Arts Clusters in Beijing: Socialist Heritage and Neoliberalism

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By

Li Shao, M.A.

Graduate Program in Arts Administration, Education, and Policy

The Ohio State University

2015

Dissertation Committee:

Margaret J. Wyszomirski, Advisor

Nancy Ettlinger

Wayne P. Lawson

Candace Stout

! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Copyright by

Li Shao

2015

! ! ! ! ! ! Abstract

This dissertation provides a Foucauldian genealogy and governmentality study on the arts clusters in Beijing, the first of which was established in 1990. By investigating how the emergence and disappearance of different types of arts clusters are produced by specific social conditions, I examine the changing power relation between artists and the political authority since the late 1970s and interpret how contemporary Chinese art has been governed. The genealogy of arts clusters takes into account not only arts-related topics but events and phenomena in economics, population migration, land regulation, international relations, etc. Therefore, the analysis also offers a window to Chinese society and its histories more generally. In addition, I conduct a case study on the 798 art factory – the most famous arts cluster in China and the one subjected to the most intense government intervention. An examination of the governance inside 798 provides an account for how contemporary art is governed at a specific site.

Subscribing to the ascending research method advocated by Foucault, I ground my analysis on abundant empirical data gathered from interviews, observations, and document studies. In addition to data that accounts for people’s daily practices and lived experiences, I collect social discourses on various topics and issues from law, policies, regulations, development plans, entries in yearbooks, government briefs and Party leaders’ speeches. Based on these discourses and actual practices, I identify two dominant governing rationalities – Reason of Party and neoliberalism – and examine their ii interplay. Specifically, I interpret how neoliberalism as an exception to socialism has been promoted by the political authority to reinforce its rule and gradually extend into different social domains. I argue that artists are in a sense “pushed” to adopt the neoliberal mentality and prioritize economic calculations. I also interrogate socialist legacy within neoliberalism in my case study of 798. I articulate the different modes of governance employed by the two administrators in the cluster, the local government and the factory owner – the “socialist land master,” and evaluate the effect of governance.

The findings of this research determines that after 798’s official designation, there has barely been space for artists’ counter-normative activities and possibilities.

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To my parents, my auntie and uncle, and Renjie,

for your unconditional love and support.

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Acknowledgments

I feel blessed to have an amazing dissertation committee that has guided my research over the past two years, helped me to grow intellectually, and supported me along the whole journey. I would like to express my gratitude to my advisor, Margaret

Wyszomirski, who always enlightened me with very insightful suggestions, no matter what project I was doing. Her encouragement and comfort reassured me in my most difficult days when I had just entered the program. I am also very grateful to Nancy

Ettlinger, who introduced me to Foucauldian theories and thus opened a new door for my intellectual pursuits. To Wayne Lawson and Candace Stout, thank you for the wonderful conversations, your patience and support.

Thank you to all of my research participants. Although I have coded your names in my dissertation, this project would definitely have been impossible without your priceless contribution. Thank you for spending time with me and entrusting me with your memories, feelings, opinions, endeavors, and struggles, which I could not value more highly.

To my friends in Columbus and Denver, I want to share my happiness upon finishing my doctoral program with you. You have created many miracles in my life, whether you realize it or not. I cherish our times together, your selfless help, your insights, your comfort and your hugs. It is my fortune to be your friend.

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To my parents and my auntie and uncle, thank you for making me into the person

I am today and preparing me for my intellectual pursuit. I am lucky to have been born into this family.

Renjie, thank you for being an endearing husband, as well as a good “research assistant” and cook over the past month. Also, thank you for wandering in a remote village and for waiting for me until 2am at the coffee shop while I was engaged in prolonged conversations with my research participants. I shall return the favor in your research.

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Vita

2006...... B.A. in History, Nanjing Normal University

2010...... M.A. in Art History, University of Denver

2010 to present ...... Department of Arts Administration,

Education and Policy, The Ohio State

University

Fields of Study

Major Field: Arts Administration, Education, and Policy

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Table of Contents

Abstract...... ii

Dedication...... iv

Acknowledgements...... v

Vita...... vii

List of Diagrams...... xiv

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION...... 1

Research Background...... 1

Statement of Problem...... 4

Rationale of Study...... 6

Theoretical Underpinnings…...... 6

Identifying "Events" and Explanation of Key Terms...... 8

Study Plan...... 10

Scope and Structure of this Study...... 10

Research Questions and Sub-questions...... 13

Significance of the Study...... 14

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CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS: GOVERNMENTALITY,

NEOLIBERAL MENTALITY, AND GENEAOLOGY...... 17

Governmentality...... 17

Understanding Governmentality through Foucault's Ontology of Power...... 17

Analytical Dimensions of Governmentality...... 19

The Applicability of Governmentality to "Non-liberal" States and the Neoliberal

Rationality in China...... 24

Genealogy...... 31

Understanding Foucauldian Genealogy...... 31

Operationalizing a Genealogical Project...... 34

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS...... 40

Situating the Study in Research Paradigms...... 40

Four Research Paradigms of Qualitative Inquiry ...... 40

Poststructuralist Research Drawing on the Interpretivist Paradigm...... 41

Research Design...... 44

Research Settings...... 44

Research Development...... 46

Case Study...... 47

Research Methods...... 49

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Data Collection Methods...... 49

Data Analysis Methods...... 54

Validity...... 58

Credibility...... 59

Voice...... 60

Poststructuralist Validity...... 60

CHAPTER 4: SITUATING ARTS CLUSTERS IN HISTORICAL CONTEXTS &

PREVIOUS STUDIES...... 61

Artists-State Relationship in Art History, 1978-2000...... 62

1978 -1989: The Rise of Unofficial Art...... 62

1990 - 2000: Unofficial as Oppositional and Commercial, and Un-unofficial Art....73

State and Culture in Cultural and Creative Industries, 2001-2015...... 79

From Un-official to Industrial...... 79

Cultural and Creative Industries in China...... 80

Cultural Clusters and CCI Studies...... 83

798 Art Factory in Previous Studies...... 84

Limitations of Previous Studies...... 85

Arts Clusters within their Immediate Contexts...... 86

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Forgotten Arts Clusters...... 87

798 without Empirical Data...... 89

CHAPTER 5: A GENEALOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE ARTS CLUSTERS IN

BEIJING SOCIALIST HERITAGE WITH NEOLIBERAL EXCEPTIONS...... 92

Introduction...... 92

Outline of Genealogical Analysis...... 92

Interplay of the Reason of the Party and the Neoliberal Rationality: Expanding

Neoliberal Exceptions...... 94

The Emergence of the First Artist Village in 1990...... 98

The Singularity of Yuanmingyuan: a Community of Self-identified Blind

Drifters...... 98

Historical Conditions that Produced the Early Artist Villages...... 110

Resistance and Individual Entrepreneurship...... 122

The Disappearance of Early Artist Villages in the Mid-late 1990s ...... 124

The Eviction of Artists from Artist Villages...... 124

Reasons for a Delayed Eviction: A Changing Power Relation under a New

Governing Rationality...... 127

The Lack of Re-emergence of Artist Villages in the Inner Suburbs of Beijing...... 140

The Emergence of New Arts Clusters in the 2000s...... 149

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From an Art Factory to a CCI Cluster: The Emergence, Preservation, and Official

Acceptance of 798...... 149

A New Configuration of Power Relation and the Expansion of Neoliberal

Exceptions...... 153

Art Districts Springing Up...... 162

Disappearing Artist Communities and Grassroots Art Districts, 2009-present

(2015)...... 166

Violent Demolition and Artists' Protest...... 168

Beyond and Within Neoliberal Calculations...... 173

CHAPTER 6: GOVERNANCE IN 798 — SOCIALIST HERITAGE IN THE

NEOLIBERAL EXCEPTION...... 185

Introduction...... 185

Socialist Heritage in the Cultural and Creative Industries Cluster...... 185

Governance and Effects...... 187

Governance in 798 after Designation, 2006-2009...... 190

Administrative Bodies in 798...... 190

Governance of the Government: Structural Regulation through Delegation...... 194

Governance of Seven Star: Infrastructure Renovation Endorsed by the

Government...... 206

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The Crush of Artists' Self-governance and Individual Resistance with Counter-

normative Possibilities ...... 210

Governance in 798, 2010-present (2015)...... 221

New Administrative Structure and New Governing Mechanisms...... 221

Seven Star's Governance and the Government's Dilemma...... 231

An Individual's Resistance...... 236

Conclusion...... 242

References...... 248

Appendix A: Lists of Arts Clusters...... 263

Appendix B: Distribution of Selected Arts Clusters in Beijing...... 265

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List of Diagrams

Diagram 1. Administrative structure of 798, 2006-2009 ...... 193!

Diagram 2. Administrative structure of 798, 2010/2012–present (2015) ...... 223!

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY

Research Background

As a student of Chinese art history and of cultural policy, I have been immersed in topics of Chinese art for years. The two fields – one traditionally considered part of the humanities and the other one of the social sciences – do not have much overlap, but they both discuss “arts clusters” when it comes to contemporary Chinese art. The term “arts clusters” is used interchangeably with “artist village,” “art factory,” “art zone,” “art district,” and in some cases, “Cultural and Creative Industries clusters.” Although there are nuances in the meanings of these terms, the general meaning is a geographic area where arts practitioners aggregate. In this study, I use “arts cluster” as the generic term for aggregations of contemporary artists and art activities. Since contemporary Chinese art was once made forced underground and only became “above-ground” by the end of the 1990s, the development of arts clusters is full of twists and turns, or even conflicts, as could be seen from the following episodes.

Episode one: Yuanmingyuan artist village – the oldest arts cluster in China – started to take form in early 1990, a couple of months after the Tiananmen crackdown in

June 1989. Many artists and new graduates from art schools gathered at the Fuyuanmen

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village beside the relics of Yuanmingyuan Garden in the Haidian District of Beijing.1 This spontaneous congregation of artists to one geographic location was unprecedented in the

People’s Republic of China, and it attracted over 200 artists from different parts of the country. Despite that many Yuanmingyuan artists had attained international recognition before long, in China they were called “blind drifters” and were under frequent police assault. Finally, in 1995, they were expelled from the village, and the Yuanmingyuan artist village ceased to exist.

Episode two: Starting in 2000, many artists began to rent spaces in the obsolete factory 798 in the Chaoyang District of Beijing. The community grew very quickly, and

798, as an “art factory,” became an unofficial landmark of Beijing. However, the cluster was doomed to be demolished, as the landlord, a state-owned enterprise, had long had plans to redevelop the factory compound into an electronic park. Artists appealed to the

Beijing Municipal government to save the art factory in the name of developing Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI), and as a result, 798 was not only preserved but was designated first as a district-level CCI base and then a municipal-level base. Yet, 798 did not remain an autonomous cluster. A“Leading Group” was formed under the district’s

Propaganda Department to guide the development of the cluster, as well as to maintain its cultural security.

1 The “district” as in “the Haidian District” refers to an administrative division in urban areas of China. It is different from an “art district,” which can be located within an administrative district.

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Episode three: The market for contemporary Chinese art started to grow rapidly in the mid-2000s. During this time, many arts clusters sprang up in the Chaoyang District, centering around the well-known 798. However, most of these clusters were considered as “unauthorized constructions,” thus the government required their demolition. In some clusters, artists tried to guard their communities, but their attempts failed. The notion of cultural industries did not change the fate of these clusters, despite the fact that it was embraced by the local government. At the beginning of 2010, around ten clusters were razed, and over 1000 artists lost their workshops and residences. The threat of demolition has since haunted arts clusters that are not officially designated, and there have constantly been rumors saying that a certain district would be torn down in near future.

Episode four: Fifteen years after the Yuanmingyuan artists were dispelled, this oldest artist village was recognized for the first time by the government. An official exhibition about the Yuanmianyuan artist village was sponsored by the Haidian District

Government in June 2009; all the dispelled artists were invited to show their works and attend the opening ceremony. Several months later, the Department of Contemporary Art was established in the Chinese National Academy of Arts, the only arts research institution on the national level. Twenty-one highly regarded contemporary artists – some of which were referred as “blind drifters” in the 1990s – were employed as “artist academicians.”

These four episodes capture some important moments in the 25-year history of arts clusters, as well as contemporary Chinese art (1990 – 2015), yet they alone do not

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account for the whole story, and there exist many “conflicts” that seem hard to explain.

For instance, why have the arts clusters been treated so differently over time, and why did clusters in the same time period and the same municipality have different destinies? What made the government change from regarding artists as blind drifters to awarding them as artist academicians? And especially, when the government had already begun to recognize the value the contemporary art and arts clusters, why did it order so many arts clusters that were important bases of contemporary art to be torn down? More pieces from the overall history of China are needed in order to answer these questions.

Statement of Problem

Studies performed in the fields of art history and cultural industries policy have partly explained what happened to the arts clusters. The Yuanmingyuan artist village is an inevitable topic for students of contemporary Chinese art history, as significant contemporary genres emerged from this village. Scholars considered that arts practitioners who were disillusioned by the Tiananmen crackdown exiled themselves to a small village, eschewing constant political and commercial propaganda in the city and practicing art that was rejected by the political authority (Muynck, 2007; Zha, 1996). This non-cooperative, “underground” nature of the Yuanmingyuan artist village determined that it would not last long back in the early 1990s, when the government’s control over culture was still strong. Another significant arts cluster, the 798 art factory, has attracted attention from both art historians and cultural industries. While artists and art critics usually regret that 798 underwent commercialization and gentrification after its

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designation and that bad management made the cluster increasingly unsuitable for artists to work, scholars have also evaluated 798 from perspectives of cultural industries: they analyzed governmental support of CCI and the non-artistic values of the cluster, including economic benefits, urban renewal functions, and city branding effects. Unlike

Yuangmingyuan, 798, and a few others that are equally well-known, the many arts clusters that have been demolished or are waiting to be demolished are rarely studied.

To generalize, arts clusters are usually examined in terms of contemporary

Chinese art or cultural industries. The former camp focuses on earlier arts clusters and examines the significance that they had on the development of Chinese art and art markets; specific political-socio-economic contexts are also discussed, but often as background knowledge to better understand the appearance of early arts clusters. The latter camp usually deals with arts clusters formed since the 2000s, which are examined indiscriminately with other cultural industries clusters, such folk art or fashion design, and their values and limitations are usually measured according to the goals of cultural industries. It is also common to compare earlier clusters, like Yuanmingyuan, with later clusters, like 798: the earlier clusters are regarded as “prototypes” and later ones as new manifestations on the same evolutionary trajectory; or, alternatively, the earlier ones appeared at a time when contemporary Chinese art was forced underground, but later on, as contemporary art gained legitimacy in mainland China, later clusters received official designation and the government’s financial support.

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Despite their contributions, one limitation shared by these studies is that arts clusters are too often examined within their immediate contexts. Therefore, earlier social- political contexts are ignored in studies of more recent clusters, or clusters are investigated as independent subjects isolated from other things happening in society. As a result, there is a lack of coherent and systematic accounts of the seemingly scattered episodes described in the previous section. In addition, depending on which episodes – even for the contemporaneous ones – one is focusing on, one may come up with different explanations of the political authority’s attitude toward contemporary artists and contemporary art. Because of this, a more comprehensive interpretation of the intricate relationship between the political authority and artists is needed.

Rationale of the Study

Theoretical Underpinnings

The problem can be effectively addressed by the French philosopher Michel

Foucault’s concepts of governmentality and genealogy. To better expound on the reasons,

I would like first to provide a brief explanation of the two terms.

The neology “governmentality” consists of two parts: govern and mentality.

“Govern” means to exercise power to guide people’s behaviors – to promote some and discourage others –rather than using suppressive power to force people to do something

(Dean, 1999; Lemke, 2002; T. Li, 2007). Its noun form, government, as per Foucault, thus does “not refer only to political structures or to the management of states; rather, it designate(s) the way in which the conducts of individuals or groups might be

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directed” (Foucault, 2000, p. 341). A “mentality” means a governmental thought, or a rationality of government, which justifies and enables government or governing practices.

Mentalities are neither “invented” or “owned” by anybody. Growing out of social realities, mentalities are collectively held by people and sustained by people’s practices.

Governmentality, therefore, means to guide people’s choices through mentalities which are collectively held. The notions of “govern” and “mentality” help to better articulate the many layers of the relationship between the political authority and artists, which cannot simply be generalized with “disapproval/suppression” or “recognition/support.” Rather, seemingly contradictory attitudes and their corresponding measures may co-exist at the same time, and they derive from different mentalities, or from different aspects or particular objectives of a mentality.

! Genealogy is a methodology built on the concept of governmentality. Different from a conventional historical analysis that attempts to trace out the evolution of the research subject to find “origin” and “results,” a genealogical analysis excavates the

“emergence” and “descent” of things that are produced in particular social realities by particular power relations, which, in turn, are decided by changing mentalities and specific calculations. Genealogy also accounts for the production of new mentalities by new practices (Foucault, 1998). Therefore, a genealogy of arts clusters treats the emergence and disappearance of different clusters as many different “events.” It looks into the social conditions – constituted by various practices – out of which the events are produced, thereby investigating power relations and changing mentalities. This said,

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genealogy approaches from the exteriority of events and deals with things that seem irrelevant to the “history of arts clusters.”

Informed by governmentality and genealogy, in this dissertation I will investigate how different clusters are constituted– especially their emergence and disappearance.

Through this I seek to understand changing power relations and changing mentalities, as well as what social conditions make these changes take place.

Identifying “Events” and Explanation of Key Terms

It is both impossible and unnecessary to deal with the emergence, development, and disappearance of every single arts clusters in Beijing, as there have been over 30 of them. Therefore, I classify arts clusters into three different types: artist communities, art districts, and Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI) clusters, and regard the emergence and disappearance of a type as “events” in the genealogical analysis.

Artist Communities refer to spontaneously formed arts clusters. An artist community is not planned. It starts as several artists gather at a place to practice art, and it grows as more artists are attracted to the same area. The word “community” is used to better distinguish this type of cluster with art districts and CCI clusters, not to suggest that the latter two are not communities. In Beijing, the earliest artist communities appeared in 1990 and later ones were formed in the early 2000s. Artist Communities include the Yuangmingyuan artist village, the 798 art factory (before designation), and a few others. This dissertation uses the conventional terms for Yuangmingyuan as an artist village and 798 as art factory.

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Art districts refer to clusters planned and initiated by artist entrepreneurs and/or real estate developers. Usually, an artist entrepreneur or developer finds a place to build a cluster of studios and then rents space to artists. This type of cluster is called an “art district” because most of them are so named by their initiators, such as the 008 art district and Zhengyang art district, to name a few. They began appearing in the early 2000s, and the number reached its peak in 2009, before many were demolished in 2010. As is articulated in Chapter 5, art districts are further classified into two sub-types: government approved art districts and grassroots art districts.

CCI clusters refer to clusters that are officially designated, by either the district- level government or municipal-level government. There are different kinds of CCI clusters, such as antique clusters and theme parks, etc.; this dissertation examines only those with a contemporary art focus. Contemporary art CCI clusters in Beijing are designated from artist communities – as in the case of 798 and Songzhuang – and art districts – such as Yihaodi and Brewery.

Finally, the generic term, “arts clusters,” is particularly phrased this way because

“arts” means art-related activities and “clusters” is chosen to differentiate with

“communities” and “districts.” In this way, the word choices are meant to avoid possible confusions; the fundamental differences between the three types of clusters are that one is spontaneously formed, one is planned, and the third is officially designated.

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Study Plan

Scope and Structure of this Study

Nowadays, arts clusters can be readily found in metropolitan areas and the capital cities of most provinces: Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, etc.

Following this trend, many smaller cities have also been building their own. This dissertation focuses on the clusters specializing in contemporary art and located in

Beijing. This combination of specialization and location was not randomly determined.

China’s first arts cluster, the Yuanmingyuan artist village, was established in 1990 in

Beijing. This cluster focused on contemporary art, and so did other arts clusters in the

1990s. More importantly, the original arts clusters were the first and only public sites for contemporary Chinese art, which had yet to gain access to other art venues, such as art academies, public museums, arts publications, etc. Beijing, the political and cultural center of China, held not only the first arts cluster, but the most arts clusters in China. For these reasons, I consider that Beijing is an informative locale to study art clusters themselves and the government/governance of contemporary artists and contemporary art.

Chapter 2 examines the theoretical frameworks used in this study: governmentality and genealogy. After interpreting the meanings of the theories and related concepts, I specify how to operationalize them with examples of arts clusters that will appear later in this dissertation.

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Chapter 3 deals with research methods. I start it by situating this study into four qualitative research paradigms. Then, I explain my research design, based on which I have determined specific methods of data collection and data analysis. At the end, I discuss the validity issue of this study.

Chapter 4 examines arts clusters in their historical contexts as well as the analyses of previous studies. I review two bodies of literature in which discussions of arts clusters usually appear: art history – particularly research on historical periods between the 1970s and early 2000s – and cultural policy/cultural industries, which focuses on events post-2000. I pay special attention to the treatment of the artists-state relationship in existing studies, and I identify their limitations in contributing to an understanding of arts clusters – limitations that become apparent through Foucauldian genealogy and ascending analysis.

Chapter 5 provides a genealogical analysis of the arts clusters in Beijing, in which

I examine the interplay of two dominant governing rationalities – the Reason of the Party and the neoliberal rationality – as well as how artists have been guided or pushed to adopt the latter mentality. I organize the analysis around four anchor events:

• the emergence of the first artist village in 1990;

• the disappearance of early artist villages in the mid-late 1990s;

• the emergence of new arts clusters in the 2000s;

• disappearing artist communities and grassroots art districts, 2009-present

(2015).

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I investigate the changing relationships between contemporary artists and the political authority based on various societal practices, which are informed by existing mentalities and calculations, constitute particular social conditions out of which the four events were produced, and produce new calculations. These practices refer to both discursive and non-discursive ones. They are from different actors in society – including but not limited to the state and artists – and they are usually discussed in different fields of studies – such as art history, Chinese history, economics, geography, international relations, as well as cultural industries studies. Therefore, in addition to generating a perspectival knowledge on arts clusters and the Party-arty relationship, the genealogical analysis also offers a window into Chinese society and its histories more generally.

Chapter 6 is devoted to the 798 CCI cluster, or the 798 art factory after designation. With the aim to understand the working of Reason of the Party within a neoliberal CCI cluster, I explore governance inside the cluster by two administrators – the local government and the “socialist land master,” Seven Star – as well as the effects of governance – the lack of space for artists’ counter-normative activities and possibilities.

While spontaneous artist communities and grassroots art districts are disappearing, as implied in the four event identified above, CCI clusters are secure. Therefore, it is crucial to explore the government’s arrangements for the CCI clusters that are allowed to exist.

Among the few contemporary art CCI clusters, 798 is subjected to the most intense intervention; thus studying the governing practices in 798 will shed more light on how a

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preserved cluster has been governed as well as how contemporary Chinese art is governed at a specific site.

Research Questions and Sub-questions

The research questions derive from the theories of governmentality and genealogy and are adjusted to better fit my research plan. Question 1 asks a genealogical question, which is to be addressed in Chapter 5; questions 2 and 3 focus on different aspects of a governmentality study, and they are to be answered in Chapter 6.

Question set 1: How are different types of arts clusters in Beijing produced by specific social conditions?

• How are the arts clusters, or their inhabitants, constituted in public discourses?

• What do the discourses and actual practices reveal about the relationship

between artists and the political authority over different time periods?

• What are the governing rationalities, as well as the particular calculations?

• How did the power relation change over time, and why?

Question set 2: How has 798 been governed since its designation?

• What are the governing practices – as the materialization of governing

mentalities – of the two “governors” in the clusters: the local government and

the landlord?

• What techniques do they use to achieve their goals?

• What is the relationship between the two governors, and how does their

governance interplay?

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Question set 3: What are the effects of governance in 798?

• What are artists’ reactions to the governance?

Have there been any counter-normative activities by artists, either as a group or as an individual? If there has been a lack of such activities, why so?

Significance of the Study

This study presents a genealogical analysis of the arts clusters in Beijing and a governmentality analysis of governing practices at a specific site. The former facilitates understanding of the changing power relations between the political authority and the artists practicing contemporary art, and it articulates how artists are gradually “pushed” to adopt the neoliberal mentality. The latter sheds light on how 798 has been governed by the local government and the landlord since its designation as well as the effects of governance; this examination in turn account for provides an account for how contemporary art is governed at a specific site. The theoretical underpinnings behind this study can contribute to areas ignored by many other related studies that fall into art history or cultural policy.

The troubled relationship between the political authorities and artists has been narrated in many art history studies, on which I build my interpretation of their power relations. A narrative tends to focus on connections between phenomenas that are more- or-less directly related, but it pays less attention to seemingly unrelated things, such as those that happened in another time period or in another social domain. For this reason, a narrative can only account for events that did took place, but is unable to explain those

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that did not, which, according to Foucault, should not be taken for granted. This gap can be filled by a genealogical analysis. For example, in the discussion of “the disappearance of early artist villages” which is a topic of many art history writings, I am required by the

Foucauldian genealogy analysis to not stop with a direct answer – such as an eviction and the reasons for the eviction – but to continue to interpret what “should” happen but did not happen: why were the underground artist villages not evicted by government earlier?

Why did new artist villages not re-appear later? Fully addressing the two questions calls for paying attention to information irrelevant to arts clusters or even to the arts, which can be, for example, the market-oriented reforms of state-owned work units, and the government’s promotion of consumerism. Such additional information can be utilized to interpret and illustrate the government’s indirect control over artists or their guidance of the latter’s choices. These accounts add many additional layers to the government-artists relationship than what can be generalized from a government order, a new policy, etc.

798 has been a popular topic among scholars of cultural policy and administration, who explore policy impacts on 798 and evaluate 798 according to policy goals. However, many informative details are not contained in policies. For example, large sums of money were granted to 798 to support its development, but the policy itself did not explain how the money was actually used. Administration studies usually investigate objects and results of administration, but they tend to neglect unstated goals – which can only be learned from many other “irrelevant” practices – and many indirect, long-term effects, effects other than, for example, commercialization and gentrification.

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A governmentality analysis of 798 requires me to start from actual practices and to collect empirical data – lived experiences of artists, both artists who are “sensitive” or

“troublesome” and those who are not. The abundant empirical data allowed me to provide a critical analysis of cultural policies and administration activities, including the interplay and mutual influence of the governance from different administrative bodies, which are often ignored in studies of 798. It also addresses effects of governance, including the absence of something, such as the lack of space for counter-normative activities.

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CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS ––

GOVERNMENTALITY, NEOLIBERAL MENTALITY, AND GENEALOGY

In this chapter, I discuss the two theoretical frameworks used in this study – governmentality and genealogy – both of which were developed by French philosopher

Michel Foucault. The two theories are logically related: a governmentality study examines mentalities and ways of government, and a genealogy reveals how governing mentalities change over time and why the changes take place. I explore the connotations of the two theories and exemplify how they can be used to address my general question about how artists are governed at a specific site and over time. In addition, I discuss a particular mentality – neoliberalism – in the governmentality section, as well as its emergence in China. This neoliberal mentality is further articulated in Chapter 5 through a genealogical analysis of the arts clusters in Beijing.

Governmentality

Understanding Governmentality through Foucault’s Ontology of Power

Governmentality is a theory that Foucault started to develop in the late 1970s.

This neology consists of two parts: “govern” and “mentality.” M. Dean (1999, p. 24) generalized that the neology dealt with “how we think of governing, with different

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rationalities.” N. Ettlinger (2011, p. 538) suggested that it referred to “the governance of a mentality.” The two scholars place emphases on different aspects of governmentality, with Dean more focused on the “thinking” aspect and Ettlinger more on the “governing” aspect. In combining the two interpretations, we find that governmentality means the governance of mentalities, which informs how we think about governing things.

Ontology of power. To “govern” is to exercise power. Thus, the meaning of governmentality is inseparable from Foucault’s ontology of power. Instead of subscribing to a purely negative conception of power – that power is a negative, repressive and juridical force – Foucault emphasized the positive, productive, technical, and relational characteristics of power. As Foucault put it, “[power] doesn’t only weigh on us as a force that says no, but that it traverses and produces things” (Foucault, 1980a, p. 119). For this reason, Foucault did not speak of power in terms of laws and institutions that “possessed” power and exercised it “over” people, but he understood power in relations. This relational character denoted that power was a mode of actions that acted on people’s actions. In other words, power is exercised on free subjects, who can decide how to act and who are faced with “a field of possibilities in which several kinds of conduct, several ways of reacting and modes of behavior are available” (Foucault, 2000a, p. 342). In addition, any person or institution can exercise power that “traverses,” including, but not limited to, the legitimate government of a country.

Govern and government. To govern, therefore, is to “structure the possible field of action of others,” meaning that others will behave according to the will of the

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governor. The noun form of “govern” is “government,” or “governance” as it is called in this dissertation to distinguish the noun from the political structure that people refer to as

“government.” Foucault explained “government” as “designat(ing) the way in which the conduct of individuals or of groups might be directed.... It covers... modes of action, more or less considered and calculated, that were destined to act upon the possibilities of actions of other people” (Foucault, 2000a, p. 341).

