The “Suojia Village Phenomenon” Is Not a Story — An Interview with Qiming Liu

At the end of 2008, the artist Li Jianzhang called to say that he planned to interview dozens of artists who had lived, or still lived, in Suojia Village International Art Camp and had witnessed its development, and to write a book about Suojia Village from beginning to end. He hoped to document this contemporary artistic formation or gathering place that had played an important role in the development of Chinese art. As of now, Li says his plan has proceeded fairly smoothly and the interviews are complete. He has interviewed about seventy artists, including Shang Yang, Sui Jianguo, Shi Jinsong, Wu Mingzhong, Li Hui, Cui Xianji, Yin Zhaoyang, Liu Bolin, Shen Jingdong, Qiming Liu, Chen Wenling, Li Gang, Ren Sihong, Xin Dongwang, Sun Jianping, Xu Xiaoyan, Zhou Jirong, Zheng Xuewu, Gao Xiaowu and Geng Bo. Below is the transcript of his interview with me.

Li Jianzhang: Could you talk about your view of Suojia Village?

Qiming Liu: The “Suojia Village phenomenon” is a subject well worth serious study. In an era of dramatic change, the emergence of Suojia Village International Art Camp and the events it encountered will inevitably enter the writing of Chinese art history. Simply put, its concentrated form of studio organization is an inevitable phenomenon in the development of Chinese contemporary art. The demolition controversy it encountered is also contemporary art’s inevitable fate once our country’s social and economic development reaches a certain stage.

In China, experimental art and artist communities that take freedom as their core value have always existed outside the establishment, in a semi-underground state. In terms of strategies for the survival of art and artists, the communities from Yuanmingyuan through Songzhuang displayed the characteristics of spontaneous, agrarian-style, supposedly “aimless” migration. Their nature was passive. More than a decade later, communities represented by 798, Suojia Village, 318 and the Liquor Factory display the characteristics of industrialized, partly itinerant migration. Artists now show more awareness and make partly active choices. Choice comes from a diversification of opportunities, evident first in where one can establish a studio: one can rent in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Chongqing, Shenzhen and elsewhere. Within Beijing, one can also choose an art district—798, Suojia Village, 318, the Liquor Factory, Songzhuang, Dongying, Caochangdi and so on. The survival strategies of today’s art and artists are an inevitable response in the cultural and artistic sphere to thirty years of our market economy’s development without freedom. This reflects artists’ conscious actions to some extent, but contemporary art’s nature determines that it must confront many incidents and problems. Examples include the demolition at Suojia Village in 2005, and 798, which gradually developed as an art district from 2000 but was not legalized until March 2006. To this day, apart from Songzhuang, 798 and No. 1 Art Base, Beijing’s art districts not only retain an “illegal” status; they all face a policy of compulsory demolition to be enforced before June 2010.

Li Jianzhang: What was the situation when you planned the Suojia Village exhibition in 2007?

Qiming Liu: Although Suojia Village faced a legally mandated compulsory demolition in 2005, it still exists today. What it faces next may simply be the Chaoyang District government’s overall demolition plan for 2010. Why, then, does Suojia Village still survive after the 2005 demolition? That is a question. It was also a question I had to confront and consider when planning Restart—Suojia Village Art Camp in 2007. Faced with these conditions for art’s survival, I began planning the exhibition in early 2007 to express my thinking and understanding of this artistic ecology.

Li Jianzhang: What was the situation in 2005?

Qiming Liu: In June 2005, as Suojia Village faced compulsory demolition by the government, more than a hundred Chinese and international artists living there called for public attention through newspapers, the internet and other media in China and abroad. They tried to use so-called “international influence” to persuade the government to preserve it. The same method had been used at 798 during the 2004 Dashanzi Art District Art Exhibition Activities. After one row of studios was forcibly demolished at Suojia Village, the demolition temporarily stopped. By the time I arrived in 2006, that row had been restored. It seemed Suojia Village no longer had any problems, so I rented one as my studio. But on the very day I signed the lease, the court posted another notice: compulsory demolition would take place within half a month. Everyone began looking around for other places that could serve as studios, even though developers always claimed to guarantee ten- or twenty-year leases for their studio camps. Gradually everyone understood one thing: Beijing had no legal studio districts, so wherever you went, you would face the same problem. Studios were temporary buildings, and the government could use any number of reasons to raze them overnight. After half a month, nothing had happened, so I stayed on.

