Lu Mingjun Branching Paths to Self-Liberation

Huang Yong Ping, Reptiles, n May 1989, three artists from mainland China—Gu Dexin, Huang 1989, installation view, Magiciens de la terre, Centre Yongping, and Yang Jiecang—took part in the highly controversial Pompidou, . Courtesy of the artist. Iexhibition Magiciens de la Terre, curated by Jean-Hubert Martin at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. This was the first time contemporary was featured in an international exhibition. The Tian’anmen Square incident broke out not long after the exhibition opened. The gunshot set off by Xiao Lu at the February 5 opening of the China/Avant-Garde exhibition in was seen by many as a harbinger of the Tian’anmen incident. This sudden event affected the itineraries of all three artists to varying extents. Huang Yong Ping and Yang Jiecang (as well as Fei Dawei, the curator who accompanied them) chose to stay in Paris, and they began their careers as overseas Chinese artists. Gu Dexin resolved to return to China. Several months later, the Berlin Wall fell, and East and West Germany were unified. In the summer 1989 edition of The National Interest, Francis Fukuyama published his essay “The End of History?,” in which he declared Communism bankrupt and posited that liberal democracy was possibly the “end point of mankind’s ideological evolution” and the “final form of human government.” Two years later, the Soviet Union declared

65 its dissolution, bringing the Cold War to an end. The “post-Cold War” era replaced it as the new system of the world. A year after that, Deng Xiaoping toured southern China to promote reforms to the economic system, and marketization came to occupy the mainstream of mainland Chinese ideology. Soon after, in 1993, Chinese artists made their first group appearance at the Venice Biennale and began down a new path of internationalization.

Feng Mengbo, My Private Album, 1997, installation view, documenta X, Kassel. Courtesy of the artist.

If Magiciens de la Terre was an omen of globalization and the “end of history” was the mainstream ideology of the “post-Cold War” or “Post-89” era, then Samuel P. Huntington’s book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order stood as a sweeping diagnosis and criticism of this period’s “universal optimism,” and Magiciens de la Terre could be seen as a model of the “postcolonial.”1 As Rasheed Araeen, founder of the journal Third Text, pointed out, Martin’s self-declared “good deed” not only failed to cast doubt on Western dominance, it also denied “other cultures their ability to question their domination and to liberate themselves from it.”2 In 1997, a year after Samuel P. Huntington published Clash of Civilizations, artists Wang Jianwei and Feng Mengbo took part in documenta X in Kassel, becoming the first Chinese artists to be featured in this exhibition. The reason this installment of documenta, curated by Catherine David, was of groundbreaking significance in the history of the exhibition is that she pulled it from its Western- centric modernist leanings into a framework of global politics, society, and culture in order to confront the differences, shifts, and complexities within. Coincidentally, it was also in this year that “A world economic crisis forced people to consider the destructive force of international financial capital flows on society and economy.”3 At the same time, the journal Frontiers published Wang Hui’s essay “The State of Ideas in Contemporary China and the Question of Modernity,”4 which touched off a battle between left and right that continues to this day, and provoked reflection on global capitalism, neoliberalism, and the hegemonic inequality of the entire modernization process. Nevertheless, the rise of such schools of thought as the “New Left” and democratism were accompanied by the total, unstoppable invasion of globalism. Even anti-globalization itself was a global wave.