Mentality. “Mentality,” the second part of the neology, means a governmental thought or a rationality of governance. Mentalities, as ways of thinking, decide ways of doing things or ways of governing. It is according to mentalities that possible fields of actions are structured. Unlike an ideology that is derived from a theory and that stands “in a secondary position relative to something which functions as its infrastructure,” mentalities are closely linked to practices (Foucault, 1980a, p. 118). Mentalities are not only always produced by practices but sustained by practices. For mentalities to work or to constitute guided practices, they are made thinkable and performable through discourse and are made commonly held by both the governor and the governed. Together, governmentality is called the “art of government” (Foucault, 2000b), as it governs not so much through coercion, but by spreading and reinforcing mentalities among people in order to guide their possible activities.

The Analytical Dimensions of Governmentality

In its broadest sense, the governmentality theory through which we understand the issue of governance, deals with two things: how people think (mentality) and how

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people do (govern). Many scholars have developed more specific analytical dimensions of the governmentality theory, among whom are N. Rose and P. Miller (1992), Dean

(1999), and Ettlinger (2011). Referring primarily to Ettlinger’s framework and adapting it for the purpose of my research, I mainly focus on three dimensions:

• mentalities;

• practices: both discursive and non-discursive ones, hereafter called

discourses and practices;

• and (possible) resistance, which – though being a kind of practice or a kind

of reaction to government – is an outlier from the structured field of actions.

Resistance brings possibilities of change and is thus worth special attention.

Specifically, I seek to address two “how” questions within the governmentality structure: how artists are governed over time and at a specific site, and how they react, which, in a sense, reveals the effects of governance. According to the theory, I need to investigate not only (guided) practices but governing rationalities informing such practices, as well as

(non-guided) practices rejecting the rationalities at work.

Approaches to mentalities. The previous section has discusses what a mentality is. This section looks at how to identify mentalities that are intangible. Foucault advocated for an ascending analysis of power/governance. This entails starting an analysis not from institutions, theories, or ideologies “on the top” – where people usually think power “resides” – but always from practices. “[Practices are] places where what is said and what is done, rule imposed and reasons given, the planned and the taken-for-

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granted meet and interconnect” (1980b, 2000c, p. 225). This is because not all practices are prescribed in theories or guided by policies, but practices may “possess their own specific regularities, logic, strategy, self-evidence, and ‘reason’” (Foucault, 2000c, p.

225). If one adopts a top-down method, one would be guided by theories or policies, thereby ignoring many mundane practices that may point to other mentalities. Therefore, one needs to look into mundane practices – material ones and discursive ones – to understand mentalities.

Practices: Discourses and Non-discursive Practices.

Discourses. In taking a closer look at discursive practices – discourses – we find that they are produced by power. In them mentalities are embedded and through them mentalities are communicated. As N. Rose and P. Miller (1992, p. 175) put it: mentalities were “discursive fields within which the exercise of power is conceptualized.” Yet, this is not to say that discourses need to be “deciphered.” Rather, Foucault emphasized that discourses are transparent and that to examine discourses is not to attach meanings to them. Yet, if discourses are read in a certain way, they speak clearly (Foucault, 1980a).

Specific ways of reading or analyzing discourses are discussed in the next chapter. Here, I suggest that to better understand the mentalities contained in discourses, discourses, which are performable, need to be scrutinized together with the material practices that they enable.

Non-discursive Practices. On the other hand, non-discursive practices are mentalities materialized by technologies of governance. These are “the complex of

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mundane programs, calculations, techniques apparatuses, documents, and procedures through which authorities seek to embody and give effect to governmental ambitions” (Dean, 1999, p. 31). It is through technologies of government that mentalities are deployed and realized in practices, and this is why practices sustain the mentalities.

However, as Foucault suggested, practices have their own logic up to a point. Therefore, new practices may emerge creating new conditions, which inform new mentalities or new ways of thinking about governing.

Resistance. According to Foucault’s notion of power, power is exercised on free subjects and does not renunciate freedom. Thus, “there is no power without potential refusal or revolt” (Foucault, 2000a; Foucault, 2000d, p. 324). In terms of governance, the exercise of power may be effective in communicating mentalities and guiding people’s conduct. However, the governed are not negative recipients of mentalities who always behave within the structured field of action and whose behaviors only function to reproduce the mentalities. In other words, there is no certainty that the governed would always turn themselves into subjects and there is always the possibility that they will resist.

A Foucauldian power relation is different from a Marxist class relation in which the ruling class oppresses and forcibly imposes its ideology on the working class. A

Foucauldian resistance is formed at places where relations of power are exercised, and it need not be a political program of the oppressed that has an effect on the oppressive system (Foucault, 1980b, Saukko, 2003). This said, Foucauldian resistances may be as

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small as saying “no,” and they do not exclude resistances that may be judged as

“primitive” or “lumpen” according to the Marxist notion (Gordon, 1980, p. 257). As scholars have pointed out, resistance opposes “the corollary of power” (Gordon, 1980;

Gunn, 2006; McKee, 2009).

Exemplification of using governmentality as an analytical framework. In this dissertation, I examine how artists, as well as their activities, are governed in the 798 art factory. I also seek to shed light on how artists have been governed in general. Instead of approaching this issue by analyzing some of the grand plans that the government designed for CCI clusters or specific policies of 798 – which in this case are not publicly accessible anyhow – I started my investigation by looking at actual practices in the cluster. These practices included, for example, difficulties that artists encountered in the cluster, their ways of handling the difficulties, specific requirements of the administrators, changes taking place in the cluster, etc. At the same time, I analyzed relevant discourses, both general guidelines or slogans as well as specific instructions found in government briefs. I associated these with non-discursive practices to expand my understanding of them both. For example, I identified those issues that were constructed as problems in discourses and what solutions were contrived to tackle those problems. I paid attention to artists’ opinions of these problems and solutions. When some artists were in fact part of the problem, I noted their experiences with administrators as well as with their fellow artists. In considering all the collected practices and discourses together rather than

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focusing on any single fragment, the logic behind the practices or ways of reasoning became clearer.

In a similar manner, I gathered information on other arts clusters – those in different time periods and of different kinds – as well as artists’ experiences before the formation of the first cluster. Based on these various practices and discourses, I learned the changing mentalities and calculations on artists – and of the artists – on contemporary

Chinese art and on arts clusters as important venues of contemporary Chinese art. Once the mentalities were identified, they in turn facilitated the identification of practices that functioned to sustain the mentalities or that sought to reject the mentalities.

The Applicability of Governmentality to “Non-liberal” States and the Neoliberal

Rationality in China

Foucault is usually criticized for his Eurocentricity because his theories, including governmentality, were developed from a western perspective. Specifically governmentality has been most frequently used to analyze governance issues in liberal- democratic societies. Indeed, when taken into consideration that governmentality requires indirect control and exercising power over “free subjects” that can decide on their own actions, it raises this question: is governmentality suitable to study issues in China? Many scholars have answered, “Yes.” Some have experimented with governmentality in non- liberal contexts like post-colonial and post-communist states (e.g. Fimyer, 2008; Tikly,

2003). Others have appled this theory in examining various phenomena in China, with topics ranging from community building (Bray, 2006) to sex buyers (Jeffreys, 2006),

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from “quality” education (Woronov, 2009) to career choices (Hoffman, 2006), and from the “Special Economic Zones” (Ong, 2006) to the reconstructing of media and the communication industry (H. Yu, 2011; Y. Zhao, 2008). In addition to these various topics, Gray Sigley (2006) elaborated and advocated for the deployment of governmentality in the Chinese party-state. The following paragraphs expound on why governmentality is applicable in a non-liberal state, and particularly, in China. I approach this issue from two perspectives: first, the implications of governmentality and its relation with other forms of power (i.e., sovereign and discipline) that are more or less coercive and repressive; second, the current mentalities at work in China. In regard to this second perspective, I argue that the applicability of the governmentality theory is not concerned with the type of political system as much as it is with the kind of functioning mentalities in a social context.

Co-existence of productive and suppressive modes of power. Dean (1999) suggested that in Foucault’s work, governmentality had two meanings: the art of government in its most general sense, and the historically specific version. The historic version is the mode of government that emerged in the western European societies in the early modern period and that featured the birth of bio-power – a mode of power targeting the population and seeking to foster lives. It is, therefore, somewhat natural for one to use governmentality in liberal-democratic polities only if one understands governmentality in its narrower sense.

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Yet, Dean argued that “authoritarian governmentality” can also be located on the

“trajectory of governmentalization of the state” (1999, p. 131). This is because, on the one hand, illiberal and non-liberal forms of rule – the “right to take life” or direct coercions – are constantly practiced in liberal-democratic governments against those deemed as incapable to govern themselves or to live up to the standards of “free subjects,” such as infants and criminals. These people are ruled in a coercive manner for the security of others and the state (Dean, 1999; Hindness, 2001). Here, authoritarian governmentality may be understood as Ong’s (2006) “exceptions to neoliberalism,” though this term can mean different things in different contexts. Likewise, Ettlinger

(forthcoming) argued that in modern societies, the normalization of sovereign rule relies exactly on governmentality, which can justify the exercise of coercive power through a certain mentality. For example, the rationality of “a state of exception” normalizes the surveillance and discipline of all actors (Agamben, as cited in Ettlinger, 2013, p. 6).

On the other hand, bio-politics – power that makes live and lets die – also exists under modern non-liberal rules, as in the case of the eugenics in which Nazism engaged.

Through this interpretation, Dean deconstructed the binary of liberal and non-liberal societies, making the two not absolute opposites, but rather, different compounds with particular articulations of bio-politics and sovereign power (Dean, 1999, p. 147).

Mentalities at work in China. Based on the studies of the above scholars, the applicability issue of governmentality is better understood by focusing on different mentalities at work in a social context, rather than on the type of political systems that are

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usually discussed in, for example, political science. As further articulated in the literature review in Chapter 4 and the genealogical analysis in Chapter 5, I identify the two major rationalities functioning in China based on practices and discourses in historical periods and currently to be the Reason of the Party – similar to the Reason of the State – and the neoliberal rationality.

While the Reason of the Party has been explicitly announced in various political slogans and is implied in the preface to the current Constitution of the P. R.C., there have been debates on the “neoliberalism” in and of China. For example, D. Harvey (2007) in his book section “Neoliberalism with Chinese characters” suggested that the Chinese government had adopted neoliberal solutions or policies to solve domestic problems: to amass wealth, to manage internal dissent, to defend itself in front of international players, etc. D. Nononi (2008), on the other hand, provided a “no” answer in his article “Is China

Becoming Neoliberal?” He stated that, from the viewpoint of many Chinese leaders and people, the market, state, and the relationship between the two were not a cognate version of “major tenets of a form of neoliberalism hegemonic in the US.”

Neoliberalism as a mentality. Instead of judging the right or wrong of the above two contesting arguments, I would like to re-emphasize a point that has been implied in the previous paragraphs. In this dissertation, I understand neoliberalism as a governing mentality, a way of thinking about governance which informs ways of doing things. A mentality is commonly held among people – not only Party leaders but also common people. While many scholars acknowledged neoliberalism as governmentality in the

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Foucauldian sense, they nevertheless did not really treat it this way. Instead, they regarded it more or less as a policy doctrine or a top-down ideology. As Foucault (2008) himself put it, he tried to analyze (neo)liberalism …

...not as a theory or an ideology, and less as a way in which ‘society’ ‘represents

itself,’ but as a practice, that is to say, a ‘way of doing things’ directed towards

objectives.... liberalism, then, is to be analyzed as a principle and method of the

rationalization of the exercise of government. (p. 318)

Briefly generalizing Foucault’s notions on liberalism and neoliberalism. The liberal rationality obeys the internal rule of the maximum economy; it reveres the market as a site of justice and thus seeks to limit the exercise of government power as much as possible. As a critique of the previous governmentality, neoliberalism is concerned with how the exercise of political power can be modeled on the principles of a market economy. It works towards “constructing a social fabric in which ... the basic units would have the form of the enterprise” and towards the “multiplicity and differentiation of enterprises.” Governmental actions aim to let these enterprises operate, and individuals thus become economic actors who calculate their resources according to market-based principles (Foucault, 2008). Interestingly, Foucault also mentioned – again in the context of western European countries – that an enterprise society and a judicial society are two faces of a single phenomenon. However, this second face – the judicial society that in turn fosters the enterprise face – is absent in China. This absence is resulted from the work of the Reason of the Party, which entails mechanisms of a police state, or the rule of

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the ruler, as will be expounded on in Chapters 5 and 6. It is due to the lack of this feature that many scholars who understand neoliberalism as a doctrine or ideology judge that the

P.R.C. is not neoliberal.

The birth of neoliberalism in the P.R.C. Scholars have commented on the existence of the neoliberal rationality in China, as well as its co-existence with socialist sovereignty. For example, G. Sigley (2006) pointed out that since the period of reform

(1978), market autonomy had become a new state rationality and a pattern of governing, co-existing with the conventional socialist administrative regulations. A. Ong (2006) encapsulated the newly emerged autonomy in her term “neoliberalism as exception.” She suggested that market reforms in China allowed flexibilities in sovereign rule. Thus,

“exceptions” came in to being in the form of economic zones and Special Administrative

Zones, which “enjoy autonomy in all economic and administrative matters in order to attract foreign investment” (p. 108). Y. Zhao (2008) examined the co-existence of neoliberal capitalist development and socialist and anti-imperialist legacies through the lens of communication and culture. As a complement to the above studies as well as many not mentioned here, the following paragraph renders a brief interpretation that accounts for the constitution of the neoliberal mentality – from an ambiguous one to a determined one – by the practices of both the Party and the Chinese people.

After Deng Xiaoping defeated Mao Zedong’s appointed successor and became the effective top leader of the Party in 1978, a series of market-oriented reforms were launched in China. Deng identified economic stagnation rather than any politically-

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related issues as the most pressing problem faced by China. This mainly reflected the working of the Reason of the Party and required primarily economic changes. In addition, it was a time when Japan and the Four Asian Tigers kept creating economic miracles after adopting western economic principles. Following their examples, market-oriented reforms were adopted in China to “emancipate productive forces.” It might be said that, at this point and also throughout the 1980s, the Party did not possess a clear neoliberal rationality although its reforms could largely be called neoliberal policies.

The economic reforms in the 1980s, especially the rural reforms begun in 1980, proved to be very successful. They quickly stimulated the entrepreneurial spirit among people who had long suffered severe impoverishment under the planned economy (Y.

Huang, 2008). Through people’s endeavors, their own standards of living rose and the national economy also grew. Following the 1980s experimental reforms in different social domains caused by the power struggle between soft-liner and hard-liner Party leaders, as well as the final crackdown of the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen

Square in 1989, Deng Xiaoping generalized in his highly-appreciated 1992 Southern Talk that it was thanks to economic development that Chinese society maintained stable after the Tiananmen incident.

Deng might be right to say that it was people’s economic calculations that made the government’s brutal force “acceptable” to them. Yet, this could hardly be the only factor, considering the cultural purge taking place immediately after the crackdown.

Nevertheless, the Party leader decided to brush aside dangerous ideological issues and to

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single-mindedly pursue economic development by encouraging entrepreneurship and providing the people with more opportunities to get rich. In Chapters 5 and 6, more detailed accounts are provided to clarify how people are made to prioritize the neoliberal mentality. They are not really guided, much less coerced, but are pushed to the choice under the co-effect of neoliberal rationality and the Reason of the Party.

Genealogy

In addition to the governmentality theory that addresses the “how” questions of governance, I am also interested in learning how the governance changed over time and I use the genealogy theory of Foucault to address the historical dimension of my study.

Though usually treated as a research method, genealogy is more theoretically developed than most other methods. Thus, it may also be understood as what C. Pascale (2011) called an “interpretive framework.” In this section, I discuss what the Foucauldian genealogy is, as well as the important features that make it different from a conventional historical inquiry. Then, I use examples to explain how I operationalize a genealogical analysis in this study.

Understanding Foucauldian Genealogy

It must record the singularity of the events outside of any monotonous finality; it

must seek them in the most unpromising places... it must be sensitive to their

recurrence, not in order to trace the gradual curve of their evolution but to isolate

the different scenes where they engage in different roles. Finally, genealogy must

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define even those instances when they are absent, the moment when they

remained unrealized.

Above is Foucault’s (1998, p. 369) description of genealogy in “Nietzsche,

Genealogy, History.” While conventional historical research seeks the “origin” of the thing under study, genealogy investigates its “emergences.” This key epistemological difference between conventional history and Foucauldian genealogy is determined by their different ontologies. Seeking for an “origin” presumes that the thing is rooted in the past and that it has an “essence” that remains more or less the same, though its appearance may have changed or it may be “silenced” at times. In contrast, genealogy looks for the “emergences” of “things” out of the “different scenes” in which they play different roles. It is the “thing” in its plural form. Foucault noted that the “thing” has “no essence, or (its) essence was fabricated in piecemeal fashion from aliment forms” (1998, p. 371). Therefore, in searching the emergences of “a thing,” one may find something very different from that thing. To use arts clusters as an example, a genealogy of current

CCI clusters is not tracking the “gradual evolutionary curve” through which they come into being. Rather, it is to tease out the points when they function very differently or take very different forms – as artist communities and art districts – and to reconstruct the socio-political conditions out of which these alternative forms are produced.

Inconsistency/discontinuity. Foucault called genealogy an “effective history” that deals with inconsistency and discontinuity, because in effect, things do not appear in successive forms and they might occasionally be absent (p. 380). As for Beijing, it seems

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there have always been arts clusters from 1990 to the present (2015). However, a discontinuity took place from 1995 to 2000, in the sense that arts clusters did not re- emerge near their original locations in the inner suburbs of Beijing after artists were evicted, but new clusters appeared in the outer suburbs. To some degree, this occurrence is too natural and too self-evident to be taken as a discontinuity that calls for further investigation, in that artists would automatically choose a place from which they were unlikely to be driven away again. Therefore, in conventional historical studies, the occurrence is likely to be mentioned as a “change” in the evolutionary trajectory – if it is discussed at all. However, a genealogical analysis would require the researcher to account for this discontinuity by examining power relations that have this discontinuity event as an effect.

Savoir and subjugated knowledge. Genealogy, an “effective history,” pursues

“perspectival knowledge,” or “savoir.” Savoir is a concept that Foucault uses as opposed to “connaissance.” Connaissance is a specific, particular body of knowledge that is readily accessible as it is derived from discursive conditions that are pre-established and given to us. For example, artists used to be called “blind drifters” as they were illegal migrants and were thereby subject to punishments such as custody and repatriation.

Another example would be that some clusters important for the development of CCI are designated as CCI clusters, whereas others are unauthorized constructions and need to be removed. Savoir, on the contrary, refers to holistic knowledge that connects connaissance and takes account for the discursive conditions out of which connaissance is produced.

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The way to gain access to savoir – perspectival knowledge – is through excavating “subjugated knowledges.” By this term, Foucault meant “historical contents that have been buried and disguised in a functionalist coherence” as well as “low-raking,”

“disqualified” knowledges – those “beneath the required level of cognition or scientificity” (Foucault, 1980c). Subjugated knowledges can either be lost in history or deliberately buried and ignored. For instance, the eviction of artists from the

Yuanmingyuan artist villages had to do with Beijing’s preparation for the 4th World

Conference on Women. Yet, this piece of information is rarely recorded in any art history.

Another historical content related to the eviction is about the dispute between the head of an artist village and the police, which is, in a sense, too sensitive and also not significant enough to be included in histories of artist villages. I only learned of it from a research participant who lived in Yuanmingyuan back then. A genealogical inquiry demands to bring into play such subjugated knowledges; they help to explain the emergence of

“things.” It is also based on subjugated knowledge, as well as various connaissance, that perspectival knowledge can be attained.

Operationalizing a Genealogical Project

In its strictest sense, a genealogy can be an endless task; the emergence of one

“thing” can always lead to the excavation of related practices, knowledge, and mentalities, which are constituted through other events. Therefore, I aim to conduct a genealogical project, rather than a “genealogy,” which is infeasible in this dissertation.

Before illustrating the way I operate a genealogical analysis, I quote several statements of

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Foucault on genealogy from four articles and interviews. Foucault did not offer an

“instruction” on the procedure of genealogical studies, but clues can be gleaned from different pieces of his words.

“Effective” history deals with events in terms of their most unique characteristics,

their most acute manifestations. An event, consequently, is not a decision, a treaty,

a reign, or a battle, but the reversal of a relationship of forces, the usurpation of

power. ... The world ... is a profusion of entangled events.

“Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” (Foucault, 1998, p. 381)

[Genealogy,] that is, something that attempts to restore the conditions for the

appearance of a singularity born out of multiple determining elements of which it

is not the product, but rather the effect... this singular effect can be accounted for

in terms of relationship, which are ... relationships of interactions between

individuals or groups. ... In other words, these relationships involve subjects,

types of behavior, decisions and choices. ...

[I]nstead of defining the problem in terms of knowledge and legitimation,

it is necessary to approach the question in terms of power and eventualization.

“What is Critique” (Foucault, 2007, p. 6466)

What do I mean by [eventualization]? First of all, a breach of self-evidence. It

means making visible a singularity at places where there is a temptation to invoke

a historical constant, an immediate anthropological trait, or an obviousness that

imposes itself uniformly on all.

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Second, eventualization means rediscovering connections, encounters,

supports, blockages, plays of forces, strategies, and so on, that at a given moment

establish what subsequently counts as being self-evident, universal, and necessary.

This procedure of causal multiplication means analyzing an event

according to the multiple processes that constituted it.

“Questions of Methods” (Foucault. 2000c, p. 226)

As can be generalized from the above statements, a key concept in a genealogical analysis is “eventualization,” or the identification of a “thing” or changes of “the thing” as an “event.” An event may seem to be self-evident and may easily be taken for granted.

The event has some unique characteristics; its uniqueness is produced by particular societal-historical conditions which are constituted by changed power relations of which this unique event is an effect. In turn, changed power relations reflect changes in mentalities or changes in specific objectives and calculations of the governing rationality.

Therefore, a genealogical analysis of a thing, or things, is in effect one of power relations and of mentalities (Cruikshank, 1997).

Identifying events. Identifying “events” is essential to a genealogical project as it determines whether one can have enough anchor points to account for all the “reversal(s) of a relationship of forces.” For the genealogical project in this dissertation, I identify four anchor events in the “history of arts clusters” which deal with both the appearance and disappearance, or discontinuity, of clusters. These events are:

1. the emergence of the first artist village in 1990;

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2. the disappearance of early artist villages in the mid-late 1990s;

3. the emergence of new arts clusters in the 2000s;

4. disappearing artist communities and grassroots art districts, 2009-present

(2015).

At least two out of the four events, No. 1 and No. 3, are easily noticeable and have been frequently discussed in previous scholarship. The other two, No. 2 and No. 4, deal with the disappearances and have not drawn much scholarly attention. When they do, it is usually the disappearance of a single cluster or a group of clusters rather than types of clusters that was under examination. The disappearance also tends to be treated either as an episode on a storyline, or a consequence of a government decision. In fact, the lack of attention on the disappearances is hardly surprising. After all, for No.2, there still existed a couple of artist villages during the mid-late 1990s, which were also spontaneously formed but just located at more remote places. Then, for No. 4, the two most famous artist communities not only did not disappear, but they were designated as official CCI clusters. Therefore, the “disappearance” is a false alarm unless one adopts a Foucauldian perspective and regards the same types of clusters – or even the same cluster – not necessarily as “historical constants,” but as different events that are constituted by changing power relations and mentalities.

In addition, I identify some “sub-events” within the four anchor events. These sub-events constitute the anchor events and are actually things that did not take place. For example, in my discussion of event No. 2, I look into the “delayed eviction” – or the

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absence of an immediate eviction – and the “lack of re-emergence of artist villages in the inner suburbs of Beijing.” For event No. 3, I account for the lack of emergence of new spontaneous artist communities after the early 2000s. These absences are things that, to a degree, “should” happen but did not occur. They should not be taken for granted and left unexamined. In fact, the absences complement the presences, and they can reveal different aspects of power relations.

Processing events. Then, when facing an individual event, I examine what practices were involved and what knowledge was generated regarding the clusters or their residents or both. These practices and discourses/knowledge may be directly related to an event or a cluster. Yet, they are more likely to be something seemingly irrelevant or something that, though closely relevant, is “subjugated” and thus usually unknown to outsiders. For example, in my genealogical analysis I discuss a government official’s hint at artists’ self-discipline, artists’ reactions to this hint, and artists’ struggles when trying to fight for demolition compensation. All of these are sensitive pieces of information that are almost “buried” and are knowledge for insiders only. I also look into the change in the connotation of “blind drifters,” the first Guangzhou Biennial, Beijing losing its bid for the

2000 Olympic Games, and the dilemma behind “unauthorized constructions,” etc. These processes may seem to be unrelated but, nevertheless, have impacts on artists’ experiences and actions. Based on this information, I learn about power relations and mentalities at work. To put it another way, dealing with an individual event is like

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conducting a governmentality analysis; one starts from practices and discourses and then determines mentalities.

To summarize, informed by governmentality and genealogy, this study on the arts clusters is also one of the power relation between artists and the political authority, as well as one of the changing mentalities and interplay of different mentalities. In addition, the perspectival knowledge produced by the genealogy analysis also offers a window into

Chinese society and history by taking into accounts various non-arts elements, from migration and land policies to various social discourses.

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CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS

Situating the Study in Research Paradigms

Four Research Paradigms of Qualitative Inquiry

Drawing on her earlier writings and works from other scholars, Patti Lather

(2006) discussed different research paradigms in qualitative research. Four full-fledged paradigms were generalized in her article: positivist paradigm, interpretivist or constructivist paradigm, critical theory paradigm, and deconstructivist or poststructuralist paradigm. These paradigms have different research goals that are to be achieved through different research methods, yet what distinguished them is their ontological and epistemological assumptions. Ontologies are “theories about the nature of existence,” and they “construct what can be known and on what terms.” Epistemologies describe “how the world can be known,” and thus they are concerned with “justificatory account(s) of the scientific production of knowledge” (Pascal, 2011, pp. 5-6).

To briefly generalize the ontological, epistemological, and methodological underpinnings of the four types of paradigms: a positivist paradigm holds that there is one true reality, and this reality can be found with objective research methods. Thus it adheres to a-priori theories, and it values experimentation and random sampling. An interpretivist

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or constructivist paradigm believes there are multiple, fluid realities. Realities are subjective and constructed, and thus it relies heavily on interpretive methods such as ethnography and phenomenology. A critical theory paradigm considers that various realities are socially – and especially materially – constructed. In other words, it tends to attribute micro-level multiplicity and differences to profound inequalities in the macro- level social-political-economic systems. Therefore, emancipatory methods such as action research and critical race theory are employed with the goal to change the social injustices. Finally, a deconstructivist or poststructuralist paradigm is also based on the premise of socially constructed realities. Unlike a critical theory paradigm, it denies a binary reading and instead works to expose contradictions within the system of knowledge, to deconstruct the commonly-held knowledge, and to display a pluralism.

Foucauldian genealogical analysis falls into this paradigm (Levinson and Sutton, 2001;

Lather, 2006; Saukko, 2003). It is also worth mentioning that the four paradigms do not represent a progressive hierarchy, they do not have clear-cut delimitations, and they are not mutually-exclusive domains. Rather, multiple paradigms can be involved in one study, as their different objectives may be addressed by different methodologies associated with the paradigms.

Poststructuralist Research Drawing on the Interpretivist Paradigm

This dissertation is built on the theoretical basis of Foucauldian governmentality and genealogy; it subscribes to the fourth, poststructuralist paradigm. The research aims to challenge the readily-available knowledge on art, arts clusters, and the history of

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China, all of which tend to guide people’s thinking and make it difficult to think otherwise; it also strives to excavate buried connections and seemingly negligible details so as to construct an alternative structure that offers in-depth analysis of above-mentioned topics. Specifically, while acknowledging that arts clusters started as spontaneous gatherings of artists practicing contemporary art and many of those remaining are now government-supported CCI clusters, I attempt to reveal some less evident dimensions of arts clusters. I do not treat the changes in arts clusters as naturally occurring, neither do I consider the changes as precisely calculated by people. I regard what has happened as a contingency, which arose from competing social forces and thus is simultaneously constrained and not entirely subject to chance. Therefore, my goal is to reintroduce power relations – particularly those between the political authority, the CCP, and artists practicing contemporary Chinese art – which constitute the conditions out of which contingencies arise.

Following Foucault, I do not make the assumption that power is possessed by the

“oppressor” and used against the “oppressed,” but recognize that it diffuses and operates in a capillary fashion. Therefore, not only the “oppressor” but also the “oppressed” can exercise power in a power relation. By examining how power is exercised in actual practice, I deconstruct statements and claims contained in cultural policies and social discourses. I problematize issues identified in policies and assumptions embedded in social discourses, and then I re-construct new connections by positioning social events in a wider historical context and relating them to people’s lived experiences. These lived

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experiences include possible resistance, which can be individualized and take various forms that are meaningful to the particular individuals. In this sense, this study is situated primarily in the poststructuralist paradigm, but it contains features of interpretivist paradigm as well.

