is provided, how to use it is up to you. When we express ourselves, we influence others; when we read what others say, we are influenced in turn. This interactive influence is interesting. Changes in the circulation of information have completely overturned our traditional ways of thinking and habits of expression. From another angle, technological advances and inventions bring more convenience, but they also profoundly influence and alienate human beings.

Wang Zhiwei: Alienate?

Qiming Liu: Yes. How do we face these new technological achievements? That is a question I keep considering. And why do we choose them? Their appearance certainly has a commercial motive, but I wonder whether people truly want them to appear. There are different views. Some say it is a process in which choices are made for you and you become alienated: your choice is not really yours. I give you something, and then you choose it; if I do not give it to you, what can you choose? Another view is that because we desire it, it is created to meet our needs. It is a question of perspective, but I do not think that is what matters. What matters is how we face changes in our way of life; choosing is an individual matter. How do we understand and use these things? Are there limits? Do we simply accept them or refuse them? You can reject the internet, even reject mobile phones. Most people will not; they choose and use them, and that is their right. Using these modern media completely changes how we live. The process of use is a process of alienation. Naturally, I thought: how can I use a modern tool like this? If influence is mutual, I can influence others in my own way. How I respond to information I receive is a right that belongs to me. That is why I chose online interactive technology as a means of making work.

Wang Zhiwei: When did that begin, specifically?

Qiming Liu: It began in 2011, when I made Looking for Ai Weiwei. Ai had been taken away at the airport and forcibly disappeared. I began looking for him through microblogging. It was a risky experiment. I found it interesting that after I posted something about it, although posts had previously been deleted or failed to appear, some now seemed to go through successfully, yet other people could not see them. That was when I learned about so-called “dead posts.” After posting, the content is blocked: you can see it, but others cannot. Unless you check by another means, you do not know that other people cannot see your post. I immediately made this into a work. I logged into Sina’s blogging platform with another account and took a screenshot of what was visible. I also took a screenshot of what I could see when logged into my own account. Comparing them, you see that over the same twenty-four hours, the world I saw and expressed was different from the world others could see through my account. Much of it had been blocked. That was interesting and something to investigate further.

Wang Zhiwei: Very interesting.

Qiming Liu: I kept developing these experiments. This year, I am working with STUDIO67 in Singapore on a solo exhibition in December. In March, I went there to look at the gallery’s space. Because the exhibition will bring together painting, performance, video, and installation, I wanted to see the spatial relationships and consider how the arrangement and selection of works could communicate my ideas and understanding of art more fully. During our discussions, I initiated the independent project Giving You My 272 Days and Nights. I asked STUDIO67 to provide two of the latest smart devices representative of ordinary daily use: an iPhone 5 and an iPad 4. The iPad 4 had 4G, but China had only 3G service. The iPhone 5 was interesting too. I used a China Mobile SIM card, but China Mobile and the iPhone supplier did not provide full support for one another. Apple worked with China Unicom, whose SIM cards could access 3G on the iPhone; a China Mobile card could still only use 2G. That is technological control. It is a commercial matter, of course, but for ordinary people it sets a limit on choice: if you want China Mobile’s 3G service, you cannot use an Apple phone. You see that both choosing and not choosing are prescribed.

Wang Zhiwei: Prescribed.

Qiming Liu: Yes. Giving You My 272 Days and Nights refers to the period beginning on March 7 and ending at the solo exhibition’s opening on December 4: 272 days and nights. After receiving the two devices, I use them normally in my everyday life. How their functions can be used depends on my particular environment and the services provided. Through ordinary use, the iPhone 5 and iPad 4 retain traces of what I do. I will delete none of them; they will remain intact. At the exhibition, when the period ends on December 4, I will turn them into an installation. Visitors can enter through these two smart devices, operate my phone and iPad, and peer into those 272 days of my life.

Wang Zhiwei: Everything is retained.

Qiming Liu: Absolutely. Whether the devices can retain everything accurately is Apple’s own problem. I will make no deletions. If I call someone, for instance, the number is recorded; going online leaves a record too. Through those records, visitors can enter my “space,” including through my account. They can even make calls from my phone, and the person receiving the call will think it is me: “Qiming Liu is calling!” That is not the central issue, though. What matters is that when someone communicates through my WeChat space, others think they are communicating with me. This really does involve many questions of privacy. Why make this choice? I think it depends on how you understand privacy. Of course, we can set passwords and lock screens; those functions are available. But consider another question: if I am deliberately exposing my privacy here, what if my phone were lost? Someone else could see what was inside just the same, could they not? The safeguards you can set are limited. Besides, other people can unlock devices. With these technologies, every advance on one side is met by an even greater advance on the other. How strong are so-called protection and security, really? That is a question.

Wang Zhiwei: So within this too, choices are made for you.

Qiming Liu: Yes. Choices made for us, and prescribed.

Wang Zhiwei: Thank you for sharing this with us, Mr. Liu. That concludes our interview today.