66 On July 13, 2001, International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch announced in Moscow that Beijing had been selected to host the 2008 Olympic Games. On November 10 of that same year, China officially joined the World Trade Organization after years of difficult negotiations. For a time, the whole nation celebrated. These events also brought legitimacy to contemporary art. Before this (the earliest such legitimizing event being the government holding the Shanghai Biennale), contemporary art had been illegitimate, or in a “half underground” state, but now it had become a part of the government’s cultural strategy. The West was unstable in 2001, especially the United States, when the 9/11 terror attack led directly to a resurgence of the right wing. Empire, the book by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri released by Harvard University Press the year before, attracted much attention as a result. The two authors viewed the multinational system of global capital as a new form of “empire” distinct from “imperialism.”5 One could say that the 9/11 attack dealt a fatal blow to this “empire.” That same year, Zhao Tingyang published the essay “System Under Heaven: Empire and the System of the World,” replacing “empire” with the traditional Chinese concept of “under heaven” and discussing it as a possible new world order.6 In late 2003, the 21st Century Business Herald published an interview with Gan Yang titled From “Nation-State to Civilization-State.” In the interview, Gan Yang held that the central issue facing China in the twenty- first century was to transcend the logic of “nation-state” and consciously move to rebuild China as a “civilization-state.” This would, to a great extent, depend on whether China could consciously root the “modern nation” of China in its longstanding “historical civilization.” He then used this as a lens to re-examine Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” and to attack the Western neoliberal and academic left’s fantasies of “universal Westernized civilization” from a conservative perspective.7 This interview marked the rise of “neo-conservatism” in China. That year, the group exhibition Prayer Beads and Brushstrokes, curated by Li Xianting, opened at Beijing Tokyo Art Projects and Dashanzi West Art District. Six years later, in 2009, Gao Minglu curated the large-scale exhibition Yi Pai at the Today Art Museum, Beijing. This had profound implications, as these two figures, who were once at the heart and soul of the ’85 New Wave Movement and the leading promoters of avant-garde art in China, were now both attempting to retrace China’s historical traditions to find a new understanding and establish a discursive methodology for contemporary Chinese art. In this process, as the art system (including galleries, museums, and art fairs) became more established, contemporary Chinese art could not avoid being drawn into the global capital system, and the market came to dominate the system, exemplified by the rise of art districts such as 798 in Beijing and M50 in Shanghai. During this time, virtually all acts of criticism and rebellion against the market and capitalism were in essence dependent on very this system and even strove to become the more correct components of this system.

Today, we are still mired in the financial tsunami that struck the globe in 2008, and the global crisis has only been intensified by the growing strength of ISIS and increasing ethnic conflicts. Meanwhile, the crisis rapidly wiped

67 out the frenzied spectacle of the Chinese art market as it existed from 2005 to 2007. Luckily, the crisis did not reach the roots of China’s economic growth. That fact, alongside China’s successful hosting of the Beijing Olympics, allowed nationalism to once again rear its head, leading to a debate on the Chinese model discussing the differences between theories of the foreign policy slogans “peaceful rise” and the “Chinese threat.” One aspect that cannot be ignored is that the nation’s economic rise, aside from bolstering national confidence, also led to severe social imbalances, social stratification, and widespread anxiety. These intertwining conflicts and contradictions touched off a fierce ideological debate among intellectuals. Though the debate ended inconclusively, it demonstrated that whether in the West or in China, the decoupling of political form from social form implied that the ideological framework of old could no longer explain the world of today. Liberalism or socialism, radical or conservative—none could adapt to this state of affairs.8

Opening of the Third Guangzhou Triennale, Farewell to Post-Colonialism, September 6, 2008. Courtesy of the Guangzhou Triennale.

Also in 2008, Gao Shiming, Sarat Maharaj, and Johnson Chang curated the Third Guangzhou Triennial, titled Farewell to Post-Colonialism. The exhibition intended to effect a thorough departure from the politicizing, ideological artistic framework and perceptual system of “postcolonialism” and the “ideological readymades” and “undigested realities” that emerged from it.9 What appeared to be an attempt to return to the essence of art and politics themselves, however—a return to the politics of art—when rooted in the context of the time also seemed to conceal a “nationalist” narrative. Gayatri C. Spivak once said that the whole world is postcolonial.10 In a sense, globalization and postcolonialism are two sides of the same coin. Thus, to “bid farewell to post-colonialism” is the same as to “bid farewell to globalization.” Or perhaps this is little more than discursive posturing. The complexity of the issue, however, is that even as we stand in this “China” today, it is very difficult to give it an essential definition. It actively takes part in the game of globalization under its own volition, but it is not limited by it. It completely follows the so-called universal logic of the game, rather than playing the narrow role of resistor. It has its own unique regional political circumstances, as well as a complex, multilayered inner structure.

68 As Sarat Maharaj said, to “bid farewell to post-colonialism” is not—nor could it be—a total farewell to postcolonialism. Instead, it lends flexibility to the concept of postcolonialism, and allows it to engage with other realities.11 Yet, when we are establishing cultural orientation and emphasizing differences, we consciously essentialize the self, while also essentializing globalization or the West.

We are no strangers to this oft-discussed period of history. The reason I would reconstruct this circuitous, deadlocked process is that the contemporary Chinese art practices of the past twenty years have been unable to escape from this historical structure and ideological system dominated by globalization/postcolonialism. And whether they proactively engage it or are passively drawn in to it, most artists and curators are chasing after self-liberation. It is merely a question of different paths. What forces me to return to the late 1990s and beginning of the twenty-first century is that this period is the murkiest, least certain, and most intense discursive realm within the systematic observation of and thinking about “art (text), thought (subtext), and action (event).”12 Many of the issues we face today were already apparent or beginning to emerge at that time, and, more importantly, they had already begun to decouple themselves from this ideological framework or treat it as the object of rethinking.