To further situate my research questions into paradigms, I restate my three key questions here:

1. How are different types of arts clusters in Beijing produced by specific social conditions and power relations?

2. How has 798 been governed since its designation?

3. What are the effects of governance in 798?

Question 1 is a genealogical question. It requires identification of the power relations that produce the social conditions in which arts clusters arise and disappear. This question is grounded on the epistemological presumption that realities are socially constructed; they are not naturally-occurring nor caused by some single, profound, or transcendental reason (Foucault, 2007; Koopman, 2011). Therefore, Question 1 mainly operates in the poststructuralist paradigm. Question 2 and Question 3 together constitute a governmentality inquiry, one that examines the materialization of mentalities, technologies of government, and resistance, or the lack thereof. They also fit within the poststructuralist paradigm in the sense that they challenge publicly announced agendas and aim to expose a structure that can easily be taken for granted and left without further scrutinization. At the same time, in order to complement knowledge contained in policy

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documents, which usually do not take account of people’s daily lives, it is necessary to resort to micro-level empirical realities. Therefore, this re-construct project is impossible without empirical research that incorporates people’s lived experience. From this perspective, Questions 2 and 3, and especially 3, draw on the interpretivist paradigm.

Research Design

Research Settings

This study is about the arts clusters in Beijing. As discussed in previous chapters, my focus is clusters with considerable components of contemporary Chinese art. Thus, clusters that are solely devoted to historical artifacts, folk art, or tourism, fall outside the scope of this study. The expression “considerable components” is used here because it is both difficult and beyond the purpose of this study to identify the “ratio” of contemporary art in a cluster. In fact, due to the high mobility of artists and the changes – growth, demolition, or designation – of the clusters, the “ratio” never stays static. Yet, clusters investigated in this study are largely considered to have a focus on contemporary Chinese art, though not all artists dwelling in the clusters necessarily practice contemporary genres. In art history, “contemporary Chinese art” usually refers to art genres and art forms that emerged after 1989, and genres which prevailed during the 1980s are called

“modern art,” “avant-garde art,” or at times “new art.” This dissertation follows the conventional use of the terms.

My first task in this research was to decide how many arts clusters there had been.

The counting was more difficult than it may appear, as there were no official statistics on

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this, and no previous study attempted to make a complete count. The lack of official statistics may be attributed to two immediate reasons. First, the government did not include arts clusters in its policy agenda until 2006, which was 16 years after the first cluster was established. Second, although government keeps track of CCI clusters, most of them do not have contemporary art components, whereas most artist communities and art districts that do have a contemporary art focus are not recognized as CCI clusters. The latter demonstrates how particular knowledge has been institutionalized and functioned to exclude most artist communities and art districts except for 798 and Songzhuang that have received official designation. It also explains why in previous studies some arts clusters were consistently absent whereas others received much more attention.

Specifically, many studies have been done on cultural industries clusters since the notion of cultural industries swept China, but few have distinguished arts clusters from clusters with other concentrations; when studies have make a distinction, they have tended to focus on a handful of well-recognized arts clusters.

Therefore, I gathered information on arts clusters from scratch. I mainly utilized three sources for this specific data collection purpose: earlier scholarship, artists’ blogs and other social media, and newspaper reports, including online news. In addition, I also arranged a pre-pilot research trip to Beijing in 2012 to visit clusters that still existed. My goal was to observe the contemporary art elements in the clusters, and to find clusters that were rarely covered by any source.

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As a result, I collected information on 30 arts clusters (Appendix A). In a few cases, two or three clusters were located right next to each other on the same street, yet they belonged to different developers and had different methods of operation, therefore, I still counted them as different clusters. The list I complied was not meant to be all- inclusive, as there may be clusters that were too small, too short-lived, or too new to be known even by local artists. However, it included the majority of the arts clusters that existed in Beijing at any time since 1990, and they constituted a reliable pool for my genealogical analysis and case study.

Research Development

My research objects and questions have changed greatly since the outset of the study. My initial interest was to examine politically and socially critical artworks – or rather, the lack of them – in arts clusters. When trying to interpret this phenomenon, my first instinct was to attribute it to censorship and self-censorship. However, my preliminary literature review and pre-pilot fieldwork suggested that censorship was not the answer, and using this term would cause it to lose its core meaning, the official suppression of unaccepted information. Censorship on visual art still exist, but in many circumstances, there is no need for censorship, because artists are not interested in producing potentially sensitive artworks, which, in turn, could not be simply generalized as self-censorship. Therefore, I started to look into the relationship between artists and the political authority: had they achieved a “reconciliation” of a kind, which made censorship unnecessary? However, this thread did not seem very feasible, as “relationship” was too

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abstract to be captured and could be embodied in too many random incidents –– that may be unrelated and may not necessarily take place in arts clusters.

Finally, after learning of Foucault’s theories on power, governmentality and genealogy, I decided to focus on arts clusters and to use them as a lens to understand how

Chinese artists and contemporary Chinese art have been governed, which in turn offer a window into contemporary Chinese history. Therefore, I treat arts clusters not merely as sites where arts practices aggregate, but as productions of power relations and as effects of governance, so that I can focus this dissertation while maintaining the interdisciplinary nature enough to provide thoughtful explanations of the Party-Arty relationship and to shed light on the general governance topic within the recent history of China. I then scrutinize governing practices within a specific cluster, which allows me to critique the governance of contemporary art specifically on a particular site. Through this analysis, I can also provide a more complete explanation of the lack of critical artworks in clusters, which was my initial research interest. Updated content controls, artists’ guided choices, and most importantly the lack of space for counter-normative activities, which is also a result of governance, make it very difficult for artists to resist both governors – the local government and the landlord – even if they want to.

Case Study

As just discussed, to better understand governance of contemporary art on a specific site, I decided to do a case study on a contemporary art CCI cluster. I decided on a CCI cluster, instead of an artist community or art district, because the former is

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subjected to intense government intervention that was not seen in the development in the latter types of clusters – many of which have already ceased to exist. In fact, this is part of my argument that arts clusters are either “taken over,” as is the case in 798 and

Songzhuang, or “taken down,” as is the case with the many grassroots art districts that have been demolished or may well be demolished in the future. This said, I have two cases to choose from, 798 and Songzhuang, both of which are municipal-level CCIs and both used to be spontaneous artist communities.

Between 798 and Songzhuang, I picked the former for two reasons. First, 798 is located at the center of the Chaoyang District, whereas Songzhuang is at an outer suburban area. 798’s location, as well as its reputation, which brings numerous visitors to the cluster, determined the strategic importance of this landmark of Beijing and window into contemporary art, which in turn attracts more attention and intervention from the government. After preliminary research, I found that the governing practices in 798 were more thorough, more intense, and more complicated than those in Songzhuang. This means the 798 case can shed more light on how contemporary art and other activities are governed in a cluster. Second, I am interested in politically and socially critical artworks, which I see as a means of resistance. Although such works are rarely visible in either cluster, I did find a research participant in 798 who was constantly engaged in different forms of resistance, from refusing to take off sensitive artworks from exhibitions, to insisting upon staying at 798 despite various pressures. The resistance of this individual is unique in the research I have conduced as well as in many related studies that I have

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reviewed. More importantly, it allows me to better demonstrate the effects of governance in 798 on resistance of artists; not only is such resistance rare, but some resistance is in a sense made almost “impossible.” In short, the 798 case is selected as it better addresses a key purpose of this study and the different dimensions, governing practices and possible resistance, of the theoretic framework, governmentality (Seawright & Gerring, 2008).

Research Methods

Data Collection Methods

Document studies. “Genealogy requires patience and a knowledge of details, and it depends on a vast accumulation of source material” (Foucault, 1998). Documents constitute a large portion of the “source material” of my genealogical inquiry as part of the genealogy project required the researcher to tease out how subjects have been constituted by discourses throughout history. To give a few examples, the main subject of this study, art clusters, have been regarded as places where “blind drifters” would gather, as “unauthorized constructions,” and as CCI clusters. Artists within these clusters have been classified as “blind drifters,” as examples of individual entrepreneurs, as artists, and in a few cases, as artist academicians. To understand why arts clusters and artists were referred to as such, I needed to examine not only general art history and Chinese history, but also particular topics including population policies, migration regulations, economic reforms – especially marketization and corporatization – land policies, and cultural industries polices. Then, to account for the changes in how a subject had been constituted,

I examined Chinese leaders’ speeches and slogans, as well as national and local

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development plans, to have a grasp of the larger social-political context in which I set my study. I also paid attention to important events that were seemingly unrelated to my research topic, such as the “cultural fever,” an international women’s conference, an art biennial, China’s bids for the Olympic Games, the rise of leisure culture in China, etc.

These events were used to illustrate changes in governing mentalities, as well as the effects of these changes, and/or to explain the emergence of an “incident,” such as the formation or disappearance of a specific type of arts cluster. Last but not least, in order to collect detailed knowledge of specific events, I collected old newspaper reports and magazine articles, official accounts of certain issues from government websites, and artists’ own accounts from their books, blogs, and other social media.

In addition to text documents, I also referred to three documentaries: Drifting in

Beijing (Wu, 1990), 798 Station (Zheng, 2010), and Cold Winter (Zheng, 2011). The latter two documentaries were not released in China, though occasionally they were shown in art spaces or seminars, and thus I contacted the director to get the documentaries. All three documentaries featured the filmmakers’ interviews with different people, mostly arts practitioners, but also one administrator (now resigned) and one real estate developer. These interviews provided me with precious empirical materials with which to do narrative and discourse analysis.

Interviews. In December 2013 and June 2014, I carried out semi-structured interviews with eleven people for this study: nine arts practitioners, including artists, critics, curators, a moviemaker and a gallery owner, and two administrators. Their names

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were all coded as names of colors (e.g. Brown, Green, Black, etc.) to protect these informants. The interviews were semi-structured in order to leave the space for more possibilities, yet also partly guided to ensure that the answers would be directly useful for this study (Galletta, 2012). The “structure” was formulated from my document studies as well as various accounts of the arts practitioners’ life experiences and works.

I recruited interview participants through a snowball sampling in which participants were asked to recommend additional participants. Four initial interview participants, all of whom were arts practitioners, emerged from my pre-pilot research2 and document studies; they were based in three different clusters and all had frequent interactions with either district administrators or the local government. In addition, they clearly possessed different, or even contrasting, views on many issues, such as the demolition of arts clusters. This enabled me to incorporate multiple perspectives in this study. I explained to the four arts practitioners issues that I wanted to explore, and invited them to recommend informants on those topics. In this way, I recruited the seven additional interview participants, including two administrators of 798.

Since I was planning to do a case study on 798 and to investigate the governance of different actors in this cluster, I wanted to interview not only arts practitioners being

2 In the summer of 2012, I carried out a pre-pilot research in four cities in China, including Beijing, and I talked to over twenty artists, art entrepreneurs, gallery owners, art sponsors, and art critics. This pre-pilot research trip was not IRB reviewed, as I did not have a clear research topic at that time. Yet my conversations with these arts practitioners provided direction for my preliminary document studies, which helped to shape my research questions and interview questions.

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“governed,” but also administrators who made and carried out administrative decisions. It was not easy to recruit administrator participants since neither their names nor contact information was publicly available, and I was informed by more than one source that 798 administrators only accept interviews from licensed reporters. Fortunately, an arts practitioner introduced me to an administrator, who was a government official dispatched to 798. It was through this administrator that I got the chance to have a telephone interview with another administrator, a leader from the Seven Star Group that owned the land and the properties of 798. With the two administrators and arts practitioners, I had informants from the three major actors in 798: the local government, the landlord, and the artists themselves. They contributed to my case study tremendously. Not only did they provide information that was not available online, but their responses also inspired me to conduct more document studies on new topics.

For the two administrators, I asked about daily administrative issues as well as long-term development plans for 798, based on information I had accumulated online.

For the arts practitioners, I tailored my interview questions according to what was available about their experiences from other sources. Interviews with arts practitioners were informed by Saukko’s notion of “new ethnography” (2003), which suggested a two- faced project: a hermeneutic one that attended to the lived realities of the participants as well as their perceived meanings of the social worlds, and a poststructuralist one to study how such lived experiences and understandings of the worlds are mediated by prevailing social discourses.

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Observation. In this research, observation was used to supplement data collected from document studies and interviews. I observed nine different arts clusters in my fieldwork for this study, and special attention was paid to the object of the case study:

798. In the other eight arts clusters, I looked for contemporary art elements to make sure they were focusing on contemporary art, or at least had considerable contemporary components. I also observed their layouts and facilities. In many cases, it was not difficult to distinguish grassroots arts clusters from a government approved, real estate oriented ones; the latter usually featured deluxe architectures, luxurious recreational spaces, and delicate landscaping, while grassroots clusters were much more modest.

In 798, I paid attention to two things: the arrangement of the space, as well as artworks that could be found with in it. The purpose of this was to understand some technologies of governance and visible effects of government. Specifically, a space can be organized in an attempt to shape people’s behaviors (Huxley, 2006). For example, the first and the only police station in 798 was built right next to the art space of the Gao

Brothers, two of the most “troublesome” artists in the cluster; it was constructed after the artists’ exhibitions were called off several times. It is hard not to connect these two occurrences, though other sources, such as document studies and interviews, were needed to make a more solid argument.

Artworks provided a lens to understand the effect and effectiveness of governance. For instance, “cultural security” had been announced as a goal of administration, and measures had been taken to achieve this goal. Though artworks and

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activities considered to be “culturally secure” and “culturally insecure” were never articulated, it was common knowledge that politically and socially critical works were usually regarded as sensitive and provocative, and thus were considered as threats to the cultural security in the cluster. Therefore, if a “sensitive” piece of art was exhibited and made accessible to the public – for a longer or shorter time – it demonstrated the arts practitioners conscious resistance and his/her negotiation of the meaning of “cultural security.” If such works were rarely seen, then this shows the effectiveness of governance.

Data Analysis Methods

I used different methods to process data collected from different sources. I applied

Foucauldian discourse analysis to policies, social-political slogans, and other official discourses. The purpose of this was to examine “knowledge/connaissance” as identified and defined in the discourse as well as the discursive structure that supported the

“knowledge/connaissance.” Interview transcripts were processed with “multiple and successive readings” – analyzing each reading in a different way (Brown, 1998, as cited in Doucet and Mauthner, 2008, p. 405). My particular readings were informed by narrative analysis and discourse analysis, with the goals of understanding people’s lived experiences and their subjectivities.

Foucauldian discourse analysis. As per Foucault, discourses carried mentalities and reflected power relations. Discourses were also performative; by eliciting certain practices and restraining others, they worked to maintain current power relations.

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Building on the notions of Foucault as well as other poststructuralists, many scholars developed specific ways to approach discourses and to operate discourse analysis. Among them are Sara Mills (2004), James Scheurich (1994), Elizabeth Allan (2008), Jean

Cararbine (2001) and Gavin Kendall and Gary Wickham (1999).

Drawing on all the scholars mentioned above, and I paid attention the following three aspects in discourse:

• Problems, solutions, and knowledge/connaissance: I identified specific

problems and the solutions to them as contained in discourses. I examined

how problems and solutions were constituted and sustained in the discursive

structure, what knowledge/connaissance was produced, and what practices

these discourses justified or discouraged.

• Exclusions from discourses: I looked for absences and silences in the

discursive structure. I examined what was excluded from discourses and how

it was excluded through methods including tacit taboos, prohibitions of laws

and regulations, or the division of truths and falsehoods. For example, the

opposite of the expression “cultural security” was the loosely defined

“hazarding cultural security,” rather than “cultural dangers,” “cultural

poisons” or any specific examples considered as threats to “cultural security.”

In this sense, the opposite of “cultural security” was excluded from discourses

by making this concept unintelligible and extremely elastic, and thus it could

be used to refer to a broad range of things.

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• Social conditions/constructions: I investigated the social constructions of

problems, solutions, and silences. I pondered questions such as the following:

what social condition gave rise to this particular phenomenon and why was

this phenomenon regarded as a “problem” to be solved in this context? Why

are particular strategies accepted as “solutions”? Why, in terms of social

conditions, was a certain subject “silenced” in a particular time period and

then re-introduced in discourses in another period?

Multiple and successive readings: narrative analysis and discourse analysis.

For my own interview transcripts, as well as interviews available from other sources, I used a multiple and successive reading method that drew on both narrative and discourse analysis. Following Andrea Doucet and Natasha Mauthner (2008), and Paula Saukko

(2003), I adopted a procedure that attended to the following four aspects:

• A reflexive reading of narratives of lived experiences: I traced the storylines

and marked down my own reactions. The purpose was to be “truer” to lived

experiences, and this required me to make explicit how my interpretations

were affected by my own biases.

• Evaluating lived reality against the social context: I incorporated the “real”

world in the examination of the “lived” world, so as to avoid pointless

pluralism. This was not to suggest there was only one “right” way to interpret

the “reality.” To use the following case as an example, governmental

interventions were intensive in some arts clusters. One might interpret the

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intervention as beneficial or otherwise, but to deny the existence of

intervention would render this particular voice as less “trustworthy.” In this

study, I encountered very few examples of this kind.

• Reading of narrated subjects and reactions/resistance: I made efforts to

understand and honor how research participants spoke of themselves and of

their strategies to tackle various inconvenient situations, such as violent

demolition. In my interviews, I invited them to reflect on their reactions/

resistance, and in a few cases, on how their choices and perspectives might

have been conditioned by some discourses. Therefore, instead of judging

participants’ subjectivity as a “smarter” outsider, I elicited self-reflections and

respected them in my analysis.

• Discrepancies in different lived experiences: Five of my research participants

were based in 798 then and two others used to live in the earliest cluster. Two

participants were involved in a group project, Warm Winter, and over ten

other participants of the same project were interviewed in the documentary

Cold Winter that I mentioned previously. I compared participant’s accounts of

the same events and took note of discrepancies. The purpose of this was to

recognize multiple dimensions of a certain issue, to understand the various

perspectives, and most importantly, to determine different calculations that led

to different understandings, or in other words, to identify different

subjectivities.

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In short, my analysis of interview transcripts sought to achieve three purposes: to value lived experience, to examine issues of subjectivity, and to incorporate different voices thereby making sense out of discrepancies.

Validity

Just as there are multiple paradigms in qualitative research, scholars have advanced different criteria of research validities (see, Lather, 1986, 2007; Lincoln, 1995;

Scheurich, 1996; Saukko, 2003). I adopted three criteria to monitor and evaluate the validity of this study: a conventional criterion, an interpretivist one, and a poststructuralist one.

Credibility

Credibility, which is one of the most frequently used validity criteria for qualitative studies, deals with fieldwork activities, triangulation, and member check. For the purpose of this dissertation project, I made three trips to China: a pre-pilot research trip in June 2012, which laid the groundwork for the formation of research objectives and questions, a first-stage fieldwork trip in December 2013, and a second-stage fieldwork trip in May 2014. I deliberately separated the fieldwork so I could have time to process and reflect on the data. This strategy turned out to be very effective. The first stage allowed me to come up with more specific interview goals and questions and to identify more potential research participants. In the second stage, I not only interviewed new participants but also conducted follow-up interviews with two previous participants. In terms of triangulation, I adopted the most basic strategy: comparing data from different

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sources. The purpose of triangulation, for this study, was not to find “consistency” among the data but to confirm the reliability or accuracy of data from various sources. This was especially important given that the genealogical project required numerous source materials, and some of them were from sources with lower credibility, such as websites.

Therefore, I carried out triangulations throughout the whole research project.

Voice

Voice is a criterion frequently employed in interpretivist studies. It usually means, first, to faithfully convey the voices of participants, and second, to incorporate multiple voices. As for the first connotation, scholars have deconstructed the idea of voices as re- presentations, arguing that “voices” do not necessarily convey the thoughts of a person, and that researchers cannot accurately re-present the voices uttered by research participants (Pierre, 2008). Acknowledging and agreeing with this notion, I sought to enhance the trustworthiness of “voice” by incorporating my self-reflexivity in the analysis. I considered that the narratives of interviews had been co-constructed by the participants and the researcher. Therefore, in processing interview transcripts, I analyzed my methods of questioning as well as my interruptions in the interviews, and I took note of my thoughts on and feelings towards the participants’ responses. My goal for “voice” was not to be “faithful” or “accurate,” but to recognize my own participation and subjectivity, through which I could at least identify – if not minimize – their possible impacts. As for the second connotation, incorporating multiple voices, this study not only

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includes different voices, but it honors and explains discrepancies between accounts, as already discussed in the data analysis section,.

Poststructuralist validity

Unlike positivist and interpretivist validities, deconstructivist/poststructuralist validity criteria have not been fully developed yet. According to the goal of deconstructivist research, Saukko recommended that a study in this paradigm be evaluated in terms of “how well it unravels problematic social discourses that mediate the way in which we perceive reality and other people” (2003, p. 19). Though it is difficult to judge how “well” I have done the job, during the whole research process I challenged the validity of “knowledge/connaissance” and I was cautious not to make assumptions. In addition, I examined the subjectivity of research participants, which was, according to poststructuralist notions, produced by discourses, while also maintaining an awareness of my own subjectivity. Therefore, I approached this issue of subjectivity by collaborating with the participants to elicit self-critical reflections from them as well as me.

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CHAPTER 4: SITUATING ARTS CLUSTERS IN HISTORICAL CONTEXTS &

PREVIOUS STUDIES

The Artists-State Relationship in Art History, 1978–2000

One can hardly study earlier arts clusters, artist villages that appeared in the

1990s, without looking into the debut of independent artists and their relationship with the state. This examination, in turn, requires an understanding of China’s system for the arts. Many scholars have studied the arts establishment in China before the 1980s. R.

Kraus (2004) examined the function of the Chinese Artists Association, which was controlled by the Propaganda Department and the Ministry of Culture. Its local branches were links between the Party and artists, most of whom were not party members. J.

Andrews (1994) suggested that the Chinese art world was highly bureaucratic. The art bureaucracy sponsored and controlled art by rewarding and punishing artists, and an artist’s career was determined by the art bureaucracy. R. Croizier (1999) generalized key features of the institutionalized control system that was molded from the Soviet system and installed since the establishment the P.R.C. These include a single state-controlled artists’ association to which all official artists belonged; state sponsorship in place of private patronage or unofficial support for the arts; complete control over formal artistic

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training, as well as art exhibitions and publications; and a Party-determined ideological function of art which made socialist realism the only legitimate style.

In other words, artists were made completely dependent on the state. All artists were official artists; only official artists were recognized as artists and were able to support themselves through the arts, as private patronage and an art market were absent.

This comprehensive control mechanism, as well as the intense and unpredictable political climates during Mao Zedong’s reign, meant that it was unlikely for artists to risk their future by rejecting officially mandated styles or practicing styles frowned on by their patron, the state.

1978–1989: The Rise of Unofficial Art

1978–1983: Experimental Art during a Political Relaxation. New opportunities emerged after the late 1970s, when Mao’s decease ended the ten-year

Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Deng Xiaoping rose as a pragmatic reformist. He brought Mao’s appointed successor, Hua Guofeng, to an early retirement and ascended to the peak of power in December 1978. The wrestle for power between top Party leaders loosened their political control over the society. In contrast to Hua’s rigid Maoism,

Deng’s slogan was Reform and Opening-up, which were more appealing to a society that just survived the disastrous Cultural Revolution. During 1977 and 1978, Deng took a series of steps to re-energize society, such as resuming the entrance examination to college and reconnecting China with the outside world. Though the opening-up was mainly discussed in economic terms, it nevertheless opened China to Western culture in

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addition to foreign investment. Deng also supported grassroots movements that criticized

Mao’s wrongdoings and demanded political liberation. Although these measures were meant to win him popular support and to undermine his opponent’s foundation, they nevertheless brought about political relaxation and cultural liberation for a while.

It was during this time that China’s first batch of experimental artists emerged and started to draw public attention. It is also a point where scholars dealing with contemporary Chinese art usually start: from experimental art of the late 1970s to avant- garde art of the mid-late 1980s and then to contemporary art after 1989,3 these were different stages of unofficial art styles appeared in different periods, and their appearances or social visibility were directly influenced by changes in the political atmosphere (Van Dijk, 1991, 1992; X. Li, 1994; Croizier, 1999; H. Wu, 2000, 2002;

Berghuis, 2004; Gao, 2008; P. Wang, 2010).

The Stars group – an experimental art community – was formed in 1979. Its members were all “ammeter artists” in the sense that they did not have formal art training and were not affiliated with any institution. Unlike two other ammeter artists groups –

April photography group and No Name painting group – that were formed around the same time and engaged mainly in “pure art,” the Stars group was more socially and

3 Different scholars may use the terms “experimental art,” “avant-garde art,” and “contemporary art” in different ways. For example, there are scholars who call all three stages indiscriminately as either experimental art or avant-garde art or contemporary art (Croizier, 1999; H. Wu, 2002; Berghuis, 2004; P.

Wang, 2010). Nevertheless, all three terms imply unofficial art forms. For the purpose of clarity, I use all three terms to refer to unofficial art in different time periods.

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politically oriented. The works of some of its members, such as Wang Keping, were even explicitly politically cynical. In September 1979, the Stars artists exhibited their artworks in a public park next to the National Art Gallery after their exhibition request was turned down by the gallery. The exhibition lasted only for two days before it was called off by the police. Yet, after the artists demonstrated and negotiated, they were allowed by the sympathetic Chairman of the Artists’ Association to hold a second exhibition inside the

National Art Gallery (H. Wu, 2002; Binks, 2006; Gao, 2008; P. Wang, 2010).

The Stars exhibition was the first unofficial exhibition to be held in the most prestigious official museum in China. However, this did not signify that experimental art was officially accepted, which took another two decades to occur. In fact, once Deng secured his position, his attitude changed on liberalization. Leading activists of Beijing

Spring, a pro-democracy movement that was for a time used by Deng against his political opponents, were arrested and charged with counterrevolutionary crimes.4 Hardliner high officials had made sporadic condemnations of individuals with more liberal thoughts since 1980. The official who supported the Stars exhibition was denounced, the Stars group faced constant harsh official criticism, and the group finally dispersed in 1983

(Binks, 2006, Gao, 2008).

4 Beijing Spring was a result of the temporary political relaxation during 1977 and 1978. Strong social critiques delivered in this movement helped Deng to out-power Hua, but they were no longer desired as

Deng effectively became the top leader. The movement was put down by Deng in 1979 when the critiques started to be directed at him.

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1983–1989: Avant-garde Art in between Purges. The rise of avant-garde art during 1985-1987 was not unlike that of the Stars group, in the sense that the avant-garde

New Wave movement took place when political control loosened between three purges initiated by Deng Xiaoping. The purges included the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign in 1983, the anti-bourgeois liberalization campaign in 1987, and the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989. For this reason, scholars usually examine the New Wave art movement in relation to significant cultural/political events – a campaign, a conference, an exhibition. They also examine it in the broader context of social changes brought about by the Reform and Opening-up policy, such as the influx of Western culture and reforms of cultural institutions (Van Dijk, 1991, 1992; X. Li, 1994; Andrews & Gao,

1995; Gao, 2003, 2008; Krause, 2004).

In general, when hardliners – represented by Deng Xiaoping – were in power, there was little space for innovative or non-conformable arts practices. Instead, they were easily denounced as “spiritual pollution” or “bourgeois liberalization.” When soft-liners – represented by then-Chairman Hu Yaobang and his colleague Zhao Ziyang – who advocated further liberation were in power, more latitudes were allowed. Artists organized themselves into groups to experiment new genres derived from Western art and philosophies. They were backed up by enlightened art journals and newspapers, who stimulated art debates and broadcasted the newest trends in the arts. Meanwhile, market relationships were introduced into art institutions, requiring them to be self-supporting from the mid-1980s. Political control in art institutions was also loosened, as soft-liner

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leaders reduced the capacity of the Propaganda Department beginning in 1984

(Fitzgerald, 1984; Andrews & Gao, 1995; Kraus, 2004). This said, official art institutions started to lose their binding power over artists. After providing concerning background information, many scholars go on to examine the genres in the avant-garde movement, particular groups and artists, differences between the unofficial and official art in terms of style, content, etc. (Van Dijk, 1991, 1992; X. Li, 1994; Gao, 2003; 2008).

The New Wave movement ended with the avant-garde artists’ exhibition at the

National Art Gallery in February 1989, an episode that appeared in almost all studies of

Chinese avant-garde art. It was the second experimental art exhibition in the official space, ten years after the first one, but at a much-larger scale (H. Wu, 2002). When the anti-bourgeois liberalization purge ended in 1988, artists re-engaged in organizing exhibitions. It took the art editors and artists a substantial amount of effort to raise funds, go through all the inspections, and finally get the official approval to showcase the artistic results of the New Wave movement in the most esteemed public art venue in China. The avant-garde exhibition was named No U-turn, which suggested the artists’ resolution and their optimism for the future and for everything else. The exhibition was shut down shortly after its opening when an artist used a pistol to shoot her own portrait in her installation, Dialogue. This performance art was not reported in advance and it created a panic in the audience. Although the three people involved in this shooting performance avoided punishment due to their strong family backgrounds, the central government became more alerted to troublemaking artists and intellectuals.