Suojia Village still survives without having been legalized. That is a very interesting phenomenon.

Li Jianzhang: Did it survive because artists achieved “international influence” through the media?

Qiming Liu: I do not think so. When artists use terms such as “the whole world” and “international influence,” it is merely a threat employed as a political strategy. Artists used this strategy powerfully during the Stars exhibition incident in 1979. But I think that using the same approach now cannot change the facts. In the case of 798’s legal status, threatening language did not cause the opposing side to change its position. Rather, the development of the market economy and the market reality already established at 798 alerted the government to the usefulness of this particular market and its influence. If “the whole world” or “international influence” really matter, they are considered only on the premise that they are more beneficial to the development of China’s socialist market economy. Government officials understand that political position very clearly. So we can naturally understand half of the Suojia Village phenomenon. But why was it not legalized like 798? I think there is a question of manipulation involved. That is also one of the Chinese characteristics.

Li Jianzhang: What manipulation?

Qiming Liu: Artists have always belonged to a vulnerable group, and are quite helpless before a powerful system. Yet artists are also generally quite innocent, so developers can “hold artists hostage to command the government.” Developers, however, do not understand what role these artists occupy in the government’s eyes. Is the government’s real purpose to demolish unauthorized buildings under the law? I do not think so. There are far too many unauthorized buildings that regulations would require it to demolish. Why single out Suojia Village International Art Camp? If we correctly understand the expulsion of artists from Yuanmingyuan, we can correctly understand Suojia Village. Ten years later, I believe the government’s purpose is the same; only its methods and strategies have changed. Expelling artists from Yuanmingyuan was simple, brutal and direct, face to face. Now they have merely become a little cleverer. They cite the demolition of unauthorized buildings, but their intended objective is identical. In the Suojia Village incident, they are demolishing unauthorized buildings, not expelling artists. On the surface, all this is entirely defensible. Today’s government cannot say that it wants to drive artists away.

After all, the core humanistic values represented by contemporary artists are still not recognized by the government. That is the key. If its purpose is not to expel artists and it is merely a question of unauthorized buildings, why can there be no discussion? Artists’ need for space and districts is determined by the nature of their work. Isn’t the purpose of buildings to meet needs? Besides, if not here, there should be somewhere else. Where is that somewhere else? To this day, the government has not designated a place for artists and said, “You may gather here, establish studios and work.”

Driven out but not expelled, subject to law but without its final execution, Suojia Village remains. This demonstrates the flexibility in the enforcement of Chinese court judgments. Developers, officials at various village and district levels, and court presidents control that flexibility. Its extent fluctuates with the balance of how the economic profits generated by developing these studios are distributed among them.

Li Jianzhang: What were the artists’ circumstances at the time?

Qiming Liu: Artists are not, by nature, pragmatists; they wander in soul and spirit and generally lack a sense of security. In 2005, as today, Chinese artists had to confront two external influences: the annihilation of elite thought brought about by the commercial age, and the vacant ground between brutal authoritarian power in reality and virtual democracy online. The agrarian and pastoral age is over. Artists must make their own decisions.

Li Jianzhang: Before coming to Beijing, when you were a department head at a university, did you also have to do a lot of coordination and exhibition planning? Were those earlier work experiences helpful?