Post-Sense Sensibility: Alien In the first half of 1999, the two Bodies and Delusion, 1996, group photo of artists and experimental exhibitions Post- curator, 1996. Courtesy of Qiu Zhijie. Sense Sensibility: Alien Bodies and Delusion, curated by Wu Meichun and featuring writing by Qiu Zhijie, and Art for Sale, curated by Xu Zhen, Yang Zhenzhong, Art for Sale, exhibition site, 1999. Courtesy of Yang and Alexander F. Brandt, opened Zhenzhong. in temporary spaces in Beijing and Shanghai, respectively. Forty young artists took part in these two exhibitions, and, today, most of them (including, aside from the artist-curators listed above, Liu Wei, Yang Fudong, Zheng Guogu, Kan Xuan, Zhang Hui, Zhu Yu, Wang Wei, Shi Qing, and Sun Yuan) are now leading figures in contemporary Chinese art. Meanwhile, far away in , Lu Jie was planning the Long March Project as his thesis curatorial project at Goldsmiths, University of London. Three years later, Long March—A Walking Visual Presentation, curated by Lu Jie, with Qiu Zhijie as co-executive curator, officially began.13 The project continues to this day.

The reason I have selected these three exhibitions or projects as the focus of this discussion is primarily because they happened to have taken place simultaneously, and although they had clearly different directions, this was no coincidence. Post-Sense Sensibility was directed at the local conceptual

69 art that was then in the process of Song Dong, Art Travel Agency, 1999, performance for Art For being absorbed by the international Sale. Courtesy of Xu Zhen. art system or was intentionally catering to an international vision. The exhibition intended to return to experiments within the sites of where art occurs and within sensory perception. Even the later temporary theatre performances that took place as part of the Post-Sense Sensibility exhibitions exemplified resistance against the ossified and competitive exhibition system of international art. Art for Sale looked at ways of intervening in everyday experience and the lives of urban residents through individual means, and how to use a new exhibition language to try and break through the orderly restrictions of the art system. The Long March Project was directed at the art and exhibition system against the backdrop of globalization, at once attempting to present a fresh, fluid model for artistic creation and exhibition that is rooted in folk art, folk ways, folk tones and regional environments, as well as a new cross-media model of art history and theoretical composition. It also aimed to reassess and sift through a century of revolutionary and socialist life experience.14

Left: Long March—A Walking Display, Zun Yi International Symposium, 2002. Courtesy of Long March Space, Beijing. Right: Zheng Guogu, Deep-Fried Tanks, 1999, performance, Post-Sense Sensibility: Alien Bodies & Delusion. Courtesy of Wang Wei.

Second, the year 1999 was just a beginning. Not only were their experiments sustained, but also they had a profound impact on the individual practices of the participating artists. In Beijing, after Post-Sense Sensibility: Alien Bodies & Delusion, various individuals curated and executed the exhibitions Post-Sense Sensibility: Spree (2001), Post-Sense Sensibility: Nemesis (2001), Post-Sense Sensibility: Inside Story (2003), Post-Sense Sensibility: Fearful (2004) and Post-Sense Sensibility: Black and White Zoo (2006), as well as the “Complete Art Experience Project” series (2005) and other experimental performances. At that point, however, they were tending toward disbandment, and core member Qiu Zhijie’s interest was shifting toward what he called “total art,” a form of multimedia experimental theatre rooted in research that resists the everyday systems that exist within everyday life. Likewise, in Shanghai, after Art for Sale, Xu Zhen and Yang Zhenzhong went on to curate and organize many similar exhibitions, such as Useful Life (2000), Fang Mingzhen and Fang Mingzhu (2002), and the 62761232 Courier Exhibition (2004). Particularly noteworthy is the conceptual influence Art for Sale would have on Xu Zhen’s later systemic

70 Qiu Zhijie, Left/Right, 2002, performance on Luding Bridge, Long March—A Walking Display. Courtesy of the artist and Long March Space, Beijing.

Post-Sense Sensibility: Nemesis, Hang Up, 2001, installation view. Courtesy of Qiu Zhijie.