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A few months after the half-way suspended art exhibition, the political situation got increasingly out of control. Students went to the streets to protest against inflation and corruption and to demand freedom of speech as well as democracy. They were joined by intellectuals and local residents. On June 4th, the military forces were sent to suppress protests on Tiananmen Square, quite contrary to the No U-turn expectations. Another large-scale political purge followed the crackdown.

Missing pieces in art history narratives: discourses and less-relevant events.

Less addressed by scholars is the cultural policy of the 1980s. This might be because the

“policies” were merely less-than-specific principles and the general guideline – “two hundreds” – was a socialist cliché derived from Mao’s time. “Two hundreds” was short for “let a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend” (

), a slogan used first by Mao Zedong in the 1950s – thus an inevitable topic for scholars working on cultural policy back then – and reinforced by Deng

Xiaoping in the 1980s. Seemingly an enabling principle, “two hundreds” were in effect meant to be restrictive. The phrase was resurrected by Deng in a talk in 1980, shortly after activists in the Beijing Spring were arrested. In this speech, Deng announced that the “two hundreds” principle was in accordance with his “Four Cardinal Principles”5 which were “prerequisites” to China’s socialist modernization – modernization in the

5 The Four Cardinal Principles advanced by Deng in 1979 were: upholding the socialist path; upholding the dictatorship of the proletariat; upholding the leadership of the communist party; and upholding Marxism,

Leninism and the thoughts of Mao. The core principle among the four was to “uphold the leadership of the

Communist Party.”

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fields of agriculture, industry, national defense, and science and technology. He further emphasized that the “two hundreds” should not go against “social stability and unity.”

According to the document China submitted for the 1982 World Conference on

Cultural Policies (Liu, 1983), “two hundreds” could be generalized as follows:

• free development of different forms and styles should be encouraged and

culture workers could decide their own subject matters, artistic approaches

and styles, as long as their works benefited “socialist ethics;”

• leaders should not make political charges against cultural products and culture

workers;

• criticisms and self-criticism were essential and different views were allowed,

but everyone should uphold the truth and correct mistakes;

• it was necessary to draw on cultural legacies of China and foreign countries in

order to build a new socialist culture;

• and “two hundreds” did not mean bourgeois liberalization, which ran counter

to the essence of this principle.

The “two hundreds” promised a relaxation on cultural control. Culture workers were allowed some autonomy in creation and the values of traditional Chinese culture and foreign culture, which were treated indiscriminately as detrimental during the Cultural

Revolution, were recognized. However, the granted liberties were conditional on vague

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terms, such as “socialist ethics” and “bourgeois liberalization,”6 which only the top Party leaders had the power to interpret. Together, “two hundreds” forged a socialist hegemony wherein autonomy was allowed for arts activities within the boundaries set by the Party.

Anyone or anything that did not conform to the Party’s rule fell outside of this hegemony and were not taken as being cultural-related, but “law-breaking activities” of the

“counterrevolutionists” (Liu, 1983, p. 20). Such activities could easily be denounced as challenging socialist ethics or displaying bourgeois liberalization.

In 1983, Deng and his colleagues launched the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign, in which he referred to works demonstrating Western influences as “spiritual pollutions” in the “ideological frontline.” These spiritually polluting works were denounced as humanist and individualist works that would erode people’s minds and would make them doubt the Party’s leadership in the long term (Deng, 1983). Deng used the “two hundreds” policy to justify and encourage attacks on “spiritual pollutions.” According to him, such “righteous criticisms” against “unhealthy” works were constantly smeared and under siege, whereas they should be part of the “two hundreds.”

The Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign targeted mainly intellectuals, editors, journalists, and writers who openly commented on or insinuated political problems.

Many of them were forced to engage in “self-criticism” – as encouraged in the “two

6 The term “bourgeois liberalization” was advanced in 1959 by then-Chairman Liu Shaoqi. It was usually used without a clear definition until Deng prescribed in 1985 that “bourgeois liberalization” meant to follow the Capitalism (Deng, 1985).

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hundreds” – or were removed from their positions. In the arts, restraining and punishing measures were taken to check the spread of condemned Western influences. For example,

Li Xianting, an editor of the then most prestigious art journal, Fine Art, was suspended from work for publishing articles advocating abstract art. Abstract art, Dada and post-

WWII genres alien to socialist atheistic values were set as taboos. Exhibitions with artworks of these kinds were called off immediately after being set up and no editor could afford to publish information concerning such events after Li’s case (Van Dijk, 1991).

Accompanying these punishments were promotions of orthodox art, or propaganda art.

The goal of the Sixth National Art Exhibition, organized by the Chinese Artists

Association and held in 1984, was to replace the coarse products of Western modernization with high quality socialist spiritual products. Official organizations took full charge of all aspects of this exhibition, from mobilization to creation. The general contents and styles were all officially determined and artists were sent to the countryside and factories to collect materials from the lives of “the masses” (Fine Art Editorial,

1984).

Before the hardliners could enforce their atheistic standards on a larger scale, however, the rigor of the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign waned due to efforts of soft- liner leaders. Shortly after the Sixth National Art Exhibition, the Fourth Congress of the

Chinese Writer Association was held in the end of 1984. In the opening ceremony, a speech written at the behest of Hu Yaobang and his colleagues was delivered, in which writers and other culture workers were promised a more liberated environment for

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creation. The speech did not mention Deng’s Four Cardinal Principles that were ritually quoted in most official documents. Neither did it use the term “bourgeois liberalization,” as Hu suggested the expression was too vague and too disabling (Hao, 2010). Most significantly, it admitted that the Party had intervened a lot in cultural fields, which should be changed (Hu, 1985).

Though still filled with phrases like “serve the socialism” and “reject decadent ideas of the Capitalism,” the speech euphemistically expressed Hu’s disagreement with

Deng’s left-leaning line that dominated the first half of the 1980s. In addition, Hu sought to negotiate the connotation of the “two-hundreds” by rendering a newer, more specific interpretation of this guideline. The speech suggested that cultural creation should enjoy adequate latitude and qualifications should not be added to limit the scope of creation. It also openly objected to exercising administrative punishments as “criticism.” In other words, culture practitioners were assured of a more secured environment of creation: they could have some actual autonomy to work on styles other than those already approved by the Party and they would not be attacked with vague yet destructive charges. This was the clearest message sent by soft-liner leaders and it was delivered directly to a group of immediate beneficiaries. Under the encouragement of the Chairman, cultural activities revived in 1985 and the New Wave movement broke out, in which avant-garde genres were nurtured and showcased.

The spread of Western ideas during 1985 and 1986 greatly changed people’s lives and perspectives. Intellectuals, writers, artists, and students all displayed to different

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extents a yearning for democracy and freedom, or at least artistic freedom. Time seemed to be ripe for an open plea as central government leaders, including Deng Xiaoping, also started to talk about political reforms. It was in this atmosphere that in November 1986, students from the University of Science and Technology of China in the Anhui Province protested against the false election of representatives at the grassroots level. This event quickly triggered a series of students’ demonstrations in several big cities in China.

Students asked for voting rights and for anti-corruption actions. Acute criticisms were also raised against the party system. This wave of students’ demonstrations lasted only for a couple of months before it completely quieted down.

Nevertheless, Deng showed zero tolerance for any challenge to his authority. On

December 30, 1986, Deng delivered a talk entitled “Taking a Firm Position against

Bourgeois Liberalization” to several of his supporters in the central government, in which he expressed three key ideas:

• China should not follow the bourgeois democracy and China would have no

future without the Party’s leadership;

• The campaign of anti-bourgeois liberalization needed to be insisted upon,

otherwise the Party would lose its leadership and the People would lose their

cohesion.

• Party members with inclinations toward bourgeois liberation had to be purged.

This talk of Deng was later echoed by an editorial of People’s Daily, which stressed that the anti-bourgeois liberalization was a necessary condition for the success of

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Reform and Opening-up (“Chronicles of the Communist Party: 1987,” 2007). Unlike the

1983 Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign which cleansed “pollutions” emerging in society, the 1987 declaration was more of an inner Party purge. Deng directed his censure toward

Party leaders by saying that “if the leaders show a hardline stance, people would not make trouble” (Deng, 1986). In January 1987, Deng forced Hu Yaobang to retire and replaced him with Zhao Ziyang. Several well-respected liberal intellectuals were expelled from the Party publicly. Journals and publishing houses were not spared during this high pressure time. For example, Art Trend was forced to shut down and Jiangsu Art

Periodical was also investigated by the local government (Peng, 2008; You 2008).

Lacking the necessary channels to spread ideas and carry on public debates, the New

Wave art movement retreated. Artists waited for the storm to pass to hold their first and last large-scale exhibition, No U-turn, in 1989.

1990–2000: Unofficial as Oppositional and Commercial, and Un-unofficial

The Yuangmingyuan artist village appeared in 1990, followed by Dongcun in

1992, Songzhuang in 1995, and 798 in 2000. When art historians talk about artist villages or art districts, it is these four earlier clusters – usually regarded as “prototypes” of later clusters – that are under discussion (H. Wu, 2000; Hopfener, 2010). All of them once existed as “underground” artist communities where unofficial artists gathered. It was these unofficial artists, as well as many who did not dwell in artist communities, who created the most significant contemporary genres – cynical realism and political pop – and new art forms – performance art and experimental art with new media. These

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contemporary art practitioners either participated in the avant-garde movement from 1985 to 1986 or were under its influence. In the 1990s, they were regarded as “unofficial” for several reasons in addition to the fact that they did not affiliate with official art institutions nor did they practice propagandist art. First, avant-garde genres were condemned in the post-Tiananmen purge and, for a while, they became taboo and disappeared from all public art venues. In fact, during all of the 1990s, contemporary artists existed in an underground and semi-underground state (H. Wu, 2002; Feng, 2004;

Fei, 2008). Second, disillusioned artists also consciously drew a line between themselves and the establishment. Many injected their anguish, resignation, or cynicism into their artworks, creating artworks that usually contained political messages and antagonisms, explicit or implicit ones (Koppel-Yang, 2003; Wiseman, 2007). Third, as time passed, unofficial became a label and a selling point among off-shore buyers who entertained the

“Chineseness” in Chinese art or the idea of banned works of banned artists (Hou, 1996;

Barme, 1999; Zhu, 2002; Chang, 2007; Fei 2008). Therefore, terms like “unofficial” and

“underground” had much stronger implications of antagonism, opposition, or dissidence in the 1990s than in the 1980s, whether the connotations were embedded in artworks or were packaged by art dealers.

Art historians have critiqued the notion and implications of the term “unofficial.”

Specifically, scholars have examined the rebellion contained within contemporary art works as well as artistic strategies that artists employed to express their dissidence, such as the appropriation of political icons from the cultural revolution and the juxtaposition of

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them with symbols of capitalism (Lu, 1997; Koppel-Yang, 2003; Yan, 2007; Wiseman,

2007). Many others have adopted more critical perspectives and investigate the impacts of capitalism and consumerism on contemporary Chinese art. According to them, Chinese art was quickly absorbed into the international art market beginning in 1993, and artists and art critics started to cater to international buyers’ imaginations concerning Chinese art or “Chineseness.” Scholars have acutely commented that there was nothing left in contemporary art except for interests; that political art produced after 1993 only demonstrated artists’ entrepreneurship and thus had little value in Chinese art; and that politically antagonistic artworks were equally ideologically-driven and gave birth to a new ideology, one worshiping money and nationalism (Hou, 1996; Zhu, 2002; Groom,

2008; Fei 2008; L. Wang, 2009). Considering the disappointing situation of contemporary

Chinese art losing its independency in the market system, H. Hou argued that “art should neither be a forum of ideological, antagonist debates, nor a battlefield of propaganda or counter-propaganda; but rather, it should be an irreplaceable, specific and autonomous narrative of and testimony to reality.” He advocated for an “un-unofficial” art that encouraged “real freedom” of creation (Hou, 1996, p.50).

In addition to examining contemporary artworks, scholars have also examined art exhibitions, both domestic and overseas ones. Whereas international exhibitions – including those held in Hong Kong and Taiwan – decided what genres got promoted and, to a degree, shaped the development trajectory of contemporary Chinese art, domestic exhibitions, or the lack thereof, revealed the government’s changing attitude toward

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contemporary Chinese art. At the beginning of the 1990s, contemporary art exhibitions usually took the form of private or closed shows. Then, as commercial art galleries gradually increased after 1992, they became another locale for contemporary art exhibitions. In the later 1990s, some official and semi-official museums – both larger national or municipal galleries and smaller university galleries – were open to contemporary art. Nevertheless, exhibitions of multi-media art, performance art and installation art were still generally discouraged by the art establishment. Additionally, artists and curators still needed to avoid ideological topics in order to hold exhibitions in public art venues (H. Wu, 2000, 2002; Gao Brothers, 2003). Things started to change in

2000 at the 3rd Shanghai Biennale. The organizer, the Shanghai Art Museum, welcomed contemporary art forms and even invited two independent art curators to join its curator team, a move that seemed to resolve the official/unofficial dichotomy. The two curators, one of whom advocated for the de-ideologicalisation and un-unofficialization of Chinese art, considered the government-sponsored exhibition as a demonstration of refreshing changes and viewed it as a victory for independent artists (Wu, 2002; L. Wang, 2009).

However, some independent curators opposed collaboration with official art institutions and organized a series of provocative “satellite” exhibitions to express their uncooperativeness. Nevertheless, H. Wu pointed out that even in these uncooperative exhibitions, curators had to self-censor in order to avoid official cancellation (Wu, 2002;

Berghuis, 2004).

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The “absence” of the government. Interestingly, although the term “unofficial art” suggests a tension within the artists-government relationship, the government has rarely been a focus in discussions of unofficial art, except that all the scholars cited above more or less mentioned that contemporary Chinese was still rejected from many official art venues. Instead, it is the artists-market or artists-Western audiences relationships that are frequently critiqued. By saying this, I do not deny that many artworks deliberately incorporate sellable Chinese political imagery, and I agree with the many problems of contemporary Chinese art as identified by the above-mentioned critics and art historians.

Yet, it is at least insufficient to discuss what art should be and should not be without looking into what it still cannot be. In addition, in playing the "blame game," we find that just as many artworks can be criticized for catering to Western imaginations as there are studies that can be criticized for pandering to post-colonial theories, which are popular among Western academia and are also welcomed by the Chinese government.

Instead of commenting on the possible consequences of disregarding the government in studies, I want to suggest two understandable reasons that scholars are ignoring the government's role. First, while in the 1980s, official art organizations and institutions were still influential and there existed many artistic taboos, the government indeed withdrew from the arts in the 1990s. Not only so, but it also displayed a more tolerant attitude toward the art that it once condemned. As just mentioned, contemporary artworks gradually made their way into semi-official and official art galleries in the mid- late 1990s. In the year 2000, contemporary art became the banner of the government-

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sponsored Shanghai Biennale. Later, as discussed in the following section, contemporary arts clusters were designated by the government and also received financial support from the government. All these point to a retreating, more tolerating government whose role in the arts has been diminishing. Second, while the government was withdrawing, the market was expanding. Domestic art markets did not exist until 1992, and Chinese art only emerged onto international art scenes after 1993. In other words, since the early

1990s, artists have had more opportunities to participate in art markets. The fact that their works were not welcomed in official arts institutions further drove them to the market.

Because of these two reasons, the government – especially as a negative force – gradually disappeared from analyses of contemporary Chinese art.

For the same reasons, I suggest bringing back the government into the analysis of contemporary Chinese art and re-examining the artists-government relationship, rather than replacing it with the artists-market one. However, I do not mean to focus on how the government directly intervenes in art activities. As Foucault’s governmentality theory suggests, the political authority can achieve its objectives of controlling unwanted art activities by guiding artists’ behaviors, without itself stepping into the arts or without itself being directly involved at all. Therefore, I argue not to ignore the political force when it appears to be withdrawing; not to concentrate on conventional, suppressive ways of control which have become less prevailing; and not to confine an investigation on contemporary art to the art realm only. Rather, I argue to find the political force in

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alternative forms and in alternative domains. This is what I seek to do in Chapters 5 and

6.

State and Culture in Cultural and Creative Industries, 2001–2015

From Un-official to Industrial

Art historians and critics have pointed out that the official acceptance of contemporary art – from its admission into official art galleries and government- sponsored art exhibitions to the construction of contemporary art clusters and art museums – has to do with the popularity of “cultural industries,” a concept that changed the government’s perspective on cultural endeavors (Wu, 2002; L. Wang, 2009). To some extent, scholars are right to criticize the false dichotomy of official and unofficial art as culture has been treated increasingly as an industry and less as an ideological issue in the new millennium.

On the other hand, as contemporary Chinese art gradually moved “above-the- ground” and gained access to many public arts institutions, arts clusters lost their previous significance in art history as places where artists gathered to communicate and experiment with novel artistic expressions. In addition, the concept of “cultural industries” was augmented by the hype of “creative industries” and “creative economy” that hit mainland China in the early to mid-2000s. “Clustering” – the clustering of CCI – has become a “buzzword” since then. Many new art districts were constructed all over

China, not only in municipalities and provincial capital cities, but in smaller cities as well. These newer clusters - usually places of art exhibition and especially art distribution

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- have less significance in art history compared with older ones that predominately focus on creation. These newer clusters also embody more of the leasing and administrative relationships between arts practitioners and the managements of clusters than they do political tensions between (semi-)underground artists and the state. Therefore, these new clusters appear more frequently in studies of CCI. In the rest of this section, I review the literature on CCI as well as on cultural districts.

Cultural and Creative Industries in China

The idea of “cultural industries” arrived in China in the late 1990s. In 1998, a

Cultural Industries Department was formed under the Ministry of Culture. Since 2001,

“cultural industries” has been incorporated in the National Five-Year Plans as an independent category. As cultural industries quickly attracted the central government’s attention, creative industries also piqued the interest of the local government. In January

2006, the term “cultural and creative industries” was officially adopted by the Beijing

Municipal Government and the Chaoyang District was designated as the CCI base (Hui,

2006).

D. Hui (2006), a policy researcher from Hong Kong who was commissioned by the Chaoyang District Government in 2005 to develop CCI development strategies, provided an interesting account on how the term “cultural and creative industries” was accepted by the government. While the term “cultural industries” was in place since the late 1990s, the district government had an interest in “creative industries” after its officials were introduced to this latter term at a conference in Hong Kong. Therefore, the

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wording “cultural and creative industries” was used throughout the research process until the final draft was turned in. The research group was then asked to omit the word

“creative” in association with cultural industries. Due to the time constraint, researchers did not change the wording in the English version of the report. Ironically, just before the research report was to be published, the researchers again were asked to stick with the term “cultural and creative industries” in both the Chinese and English versions. The arbitrariness of the government in deciding which term to use indicates one of the two things: either there is no difference between these terms, or there are differences but which term is adopted does not affect the specific contents of government policies.

Cultural industries and creative industries in global and Chinese contexts. In the global context, the terms “cultural industries” and “creative industries” have slightly different meanings and emphases. “Cultural industries” originates from the term “cultural industry” coined by Adorno and Horkheimer in 1947. The authors used this term to criticize the mass-production of cultural goods, as well as its resulting cultural hegemony.

While “cultural industries” refers to the industrialization of the creation, production, and circulation of cultural goods, it is without the negative connotation of “cultural industry.”

The term “creative industries,” on the other hand, is derived from “cultural industries,” yet it covers a much larger range and reflects new developments in the contemporary world (O’Connor, 2010). The term was first used in Australia and it served to “signpost the significant interface between commercial cultural activities and the emerging new media driven by technology changes” (Foord, 2008, p. 93). Other scholars have argued

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that the concept of “creative industries” far exceeds the realm of arts and culture and is closely linked to information, communication, and technology (Garnham, 2005).

Compared with “cultural industries,” the term “creative industries” suggests a more explicit expectation of the economic potentials of these industries.

In China, the two terms have gained new connotations. Culture has long been residing in the ideology domain, thus the term “cultural industries” implies a political/ ideological bottom line. However, it also means that some cultural sectors – those that are

“less sensitive to national culture and information security” – have been transferred from the state-managed model to a more autonomous industry model. On the other hand,

“creativity” is usually linked to ideas of “individuals, autonomous artists, entrepreneurs and iconoclasts.” In addition, creative industries include non-ideological sectors and require a much higher level of marketization and privatization than cultural industries (J.

Wang, 2003, p.8; 2004; O’Connor & Gu, 2006; Keane, 2009a). In fact, M. Keane (2009a) argued that incorporating “creativity” facilitated the inclusion of non-ideological sectors such as design, software and Internet service into cultural industries and allowed more entrepreneurs to join the field. Nevertheless, many studies also suggest that there are too many obstacles – state surveillance, censorship, corruption and cronyism – for creative industries to develop in China (J. Wang, 2004; Keane, 2007; O’Connor, 2009).

The different connotations of cultural industries and creative industries partly explain why the Chaoyang District Government was hesitant to use the term “creative industries,” and finally juxtaposed it with “cultural industries.” The ideological bottom

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line needs to be maintained, yet economically promising industries need to be included too. Nevertheless, establishing CCI clusters was recognized as an important policy strategy to stimulate the development of CCI. Shortly after the term was officially adopted, two of the most significant arts clusters – 798 and Songzhuang – were designated as municipal-level CCI clusters. Additional designated clusters included eight other cultural districts with various focuses, from a technology park to an antique street.

The ten clusters were the first batch of municipal-level CCI clusters, and they were followed by three more batches. The goal was to have 30 municipal-level CCI clusters by end of the eleventh Five-Year Plan (2010), which was achieved on time (“The fourth batch of CCI clusters,” 2011).

Cultural Clusters in CCI Studies

Under the CCI framework, most recent studies of Chinese cultural clusters either focus on mapping and advocacy or on evaluating clusters according to worldwide- acknowledged goals of cultural industries – urban growth, economic development, and city branding. For example, J. Borg, E. Tuijl, and A. Costa (2010) reviewed different creative clusters in Beijing to understand how design had been used and could be further employed for economic development of the city. In many of his works, Keane (2007,

2009a, 2009b, 2011) delineated the stages and development models of cultural clusters in various cities in China. He also rightly pointed out that the driving force behind the boom of cluster-construction was not creativity nor independent innovation, but rather real estate development and the production and sale of tourist commodities.

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These studies, as well as many that are not discussed here, share two things in common. First, clusters with very different contents – contemporary art, fashion design, film production, folk art, antiques, cultural heritage, recreation, IT and software, etc. – are discussed together and treated indiscriminately, as it is their cultural industries benefits that are emphasized. Second, to some extent, clusters are analyzed like places with cultural products; little attention has been paid to activities in the cluster, including the particular administrative works involved – whenever they are applicable – and much less the experiences of cultural practitioners residing in the clusters. These two characters may not necessarily be “shortcomings” in studies of CCI, yet they hinder the process of gaining specific knowledge on a particular cluster.

798 Art Factory in Previous Studies

Formed in 2000, 798 is the most famous cultural cluster and appears in many studies in art history, cultural industries, and urban geography. With various emphases, these studies examine the formation of this cluster, its official designation, and the many changes in the cluster after its designation. Studies focusing on pre-designation years of

798 provide detailed accounts of how artist–founding fathers of 798 worked to turn this obsolete factory into an art hub and of how artists endeavored to preserve their community through self-organized art festivals. Commercialization, gentrification, and the decline of art festivals are among some major phenomena frequently discussed in analyses of post-designation 798.

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Government intervention is another major topic for post-designation 798. Yet, oftentimes, it is the publicly announced events or plans – supportive developmental policies, vast financial investments, and physical renovation of the cluster – that are discussed. Given the recent underground history of contemporary Chinese art, it is hardly possible that government interventions are restricted to some supportive measures only.

However, except for a couple of studies touching on the administrative bodies and control mechanisms in 798, specific accounts on the governance of 798 are almost absent from previous scholarship (Currier, 2008; Chou, 2012; Y. Zhang, 2014). Interestingly, many in- depth news reports looked into management issues, or rather, disputes in 798, but their focus is usually on the tension between artist tenants and their landlords, or sometimes on the lack of effective mediation on the part of the government. To summarize, the government is again missing from most studies and reports on 798. It is only present at some “grant occasions,” such as 798’s designation and financial support.

Limitations of Previous Studies

In the above sections, I reviewed the literature in art history and studies of cultural industries. Although arts clusters are not a major subject in either of the fields, they are discussed – or at least mentioned – in many studies. These clusters are examined to serve different purposes of the various investigations. Here, I do not evaluate whether they have been effectively analyzed to achieve different research purposes. Rather, I focus on whether existing studies can contribute to a greater understanding of arts clusters, although this is not necessarily the goal of those studies. As I identify limitations in

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previous scholarship, I evaluate possible misunderstandings caused by these limitations and provide solutions based on Foucault’s theories of governmentality and genealogy.

Arts Clusters within their Immediate Contexts

The word “contexts” in the sub-heading refers to two things: the historical/social context, and the context of a particular discipline, such as art history or cultural policy/ cultural industries. Studies on arts clusters that emerged in the early 1990s –

Yuanmingyuan and Songzhuang – usually have to take the history of the 1980s into consideration, which explains the tension between the political power and avant-garde artists in the early 1990s. Yet, things that happened in the 1980s become “too remote” when it comes to clusters formed in the 2000s. These new clusters are oftentimes situated by scholars in completely different social settings which can be generalized as follows: the government’s perspective on art has changed, contemporary art has gained legitimacy, or the artists and the government have achieved a reconciliation of some kind. Therefore, an examination of the government has been lacking in studies of more recent clusters – a consequence of focusing only on immediate social contexts.

In art history, arts clusters are discussed in relation to monumental events in the arts, like a significant art exhibition, the rising of a new genre, or governmental recognition. It is typically the artists dwelling in the clusters who are discussed while things happening to the cluster are left out, unless they have further impacts on art history. Likewise, unrelated information is either ignored or briefly discussed as background information. For example, important talks and public discourses are rarely

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examined by art historians. Sometimes cultural policies, which can be too vague to have any operational power, are generalized with one or two words without further scrutinization while economic reforms are almost always treated as background knowledge, if mentioned at all. To focus on things within one discipline makes it easy to generate a linear history, and what Foucault would call “inconstancies and discontinuities” can be treated as another stage along the evolutionary trajectory or just taken for granted.

Likewise, in cultural policy and cultural industries, scholars tend to evaluate clusters according to stated policy goals. This descending analysis can result in not only a neglect of mundane practices in the clusters, but an ineffective critique of cultural policies themselves. Specifically, there have been many works critiquing the effectiveness of cultural policies or the classification of cultural industries. Yet, the crux of a policy of cultural industries may not lie in whether or not it can stimulate the development of cultural industries, but in what it is really intended to. To study the “real intention” is not to speculate about what is left unsaid, but to understand the policy with reference to practices – not only its own implementation, but the implementation and operation of many other policies and regulations.

Forgotten Arts Clusters

If arts clusters are examined in terms of their significance in art history and their contributions to CCI, then what happens to clusters that are important, but not in terms of art history and cultural industries? Previous scholarship demonstrates that they are left

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out. In Beijing, many art districts were built in the mid-2000s. It was a time when 798 was preserved from the threat of demolition and when contemporary Chinese artworks were sold at astronomical prices in international auction houses. Many of the newly-built districts were real estate oriented. Artists – established or newly graduated ones – resided in the districts where they made art creations and where they could find places to exhibit and sell their works within vicinity. These art districts were not where “monumental” events in history or art history took place, and they were not part of the government’s

CCI agenda. In fact, they were recognized as “unauthorized constructions” and many were justifiably razed to the ground. Therefore, not only were these districts rarely addressed in art history or cultural industries, but their demolition in 2010 did not draw much attention. This was because, first, they were indeed “unauthorized constructions” according to current land policies, and second, the demolition was no more violent than many other cases of forced demolition.

With these clusters – which I categorize as art districts – missing from the literature, the history of arts clusters in Beijing can be easily (mis)taken as follows: clusters formed in the early 1990s – Yuanmingyuan and Dongcun – are prototypes;

Songzhuang, 798, and Caochangdi are their later expressions; and the final stage being official designation, as demonstrated by Songzhuang and 798. Prototypes were wiped out by the government when it was still hostile toward contemporary art. As time passed, the government’s perspective changed and it preserved and designated some clusters, following the international policy of using culture for sustainable economic growth. Such

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narratives are frequently seen in scholarly articles and blog posts of artists and critics.

Also missing along with the districts were artists’ struggles as well as their various perspectives on the demolition. These are what Foucault referred to as subjugated local knowledges. They may not qualify as erudite knowledge and are not particularly informative, but when they are taken into consideration together with other subjugated knowledge, irrelevant knowledge, scattered discourses, and connaissance, they constitute perspectival knowledge – savoir – that can not only provide knowledge on arts clusters, but can interpret how artists are governed.