Qiming Liu: Experience leaves its imprint. I can say something briefly about being a department head. Chinese universities are essentially still part of officialdom. Above a department head are the dean and the university president. A department head is simply someone who does the work: you are responsible for mistakes, but the credit is not yours. Because it is officialdom, and officialdom does not concern itself with scholarship, scholarship is only a superficial display. Throughout the institution, from leaders to teachers, the general attitude is to seek no merit, only to avoid error. The helplessness of reality and teaching through lies against one’s conscience; every day, machine-like teaching by regulations, rigid teaching evaluations, standardized thesis writing—no creativity is permitted. Everything must merely be quantified and standardized! This so-called university art education is like a chastity memorial arch erected for a prostitute. There is therefore no creation to speak of. So I can be neither a good leader nor a teacher.

Li Jianzhang: You still prefer to be an artist?

Qiming Liu: Yes. To follow the choice within my own heart.

Li Jianzhang: Is the formation of your thinking and worldview related to making art?

Qiming Liu: I think they complement each other. Every artist has a devil inside. Finding an appropriate way to release it can be painful. At the same time, an artist is a person with an attitude. Faced with the contradiction between the realities of society and the ideals of youth, you feel on one hand that these values are wrong, while on the other you are forced, helplessly, to act that way. This can split a person apart. So it is best to be able to keep working in art, expressing what is your own through artistic means. This is not only a release. Within art, you can also find a frame of mind and a state that keep some distance from life, allowing you to continue living as an ordinary person without going mad.

Li Jianzhang: If you did not make art, what else would you do?

Qiming Liu: Perhaps I would become a poet. I think the 1980s were the age of poets, but 1989 was a turning point. On one hand, through the Chinese government’s brutal baptism by arms, spiritual things were banished. On the other, the devil of commercialization began to rape everyone. While granting material prosperity, it numbed people’s nerves and alienated their capacity to feel things. The advantage of being a poet is that through a form of low-cost, private labor, you can hide yourself and thus live like a “normal person.”

Li Jianzhang: When did you begin studying art?

Qiming Liu: In primary school. There was no formal study; I simply drew as I liked. My family was very relaxed with me, and I could do whatever I wanted. In junior secondary school, I formally encountered drawing, color and ink painting.

Li Jianzhang: Does examination-oriented education stifle art?

Qiming Liu: To put it rather extremely, I think it has never stopped stifling it. University education has, in effect, gradually degenerated into an unsuccessful vocational training institution. First of all, entrance examinations for art education are the beginning of a process in which the inferior prevail and the excellent are eliminated. Rigid examination methods and means determine that we inevitably pay the price of abandoning outstanding students. Schools are always seeking the simplest, most convenient admissions examination that costs the least. How to find better talent and educate students does not seem to be something they need to consider. In fact, the system determines schools’ understanding of talent and their requirements for it. These are all social problems.

Li Jianzhang: Did you feel this strongly when you were at university?

Qiming Liu: It was somewhat better when we were students. But after I began working, from the expansion of university admissions in 1998 onward, a series of policies and measures such as the industrialization of education gradually intensified this malignant proliferation.

Li Jianzhang: Then let us return to the Restart exhibition.

Qiming Liu: I began thinking about the exhibition early in 2007, discussing my ideas with other artists and negotiating collaboration with the property managers, the Gaoyougao company. Some artists moved away during the demolition incident in 2005; after another compulsory-demolition notice from the court appeared in 2006, others gradually left. Of course, throughout this process, large numbers of artists from elsewhere kept coming to Beijing. With 798 at its center, Beijing began to spread like a spiderweb as other developers built studio districts, including the Liquor Factory, Dongying and Heiqiao. Artists newly arriving in Beijing also kept moving into Suojia Village. By early 2007, more than sixty percent of its artists had been replaced compared with two years before. Even among those who had not left, some were rarely seen working in their studios, which stayed locked for long periods. Most of these were teachers at Beijing universities, and their studios had become a display. The artists truly buried in work in their studios were mostly new arrivals. In effect, Suojia Village had received a transfusion of new blood.