71 Post-Sense Sensibility: Inside Story, 2003, performance. Courtesy of Qiu Zhijie.

72 Shi Yong, Does Every Chinese Person Have Blond Hair, 1999, in Art For Sale. Courtesy of MadeIn Company. Courtesy of Xu Zhen.

MadeIn Gallery, exhibition view of Information Sculpture Superhighway, 2016, MadeIn Gallery. Courtesy of MadeIn Company.

turn. Many of his practices, from Art for Sale at ShanghART (2007) to Shopping Gallery (2008), MadeIn Company (2009), the “Xu Zhen brand” (2013), MadeIn Gallery (2014), XUZHEN Supermarket (2016) and Xu Zhen Store (2016) were all inextricably linked to Art for Sale. The Long March Project was aimed at returning to the relationships between the elite and the masses, and tradition and modernity, that had receded from the public eye or been replaced by the “debate between China and the West” (as seen in the debate in the critical scene around the year 2000 over whether or not to promote a “China brand”).15 Here there was no dichotomy between China and the West, no battle between left and right, no Cold War or post-Cold War logic of socialism versus capitalism or globalization versus localization, much less a retreat to a conservative state. This was clearly an attempt to break through the existing, dogmatic cognitive framework and to seek new strongholds and pathways for action within a state of change.

Finally, and, most importantly, their concepts and practices were deeply embedded within the political context of art and culture in the late 1990s, yet were not constrained by that context. Instead, on this foundation, they intended to provide critical experiments and creative discourses pointing toward the future. The year 1999 was itself a very dramatic year. NATO

73 engaged in the Kosovo War on March 24, and the Chinese Embassy in XUZHEN Supermarket, 2016, shelves, product packages, Belgrade was bombed on May 8, sparking protests among university students cash register, refrigerator, light box. Courtesy of MadeIn and residents in Beijing and other cities. The balance between nationalism Company. and imperialism, and whether human rights could or should override sovereignty, became the focus of debate. Meanwhile, as reforms continued, unemployment, systemic and increasingly internationalized corruption, economic inequality, environmental crises, and other social contradictions intensified, smashing any naive or theoretical illusions of modern society, while also demonstrating that globalization was no longer an issue external to China. It was no longer a question of whether or not we would become involved; it had become an issue internal to society.16 Interestingly, neither Post-Sense Sensibility nor Art for Sale were swept up in this ideological struggle, nor did they intentionally cater to any particular ideological needs. It was precisely these complex circumstances that led them to focus on ways of liberating themselves from existing art, culture, society, and political or ideological systems. This is not to say that they did not touch upon these issues, but that they approached reality and its complexity from more microscopic and individualized perspectives and linguistic methods. Their contribution was not a particular political stance, but fluid, hybrid, and dynamic perceptions and thoughts. This was also the practical idea behind the Long March Project, though its methods and approach were different.

Around the year 2003, with the growing establishment of the art system and the rise of museums, galleries, and art fairs, increasing numbers of artists became involved, though this does not imply that they fell under the control of capitalism or became completely dependent on the global art market. In a sense, this development is why it was difficult for these collective or small group experiences to continue, as capitalism and the art system provided artists with the platforms and conditions to realize their individual potential. As a result, they chose to leave the “correct” temporary group to enter into an “incorrect” system. According to Liu Wei, the market is a fundamental reality, and if we avoid this reality, then our art will lose

74 XUZHEN Supermarket, 2016, shelves, product packages, cash register, refrigerator, light box. Courtesy of MadeIn Company.

its truthfulness, and will be unable to naturally touch on the tender and painful spots of reality.17 Since 2000, virtually all of his practices have been rooted in Beijing’s urbanization campaign against the backdrop of globalization, in the urban spectacle, the everyday experience of those living on the outskirts of the city, and the aesthetic forms of stratification, and his works have always met with affirmation from the market. In comparison, Xu Zhen’s Pop-oriented systematic practices are doubtless even more total. Since his establishment of MadeIn Company in 2009, his innumerable experiments and creations have all touched on commerce and capital, and in his reckoning, commercialization has been the most irrefutable reality of contemporary Chinese art since 2006. Thus, we could say that Xu Zhen’s practice is the most fitting presentation of the symptoms of contemporary Chinese society, culture, and the art system, a kind of “capitalist realism.”18 In early November 2016, during the West Bund and ART021 art fairs, more than sixty exhibitions of various sizes opened in one week in Shanghai alone. Compared to the 1990s and early 2000s, with the shortage of spaces, paucity of exhibitions, and lack of a market, this appears as something of a “frenzy.” It was at this time that the Xu Zhen Store opened. This is an expansion of his artistic system and industry, as well as a subtle intervention into the surrounding commercial circumstances of art. His attitude may be ambiguous, but this ambiguity is precisely his means of interfering from within capital.19 Here we finally understand the relationship between the Long March Project and Long March Space. The Long March Project was first motivated by a desire for a critical rethinking of the neoliberal-driven art system, but when it became the gallery known as Long March Space, it became a part of that very system. Lu Jie does not see it this way. He feels