798 without Empirical Data

Without empirical data, 798 can only be approached from some of its commonly- known grant events: artists’ self-organized festivals, its designation, the government’s development plan, financial support, and renovation. This top-down approach is unlikely to help people realize how exactly 798 has been governed, what particular changes have taken place, and what the effects of governance are. As a result, 798 can be easily taken as evidence of the government’s tolerance for contemporary art and commitment to CCI.

Or it can be taken as another example to prove “the life circle of arts clusters” – that commercialization and generalization are inevitable, and independent artists are doomed to be “crowded out.” Both views can be easily found from articles and reports, and neither does justice to what really happens in the cluster.

In the case of 798, not only is empirical research needed, but it has to be intensive and be the major source of data. This is, to a large extent, due to the lack of information

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transparency. There is no systematic information – not even information providing the most basic introductions of the duties and responsibilities of the administrative bodies – available on the 798 official website, the local government website, or the landlord company website. Pieces of information – such as a new regulation, another inspection, or the name of an unheard of organization – can be gleaned from extremely short news updates and work briefings scattered on various unrelated government websites.

However, one would have to talk to artists and especially administrators to learn about their daily experiences, which usually contain some fragmented “keywords” that can finally lead to useful information. In addition, many artists have very unique experiences in 798, which are not accounted for in other studies nor reported on the media due to either their “sensitiveness” or lack of news-worthiness and study-worthiness. Again, these are subjugated local knowledges that can only be gleaned from people who are involved in the incidents and that make more sense only in a larger picture.

These limitations – clusters understood within their immediate contexts, forgotten art districts, and the lack of empirical data – can be solved with Foucauldian genealogical analysis and ascending analysis, which are articulated in Chapter 2. A genealogical analysis aims to generate a savoir that links specific knowledges from different disciplines, resurrects subjugated knowledge buried in history and in people’s memories, and accounts for seemingly less important things as well as easily ignored discontinuities.

Together, this constitutes a perspectival history that differs a conventional “monumental” history with a linear viewpoint, as I demonstrate in Chapter 5. Then, in Chapter 6, I

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employ the bottom-up method to examine the governance inside 798. With abundant empirical data collected from interviews as well as observations, my case study of 798 seeks to shed light on details and invisibilities that were yet to be explored.

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CHAPTER 5: A GENEALOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE ARTS CLUSTERS IN

BEIJING – SOCIALIST HERITAGE WITH NEOLIBERAL EXCEPTIONS

Introduction

Outline of the Genealogical Analysis

In this chapter, I conduct a genealogical analysis of the arts clusters in Beijing. I categorize the clusters into three types. First, artist communities, which are spontaneously formed by artists; they may either take the form of an artist village or art factory, depending on where artists gather. Second, art districts, which are initiated by real estate developers or artist entrepreneurs; these clusters may or may not be approved by local government. Third, Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI) clusters, which are former artist communities or art districts receiving official designation from district- or municipal- level government. The first two types are the focus of this chapter, though the third type is also discussed. According to Foucault’s concept of genealogical analysis, I

“eventualize” or identify as “events” the emergence and disappearance of the arts clusters; then, I explore the power relation between the political authority and artists that produce an “event” as its effect. In the process, I interweave discussions of governing rationalities, various discourses, practices of governance, and artists’ resistance or

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reactions. In addition, I also look into how the power relations change over time and what specific social conditions constitute the changes.

I argue that the political authority in China, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), subscribes to two overarching rationalities in its governance. The first and most important one is the “Reason of the Party” – something similar to “Raison d'état,” or reason of state

– which basically seeks the Party’s own growth in wealth and forces, while rejecting openness and justice. It derives from the CCP’s objective to maintain its power monopoly, which is implied in the preface of the current Constitution (1982) and inscribed in Deng Xiaoping’s “not-to-be-questioned” Four Cardinal Principles.7 This rationality entails an unlimited public authority.

The other is the neoliberal rationality, which the political authority has gradually and more systematically adopted since the 1990s. It emergence has been discussed in the governmentality section in Chapter 2. It was produced and reinforced by practices in the

1980s, especially the economic reforms, but also by the pro-democracy movements resulting from the opening-up policies and subsequent cultural changes. Specifically, after the final crackdown of demonstrations in 1989 at Tiananmen Square, the Party

7 The Four Cardinal Principles advanced by Deng in 1979 are: upholding the socialist path, upholding the dictatorship of the proletariat, upholding the leadership of the communist party, and upholding the

Marxism, Leninism and the thoughts of Mao. In the 1982 Constitution, “dictatorship of the proletariat” is rephrased into “people’s democratic dictatorship,” meaning that democracy is reserved for the “people” whereas “enemies” are subjected to people’s dictatorship. According to Deng, the four principles are

“unquestionable,” and “upholding the leadership of the communist party” is the core.

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better realized the significance of economic growth that was brought about by economics reforms and achieved through people’s entrepreneurial spirits; as Deng Xiaoping generalized (1992/2011), it was because of the economic development and improvements in people’s lives that the Chinese society stayed stable despite the Tiananmen incident.

Later, market-oriented reforms resumed after a short reform stagnation at the beginning of the 1990s, allowing people more opportunities to “get rich,” and stimulating them to fully exercise their entrepreneurial spirits. The neoliberal rationality calls for the exercise of political power to be modeled on the principles of a market economy and it works towards constructing “multiplicity and differentiation of enterprise” (Foucault, 2008).

Governed by the neoliberal mentality, people thus become economic actors who calculate on their resources according to market principles. Usually, legal arbitration is needed to maintain the formation and operation of enterprises; it demands the service of judicial institutions and requires public government with boundaries and limitations. Although the two rationalities seems contradictory to each other, Foucault argues that (neo-) liberalism works not to obliterate Raison d'état – or in my study “Reason of the Party” – but to maintain the latter and to develop it more fully (Foucault, 2008, p 28).

Interplay of the Reason of the Party and the Neoliberal Rationality: Expanding

Neoliberal Exceptions

After the crackdown of the pro-democracy demonstration at Tiananmen in 1989, the CCP needed to pursue a series of neoliberal measures to achieve economic development and avert ideological disputes. In other words, in order to ensure the CCP’s

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political monopoly, the Party had to take into account not only its own elites’ interest, but the interests of others, including “cadre-capitalists,” non-dissident human capitals, privileged urban citizens, etc. (Nonini, 2008). In fact, it is widely held that the CCP’s legitimacy, which enables it to rule more easily and efficiently, is now based on its performance, especially and dominantly its economic performance. This logic itself reflects a neoliberal calculation, that is, gauging the government’s validity on the economic grid (Foucault, 2008, p. 246); it also explains how the two rationalities – the neoliberal one and Reason of the Party – reconcile with each other in China. Admittedly, the neoliberal rationality and Raison d'état co-exist in other states and under other polities as well. Yet, the CCP’s zeal for power and its disproportional reliance on economic legitimacy dictate that the Party needs to strike a delicate balance between the competing rationalities and different governing measures they require.

To emphasize the interplay of the two rationalities and to better articulate the effects of the interplay, I borrow and adapt A. Ong’s (2006) concept of neoliberal exceptions. The author used the term “neoliberalism as exception” to refer to the neoliberal governing practices in countries where neoliberalism itself was “not the general characteristics of governing” or not the “normative order” (Ong, 2006, p. 3). She exemplified neoliberal exceptions with the creation of “Special Economic Zones” and

“Special Administration Regions” in some Asian countries, including China. In my study,

I use the “exception” not to refer to a territory or a space, but an abstract “sphere” – including culture or a certain type of culture, such as leisure culture and contemporary

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Chinese art – to which economic calculations and market logic are applied, and in which people are not subjected to command and coercions but are guided to govern themselves.

The “neoliberal exception” concept is useful in this research for two reasons.

First, with this term “expanding neoliberal exceptions,” I want to emphasize the gradual process with which the CCP has adopted the neoliberal rationality and applied it to new spheres since the early 1990s. After the Cultural Revolution (1956-1966), China experienced a “liberalization” period from 1978 to 1989; it was also a time when disputes were aroused among top CCP leaders concerning which fields – economic, cultural, and political – should be liberalized. The 1989 Tiananmen crackdown brought the liberalization period to an end. As left-leaning leaders occupied the central government, ideological control was tightened and even the economic reforms were temporarily suspended. Market-oriented reforms and opening-up policies resumed before long, as

Deng Xiaoping urged focus on economic development in his 1992 South Talk. Cultural liberalization and political reforms, however, were no longer part of the discussion.

Nevertheless, market logic and economic calculations were gradually applied to non- economic spheres, including culture, which used be regarded as the “superstructure” separate from the “economic base.” In the mid-late 1990s, leisure culture was included in the government agenda when the Party promoted the intensification of consumerism.

Entering the 2000s, contemporary art that used to be kept underground was also incorporated into neoliberal exceptions as the political authority sought to develop CCI.

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Secondly, I use the expression “neoliberal exception” to imply the persistent

Reason of the Party, which used to work mainly “beyond” the exceptions when the exceptions were few, and which now works mainly within them, as will be explored in

Chapter 6. In fact, China’s articulation of neoliberal rationality and the Reason of the

Party are mutually reliant. The neoliberal mentality has been promoted in society by the

CCP to reinforce its rule, and it is also through the increasing of neoliberal exceptions that the Reason of the Party as a commonly held mentality has been reinforced among many people, who thank the CCP for all these changes.

Recognizing the persistence and pervasiveness of Reason of the Party is crucial to understanding artists’ reactions toward the neoliberal rationality and concerning governing practices. As argued later in this chapter, artists are not only guided to adopt the neoliberal rationality or economic calculations but also pushed – though not forced – to do so. They are guided in the sense that the emergence of new spheres of neoliberal exceptions provide them with the freedom of choice that is restricted in other public spheres, as well as opportunities of getting rich, which enable them to better enjoy the freedom. They are forced in the sense that once they pose a “threat” to the political regime – or only being suspected of demonstrating such potential – they are excluded from neoliberal exceptions and might well be subjected to the management mechanisms of a police state, as exemplified by many cases through this chapter and the next. In short, it would be oversimplifying the case to attribute artists’ lack of resistance to the prevalence of the neoliberal rationality, or to the “triumph of capital.”

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The Emergence of the First Artist Village in 1990

This section mainly addresses the emergence of the earliest arts cluster, the

Yuanmingyuan artists’village (called Yuanmingyuan for short in the following). The artist village was located across from the adjacent Fuyuanmen () and Yuanmingyuan villages (). This area was in the Haidian District and was in close proximity to two of the most prestigious universities in China: Peking University and Tsinghua

University. A couple of artists had gathered in this area since the late 1980s. They rented rooms or small houses from local villagers, and they were followed by more peers at the beginning of the 1990s. Before long, this small area became an Arcadia of artists. Artists self-named it Yuanmingyuan artist village. Ritualistically, they selected a village head and a deputy head, who were among the earlier artist inhabitants and were relatively older. As an artist community, Yuanmingyuan started with less than 20 artists in 1990. In 1992, when it was reported by the media and was first known to society, it had around 50 artist residents. More than 200 artists had lived in Yuanmingyuan before it disappeared in 1995.

The majority of the artists were born in the 1960s and 1970s; the average age was approximately 26 and 27. Around 25 artists were local residents of Beijing; the rest were from all over the country (Jin, 1996).

The Singularity of Yuanmingyuan: A Community of Self-identified Blind Drifters

Back in the 1990s, these artists were derogatorily called blind drifters (mangliu

) in society, just as other unemployed migrants. They were “blind” because their migration was not state-planned or state-permitted, thereby it only counted as aimless

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“drifting.” The term “blind drifters” underlined one’s illegitimacy of mobility, and it could be used to refer to people with various occupations, including beggars, junk dealers, vendors, farmers, and artists. To some extent, artists and other migrants indeed had much in common with regard to the ways they lived at their destinations: they did not hold regular jobs and thus were not affiliated to work units, nor did they have stable incomes to support themselves. Moreover, instead of being part of local communities or grassroots administrative units, they formed their own communities, based on their birthplaces or occupations, in shabby suburban areas. Yet, “blind drifters” was not just a prevailing term used to describe a group of people sharing some common traits. It was a discourse that functioned to cast this group of “abnormal” people to the bottom of society and subjected them to punishments, such as custody and repatriation. “Blind drifters” could not enjoy the same rights as legal local residents. For this reason, most of them were eager to shed off this identity and to be accepted into mainstream society.

Artists, who usually had a higher level of literacy, seemed to have more reasons to loathe this term that denied their expertise and personal values. However, many artists appropriated the contemptuous term and self-identified as blind drifters, or they simply chose to live like blind drifters, because being blind drifters was their way to resist the system that sought to penetrate all aspects of people’s lives. It is in this particular sense that the artist village was unique to other spontaneously formed migrant communities despite their commonalities. To Yuangmingyuan artists, the village was their utopia, and they still discuss this earliest artist community with strong nostalgia.

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The singularity of the Yuanmingyuan was inseparable from the way its inhabitants handled the term “blind drifters.” In order to fully understand this singularity, it is necessary to explore the following questions: how “blind drifters” were produced, how this term functioned as a subjugating discourse in the late 1980s and especially in the early 1990s, and how the artists responded to the discourse. Answers to these questions help to better explain the emergence and disappearance of artist villages, which would be discussed in length in later sections.

The production of “blind drifters.” “Blind drifters” was a prevailing term people used to call spontaneous migrants who sought to live and work in places where they were not entitled to. The term derived from a series of policies issued in the late

1950s by the central government “to prevent and curb the blind drift of farmers into cities” (Y. Zhang, 2003). It was widely used in society and the media since the 1980s, when some barriers of migration were lifted and the number of migrants increased rapidly. At first, the term “blind drifters” mainly referred to farmers, who abandoned their assigned agricultural duties to move from rural areas to cities and townships. During the

1980s and 1990s, as urban-to-urban migration became more common than before, the coverage of the term expanded accordingly.

Blind drifters as a social phenomenon was produced by Chinese government’s population management mechanisms, especially the household registration system, or hukou system (), which was put into effect in 1958 –and is still effective –as well as the temporary residence regulation attached to it. Hukou is divided into two types:

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the agricultural one and non-agricultural one. The latter is associated with a series of social welfare services for which agricultural hukou holders are not eligible. Under the planned economy, hukou basically recognized people as permanent residents in certain areas, usually their birthplaces. According to the Regulation of Hukou Registration installed in 1958, in order to live outside one’s hukou location for more than three days, one was required to contact the local hukou office to register for a temporary stay.8 In practice, one actually needed official permission to travel to another place, without which one could not purchase train tickets or stay at hotels. For an agricultural hukou holder, without permission, he/she could not even acquire ration stamps that were required to buy meals in a city but were only issued to non-agricultural hukou holders (Wong, 1994). In short, the hukou system was designed to prohibit unplanned population mobility, and especially to prevent farmers from migrating into townships and cities. Migrations were always state-planed or based on official approval, otherwise they were considered as

“blind.”

In the late 1970s, a series of market-oriented economic reforms was launched, which required greater population mobility and a more natural ratio of rural and urban labor distribution. Therefore, the severe control over labor mobility was gradually relaxed. In October 1984, the State Council issued a new policy that allowed farmers, under certain conditions, to live in townships and cities to seek non-agricultural

8 This procedure, however, was not required for non-agricultural hukou holders who were to stay in rural areas.

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occupations there. Although some were able to transfer their hukou to townships, most migrants were not eligible for the transfer and thus they moved without changing their hukou registrations (H. Yang, 2000). Aiming at this newly emerging phenomenon, the temporary residence regulation was updated correspondingly in July 1985, and the temporary residence permit was introduced. The permit was required for temporary stays for over three months by any person sixteen years of age or older (Regulations on

Temporary Residents of Cities and Townships, 1985). The temporary residence permit system, as well as the Resident Identity Card system also initiated in 1985, not only allowed labors to flux relatively more easily, but also functioned as a new mechanism to control and manage migrants.

However, too much population mobility was also unwanted; temporary residence permit regulations – designed by local officials thus different from city to city – usually had specific stipulations on permit applications and leveled a fee on applicants, making the permits difficult and expensive to obtain. For example, the application usually required supporting documents from a third party – such as a work unit or a local resident landlord; the permit needed to be renewed every one or two years – and it involved a monthly or annual fee (See: Government of Shanghai Municipality,1984, 1988;

Government of Beijing Municipality, 1985; Government of Guangdong Province, 1989).

These rigorous regulations kept many migrants from applying for permits, especially those who did not come to cities for pre-arranged employment and failed to find jobs soon enough, or cheap laborers who could not afford monthly fees.

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Strictly speaking, “blind drifters” were migrants who did not transfer their hukou registrations and did not obtain temporary residence permits.9 Once found, these migrants were subjected to administrative punishment. Local police forces used their discretion when deciding punishments; the blind drifters might be taken into custody, be repatriated at their own cost, be asked for a large ransom, or be sent to administrative detention – re- education through labor (laojiao ). In short, the high bar over migrants’s documentation as well as the punishments were implemented in the late 1980s and prevailed in the 1990s, when the political authority sought to contain domestic migrations and to further control migrants.

In order to survive in cities, “blind drifters” tended to settle down in suburbs, where police inspections were relatively loose and cheaper rent was available (F. Xu,

2009). Artists also aggregated at the Fuyuanmen and Yuanmingyuan Villages and formed their own artist village. There were many other spontaneous villages scattered in places where urban and rural areas met, such as the “Zhejiang Village,” whose residents migrated from the Zhejiang Province, and the “rag village,” whose residents were from the Henan Province and usually worked as junk dealers (Cui and Chen, 2014).

“Blind drifters” as a discourse. In a sense, migrants without temporary residence permits were outliers of the resident registration system. Their whereabouts and undertakings were difficult to track, which the CCP viewed as unstable factors. Yet, they

9 There lacks an official definition for “blind drifters,” thus, the scope of “blind drifters” could be easily stretched in practice. More discussions on the scope issue can be find in the following sub-section.

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were captured under and governed by the discourse of “blind drifters.” This term revived in the mid-1980s as the number of migrants expanded. Entering the 1990s, the CCP felt a desperate need to increase social stability and controllability after the Tiananmen crackdown. It was during this time that the term “blind drifters” became most popular in society, due to its frequent use in all kinds of media.

Not only were these migrants referred to as “blind,” but they were accused of crimes and other disgraces in cities. According to the stereotype, migrants spit and littered everywhere; they wandered on streets and begged; their places of dwelling were viewed as “dirty, disorderly, and bad” (), quite uninhabitable and hazardous to their neighborhoods; and they committed crimes – from theft to robbery to murder –when they were unable to support themselves. In fact, a new implication of the term “blind drifter” was brought forward at the 1990 Spring Festival Gala, when a famous comedian uttered the punchline of her comedy show, Over-quota Birth Guerrillas: “blind drifters

(mang-liu), not far from hooligans (liu-mang)!”10 The Spring Festival Gala was held by

China Central Television, and it had tens of thousands of audiences all over the country, as people had very limited choices of entertainment back then. This comedy show was particularly well received, thus the term “blind drifter” – loaded with the connotation of hooligans – quickly gained unprecedented popularity. In this way, “blind drifters,” who as underprivileged migrants already being deprived of various social welfares, were then

10 The term “blind drifter,” or “mang liu,” pronounce exactly as the reverse of hooligan, or “liu mang” in

Chinese.

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successfully constructed as a group of less civilized, crime-prone people, a threat to urban decency and security.

The dangerousness associated with blind drifters justified how the group of people had been treated in society. In the 1990s, blind drifters almost became the common enemy to local residents. They needed to hide from police inspections and to deal with humiliating inquiries from residents’ committee members (jumin weiyuan hui

)11, and they could also be reported by their neighbors. Therefore, avoiding various and unpredictable hostilities from local residents was yet another reason that these migrants tended to gather in suburban areas.

Since the early-mid 1990s, the term “blind drifters” was usually used either interchangeably or together with the “three withouts” (sanwu ), namely, people who were without legal documentations, without fixed dwelling places, and without “proper” occupations (zhengdang zhiye ) or incomes (Ministry of Public Security, 1995).

The legal documents included the resident identity card, the temporary residence permit, and the employment permit12; migrants were supposed to carry all three documentations

11 The residents’ committee is a grassroots-level mass organization with the goal of “self management, self education and self service.” Its main duties include assisting the police to maintain public orders, as well as communicating residents’ demands and suggestions to the local government.

12 The resident identity card (juming shenfen zheng, ) system was launched in 1984. It recognizes a person as an individual rather than a member of a household, as hukou does. The word

“resident” in the title refers to the Chinese people, who are officially called “residents of PRC,” and the resident identity card does not show holders’ places of abode.

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with them. Under close scrutiny, the term “three withouts” fabricated a forced association by juxtaposing three conditions that were not necessarily related. It assumed that one who did not hold all required documents did not have a fixed place to dwell nor a “proper” job to support oneself, and vice-versa. The term “three withouts” considerably stretched the scope of “blind drifters”: in actual practice, it was not uncommon for people who fit – or were accused of fitting – into any of the three “withouts” were treated as blind drifters.

The terms “blind drifters” and “three withouts” were still used frequently in the early

2000s until they gradually diminished when the 1982 Custody and Repatriation Methods was abolished in 2003.

Artists: lives as blind drifters in a utopia. It was when “blind drifters” became most widely condemned in society that many artists chose to become blind drifters. Most migrant artists were typical blind drifters. They did not have Beijing Hukou, and for various reasons, such as lacking necessary documentations or trying to lower the costs of living, many did not have the temporary residence permit. Being self-employed, these artists did not have “proper” employments according to social norms, and neither did they have stable incomes. Research participant Green, an artist who came to Beijing in 1991 and moved to Yuanmingyuan in 1993, articulated his quandary back then in my interview with him. He was among those who could not afford a temporary residence permit, as it would cost him more than 100 RMB, or twice as much as his monthly living expenses.

Before moving to Yuanmingyuan, Green had to live with frequent visits of the residents’ committee members in the neighborhood, who would go to his door and confront him

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with aggressive questions such as why he came to Beijing and whether he had a job or a resident permit. Once the artist failed to respond to these questions adequately, and then the police were called. Green was warned by the policemen to leave as soon as possible, otherwise he might be taken to police custody. The artist recalled that after this incident he moved to Yuanmingyuan. It was not because there was no inspection in the village, but he felt less vulnerable staying with other migrant artists (Green, personal communication,

June 8, 2014).

Such an experience was quite common among artists. This was one of the reasons that artists came to the Yuanmingyuan artist village. In this suburban area they did not have to face harassments from residents’ committee members. There were two policemen in charge of the small area, whose daily routine included touring the village and checking what these artists were up to. The two policemen treated the artists well and would usually chat with them. This could be because, on the one hand, unlike residents’ committees who had to deal with all kinds of “blind drifters” in their neighborhoods, the policemen knew that dwelling here were artists, who would not commit actual crimes. On the other hand, the existence of an artist village, as well as other migrants’ villages, was for a time acquiesced by the local government, as it was an effective way to gather and maintain artists in one area, which in turn facilitated closer monitoring.

For the artists, the village was not only a safer place to stay, but it also provided them with a most desirable way of life in the early 1990s. Of note is the fact that most artists migrated to Beijing not because of hardships or ambitions for a more affluent

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future. Rather, they had either quit their previous work units, or had just graduated from school but had no intention to find themselves a work unit (Green, personal communication, June 8, 2014). They struggled to live by selling artwork, which did not have a large audience in society and were not tolerated by the political authority back then. In other words, these artists gave up more secure lives to endure all the predicaments involved being blind drifters. At times they even had to accept financial or material supports from their better-off peers or people who showed sympathy and respect toward their struggles and idealism.

Nevertheless, being “blind drifters” meant freer ways of living. If the official use of the term highlighted migrants’ “blindness,” then the artists were attracted by the idea of being “drifters.” Artists appropriated the term and self-identified as blind drifters, with the alternative emphasis. Artist Gao Bo, for example, while feeling helpless to what he was called, expressed a willingness to maintain the “blind drifter” status. For him, this term equaled freelance, a concept new to China in the early 1990s. Gao went on to comment that the concept of purposefully becoming blind drifters was rare to most

Chinese people, who were always too ready to nail themselves down to assigned positions (W. Wu, 1990). My own interviews as well as interviews done by others show that many artists possessed mixed feelings toward the term “blind drifters.” Yet, whether they refused to be called so or appropriated the term, these artists deliberately unplugged themselves from their previous working and living environments, in which every aspect of everyone’s life was subjected to the supervision of various grassroots administrative

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organizations. Being blind drifters was artists’ way to resist the political system that sought to keep tight control of the population and to diminish uncontrollable outliers through all possible manners.

Yuanmingyuan was an ideal place for these artists. It was a shelter to shield them from frequent insulting inquiries, and it was also where they pursued their interests in modern culture, experimented with new art forms, exchanged ideas with peers, and supported each other in times of difficulty. Therefore, although Yuanmingyuan’s rents grew with its fame, it still became the first choice for many artists; not only did artists who had already drifted in Beijing gather to the Yuanmingyuan area, but many directly came to Beijing to live in this village.

The Yuanmingyuan artist village was a unique existence. Its residents came to

Beijing for freer ways of life, rather than purely for livelihoods. These artists consciously chose lives that did not conform to any prevailing social norms, such as to find more

“proper” jobs – proper in the sense that they were endorsed by the state – or to “get rich soon,” an idea that prevailed since the mid-1980s to the 1990s. They lived in poverty, but they were more self-determined then in any normal work unit. From this perspective,

Yuanmingyuan – unlike other spontaneous migrants’ villages – was not an expedient. It symbolized freer lifestyles that artists pursued, and it was a manifesto of the free-minded artists.

The formation of the Yuanmingyuan artist village was contingent, yet conditions were mature in 1990 for the appearance of spontaneous gatherings of self-employed

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artists in Beijing. The next section discusses historical conditions that prepared the emergence of the first arts clusters after the Cultural Revolution.

Historical Conditions that Produced the Early Artist Villages

One can look all the way back to the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) or even the founding of the People’s Republic of China (1949) to fully explore the historical conditions that made possible the emergence of the Yuanmingyuan artist village. To keep this paper focused, I started from the year 1978, when Deng Xiaoping had just risen to power and initiated the Reform and Opening-up policy, or “domestic reform and opening up to the outside world.” The period from 1978 to 1989 stimulated entrepreneurial spirits among people, which laid the groundwork for the Party to promote neoliberal rationality starting in the 1990s and prelude the prevalence of the neoliberal mentality in society.

However, I did not suggest that neoliberalism was the goal of CCP leaders from the very beginning. Quite to the contrary, in this period, the CCP was exploring and experimenting the “right formula” to reform and revive China; opinions varied as for where China should go, and no one knew what China would become.

The Reform and Opening-up policy, together with other policies in the 1980s that were launched partially due to power struggles in the CCP, prepared the political, cultural, and socio-economic conditions for the emergence of the first arts cluster. Strictly speaking, it was impossible to draw clear lines between the political, cultural and socio- economic spheres as they were mutually infiltrated and reciprocally determined. To do justice to this specific episode in a genealogy of arts clusters, I loosely use an overarching

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category of cultural and socio-economic conditions, in which I discuss political decisions and events that resulted in or arose from certain conditions.

Cultural condition: cultural fever and post-Tiananmen ideological control.

As China was opened to foreign investments, Western thoughts and philosophies as well as other cultural products also poured in and caused a domestic cultural shock, first and foremost among intellectuals and students. In fact, during the 1980s Western culture kept changing peoples’ perceptions and ways of life. In times when ideological control was tight, such as in the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign in 1983, new ideas fermented underground on small scales. When the political atmosphere was relaxed – such as during

1985 to 1987 –grant topics on Western modernism and China’s modernization were debated heatedly in society. A cultural fever (wenhuare ) swept China, and the

New Wave art movement (xinmeishu yundong ) was its manifestation in the arts. The 1980s was also a decade full of uncertainties and possibilities. Baptized by

Western modern cultures, intellectuals, writers, artists, students, as well as many others with or without formal cultural occupations were all concerned about the future of China; they pursued political modernization in addition to their own occupations and specializations. All of this prepared the liberalized minds, who willingly became freelance drifting artists after the military power crushed bodies and dreams on the

Tiananmen Square in 1989, an event also known as the June Fourth Incident. In Chapter

4 I provided a more detailed historical background of this period. In this sub-section, I focus mainly on two episodes: 1985-1987, the most liberated moment in the 1980s, in

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which cultural fever as well as the New Wave art movement took place, and 1989-1992, the post-Tiananmen period that featured severe ideological control and an extremely conservative cultural policy. The previous episode produced many artists and art lovers that were equipped with non-conformist minds and free spirits, and the latter episode changed these people into self-exiled blind drifters.