Because of the demolition incident, the property managers at Suojia Village began keeping a lower profile. Moreover, most artists living there were new to Beijing and rarely held exhibitions or activities within the art scene. Consequently, even many people within the art world thought Suojia Village had already been demolished and disappeared…

Since there was nowhere in Beijing that artists could use as a long-term place to work, every artist in Beijing was, in fact, a “temporary resident.” Artists arriving from elsewhere also had to obtain a “temporary residence permit.” Artists were therefore genuinely in a drifting, unsettled state. This drifting state also matched artists’ psychological condition. I accordingly named the exhibition Temporary Residence—Suojia Village Art Camp. “Temporary residence” had become the condition of art and artists’ survival in that period. In the end, the property managers disagreed with the title, fearing it would affect their business. Since we needed them to provide part of the exhibition’s funding, we finally settled on the title subsequently used: Restart. Restart was an ideal we held for experimental art and an attitude we took toward contemporary art.

At the beginning of April, an unexpected incident in my family took me back to Sichuan for half a month. When I returned to Beijing, only ten days remained before the scheduled exhibition. It was therefore rather rushed. Without the family incident, the exhibition would have been more fully prepared, with broader participation. Time was very tight. From the design of posters and brochures to preparing and releasing material for websites and magazines, we got it all done in a week of working through the night at Li Fang’s studio. After I sent the material I had assembled to the major websites, their response was strong. They found the proposal of Restart—Suojia Village very interesting. Several important art websites then made special features on the exhibition, including Art Union, Artron Art, Art China and Eastern Visual Arts. The final response was substantial.

Li Jianzhang: Did these websites approach you, or did you approach them?

Qiming Liu: I approached them, calling to explain the value and significance of what we were doing and obtaining their recognition and agreement.

Li Jianzhang: This was indeed very meaningful work. Thank you for your efforts! Could you talk about the financial crisis? I have noticed that many artists have left Beijing, or are preparing to leave, because of it.

Qiming Liu: Whatever happens with the financial crisis or the market, artists should face life and art actively. One does not necessarily have to be in Beijing to make art. If making art can no longer sustain a living, I suggest artists actively seek strategies and methods for living. Continuing to make art does not mean painting every day. As for the financial crisis, I reposted two articles on my blog, Understand the Financial Crisis in Ten Minutes and Find Out in Five Minutes Why China Needs to Expand Domestic Demand. They explain these issues clearly. The root of the crisis is actually institutional: it is the result of the economic and political systems. So I strongly advocate that, when appropriate, artists should reclaim their identity as ordinary citizens of the country and participate actively in social development and construction. “Citizen” is a political concept. What I also mean is that artists have an obligation, as ordinary citizens, to concern themselves with the development of the country’s political system, because that system is the premise and foundation determining all its other systems—economic, cultural, religious, educational and so on.

Li Jianzhang: Well said! When I have time, I will visit your blog and learn more. Now that you are in 318 International Art Garden, do you think it is better than Suojia Village, in its various aspects?

Qiming Liu: I feel that Suojia Village has more human warmth, and people place relatively greater value on their relationships. Perhaps that has something to do with its history. Together, people have many small topics of everyday life to talk about, and these draw them closer. Here, artists are each busy doing their own work, with little visiting between people. Perhaps this relates to the generally better market for their work here. On the other hand, this place does not have a history like Suojia Village. It is a new art district, with a substantial number of artists only moving in during August 2007. Nothing has happened at 318, so there is no shared experience to talk about when people gather, making emotional connections harder to form. It therefore feels less warm than Suojia Village. Yet the rent here is two times higher than at Suojia Village.

Li Jianzhang: Would you prefer artists’ lives to be more like those at Suojia Village?

Qiming Liu: That may depend on each individual artist’s circumstances and state of mind. For instance, at Suojia Village I more often enjoyed myself despite being poor. Here I am busier and more absorbed in myself; my state of artistic creation is different too. On the other hand, history is made by people. If all the studio districts in Chaoyang are demolished next year and only 318 remains, then 318 will become the next “Suojia Village phenomenon.”

(July 20, 2009, Qiming Liu’s studio, 318 International Art Camp)