75 that there is no contradiction between the two. Long March Space is merely a part of the Long March Project and a necessary source of support for the latter. Of course, conflict between the two is unavoidable. Perhaps it is precisely this “ambiguous” relationship that allows for the emergence of an open, fluid, and uncertain discourse and politics.

Since 1989, ideology has ruled over concepts and practices in contemporary Chinese art. Within a world system and an art system dominated by globalization, artists fear only political incorrectness. This has been the source of their artistic initiative and a fixed mechanism of subjectivity. Neither Post-Sense Sensibility nor Art for Sale nor the Long March Project deny this world system and reality of art. Instead, they hope to return to the subject of art and art as the subject of politics through different perspectives and paths and to reconstruct internal connections between global politics, culture, society, and change within a reality riddled with contradictions and difficulties. What follows is not only artistic liberation, but also political liberation, and, more importantly, liberation of self.

Translated by Jeff Crosby.

Notes

1. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011). 2. Anonymous, Magiciens de la Terre, the Pioneer of Large International Contemporary Art Exhibitions (Dadi Moshushi, Dangdai Guoji Yishu Dazhan de Linghangzhe), 99ys, May 19, 2015, http://blog.sina. com.cn/s/blog_706be7890101ja25.html/. 3. Wang Hui, Depoliticized Politics: The 1990s and the End of the Short 20th Century (Qu Zhengzhihua de Zhengzhi: Duan 20 Shiji de Zhongjie yu 90 Niandai) (Beijing: SDX Book Company, 2008), 137. 4. Wang Hui, Depoliticized Politics, 58–97. 5. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001). 6. This essay was later developed into a book. Zhao Tingyang, System Under Heaven: Philosophical Overview of the System of the World (Tianxia Tixi: Shijie Zhidu Zhexue Daolun) (Nanjing: Jiangsu Education Publishing House), 2005. 7. Gan Yang, Civilization, Nation, Learning (Wenming Guojia Daxue) (Beijing: SDX Book Company, 2012), 1–15. 8. Discussion between Lu Mingjun and Wang Hui, Tsinghua Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Sciences, Beijing, April 3, 2016, unpublished. 9. Gao Shiming, Sarat Maharaj, and Johnson Chang, “Concept: Farewell to Post-Colonialism” (Zhuti Gainian: Yu Houzhimin Shuo Zaijian), in Farewell to Post-Colonialism: The Third Guangzhou Triennial (Yu Houzhimin Shuo Zaijian: Di San jie Guangzhou Sannianzhan) (: Press, 2008), 3. 10. Gayatri C. Spivak, “Gayatri Spivak on the Politics of the Subaltern,” Socialist Review 20, no. 3 (1990), 94. 11. Guangdong Museum of Art, Farewell to Post-Colonialism: The Third Guangzhou Triennial Reader 1 (Macao: Macao Publishing House, 2008), 95. 12. Zeng Nianchang, The Poetry of Rupture: The Literature, Ideas, and Actions of 1998 (Duanlie de Shixue: 1998 nian de Wenxue, Sixiang yu Xingdong) (Beijing: SDX Book Company, 2017). 13. The Long March Foundation was established in 2000 in New York; 2002 saw the establishment of 25,000 Cultural Transmission Center in Beijing in Dashanzi, and the project was officially launched summer 2002. 14. Lu Jie and Qiu Zhijie, Long March—A Walking Visual Presentation: Exhibition Foreword, 2003, unpublished. 15. Ibid. 16. Discussion between Lu Mingjun and Wang Hui, Tsinghua Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Sciences, Beijing, April 3, 2016, unpublished. 17. Guangdong Museum of Art, Farewell to Post-Colonialism: The Third Guangzhou Triennial Reader 1, 203. 18. Xiaorui Zhu-Nowell, Capitalist Realism, 2017, unpublished. 19. Ibid.

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