Cultural fever and the New Wave art movement. The Anti-Spiritual Pollution

Campaign launched by Deng gradually waned in 1984. Then, on December 29, 1984, a speech compiled at the behest of Hu Yaobang and his soft-line colleagues was delivered at the opening ceremony of the Fourth Congress of the Chinese Writers Association. The speech euphemistically expressed Hu’s disagreement with Deng’s left-leaning line that dominated the first half of the 1980s, and it also promised writers and other culture workers a more liberated environment for creation.

This enabling message quickly opened paths for the enthusiasm that culture lovers and practitioners had held back for years under harsher political control. People passionately engaged themselves in exploring topics of philosophy, aesthetics, history of thought, etc., and a “culture fever” soon swept the society. In the cultural fever, many cultural “circles” (quanzi, ) emerged; some took the form of private salons or book clubs, and some were more formal editorial committees registered under official institutions or publishing houses. These cultural circles not only facilitated idea exchanges among themselves, but they also brought new thoughts to the whole society, mostly by means of translation and publication (Su, 1992; Y. W. Zhang, 2006). Though

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the particular foci and perspectives of cultural circles varied, a main theme of the cultural fever was to make reference to western culture to criticize traditional Chinese culture and values, and by criticizing cultural tradition in imperial China, people alluded to the necessity of China achieving cultural and political modernization (J. Wang, 2009; D. Wu,

1998). The cultural fever was culture-oriented, yet its implications were not merely cultural. Culture became the immediate focus because it was in the cultural sphere that the Party’s control was loosened, whereas the ideological and political sphere was still dominated by unshakable socialism. Political appeals were thus expressed through cultural pursuits and criticisms, and traditional Chinese culture became a particularly easy target: it was once condemned by the Party, and it allowed participants to justify their urges for deeper reforms without making direct reference to more recent political situations.

Being part of the cultural fever and its manifestation in the arts, the New Wave art movement demonstrated similar features. New Wave artists – most of whom were young teachers, students, or recent graduates from major art institutions – were greatly influenced by avant-garde genres, especially surrealism, Dada, and conceptual art. They spontaneously formed into groups to foster their artistic pursuits; as groups, they developed their signature styles, organized symposiums, compiled manifestos, and held exhibitions. From 1985 to 1987 when the movement receded, there were more than 100 self-organized art groups that involved at least 2000 artists (Gao, 1998). Together, they constituted a repertoire that was entirely different from both the orthodox art or the

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propagandist art. Much like their peers in other cultural fields, many art groups and individual artists displayed an intellectual slant; reflected in their artworks were usually philosophical quests and cultural reflections. Without directly challenging the cultural principle of “serving the people, serving the socialist course,” artists explored new styles to serve their own understandings of art, and to work for China’s cultural modernization.

They denounced traditional Chinese painting and advocated new art styles for the new era, an era that grew out of modern, or western, aesthetic values and concepts of art.

Enlightened official arts journals played an essential role in promoting the New

Wave art movement. Two of the three leading publications in the arts, Art Trends (

) and Newspaper of China’s Fine Art (), were established in 1985; both were dedicated to introducing the newest domestic art trends and recent western genres.

The third one, Jiangsu Art Periodical (), was reorganized and re-oriented its focus to the New Wave in the same year. In a relaxed political atmosphere during 1985 and 1986, the three presses exercised their latitudes to the upmost to spread new ideas brewed in the movement, to stimulate debates on the status quo and future of Chinese art, and to broadcast art activities in a timely manner (Peng, 2008; Van Dijk, 1991; You

2008).

Strictly speaking, the New Wave art movement displayed an elite inclination. It was not a concern of the artists to spread their ideas among the people or to be understood by the people; artists’ pursuits and appeals were targeted upwards, not downwards. Nevertheless, the elitism did not mean that the art movement could not have

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a great influence on society. People were in fact thrilled by the new things springing up in the mid-1980s; they needed not be particularly targeted or catered to by artists, because many were automatically attracted to the arts. On the other hand, the art styles that were popular then also allured more people to the world of art. Green was studying art at a middle school in his hometown in 1985. From art magazines and newspapers, he learned about avant-garde ideas and the art movement that was taking place in bigger cities. He realized with surprise that there were other unimaginable ways of doing art: one did not need profound skills in order to make art, and art could sometimes be “messed up with.”13 This message was quite encouraging to the teenager, and Green decided to follow the trend. With his classmates, he formed a small group to discuss grand art topics and practice art. In 1991, Green went to Beijing, and later moved to Yuanmingyuan

(Green, personal communication, June 8, 2014).

Artists and art lovers were not only drawn to the new phenomena and new possibilities in art, but they were also attracted by the typical or stereotypical lifestyle of artists. For example, Green recollected that his art teacher “always dressed eccentrically, wore his hair long, drank and danced with friends a lot, and made very messy art.” The teacher’s behaviors might have landed him in prison for the “crime of hooliganism”

13 By “messed up with art,” Green might be refer to the works of Robert Rauschenberg, who visited China in 1985 and whose works refreshed people’s conceptions on art.

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during the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign in 1983.14 In 1985, while these practices were still very alien to society, at least there was room for this kind of behavior to exist,

Green generalized (Green, personal communication, June 8, 2014). Despite the fact that a more freestyle way of life was almost certainly more attractive to young people, it should be remembered that this self-induced alienation spoke of one’s choice of identity. Young people were eager to adopt a (stereo)typical lifestyle to demonstrate their modernized mindsets, to associate themselves with their peers, and most significantly, to sever themselves from the rigid life that represented an ossified political period.

Post-Tiananmen purge. The domestic ideological relaxation during 1985 and

1986 and drastic changes in the international arena encouraged college students to participate in demonstrations against inflation and corruption, and to ask for freedom of speech and democracy. The first demonstration was set off by the sudden decease of the former Chairman Hu Yaobang in April 1989. More demonstrations, including students’ hunger strikes, followed and occurred in many cities. Finally, on June 4, 1989, protestors were fired upon at Tiananmen Square. Five days after the tragedy, Deng Xiaoping delivered a talk that was saturated with the Reason of the Party. He generalized the

Party’s mistake as failing to insist on the Four Cardinal Principles and failing to conduct

14 Hooliganism was recognized as a crime in the Criminal Law of the PRC during 1979 and 1997. It was known for its vagueness and all-inclusiveness. It was also called a “sack crime” in society, meaning that all kinds of crime could be swept into the sack. Offenders of hooliganism were usually considered to be disturbing public order. During the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign, many were arrested or even put to death under hooliganism.

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effective ideological education among the Chinese people, and he also commented that this turmoil would help the Party to correct its past faults. Deng’s standpoint put the policy vacillation since the late 1970s to a sudden end. The Political Reform no longer seemed to be possible as the soft-line political leaders, including then-president Zhao

Ziyang, were removed from the central government, and hard-liners seized all the important positions. In fact, as scholars have pointed out, not only was there no political reform proposed in the 1990s, but those initiated in the late 1980s, such as the separation of the Party and the government, were also discontinued (Y. Huang, 2008; Wu & Ma,

2012).

Measures were immediately taken to correct the Party’s faults in terms of bourgeois liberalization. Ideological control was extremely tight in the few years after the

Tiananmen crackdown, and all of society was affected by a cultural purge. Investigations were initiated to discover counter revolutionists; people involved in the demonstrations were thrown into jail, and liberal-minded reporters, hosts, editors, and teachers, those who held sympathy toward students demonstrations, were all removed from their jobs. In the meantime, remedial measures toward the Party’s “faults” that Deng pointed out were prescribed: the top leader in charge of ideology required media to be the mouthpiece of the Party, to report positive propagandist examples, and to lead public opinions; the acting Ministry of Culture proposed to continue the cultural purge at all costs, and his predecessors were openly denounced for supporting cultural pluralism (R. Li, 1989;

Barme, 1999). Media was completely muzzled for a couple of years and Western

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thoughts were no longer mentioned as they were easily associated with bourgeois- liberalization, whereas Mao’s thoughts and the traditional Chinese culture – those that had been criticized during the cultural fever – took dominance. With regard to the arts, newspapers and magazines that played an important role in the New Wave art movement were shut down. Newspaper of China’s Fine Art and Arts Translations (meishu yicong

) were closed down; Fine Art and Jiangsu Art Periodical survived, but was subjected to an editorial regroup and re-oriented its focus (Peng, 2008). The avant-garde genres that emerged during the New Wave art movement became taboo, and they were severely attacked by the art press during 1990 and 1991 (Van Dijk, 1992).

In retrospect, within several year’s span, people had experienced the most liberated moment and then the most harsh period since the end of the cultural revolution.

Those who held high hopes toward China’s cultural and political modernization in the mid 1980s were completely disillusioned by the series of containment measures the government adopted after the massacre. A great number of them chose to leave for western countries; many quit their jobs or ended their intellectual pursuits and went into business; and more students denied assigned positions upon graduation. In all matters, these people detached themselves from politics and the political regime.

Artists were among these non-cooperators, although they were relatively less impacted by the purge as were writers and intellectuals. In 1990, several self-employed artists who had been “drifting” in Beijing after graduating from arts institutions moved to the Yuanmingyuan village and initiated the story of this artist village (Jin, 1996). These

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artists had started to pursue freer lives before the Tiananmen crackdown; since 1990, they were joined by new art graduates, art editors that were fired during the cultural purge, and art lovers who quit their various positions and devoted themselves to art. In late 1992, when the political atmosphere finally loosened, Yuanmingyuan was reported about by newspapers and started to draw arts practitioners from all of the country. Later, another artist village, Dongcun, was formed in inner suburban Beijing and focused on performance art.

Counter-culture entities. These early artist villages existed as counter culture entities. After the crackdown, Mao’s thoughts and the ideology-oriented realism style revived, whereas the avant-garde that thrived in the 1980s through arts magazines and newspapers completely lost its foothold in public art venues. The culture liberalization during the 1980s made it impossible for avant-garde artists to forsake new art genres and return to ossified sanctioned art. Therefore, they formed their own communities and moved their arts practices underground. This was how contemporary Chinese art started: it was positioned – by artists themselves, the government, and later art buyers – as the opposite of official art from the very beginning, and it was branded with labels such as

“underground,” “unofficial,” or “banned.”

While the cultural/political changes from the 1980s to the early 1990s explained key conditions for the emergence of the Yuanmingyuan artist village, they formed only part of the story, and it would be too romantic to deduce that artists would rather starve as blind drifters than give up their artistic dreams or cooperate with authority. In fact, when

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the cultural fever – an effect of the cultural liberalization – prepared their minds, economic reforms also provided them with more incentives to leave their previous lives.

Social-economic conditions. Economic reforms constituted the major part of

China’s liberalization during the 1980s, when cultural reforms were suspended at times and political reforms were generally limited to institutionalization instead of democratization or establishing the Rule of Law (Shirk, 1993). It was the economic stagnation, rather than anything else, that was identified as the most urgent problem

China needed to solve, and economic development was designated as the focus of the country since 1978. Under Deng’s slogan of “build socialism with Chinese characters,” the market economy that had only been associated with Capitalism was adopted, whereas the state-ownership and state-planning characteristic of socialism gradually receded, though they were never abolished.

The economic reforms started first in rural areas, and a non-state sector was created parallel to the state sector. The village commune system was replaced by a contract responsibility system, meaning that farmers could lease communal lands and sell surpluses at markets. Farmers thus became the first cadre of entrepreneurs, and with increasing savings, they started to form township and village enterprises (TVEs). The rural reform since the beginning of the 1980s proved to be very successful; driven by the fast growth of TVEs, the non-state sector that was controlled by market rules rather than central planning quickly expanded (Cao, 2000; Harvey, 2007; Y. Huang, 2008).

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At the same time, market relationships were gradually introduced to state owned enterprises (SOEs): the state cut its financial supports to these enterprises and the latter could retain part of their interests. The contract system was also adopted, meaning that the workers no longer had employment tenures and that their children could no longer

“inherit” their positions. This reform, however, made many SOEs that were “too big to fall” difficult to make ends meet, as not enough profits were made while state supports kept dropping. Similar changes took place in the culture sphere. Cultural organizations, where many art graduates used to find jobs, become increasingly self-financed during the mid-1980s as state subsidies diminished. Though these organizations had to incorporate more market strategies in order to survive, their market transformations were usually not very successful. At the same time, “cultural workers” became contracted employees, and social welfares associated with the planned economy also gradually disappeared (Krause,

2004).

While the rewards of working in state-owned organizations shrank quickly, the tradeoffs lingered. For example, ideological controls from the propaganda apparatus were still very strong in most cultural organizations, and the very conservative working environments were generally incompatible to new thoughts and genres. In addition, these state work units, or danwei, bore many characteristics of “total institutions,” in that most aspects of life were conducted in collective places owned by the unit, witnessed or accompanied by many co-workers, and monitored by the same single authority (Shenkar,

1994). Although work units became comparatively less penetrating into people’s lives as

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social welfares dwindled, they were far from collapsing and still functioned as powerful disciplinary organs through the 1980s and early 1990s. Therefore, between the declining state-sector with fewer benefits yet no less control and the thriving non-state sector that at least ensured freer lives – if not better monetary rewards as well – more and more people started to choose the latter, or at least were more reluctant to join the former. The several artists that had started to “drift” in Beijing since the late 1980s, mentioned in the previous sub-sector, were some examples.

Resistance and Individual Entrepreneurship

To generalize, the cultural and economic conditions were ripe for the emergence of the first batch of artist villages, Yuanmingyuan in 1990 and later Dongcun in 1992.

Artists rented houses from local villagers and pursued life as blind drifters as a resistance to the political system. It was a resistance in two senses. First, the cultural purge had made the cultural sphere extremely conservative; rather than accustoming themselves to the new norm, artists formed their own communities to pursue art genres that were not tolerated by the authority. Second, artists abandoned a “normal” way of life by unplugging themselves from previous working and living environments; they gathered at places where there was not a single superior to monitor their lives, though they had to endure aggressive questions from the police and suspicion from local residents.

While there were strong incentives for artists to become blind drifters, it is equally important to note that they were able to support themselves by selling artwork because of the marketization reforms and the opening-up policies. Some artists started to sell their

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works in the late 1980s, despite the absence of a mature art market. In Yuanmingyuan, artists displayed artwork and organized small exhibitions in public places15, though sometimes they would be driven away by police. More frequently, they opened their studios to potential buyers who learned about the villages through various channels.

Many of the art buyers were foreigners from the west, including embassy officials and tourists. These buyers on the one hand were curious about contemporary art from this oriental land, and on the other hand held sympathies toward artists who were forced underground after the massacre. They purchased artwork directly from artists at prices that were very cheap for art, but still could mean a fortune to impoverished artists.

Embassy officers also helped artists hold exhibitions in their embassies, so that artists would not be harassed by the police. For this reason, Yuanmingyuan art was also called embassy art (Green, personal communication, June 8, 2014).

Selling artwork was not always easy and being self-sufficient was still a major challenge for many artists. At times, artists had to draw portraits for tourists at parks and sell their calligraphies on spring festival scrolls; sometimes they had to resort to family and better-off friends for monetary assistance (Jin, 1996). Realizing the odds of making a fortune and facing the constant pressure of making a living, artists increasingly took an

15 As reviewed in the previous chapter, without an official artist identity, these free-lance artists rarely had a chance to exhibit their works at state-owned art venues. On the other hand, private art galleries had just started to develop and were very few in number. Though these galleries provided artist with exhibition opportunities, especially from 1992 onward, most artists sold their works directly to art buyers without intermediaries (Green, personal communication, June 8, 2014).

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entrepreneurial stance, whether purposefully or not. To put it another way, they resisted the closed political system through individual entrepreneurship that usually brought with it a certain artistic and life autonomy though less financial security. Because of this, the market became their tool and the site of resistance. However, artists’ entrepreneurial spirits were increasingly constituted by the neoliberal rationality diffused in society after

1992, even more than the impetus to resist through being freelance artists, which, in turn, made the resistance paradoxical, as explored in the next section.

The Disappearance of Early Artist Villages in the Mid-Late 1990s

The Eviction of Artists from Artist Villages

In 1995, several Yuanmingyuan artists were involved in a fight after drinking in a restaurant. It created a big fuss and some got arrested under the crime of affray. Shortly thereafter, the police started to check the residency status of artists in the village, and, hardly surprising to anybody, most artists were “three withouts.” The police gave the artists a deadline to move out, after when they would face custody and repatriations.

Artists refused to leave at first, and tried to hide from police in the daytime; yet, after several rounds of arrests, it finally occurred to them that this time the police was determined to wipe the artist village out, so they packed their packages and left (Green, personal communication, June 8, 2014).

Hooliganism was a mere pretext for police action: fights were not news among these bohemian artists, and the police always knew that these artists were illegal residents. Yet, Yuanmingyuan artists were dispelled in 1995, and Dongcun artists were

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evicted from their village a year ago in 199416, a time when ideological control had already loosened compared to the first three years after the massacre. In fact, as reflected in various writings and previous interviews, people usually associated the eviction with two other incidents: an early rancor between the head of the artists and the police, and/or the pending World Conference of Women held in Beijing in 1995. The rancor could be traced back to 1993, when the head of the artist village, Yan Zhengxue, decided to sue the

Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau. Yan was mistaken for a thief and brutally treated by police as a three-without blind drifter. The dispute, as well as later injustices that occurred in Yan’s family, aroused the indignation of three hundred intellectuals, who signed an open protest letter. The incident was quickly quelled before it could cause a greater stir, and Yan was thrown into prison (Yan, 2006; Green, personal communication,

June 8, 2014). Though other Yuanmingyuan artists were not involved in this incident, many believed that the police, who had called off several exhibitions organized by artists, further realized what a single intellectual/artist was capable of doing and became more vigilant toward this community. Other people considered the eviction as part of the preparation for the 4th World Conference of Women organized by the United Nations, which was to be held in Beijing on September 1995. This conference was not a major gathering in any sense, and the 5th session never took place. Nevertheless, it was the first

16 The direct cause for the eviction was that an artist conducted a performance art in the nude. Though the performance was made in an artists’ gathering at an artists’ studio, the artist was detained by the police on the grounds of obscenity.

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large-scale global event that took place in China since the establishment of the PRC, thus bearing with it significant diplomatic importance. To prepare for the gathering, not only were luxurious infrastructures built, but villages where blind drifters gathered, places of

“dirty, disorderly, and bad,” were swept off for public security reasons. In addition to

Yuanmingyuan artist village, Zhejiang village and Xinjiang village also did not survive.

For this reason, some journalists and art historians considered that the eviction was not aimed at the artists’ group.

My purpose in generalizing the two incidents is not to diagnose the “real” reason for the eviction, as it is impossible to gauge the intention of those who made the administrative decisions. However, these incidents, as well as a series of other things that happened during the same period that seemed irrelevant to the eviction, reflected a changing relationship between artists and the authorities as the CCP recovered from the immediate aftermath of the 1989 crackdown, terminated reform measures implemented in the previous decade, and gradually adopted a neoliberal governing rationality. In the rest of the this section, I discuss how the power relation changed, and how this changed relationship had as its effect the disappearance of artist villages in Beijing in the latter half of the 1990s. Here, “disappearance” refers to not only the eviction of the first two artist villages, but also the lack of a re-emergence of artist village except for in the outer suburbs.

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Reasons for a Delayed Eviction: A Changing Power Relation under a New

Governing Rationality

New formula of modernization and new arrangement of legitimacy sources.

In the 1980s, the political authority held a mixed attitude toward artists, due to the intra- party power struggle. Opinions differed as to how much liberty should be granted to the cultural fields and whether more autonomy would complement or impede China’s modernity. On the other hand, artists, though constantly striving for artistic autonomy and cultural modernization, usually did not hold an anti-despotism stance. However, from

1989 to 1991 when the pro-democracy protests were referred to as an anti-party anti- socialism riot, the New Wave movement was associated with bourgeois-liberalization, and cultural pluralism was publicly denounced. Therefore, artists with new thoughts were pushed to the opposite side of the official culture. Disillusioned artists actively disconnected themselves from the all kinds of official institutions and sought to find new ways of living through the non-state, or market, sector.

This tension started to weaken in 1992, when Deng delivered his famous Southern

Talk. It is necessary to analyze the connotations of this talk – which shaped China’s development trajectory since then – in order to understand how a new power relation was formed. Deng was very unsatisfied with the halt of economic reform after 1989, thus in his southern tour, he urged the continuation of market-oriented economic reforms to achieve economic growth. According to Deng (1992/2011), economic growth was proved to be crucial, as it kept the society stable after the Tiananmen incident and spared China

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much turmoil. It was important also because it could help realize a common affluence, which was the final goal of socialism.

As Deng advocated for the priority of economic development, he especially urged people to “be bold” in economic reforms and to try new paths and risk new ventures. In addition, by using an example of a millionaire who got rich through a small business – selling sunflower seeds, a popular snack in China – Deng guaranteed people that this personal achievement was sustained and protected by new economic policies. In other words, Deng was actually promising private ownership, though he did not use this

“capitalist expression” directly, that people’s personal earnings would not be confiscated and re-distributed to “the working people,” as the CCP used to do to “land masters,” and that this new guideline would not be flipped and would continue to be carried out by the central government. This particular statement of Deng was addressed to people who had doubts on the Party’s standpoint and feared that China would regress toward the Cultural

Revolutionary practices. Those who thought this way were more than a few, so Deng’s attitude encouraged many to continuously seek for personal affluence.

The neoliberal rationality had never been more strongly implied in top Party leaders’ talks. This rationality did not grow out of nowhere. Deng recognized that it was economic reforms – rural reform during 1981 and 1983, and urban reform since 1984 – that created new spaces outside the planned economy for people to venture; people’s entrepreneurship not only brought about national economic development but also personal better-off, which in turn made the Tiananmen crackdown to some extent

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tolerable. China was spared an insurrection after the Tiananmen incident thanks to the improvements in people’s lives, as Deng put it himself. The CPC was thus spared the same fate of the Communist Parties in many Eastern European countries.

Taking into consideration Deng’s standpoint, which could be understood from his various talks and purges as discussed in Chapter 4 and earlier in this chapter, Deng was primarily concerned about the security and longevity of the Party’s rule. Thus, he perceived that there would be “no way out” unless “socialism is upheld, reforms are carried on, economy is developed and people’s lives are improved.” This reasoning was grounded in the Reason of the Party, but it naturally led to the strategy of creating more spaces to engage people in making money. As long as living standards were improved in comparison to the past, other concerns would slip away.

In this economic blueprint, Deng mentioned another point briefly: to stick to the

Four Cardinal Principles, because the correct line would ensure the economic growth as well as the country’s peace and stability in the long term. Unlike in his earlier talks, Deng did not mention “CCP’s leadership” directly, though this point was implied when he used the term “Four Cardinal Principles.” He went on to construct a causal relation between the correct (Party) line and the prosperity of the country. This connection demonstrated how the Reason of the Party was justified in the new period: instead of attributing economic development to people’s entrepreneurship and endeavors, Deng craftily gave the credit to his Party, whose rule guaranteed the economic leap, which in turn ensured

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social stability and people’s improved circumstances, thus should be supported by the people.

In fact, connoted in this talk were three sources of legitimacy for the CCP: economic performance, moral superiority, and ideological inheritance. Moral legitimacy was argued on the grounds that the Party would attack criminal activities and was capable of diminishing things of wickedness, thereby achieving “spiritual civilization” (jingshen wenming ) missed in capitalist states; and ideological legitimacy on the grounds that China’s socialist system was protected through people’s democratic dictatorship and a market economy was only a means to achieve the socialist ends.

Nevertheless, among the three, economic legitimacy was treated as the focus, the effectiveness of which had been testified through the aftermath of the 1989 crackdown, whereas the other two to some extent were supplements to guarantee that China’s marketization would be free of the consequences of “bourgeois liberalization” and would have the advantage of “spiritual civilization.” Here, the “formula” of China’s modernization reform was made clear: economic reforms – and only economic reforms – should be continued, and socialist heritages – such as the rule of the Party and the dictatorship against people’s “common enemies”–should be upheld to make sure, allegedly, that the Chinese society would not be corroded by side effects of the reforms.

Artists to the Party: cases of entrepreneurship and possible menace. The emphasis on economic reforms, which entailed further – though still restricted – marketization and privatization, encouraged people to become entrepreneur of themselves

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and to be less dependent on diminish social welfare. At the same time, the de-emphasis of cultural and ideological conformity suggested, in theory, that one would not be treated as the enemy unless one challenged the Four Cardinal Principles, or the rule of the Party. In other words, for artists who alienated themselves from the political system to pursue autonomy, they were not regarded as anti-Party anti-socialist, unless their activities or art works proved otherwise. Not only so, but their entrepreneurship was what the Party wanted to promote in the economic reforms. Yet, it does not mean the political authority reconciled with artists immediately, as it at least took time to decide whether contemporary art throated the political system or hamper socialist “spiritual civilization.”

As a result, the years between 1992 and1995 witnessed wide media coverage on the artist villages and the Police’s constant calling off artists’ self-organized exhibitions.

The first domestic report on Yuanmingyuan artist village was published on

China’s Youth Daily on May 1992, then related reports were quickly seen on other major newspaper and magazines, including Xinhua News, the most “official” media in China, a ministry-level department. Jiangsu Art Periodical, one of the three major paper media during the New wave art movement and made to re-focus on more conventional styles after 1989, selected Yuanmingyuan artist villages as one of top ten news in the art world in 1992. One of the most detailed reported was published on a magazine subordinated to the Xinhua News Agency. In this report, artist villages were regarded as a novel social phenomenon, not in the sense that blind drifters gathered in village, but in that these educated artists gave up the highly-wanted “iron rice bowls” in their previous work units

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– paying no attention to others’ gossips – to pursue their art dreams. This report recorded the backgrounds of the artists, reasons that they were attracted to Yuanmingyuan, their current lives in the village, and also, though briefly, how they strove to live through the market (Yin, 1993). Reports of this kind not only presented to a wider scope of readers a romanticized, self-sufficient Yuanmingyuan, but also sent a message that this way of life is officially sanctioned, encouraged, and even appreciated. As a result, more art lovers from all over the country moved to Yuanmingyuan, and to the original villagers’ great excitement, rents at Yuanmingyuan increased quickly.

Concurring with the news reports, yet were rarely mentioned in them, were police surveillance and intervention. As discussed in the previous section, there were two policemen took charge of the village area, and they visited artists regularly in a friendly manner. When it comes to artists’ self-organized exhibitions in public places, however, the police became less tolerant, and the growing media attention did not change the situation that exhibitions were easily called off. It was also in 1993 that Yan Zhangxue, the head of the artist village, was treated as thief and beaten up by police. All this points to a paradox: on the one hand, artist villages were allowed to be wide reported, and not in a negative tone, which to some extent demonstrate government’s approval; on the other hand, artists’ interactions with the police did not became any happier.

Many tended to explain this contradiction as that government became more hostile towards artists after their villages got famous in domestic and abroad. Despite some truthfulness in it, this interpretation did not take into consideration government’s

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mixed feeling towards artists’ gathering: independence from work units and living on one’s own were desirable when the state sector started to shed off tenure workers; yet, from another perspective, the pure gathering of a group of artists that had experienced the twists and turns in the 1980s, not to mention possible provocative activities of them, could be a destructive force against the political regime if it went out of control.

Therefore, the government, while continuing to ban exhibitions to contain the influence of the artist community, did not evict the expanding artist village immediately but kept observing to see where the artist village would go, or whether artists would cross the bottom line of not challenging the Party’s leadership. Then, with little question, Yan’s misfortunes with the police, which led to a suit against the latter and an open protest letter signed by three hundreds intellectuals in 1994, made the authority more alerted to artists and prone to eliminate the source of the threat before it getting worse.

The Party to artists: a receding might and the paradox of resistance. As the political authority became less hostile toward artists in the sense that it gradually stopped regarding the latter automatically as an ideological heresy and even started to endorse the latter’s entrepreneurship, similar things could be said about the artists, because, after all, as the party placed ideological issues second to economic reforms, the socialist culture hegemony was receding. At the same time, market-oriented reforms greatly expedited the formation of the domestic art market, which provided artists with another way to gain publicity and better support themselves, in addition to being official artists or to relying on overseas art agents and collectors, whose personal preference to some extent decided

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which artists’ works would be introduced to the international art world. The first art auction was held in Beijing on April 1992, and shortly after, in Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen; though these auctions all focused on historical paintings and calligraphies, as well as antiques, they nevertheless indicated a possible future for contemporary artwork. It was also in 1992 that the first Guangzhou Biennale took place. Unlike previous exhibitions that were financed by the state, or were funded by artists’ fundraising efforts, as in the case of 1989 No U-turn Avant-garde Exhibition, this

Biennale was the first one sponsored by private companies. Large sums of monetary prizes were set for awards winners, and their works were to be purchased by the chief sponsor, according to an agreement set before the Biennale (Lv, 1992). This Biennale had as it purpose to foster the development of the art market, and it was criticized for its overtly economic purpose. Despite various comments on the significance and inadequacies of this Biennale, little was discussed about its delimitation.

This Biennale was full of political safeguard measures. Government officials from the Provincial-level Cultural Bureau and Radio and TV Broadcasting Bureau assumed the role of reputation directors at this Biennale. The organizing committee listed four kinds of artwork that would be rejected by the judges – those that:

1. violated laws and jeopardized public interests,

2. infringed other’s copyrights,

3. displayed obscenity, and

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4. harmed the image of Chinese culture and hampered “artistic creation/

expression” () (Lan, 2011, pp. 52-53).

On top of that, the Cultural Bureau of Guangzhou required all artwork to be reviewed by its cultural management office before being exhibited (Lan, 2011, p. 38). Although no work was pulled out from the Biennale, thanks to the curator’s mediation, these arrangements suggested an explicit political bottom line being applied, and politically or socially critical artworks could be easily categorized under the fourth taboo and get rejected. In practice, a 300 RMB (around $50) registration fee was required for each participants, and it was unlikely for artists to risk wasting this expensive fee by sending sensitive works that were likely to be declined.

Admittedly, under the Party-state regime, this Biennale would never have taken place without the above politically assuring arrangements, and my purpose is not to criticize its limitation and restrictions. Curators of the Biennial repeated on different occasions that their intention was to promote contemporary Chinese art via the market mechanism, as there was no other way to hold an exhibition with a contemporary slant in

China (Gao Brothers, 2003). I argue that this solution was exactly the predicament faced by arts practitioners: official institutions were too ossified to accept contemporary art, and private art foundations and art patrons were absent after three decades of an ardent pursuit of socialist state ownership from 1949 to 1979; therefore, artists and curators indeed could only rely on the market for publicity. Yet, this market influenced by socialist heritages was full of political intervention and far from being a site of “justice,” as arts

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practitioners might expect. To survive without complying with ideological rules meant to rely on the market, but being accepted by the market required artists to become non- oppositional to the Party, the final arbitrator of the market, or at least to keep their oppositions private.

Nevertheless, the transition to a market economy could be a rather smooth process for many, and the painful process of self-containment did not necessarily occur. The market, even a restricted one, was lucrative enough to become a great temptation to impoverished artists. In this Biennale, for example, two first place pieces won 50,000

RMB each (around $8,000), five second place pieces won 30,000 RMB each (around

$5,000), and 20 third place pieces won 10,000 RMB each (around $1,600). This award money only reflected the prizes and it did not include the payments for their artwork purchased by the sponsor. The same year, 1993, artists’ annual rent at Yuanmingyuan was around 600 RMB (Green, personal communication, June 3, 2014). And the 1st

Guangzhou Biennale was just a beginning of the fast developing market for contemporary art. Such promising monetary rewards, in a manner, could be a comfort to people’s political disillusion and distress. More likely, It could dispel people’s discontent with the political regime, especially considering that the market economy itself was

“made possible” in China by the Party. As a result, the market – either as an expedient resort under the political reality or as a voluntary choice embraced by artists – automatically functioned to encroach on artists’ ability to dissent against the political power.

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To generalize, through relaxing the socialist hegemony and promoting a market economy, the Party not only became less hostile to artists but made the latter less oppositional to its rule. It was the market force – not the political force – that produced the change. For those artists with strong intentions to resist the regime, they were caught in a paradox, as their very tool of resistance or non-cooperation, namely the market, was integrated into the political system.

After all, blind drifters rather than artists. The above paragraphs argued that the tension between artists and the Party were relaxed beginning in 1992. The Party became a benevolent authority in the eyes of many, and it no longer viewed unofficial artists indiscriminately as ideological heresy or bourgeois threats, unless artists crossed its bottom line. This explained why the artist villages were allowed to exist for several years. Yet there was another layer to this power relation, a layer that accounted for the issue of eviction order in the late spring of 1995: many artists were still blind drifters.

They were not regarded as “artists,” as this title was reserved for official artists; their value as artists – rather than as individual entrepreneurs – was yet to be realized and utilized by the government. Therefore, these artists, as well as other disadvantaged blind drifters, could be cleared away as China sought to promote itself as an amiable economic partner in the international arena.

“Opening-up” was one major aspect of China’s economic reforms since 1978.

During the 1980s, after the successful examples of the Special Economic Zones, coastal cities were opened to develop an export-oriented economy and to attract foreign capital.

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Looking ahead into the 1990s, it was firmly believed among Chinese policy makers that foreign direct investment (FDI) would boost economic growth (Y. Huang, 2008). To invite more FDI, the government faced an imperative to improve its national image and rebuild its relation with other countries, in addition to implementing favorable policies.

After the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989, many countries deplored the Chinese government’s atrocity and temporarily froze their diplomatic relations with China or withheld their investments from China. As the aftermath of Tiananmen gradually faded, in 1992, Beijing submitted its application to bid for the 2000 Olympic Games; its main slogan was “The open China expects the Olympic Games,” and other slogans included:

“China’s opportunity, Beijing’s honor,” and “Welcome the new century with peace and progress” (“Bidding for Olympic Games,” 2001). These slogans spoke of the Chinese government’s eagerness to shed the negative impression the world had of the country and to be reaccepted onto the global stage as an open, peaceful, and progressive nation, a nation worth trading with and investing in. Similar key words were later used in the theme of the 4th World Conference of Women in 1995, which read: “Act to seek Gender

Equality, Development, and Peace.” This gathering became the first opportunity that allowed Beijing to have people from all over the world see its changes in person.

Receiving full support from the Chinese government, the scale of this conference was unparalleled in its record: more than 17,000 representatives from 189 countries attended the conference (“World Conferences on Women,” n.d.). Various preparation work started in 1992: an upscale multifunctional conference building was constructed, thousands of

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commuting buses and cars were prepared, and more than 10,000 volunteers were recruited, to name a few (Ding, 1995).

In the preparation, equally important as infrastructure building and citizen mobilization was managing blind drifters and dissidents. Blind drifters were regarded as almost equivalent to hooligans; they were a threat to public security, especially so when large numbers of women representatives gathered in Beijing. Therefore, they needed to be driven away, be taken into custody and repatriated, or at least be made dormant for a while. Dissidents, too, needed to be taken care of, especially those who fought for human rights, because a parallel NGO Forum would be held, which provided a perfect chance for dissidents to get their voices heard. As a matter of fact, several human rights advocators were arrested or sent out of Beijing prior to the conference.

As for Yuanmingyuan and Dongcun, back in 1995 they were regarded not as artist communities but as dens for arts-related blind drifters who were potential dissidents. The changed power relation between artists and the Party determined that these artist villages could be broadcasted and be maintained just as other drifter’s villages on ordinary days, yet they also had to be cleared up together with the other shabby villages when the government strove to manufacture China’s development and peacefulness, by emphasizing its possession of grand infrastructures and ardent supporters as well as the absence of disorder and disaffection.

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The Lack of Re-emergence of Artist Village in the Inner Suburbs of Beijing

A year before the eviction, several artists moved out of Yuanmingyuan and relocated themselves in a remote outer suburb, Songzhuang, in Tongzhou County.

Following their lead, many artists also moved to Songzhuang after being expelled from

Yuanmingyuan, and others gathered at Shangyuan in Changping County, even further from urban Beijing. With strong attachments to Yuanmingyuan, around ten artists lingered in the neighborhood, hoping to go back one day. However, after several months, these artists’ hiding place was found by the police; this time, they moved to further away to join their artists friends (W. Yang, 2013).

Tightened control over “three withouts blind drifters.” The absence of a re- emergence of artist villages near their original locations was a direct effect of the migration management regulation, which was renewed in 1995. Rebooted market- oriented reforms had greatly increased the number of domestic migrants, thus there followed a need to control the size of this population as the floating population had greatly burdened “local public security, transportation, birth control implementation, employment, housing, and hygienic conditions” (Ministry of Public Security, 1995). In addition to locally varied restrictive measures on migrations, such as limiting the kinds of work migrants were eligible to do and levying management fees on migrants and setting quotas for migration (Huang & Wang, 2009), the Ministry of Public Security, in its notification of Intensifying the Management of Blind Drifters (1995), juxtaposed “three

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withouts” with “blind drifters,” and announced that “three withouts blind drifters” were to be put into custody and repatriated.

As discussed earlier, the equation of “three withouts” with “blind drifters” signified an operative expansion of the scope of latter, meaning that even registered migrants could become targets of administrative punishments, if they failed to carry all required documents with them or did not have proper incomes or fixed dwelling places.

More importantly, the Custody and Repatriation Regulation enacted in 1982 had as its targets “vagrants and beggars”; though “blind drifters” in practice could be easily regarded as vagrants and beggars – whether they were “temporary vagrants” trying to find odd jobs or “beggars” that lived by begging – they were not directly announced as objects of custody and repatriation until in 1995, when they were also equated with “three withouts.” Therefore, the size of the population that could quite justifiably be subjected to custody and repatriation expanded significantly. A month later, in September 1995, the

Public Security Comprehensive Administration Committee, which was directly supervised by the Central Committee of the CCP, prescribed several measures of migrant management, among which were to intensify the supervision of sites of migrant activities and reinforce the custody and repatriation of the three without blind drifters.

These measures were faithfully carried out in Beijing, one of the major destinations of migrants. Several Yuanmingyuan artists that remained in the village after the eviction deadline were sent under escort out of the city, and they were only released from local custodies after paying ransoms upon police requests (Black, personal

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communication, June 3, 2014). The government’s resolution to drive away blind drifters from cities was made clear. Under these circumstances, it was natural for the three withouts artists to avoid gathering again in places where police inspections were common. However, other drifters’ villages reappeared when control became relatively lax, which started another cycle of eviction – regathering. Taking this fact into consideration, the intensified migrant control was but one reason for the lack of re- emergence of artist villages in the inner suburbs of Beijing. The other reason had to do with the changing mentalities among artists.

Artists’ entrepreneurship in an era of consumption.

A cultural center for idealistic counter-cultural artists. It was not merely by accident that the first artist village appeared in Fuyuanmen and Yuangmingyuan villages, in the Haidian District. Haidian was the cultural center of Beijing in the sense that it was where many top universities were located; Fuyuanmen and Yuanmingyuan, in particular, were within walking distance to both Peking University and Tsinghua University. Back in the liberating period of the 1980s, college students concerned themselves with the future of China, especially its cultural and political modernization; they actively participated in public affairs and formed the main forces of the pro-democracy protests from 1986 to

1989. The “triangular place” () at the center of Peking University, particularly, was a hub of students’ activities and a place where people put up posts of political opinions or delivered speeches. For this reason, the triangular place had symbolic

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significance even after 1989 when it became less politically oriented and contained more commercial information.

Yaunmingyuan artists, on the other hand, were either recent graduates from art institutions or had participated in or witnessed demonstrations in different cities in 1989.

Though the dream for political reform was crushed, the intellectual inclination and idealism from the late 1980s persisted in many. Artists settled down in a village close to top universities; they had frequent communication with students to exchange ideas, and they also took advantage of university facilities, such as public bathrooms and canteens, to keep a pristine and also affordable life. In 1992, at the invitation of a student society at

Peking University, Yuanmingyuan artists held an exhibition at the triangular place, which included some works with political contents. The exhibition was called off before long when the police found out, yet it caused a sensation and also became a highlight of

Yuanmingyuan’s history (Green, personal communication, June 8, 2014). It a sense, this exhibition at an activists’ hub at the top university was a visual manifesto of the idealistic counter-culture artists, speaking of their aesthetic and sometimes political values, as well as their life attitudes.

Remote artist villages meeting entrepreneurial needs. Creation, communication, exhibition, drinking and dining, visits from art lovers and buyers, and surveillance from the police; these constituted the typical lives of Yuanmingyuan artists as the village became increasingly known to the world. Yet, not everyone enjoyed the noise and excitement. There were several artists that already gained their popularity among art

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buyers before market reforms restarted in 1992. Since 1992, they became even better received on overseas art markets and secured contracts with art dealers in Hong Kong and

Taiwan; Fang Lijun, to take one of the most renowned artists for example, joined several touring exhibitions abroad and was invited to the the Venice Biennale in 1993. For them, being a free lance artist was not as much as a rebellious life style as it was serious career worth their full commitments, and too much visits, communications, and idle social lives were not what they needed. During 1993-1994, the dispute between Yan and the police, especially Yan’s arrest created a disturbance among artists, who felt Yuangmingyuan went into police’s special attention in a very unwanted way; rumors also started that the village would be evicted before long.

It was during this time, in 1994, that Fang Lijun and five others left

Yuanmingyuan and relocated at Songzhuang, the Tongzhou County. It was located besides the 6th ring road of Beijing, for which construction was in 1998 and which opened to traffic in 2006.17 This said, Songzhuang was difficult to get to back in 1994.

Yet, this remoteness was exactly what these artists looked for. They were the most affluent ones in Yuanmingyuan; they owned cars and they bought houses and yards from farmers, who left the countryside and migrated into cities. They lived in the same area, close enough to get together easily, but not right next to each other so privacy could be

17 Yuanmingyuan artist village was located on what is now the 5th ring road of Beijing. The approximate distance from the 5th ring to the center of Beijing, Tiananmen, is around 10 miles; and from the 6th ring to the center is about 15 miles.

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maintained (J. F. Wang, 2011). Free of endless visitors, police checks, and “socials lives,” yet having the advantage of capaciousness and serenity, Songzhuang seemed to be a desirable place for artists’ creation. Shortly after the first batch of artists settled down, around a dozen more artists moved to Songzhuang from Yuanmingyuan (W. Yang, 2012).

Therefore, songzhuang started to take shape before the disappearance of Yuangmingyuan, and it became many artists’ first choice after they being evicted.

Guided by “getting rich soon” and governed through neoliberal exception.

Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms had a catchy slogan: “allow some people to get rich first.” Now these artist-achievers became the “some people”: they attained financial successes within only a few years, and their lives improved tremendously. Political Pop,

Cynical Realism and Gaudy art were some of the best-received genres at off-shore galleries and arts expositions. The appropriation of socialist icons and their juxtaposition with capitalist symbols – saturated with artists’ resignation, cynicism, and psycho-social- reorientation – conveyed the post-Tiananmen complex of mainland artists and soon proved to be very appealing to the outside world. These elements spelled the formula of success, and they were picked up by more artists, who realized domestically-rejected styles were potentially lucrative elsewhere. It was almost human nature that artists wanted to follow the early achievers’ paths to attain quick success, especially when they faced constant financial stresses and frustrations with the political authority. However, the fast rise of entrepreneurship and loss of idealism and elitism were also due to the consumerism promoted by the central government, especially since the mid-1990s.

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Formerly associated with the rotten bourgeois lifestyle, the consumption of commodities, services, and leisure culture was not only encouraged by the government but assimilated as a new component of “socialist spiritual civilization” and included in the China Yearbook of Culture & Ideology (J. Wang, 2001; Editorial Committee of China yearbook of culture and ideology, 1995;1997). Various leisure magazines began publishing in 1993 – such as Cosmopolitan and Life Style – which were supervised by key official institutions, like the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and China's

Tourism Bureau. Traditional Party newspapers, such as Beijing Youth Daily, issued special editions on automobiles and real estate property. Accompanying the officially- sanctioned consumerism was a series of policy stimuli: the two-day weekend was experimented with in 1994 and carried out nation-wide in 1995, and interest rates were lowered twice in 1996 (J. Wang, 2001).

In fact, the promotion of consumption started in the beginning of the 1990s when ideological control was still tight, and it only become predominant in the mid-late 1990s.

In the early stage, political messages were packed into new forms of pop culture: self- sacrificing moral models were erected in intricate soap opera plots that romanticized people’s impoverished lives, and one could find in Karaoke cassettes not only “capitalist” love songs, but the Party’s own pop songs adapted from traditional propaganda tunes

(Zha, 1995; Barme, 1999). Yet, even more effective than merging political culture with commercial culture was the governing technique of using consumerism to dissolve counter-culture, practiced since the mid-1990s. People were faced with unprecedented

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choices of commodities, and their desires were fully provoked by the government- supervised media18 as well as those who got rich earlier.

It was not just a matter of “increasing consumption to stimulate economic growth” or “developing leisure/service industries to catch up with the world”; rather, a new sphere was created under government guidance, a sphere that featured the autonomy of customers (Barme, 1999; J. Wang, 2001). This sphere became a neoliberal exception in the Party-state, privileged with the most autonomy and freedom of choice that were to different degrees restricted in other public spheres. In order to fully take advantage of this autonomous sphere, people need to attain adequate financial freedom, or to get rich first.

For many free-lance artists, the formula for affluence was already spelled out. However, this time the “counter culture” that won them money and reputation was no longer actually “counter,” as the mainstream culture had already become a commercial and leisure culture, with which political propagandist culture partly cloaked itself.

To sum up, the lack of reemergence of artist villages in inner suburbs where interruptions – from either the police or visitors – were frequent, and the relocation of villages to remote areas, were not only due to the intensified control over migrants but were also effects of the changed mentalities among artists. Their vulnerability to

18 Media is still one of the tightest controlled realms in China. Mass media, from print media to broadcast news to internet websites, have to gain official approval to come out, and they are required to affiliate with government organizations that function as their regulatory authorities (zhuguan bumen ). For more information on the Chinese government’s control of traditional media, see Qinglian He (2005): The

Fog of Censorship ().

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changing policies and police crackdowns as well as the frustration of being marginalized, on the one hand, and the newly created autonomous sphere of consumption together with the promising prospect of attaining financial and artistic success in art markets, on the other hand, led to a huge increase of entrepreneurship accompanied by the disappearance of idealism. In addition, resistance had already become a paradox when the political authority began to abandon the direct controls characteristic of conventional despotism and promoted a well-monitored market to act as the alternative regulator. In fact, it was through allowing larger spheres of neoliberal autonomy that the CCP promoted the

Reason of the Party among the people, many of whom indeed thanked the Party for the increasing opportunities to get rich. The governing rationalities changed into a less straightforward Reason of the Party accompanied by a more definite neoliberal rationality. Technologies of governance were updated as well, using neoliberal consumerism to dissolve counter-culture and reinforce the Reason of the Party. These changed governing rationalities and updated technologies gave rise to the neoliberal mentality among artists, who prioritized their rewarding artistic careers over infertile idealism and resistance. It was this new mentality that made the cultural center of Beijing, with its symbolic importance and factual convenience, no longer the first choice of many artists.

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The Emergence of New Arts Clusters in the 2000s

From an Art Factory to a CCI Cluster: The Emergence, Preservation, and Official

Acceptance of 798.19

Emergence. In 1995, the Sculpture Department of the Central Academy of Fine

Arts rented obsolete factory workshops at a factory compound located in the Chaoyang

District of Beijing, where they decided to finish a group of memorial sculptures commissioned by the local government. Professors and students moved out when the project was finished in 1998. Two years later, a couple of professors returned to the factory, who were looking for spacious rooms for their large-scale artworks (Shu, 2004).

They became the first artist tenants of this factory complex, usually referred as 798 or

Dashanzi by local residents. In 2001, Huang Rui visited 798 and immediately realized its potential of being another SoHo. He managed to rent a large workshop and renovated it into a stylish personal studio; through his introduction, the first gallery entered 798 (Pu,

2010). Since then, 798 started to attract large numbers of artists, as well as galleries and buyers from different parts of the world.

This successful arts cluster, however, was doomed to be demolished. The buildings used to belong to state-owned factories, 706, 707, 718, 751, 797, and 798. In

2000, these factories underwent a state-initiated reform and were transformed into the

19 “798 art factory,” or simply “798” is what this arts cluster is still commonly called. However, it was only in 2006 that the title “798” – which used to be a state-owned factory – was officially granted to the arts cluster. Before then, the cluster referred itself as “Dashanzi” in occasions such as art festivals.

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Seven Star Group, a SOE. Under the socialist land-tenure system in China, all lands are publicly owned, and Seven Star became the de facto owner of the land where the factories stand (Hsing 2012). Seven Star had plans to tear down the old buildings in the mid-2000s and to redevelop this prime area in Beijing into a high-technology industrial park before the Olympic Games in 2008. In the meantime, it rented out unused factory spaces on short-term leases just to increase revenue. The reconstruction plan was endorsed by then-president Jiang Zeming, and artist tenants were all aware of the demolition in the near future.

Preservation. Nevertheless, witnessing the momentum of the cluster, artists decided to fight for their community and turned to the local government to overrule the original reconstruction plan and thus preserve the cluster. This seemed to be a reasonable move in two senses. First, the political authority had shown more tolerance towards contemporary Chinese art since 1999, when it allowed contemporary art works to be displayed in a national-level museum in Shenzhen, Guangzhou (Gao Brothers, 2003).

Second, artists had learned from their past experiences that without government support, the cluster might still be wiped out someday for some reason, even if it was preserved for the moment. Thus for 798’s long-term existence, official approval was essential.

Artists took two strategies to gain government support: one was to reinforce 798’s reputation through art festivals, thus to create a leverage of favorable public opinions, and the other was to lobby the local government in order to convince them of the benefits of this artist community. During 2003 and 2004, artists organized a series of art programs

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that attracted large numbers of audiences, both domestic and international. These activities, however, did not proceed without obstacles from the landlord. Realizing its reconstruction plan might be compromised, the Seven Star attempted to sabotage the exhibitions and restricted the expansion of the art community. It put a halt to renting spaces to artists and foreigners in 2003, and in 2004, it sought to obstruct the annual art festival by reporting to the government the unauthorized activities on its property (Cheng,

2007a)20. Despite all the frustrations, artists kept staging various exhibitions and festivals, thereby successfully keeping the community under the limelight of domestic and international media. 798 became known as a most important and vigorous contemporary art hub in China, where independent artists gathered and exciting “unofficial” art events took place.

In the meantime, a lobby was undertaken to get the government to endorse maintaining the factory complex. In March 2004, an artist tenant who also served as the

People’s Representative submitted a motion to the Beijing Municipal People’s Congress.

A proposal for preservation of the complex was advanced on five grounds:

1. The historical and aesthetic value of the buildings;

2. The symbolic value of the factories that carried people’s memories of the

Chinese socialist society at an early stage;

20 The festival still took place as scheduled, as the organizer, Huang Rui, contrived to bypass the strict screening by renaming the “International Art Festival” to “Month of Artistic Activities,” which suggested a relatively lower level and thus required less attention.

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3. The city promotion and city branding function that was brought about by a

vigorous arts cluster;

4. The economic potential of the cluster;

5. The opportunity to promote Beijing’s image as an open, variegated city to the

world before the 2008 Olympic Games (Li, 2004).

The Beijing Municipal Government quickly responded to the preservation appeal, in a way that was both ambiguous and suggestive. It claimed that the cluster needed to be further “discussed, inspected, and controlled” 21) before its future could be determined (Red, personal communication, June 5, 2014). Another equally suggestive message was sent by a municipal government official in a private conversation, in which he communicated to artists that the arts cluster as a new social phenomenon was worth government protection and support, but the artists also need to work to create “good vibes” for the cluster (White, personal communication, June 4,

2014). Together, the feedback implied that the arts cluster could be preserved, provided sensitive art as well as the atmosphere favorable to the creation of sensitive art would be controlled; this would require efforts regulation from government, but also cooperation of the artists.

21 The Chinese word guancould be translated as “control,” “manage” or “regulate,” and when used alone, the word primarily conveys the meaning of direct control. In this case, “guan” was translated as

“control” also because the slogan was proposed before the designation of 798, when the government officially became the administrator of the cluster; back then, there was no government management or regulation in place.

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For many artists, their primary goal was to protect their community from the impending demolition crisis. Thus, to secure government endorsement, several of the earliest tenants who rented spacious studios voluntarily formed a self-disciplinary group

(). Though this group was to some extent a posture that artists displayed to the government – which dissolved after the cluster was preserved –it nevertheless functioned in exactly the way the government expected: when “sensitive” or

“provocative” artwork appeared, members of the group advised contributing artists or curators to temporarily pull the works, for the sake of the big picture (White, personal communication, June 4, 2014).

Designation. Before long, rumors began to spread that the government was determined to overwrite Seven Star’s reconstruction plan. Seven Star reopened its spaces for renting at the end of 2004; the next year, it signed contracts with several renowned international art galleries. In July 2006, the Chaoyang District Government designated the art factory as a district level CCI cluster and gave it the official name “798.” In the same year, 798 was also designated by the Beijing Municipal government as a municipal- level CCI cluster.

A New Configuration of Power Relations and the Expansion of Neoliberal

Exceptions

In a sense, the new relationship between the political authorities and artists in the new millennium was all captured in the detailed history of 798, from its emergence to artists preservation efforts, and then to its designation. Just as the Haidian District was the

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cultural center of Beijing, the Chaoyang District used to be the industrial center of

Beijing during the 1960s and 1970s, and it gradually developed into a new commercial center. The emergence of a new artist community in factory 798 was contingent, whereas its appearance in the Chaoyang District was not. Since early-mid 1990s, independent artists began to seek more publicity in society, yet their attempts were frustrated as contemporary Chinese art was still rejected from official museums, and artists’ self- organized exhibitions were frequently called off. Therefore, artists gained reputations mostly aboard, where they were frequently referred to as underground or unofficial artists, though the label had increasingly became a selling point. Under this circumstance, outer suburban areas were desirable locations for arts clusters: fewer police checks and art lovers’ visits enabled artists to focus on their creations, and such isolation from the outside world did not impede their career much, because, after all, they were not really accepted by society or the domestic market, and many in fact depended on international markets – especially Hong Kong and Taiwan – to thrive. However, the political authority’s perspective on culture kept changing, and its recent application of neoliberal logic to culture –or culture as an impetus for economic growth and city promotion – provided new opportunities to artists to strive for the official acceptance of contemporary art.

Culture in neoliberal terms. Specifically, first of all, the Party had realized the economic importance of culture, and it had made corresponding policies to exploit the economic capital of culture activities. Following the Marxist theory, culture had been

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long treated in the PRC as part of the “superstructure.” When culture was mentioned, it was usually referred as wenhua shiye (), which could be roughly translated as

“cultural undertakings” or “cultural institutions” depending on specific contexts. The term “shiye” suggested that culture was a sublime course, thus it was naturally not designed for monetary calculation. Yet, as the government started to promote consumption and leisure culture in the early to mid-1990s, the economic potential of culture was gradually recognized. In 1997, the term “cultural industries” (wenhua chanye

) appeared in the Ninth Five-year Plans (1996-2000). It was the first time that culture was officially recognized by the central government as an “industry.” Although the term was only briefly mentioned in the Cultural Institutions Development Plan

(1996-2000) without further articulation, the government’s quick outline of cultural industries explained its expectation: it urged cultural organizations to focus on developing high-tech cultural products with “strong market competitiveness and high economic benefit”22 (The Ministry of Culture, 1997). In 1998, a Cultural Industries Division was set up under the Ministry of Culture, and in the Tenth Five-year Plans (2001-2005), a separate development plan were made for cultural industries, the benefits of which were generalized as “promoting economic growth, boosting domestic demands, and solving employment problems.” Major cultural industries included: performance industry, film

22 In this document, film, television and music production, cultural tourism, entertainment, arts intermediary service, information service, arts training, and stage devices were listed as industries that would be fostered.

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and TV industry, audio-visual industry, entertainment industry, cultural tourism, and industry of artworks (The Ministry of Culture, 2001). This development plan as the first official agenda on exploring the economic effects of culture signified the formalization of cultural industries in China, which had taken a cultural section parallel to the “cultural undertakings” with a not-for-profit slant.

Secondly, the image issue become increasingly significant to the political authority as China won the bid for the 2008 Olympic Games in July 2001 and gained access to the TWO in December that same year. China had become a new economic power, yet its recent cultural records were not very impressive, except for its underground culture. Therefore, the CCP’s new imperative was to project itself to its liberal- democratic economic partners as an open-minded authority that supported variegated cultures. In 2001, then-president Jiang Zemin advanced the “three represents” slogan23, in which he urged that CCP should always represent China’s advanced culture. Particularly, the “advanced culture” referred to “socialist culture that faces the modernity, the world, and the future,” which should be supported through the Party’s guidelines and policies

(Jiang, 2001). In addition, the application slogan of the 2008 Olympic Games was “New

Beijing, Great Olympics.” Because of this, in 2001 a new topic was raised as to how to make Beijing “new” and to successfully display its newness to international visitors.

23 The “three represents” respectively are: to represent the development of China’s advanced productive force, the direction of China’s advanced culture, and the fundamental interests of the greatest majority of people.

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Creating urban spectacles was far from enough, and something deeper than a makeover was needed. Culture, with little doubt, became one significant sphere to work on.

Competing calculations and governance before the designation. As a contemporary art cluster, 798 answered both needs of the political authority: it yielded a large amount of artwork that could be transferred into economic capital, and its cultural capital – provided this could be incorporated into the government agenda – would forcefully demonstrate the openness of the CCP and the newness of the city. 798’s strategic importance was recognized by both the government and the artists. Therefore, in the 2004 motion of preserving 798, following an argument on the significance of the historical architecture – especially their connection to an early socialist period – classic benefits of cultural industries were advanced, including city branding and economic growth. Within that motion, the probable negative impact of demolition was also implied.

With the employment of economic and image arguments, the term “contemporary art” was adeptly left out: this previous taboo was not mentioned in the motion at all, though it was what made 798 famous to the world. Artists were fully aware of the sensitivity of contemporary art to the CCP. Therefore, they evaded the contemporariness and instead tried to associate the 798 into three dominant official discourses: the socialist course, the economic development, and the “new Beijing” image issue. The motion attempted to persuade the government that this independent arts cluster could be used to achieve the government’s goals. In the artists’ calculation, preserving 798 was a win-win plan: artists and their communities became “aboveground,” the government improved its image, and

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both won economic gain. In the face of all these benefits, the independence that featured contemporary Chinese art could be set aside for the moment.

The government’s responses also reflected a new calculation. Many of the artists residing in 798 were established artists respected in the international art world, not nameless trouble-making blind drifters, and, in the time of cultural industries, their exploitable value far exceeded simply being examples of self-reliant entities, as was the case in the early 1990s. On the other hand, “the Reason of the Party” was still a fundamental rationality of the CCP, and contemporary Chinese art, despite its various benefits, could be supported only when its potential risk could be managed. These risks included “sensitive artworks and activities,” which mainly included works that contained political or social criticism and that alluded to the unspeakable history of China, such as the Tiananmen crackdown. Propelled by both the socialist rationality of the “Reason of the Party” and the neoliberal rationality of cultural industries, the municipal government decided to “discuss, inspect, and control” () the clusters and to ask artists to work for the vision of 798, which, correspondingly, suggested two distinct yet mutually influenced governing techniques.

The desire to “discuss, inspect, and control” reflected a traditional disciplinary technique of power: the community would be inspected at times, and undesirable individuals or activities would be controlled. To take a closer look, this is a term that could not be faithfully translated into English without being grammatically inaccurate, as it contains three predicates but no subject or object. This way of constructing an

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expression was very common in government initiated slogans. Pragmatically, it left the content as vague as possible, which not only allowed the unspecified governor enough flexibility to maneuver, but also required the governed to summon their common sense and past experiences to gauge possible objects of the announced actions. As a result, people tended to fully exercise, or even to overuse, their discretion. In this case, the particular agent of “discussion, inspection, and control” was not specified, and the object of inspection and regulation was probably sensitive contemporary artworks; what constituted “sensitive” was never officially articulated, yet using common sense most

Chinese people knew to what it was referring.

The second response, in contrast, demonstrated an indirect control that utilized the

“capillary” nature of power and worked through artists’ autonomy. When the government told one artist that the cluster was worth preserving, but the artists needed to create good vibes in it, it effectively implied a causal relationship between artists’ choice and the fate of 798, thereby underplaying its own role in the decision process. This knowledge was circulated among artists, and soon, a small self-disciplinary group was formed voluntarily. It is worth mentioning that while many were eager to preserve the cluster, not everyone was as enthusiastic about winning government endorsement. The self- disciplinary group, unconsciously or otherwise, served to reinforce the idea that each artist was responsible for the future of the community. This self-imposed moral principle held artists accountable not to the authority that implied cooperation as the precondition of preservation, but to their peers and their common sanctuary. Therefore, although the

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self-disciplinary group held no authority over their peers and the other artists had no obligation to follow its advice, which almost sounded like self-censorship, the group still managed to make observable changes in the cluster that aligned with the government’s expectation. Because in this context, taking out sensitive works became a moral practice, whereas refusing to do so equaled prioritizing personal desire of expression over a common good. When cooperation was in place, direct control needed not be as frequent or as harsh.

Precondition of neoliberal exception. 798 was finally spared from demolition as independent artists and the government unified their primary interests and attained a reconciliation, or a collaboration, in a sense. However, though both actors seemed to adjust their perspectives and made necessary concessions, this reconciliation was based on a guided compromise on the part of the artists from the very beginning. The political authority kept yielding new spaces of liberty; neoliberal exceptions with market-driven logic extended from economy to culture and from leisure culture to contemporary culture, which had an independent – if not antagonistic – connotation. In fact, in 2005, the concept of “creative industries” that had a strong focus on independent innovations made its way to mainland China; by the end of that year, the term was already embraced in the

Chaoyang District Government’s agenda, and “cultural industries” was updated into

“cultural and creative industries” (Hui, 2006). In the long process of withdrawing authoritarian controls and accepting previously rejected concepts, the political authority stood fast by its bottom line – the Party’s rule – which became a norm that people learned

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to abide by in order to take advantage of newly granted liberties, or in order for their undertakings to be incorporated into neoliberal exceptions.

The case of contemporary Chinese art was no exception. The beginning of the

1990s marked its most distressed moment, as political controls were tight in almost all spheres of society. Ironically, it was also a time when artists could “easily” be oppositional and sought artistic freedom, because the price for cooperation – to practice ossified official art – was too high, whereas the stake for resistance was relatively low, in the sense that artists did not have invested interests elsewhere to lose. When market- based logic was introduced to culture in the 1990s, the domestic art market began to take shape. It was on the one hand independent from and parallel to the official art system, and on the other hand annotated by the Reason of the Party. At the same time, the Opening-up policy also allowed artists to be connected with the international art arena. Although artists had to constantly avoid political taboos, the emergence of new spheres of neoliberal exceptions nevertheless provided them with opportunities of getting rich and earning more free choices. In this context, resistance became very high-stake, as it was not only politically unsafe, but also economically inefficient. Then, the time finally came when contemporary art could be officially accepted and assimilated into neoliberal exceptions, as long as artists could restrain themselves from sensitive activities. The reconciliation seemed to be a good deal to artists: they did not have much to compromise, except for withholding their dissidence – if any – yet the economic reward could be very

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high if 798 was preserved. Nevertheless, serious setbacks of the collaboration gradually surfaced only after the official designation, which are elaborated in the next chapter.

Art Districts Springing Up

As 798 became a phenomenon in the international art arena, many new arts clusters appeared in the Chaoyang District in the mid to late-2000s. These clusters were initiated by art entrepreneurs and commercial developers, who constructed studios on contracted lands and rented the spaces to artists. To a degree, these clusters could justifiably be called “artist communities,” as there were many cases in which artists had frequent interactions with each other and fought for their common interests. Yet, I categorize them in this research as “art districts” for two reasons. First, they were in fact named by their developers as art districts, which gave the clusters a more upscale feeling, because the word “district” (qu ) usually referred to an urban area, in spite of the fact that most of the art districts were located in urban villages (chengzhongcun, ) and surrounded by shabby village houses. Second, I intend to distinguish this specific type from the spontaneously formed artist communities – either in the form of an artist village or an art factory – and CCI clusters that had received official designation. These art districts could be further divided into two sub-categories: those approved by the district- level government; and grassroots art districts, whose establishment and development were without governmental involvement.

The timing for art districts to rise. Except for a couple of early examples, including Feijiacun () and Suojiacun (), most of the art districts were

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constructed after 2005, especially between 2006 and 2008. Before the end of 2009, when the mass demolition started, there were around 20 art districts scattered in the Chaoyang

District. The mid-2000s was a perfect time for art districts to rise as the dominant type of arts cluster. It was in 2006 that 798 was officially designated, CCI were written in the development agenda of the Chaoyang District, and works of contemporary Chinese art were bid at astronomical prices at major auction houses. In other words, the year 2006 witnessed contemporary Chinese art winning both business success and official legitimacy in the mainland – at least it appeared so for a time. On top of that, the Olympic

Games were coming in two years; by then, visitors from different parts of the world would be gathering in Beijing, which promised yet another great opportunity for art dealing. All these favorable changes made artists excited about the blowout of contemporary Chinese art, yet nobody knew for how long the contemporary art fever would last. In this situation, spontaneous artist communities that required time to take shape and accumulate influence could no longer meet the needs of artists and were replaced by the more instant version – art districts. The demand for arts districts was very high: 798 was difficult to get in even before its designation, and afterwards, gentrification and commercialization shut more artists out. Many artists thus preferred to set up studios in quieter places not very far from 798, so they could easily bring artwork to display and sell at 798 galleries. The business opportunity was quickly captured by art entrepreneurs and developers. The Huantie () art district, for example, was intended to be a logistics base when it was under construction in 2005, but the developer soon rebuilt the

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storage houses into studios as he realized spaces close to 798 were highly desired by artists (Liu, 2014).

Government-approved art districts and grassroots art districts. However, art districts did not grow without obstacles. In 2005, one of the early art districts, Suojiacun, encountered a demolition crisis. The district had been constructed without the approval of the Chaoyang District Government, thus the court ordered it to be demolished. Suojiacun artists tried to maintain their district through art activities and international public opinions, as 798 artists did earlier on, but their attempts were all in vain. Nevertheless, this setback was passed over quickly, because for some unclear reasons only half of the district was razed out, and the developer managed to rebuild the area not long after. This demolition crisis signaled to the artists that art districts without government approval might not last long, yet the way the crisis ended also sent a message that in a time of CCI, there could be favorable turns and demolition was not a necessary fate.

While artists were worried about the long-term security of art districts, so were the developers. Realizing that the threat of demolition was real and it was a major concern of artists, developers sought to acquire government endorsements, with which they bought artists’ confidence on the longevity of the districts. However, the types of endorsements varied and so did their efficacy, as it later turned out. Yihaodi International

Art District () and Brewery () were two art districts that had acquired the

Chaoyang District Government’s approval and support. Specifically, Yihaodi was located in the Cuigezhuang () township; not only was its construction plan approved by

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the district government, but it was in fact partially invested in by the government.

Brewery, located in an urban area, was rebuilt from a state-owned brewery, just as the case of 798. It was unclear whether Brewery was part of the CCI development plan of the

Chaoyang District from the very beginning, as Yihaodi was, yet to re-construct a state- owned factory on a state-owned land, some sort of governmental permission had to be in place. The two districts were both real estate oriented, featured deluxe architecture and targeted established artists and cultural companies. Both art districts were planned in

2005 – when 798’s preservation was decided – and put into use in 2006; two years later, they were designated officially as district-level CCI clusters. In the 2000s, Yihaodi and

Brewery were the only art districts approved by a district-level government.

Most other developers, either less resourceful or less ambitious, simply constructed art districts on lands leased from villagers and village officials without acquiring approval from the district government. Nevertheless, they sought to invite township governments to endorse their projects, and such endorsement – though not as powerful as those from the district-level governments – were enough to assure many artists. For example, the Jinzhan () township officials were invited to attend the 008 art district’s opening ceremony in 2008, and the government also expressed on public media its willingness to create a better environment to attract more artists to the township

(Z. Zhao, 2010). In fact, even without explicit support from township governments, art districts were very welcomed among them. Leasing out idle lands was quite common in villages ever since the increase of migrant workers due to market-oriented economic

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reforms. Although the practice was not entirely legal, as articulated in the next section, it was never seriously regulated, and it was in fact supported by township governments, who could usually get shares from village land leasing. Compared with conventional land-renters, who were usually engaged in traditional manufacturing or low-end services, art districts that featured CCI could benefit the local economy in unparalleled ways.

To artists, developers, and village officials or township governments, art districts were desirable and profitable. Yet, the only problem was that they were

“unauthorized” (weizhang ). To distinguish these “unauthorized” art districts that did not have district-level government permission with the two districts that did, I refer to the former as grassroots art districts, in the sense that there was no governmental involvement in their establishment, although the lowest-level government – township governments –often expressed verbal support. The fate of grassroots art districts, preluded by the Suojiacun demolition crisis, finally loomed in 2009.

Disappearing Artist Communities and Grassroots Art Districts, 2009 - present

(2015)

I use the word “disappearing” in this section to refer to three interconnected fates of artist communities and grassroots art districts. First is designation. The most influential artist communities – 798 and Songzhuang – were designated by the Beijing Municipal government in 2006 as municipal-level CCI clusters. Unlike the government approved, real estate-oriented art districts, both 798 and Songzhuang had a high concentration of art and their establishment was without government planning. For them, official designation

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was accompanied by government intervention. The second fate is demolition. Around ten grassroots art districts were torn down in 2009-2010. Artists from different clusters launched the art project Warm Winter to protest against the forcible demolition of art districts. The project encountered many obstructions from the police, and it quietly lapsed in March 2010 as many artists secured compensation deals with either developers or township governments. In 2012 and 2014, a couple of other grassroots art districts were demolished. Third is the fate of waiting to be demolished. An artist community,

Caochangdi (), and several grassroots art districts, including Huantie and Heiqiao

(), were spared from the mass demolition. Current conversations about these areas state that these areas are limited by their geographic locations thus are unsuitable to be redeveloped for real estate purposes; for example, Huantie and Heiqiao are surrounded by a ring railway intended for technical tests. This said, these clusters are not safe – rumors of eviction and demolition have been haunting these clusters, and artists have no idea when they will have to find a new place to settle.

The first fate – designation – is made possible because of the neoliberal concept of CCI, which prescribes that arts and culture to be treated as industries. Yet, exactly the popularity of CCI renders the second and third fates – demolition or waiting to be demolished – particularly obscure: the grassroots art districts as satellite districts of 798 supply the latter with creativity and vitality, thus together, these clusters could have made the Chaoyang District by far the greatest contemporary art center in China and benefit the districts’ CCI in the long run. Nevertheless, the three fates are neither incompatible nor

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impenetrable if one takes into consideration the two overarching governing mentalities in

China: the Reason of the Party and the neoliberal rationality. To better understand the fates, as well as how the two mentalities functioned after contemporary art was accepted into neoliberal exceptions, a close examination of the large-scale demolition is necessary.

Violent Demolition and Artists’ Protest

Demolition of “unauthorized constructions” in land reserves. In November

2009, artists of the 008 and the Zhengyang () art districts received eviction notices issued by an “eviction office.” No official seal was provided, and the affiliation of the eviction office was also unknown. Although these artists had signed five to thirty years leasing contracts with the developers, they were simply informed through eviction notices that they had until early December to move out; nothing about compensation was mentioned. Forcible eviction in 008 and Zhengyang started shortly after the notifications were posted. Water supplies, electricity, and heating were cut off; the developers fled with recently collected rents. Around 10 other districts were facing similar situations.

The demolition was triggered by the 2009 land reserve project of the Chaoyang

District, which put into reserve 90 square kilometers of rural lands from eight townships.

The Chaoyang District accelerated the pace of its land reserves as an answer to the

Beijing municipal government’s call to “stimulate investment, boost domestic demand, and maintain economic growth” through land reserves. It was also used as a method to foster the “urban-rural integration” (chengxiang yitihua ). However, in the context of land reserves, urban-rural integration does not mean to extend urban welfare to

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rural-hukou holders, but to incorporate rural lands into the urban government’s jurisdiction. Specifically, as provided by the Constitution, all lands are publicly owned: lands in urban areas are owned by the State, and lands in rural and suburban areas are owned by the village collectives, except for those also belonging to the State. Despite the urban-rural land ownership division, the state – upon paying a certain amount of compensation – can requisition any lands for the sake of “public interests,” although

“public interests” is not defined either in the Constitution or the Land Administration

Law. The concept of land reserves is one example of the requisition: rural lands are bought and reserved by urban governments, who then sell the land-use rights to developers at much higher prices for the public interests of “stimulating investment and maintaining economic growth.”

The endangered grassroots art districts were all located on idle agricultural lands that were to be reserved. Agricultural lands are restricted to agricultural production only; any non-agricultural uses require the concerning village collective to apply to a higher- level government – either a municipal or district/county government, depending on the location of the village – to have the “agricultural land” (nongye yongdi ) legally changed into “development land” (jianshe yongdi ). However, not only is the application unpleasantly lengthy and costly, but the village collective is not entitled to rent the development land out, which has to be leased by the higher-level government to new land users. In other words, once an agricultural land is turned into development land, the land ownership is also transferred from the village collective to the State (Liu, 2014).

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Therefore, village officials and primary contractors of the lands (e.g. villagers) have no incentive to follow the mandated procedure, and they simply lease out their idle lands in private.24 This practice has been very common in rural areas, and in many cases, higher- level governments turn a blind eye. Nevertheless, the rapport between the village collective and the government does not alter the fact that art districts, as well as other constructions built on idle agricultural lands, were and still are unauthorized constructions. Though they may be allowed to exist for a certain time, these unauthorized constructions can be justifiably torn down when needed, such as when rural lands need to be cleaned up to prepare for an urban government’s reserve.

Artists’ resistance, divergence and settlement. The artists did not get any compensation from the demolition, but many had invested a considerable amount of money in their studios because the developers had promised long-term security.

Compensation for the land reserves – when applicable – was directly paid to developers or the primary contractors of the lands, whereas artists had no access had no access to the details about it, thus were unable to pursue payment.” Developers stayed out of touch and cut off necessary supplies, township officials that once were very supportive turned their backs on artists, and thugs were hired by unknown authorities to damage the districts. It was in these extreme circumstances that a group of five artists initiated the Warm Winter project. Their goal was to protest against violent demolition and fight for artists’ rights –

24 Since the implementation of the Contract Responsibility System in 1978, collective-owned rural lands have been contracted out to individual households.

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specifically the rights to live and work – as well as their economic rights (Brown, personal communication, January 4, 2014). The project consisted of performance art and installations that were presented successively in four different districts. It started on

December 29, 2009 and ended on February 3, 2010, with participation of more than 100 artists from 15 arts clusters, including some that were targeted for demolition.

Warm Winter did not run smoothly. At first, performances were disturbed by thugs; later, the project proceeded under the supervision of uniformed and plainclothes policemen. Domestic media received orders from the Propaganda Department to stop reporting the demolition and the artists’ protests, and correspondents of some foreign media gradually slid out of touch (Brown, personal communication, January 4, 2014). In the meantime, violence kept escalating. The leading curator of Warm Winter received death threats from unknown sources, and some other participants of the project were followed or bugged by the police. Finally, in February 2010, 008 and Zhengyang districts were ransacked by armed hooligans at night; studios were bulldozed, and artists were beaten up. Only after the violent incident did district and township government officials show up in Zhengyang, saying that “it was not a government action” and expressing determination to catch the thugs soon (Shangguan, 2010). However, some artists had already been pushed to their limits. The same day that government officials paid a visit, sixteen artists paraded through Chang-an Street, the major thoroughfare in Beijing.

Although the procession lasted for only an hour before police dispersed the artists, it successfully created a sensation, as this was the first demonstration at the heart of Beijing

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after the Tiananmen incident in 1989. It is said that the demonstration was encouraged by

Ai Weiwei, who accompanied the team and took pictures from the sidewalk.

The unplanned demonstration helped to further promote Warm Winter in the international arena, yet it also caused divergence among artists. Artists against the demonstration called it an “extreme behavior” and a “political action” that Warm Winter should never be. A few supporters of Ai commented that most artists were defending not their human rights but the “rights of slaves.” A third opinion insisted that Warm Winter was an appeal to government to solve the immediate problems artists were facing, and that it was not intend to be a pro-democracy movement as demonstrations were in 1989

(Brown, personal communication, June 8, 2014; G. Yu, 2010a; Zheng, 2011).

Ironically, it turned out that the disputes among artists in effect helped the government to realize the “true purpose” of Warm Winter. After arranging individual talks with several artists, the police concluded that the artists wanted – in a word – compensation (Zheng, 2011). Before long, compensation packages were issued to 008 and Zhengyang artists, on the condition that they had to move out within a week. Seeing this, developers from the other art districts also reached out to representative artists to negotiate private settlements, and those who got the money agreed not to disclose the specific amount. After compensation was settled, the districts were demolished. As for the Warm Winter project, its fifth stop, which had been planned for March 2010 at

Caochangdi, where Ai Weiwei lived, never took place.

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Beyond and within Neoliberal Calculations

Judging from the demolition incident alone, grassroots art districts were victims of the economic calculations of local governments and developers. In my interviews and document research, terms like “economic decisions,” “economic disputes,” and

“economic appeals” popped up frequently. Village officials leased out idle lands without authorization to gain extra income, and this practice was tolerated and supported by township governments, who wanted CCI to stimulate the local economy. District governments accelerated the land reserve project in 2009 to increase its revenue and to

“maintain economic growth” at a time of global financial crisis, but then violent eviction was performed in order to kick artists out as soon as possible, without paying them any compensation. Artists, too, subscribed to economic calculations. Many of them moved out immediately; they either bargained with developers for private settlements, or simply believed compensation was impossible or not worth their time to wrangle (Brown, personal communication, January 4, 2014). The rest stayed and participated in the Warm

Winter project with the appeals of getting financial compensation and ending the violence. Organizers of Warm Winter, while admitting that artists were brutally treated by governments and developers and were deprived of their dignities, emphasized that lying at the core of this incident were economic disputes and that Warm Winter was not a political event (Gray, personal communication, December 31, 2013; Brown, personal communication, June 8, 2014; Zheng, 2011). In short, local governments, village officials, developers, and artists all functioned as enterprise units and economic actors

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who applied economic logic to non-market relationships and phenomena that were commonly referred to as “cultural,” “social,” or “ethical.” This fits the Foucauldian generalization of a neoliberal rationality, and indeed, the prevalence of neoliberal calculations explained much of the whole event, from the initial unauthorized construction to the final compensation settlement. However, specific conditions as well as other calculations on the part of the artists and the political authority that led to the prioritization of economic reasoning were not to be neglected.

Artists: economic calculation as the safer and feasible option. It is worth noting that except for in the case of the Chang-an thoroughfare demonstration – which was in fact frowned upon by many Warm Winter participants – artists tried to avoid any association with “politics.” Here, the word “politics” can be tacitly used almost interchangeably with “political dissidence,” or “asking for political rights.” Artists had adequate reason to step away from “politics,” because being politically dissident meant to stand opposite the political authority, which – due to absence of the Rule of Law – was the ultimate authority that could solve artists’ immediate problems, including violent harassment and lack of compensation. In other words, artists had to choose between being economically-oriented and being “political,” as the latter was not compatible with the former. This “common sense” not only informed artists’ resistance, but was also fulfilled and reinforced through it. As mentioned above, some organizers of Warm Winter had their phone calls and text messages monitored by the police, who did not mind being

“found” doing this; one of the organizers even felt as though s/he was being spied upon

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and bugged in his/her own apartment (Brown, personal communication, January 4, 2014).

It was only after the political authority were convinced that most artists indeed had no special political appeal that the district government mediated and facilitated the compensation. Therefore, the stakes were very high for demonstrating a political orientation, or being suspected of having one, which might include money, safety, and privacy.

Although artists deliberately chose to sever themselves from the narrowly defined

“politics” and to stress their disputes with the developers, it is also undeniable that they, in a sense, had to locate their focus on the “unscrupulous” developers. Artists were kept in the dark during the demolition and compensation processes and were not aware of

“who did what” or “who was responsible for what.” Under these circumstances, the only trackable thread was the developers, with whom the artists had signed contracts. For example, the evictions and demolitions were performed by a demolition company, yet it was unclear as to who hired the company. Some artists believed that the developers were behind the team (G. Yu, 2010b); a developer denied this and said the team were sent by the local government (Xiao, 2010a). Still others believed that the developers colluded with local governments and both were involved in the violence (Brown, personal communication, January 4, 2014). In news reports, the company was simply referred as the “demolition team” or “thugs.” Compensation was yet another myth. Artists were not aware if the developers had received compensation and how much they themselves were eligible for because government officials refused to discuss details with anyone other

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than primary contractors of the lands, and some developers insisted that they were also waiting for compensation (Xiao, 2010b). In the end, final compensation differed greatly from district to district. Zhengyang and 008 got the highest amounts because of the violent incidents as well as the mediation of the local governments and police. Other developers, allegedly, paid artists out of their own pockets, and only those who sought for compensation got the money (Brown, personal communication, June 8, 2014).

To generalize, at least in the demolition incident, artists adopted economic calculations not solely because of the expansion of neoliberal exceptions in China. It was also due to things beyond “neoliberal exceptions,” things that belong to socialist legacies, such as the lack of information transparency, the lack of procedural justice, the lack of the government’s accountability, and ultimately, the Rule of the Party. All of these made artists more focused on economic considerations, especially on their contract disputes with the developers, the one thing they had solid knowledge of and had better odds to win. In Foucault’s concept, government or governance means to “guide” people’s choices, instead of “coercing” people’s actions. In China, where neoliberal rationalities co-exist with the Reason of the Party, the governed are not only “guided,” but also

“pushed” to certain options that would cause the least harm to the Party’s rule.

! Socialist heritage within neoliberal exceptions.

Gains and losses of contemporary Chinese art in the 2000s. In the 1990s, the government regarded artist villages generally as places where troublesome art-related, self-employed blind drifters gathered – places that could be easily disposed of just as any

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other blind drifters’ villages. Its attitude towards arts clusters has become more complicated in the new millennium, and in a sense, the ways it dealt with arts clusters deliver almost conflicting messages. The official recognition of CCI and the designation of 798 and Songzhuang suggested that the political authority started to incorporate contemporary art into neoliberal exceptions and to take advantage of the various benefits of art, from its diplomatic values to long-term economic values. Almost simultaneously, the real estate potential of art was exploited by local governments and developers to make quick money. Therefore, the mid-2000s witnessed the growth of both grassroots art districts and government-approved art districts. Exciting news kept following. Not only new arts districts sprung up, but the earliest artist’ village, Yuanmingyuan, also gained official recognition fifteen years after its eviction. An official exhibition about the

Yuanmingyuan artist village was sponsored by the Haidian District Government as a session of the district’s 2009 international art fair. The exhibition was meant to express the government’s “belated recognition” of Yuangmingyuan as well as its welcome to contemporary art and artists (“Exhibition of Yuanmingyuan,” 2009). In the same year, a contemporary art research center was established in the Chinese National Academy of

Arts; twenty-one star contemporary artists, some of whom were once called blind drifters, were employed as “artist academicians.”

However, before artists could celebrate the final arrival of the legitimacy of contemporary art, history repeated itself: over ten arts districts were torn down at the beginning of 2010, and more than one thousand artists were forced to relocate themselves

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– similar to what happened at Yuanmingyuan and Dongcun’s evictions, only on a much larger scale. Yet, relocating to another art district was an option only for more established artists who had the financial resources to do so, because the majority of the handful of remaining art districts were real estate-oriented, and the rent was too expensive for many less-established artists. Many young artists had just started their careers, invested what they had in their first studios, spent much time dealing with the violent demolition, and did not get much compensation in the end. The options facing them include leaving

Beijing or even leaving the arts. Judging from the direct cause of the demolition, the

District Government seemed to prioritize the very lucrative land business over other things, including art districts. Many artists also considered the demolition was primarily an economic decision of the money-driven government. Yet, the Municipal and District

Governments’ negative act negative act when the natural art ecology was destroyed – despite of all the zeal they displayed toward CCI – seemed to suggest other possibilities.

After all, it would be oversimplifying the case to regard the near extinction of unplanned arts clusters as a mere coincidence, given the troubled history that contemporary Chinese art had with the political authority.

CCI zoomed-in. Taking a closer look, the gains and losses of contemporary

Chinese art are not entirely contradictory, and they in effect explain how the political authority has governed contemporary art with the neoliberal mentality. In July 2006, eleven cultural clusters were designated by the Chaoyang District Government as district- level CCI clusters; among them were recreational districts, performing art and

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entertainment districts, traditional and folk art and artifacts districts, an antique art district, a book-selling center where book stores and publishing houses congregated, a cluster where renown media enterprises gathered, and 798, the contemporary art hub. In same year, the district’s CCI development plan was issued, in which the government expressed the desire to develop six key CCI:

• media industry, including production and distribution activities undertaken by

newspapers, magazines, radio and TV stations, internet media, etc.;

• antique art industry, including the sale, auction, and exhibition of antiques;

• performing art industry, including the creation and display of performing art;

• fashion industry, which concerned fashions in people’s daily consumption and

recreational activities;

• design and consultancy industry, including activities of providing consultancy

and planning service to enterprises and individuals on business, investment,

education, and consumption, etc.;

• intellectual property service industry, including all kinds of services related to

the IP industry (Chaoyang CCI Leading Group, 2006).

It is notable that contemporary art was not incorporated in the list, although it is the kind of culture that the Chaoyang District was known for. In addition, all the districts receiving designation already specialized in one or more areas of the six key industries, with the only exception of 798. Thus the question naturally follows – what was 798’s role in the Chaoyang District’s CCI blueprint? The answer was indicated in various official

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talks and development agendas: that 798 needed to be “upgraded” to better fit the CCI development plan. In October 2006, the deputy district head reported on the development progress of the CCI clusters at the 22nd session of the 13th People’s Congress of the

Chaoyang District. He generalized that 798 was currently dominated by artists’ studios, which were “difficult to be industrialized,” and that 798 needed to adjust its current structure by embracing more cultural organizations (Guan, 2006). This official account demonstrated that immediately after contemporary art was incorporated into China’s neoliberal exceptions through the globally popular discourse of CCI, its most important expression – 798, as a spontaneously formed community and which boasted many viable studios – was problematized through China’s articulation of this discourse. The solution to the problem of hard-to-be-industrialized was generalized into a slogan: “protect some, support some, incubate some, and adjust some” (

).25 What each “some” referred to has never been articulated, neither in government reports nor in any news reports.26 In short, the designations have provided the local government the opportunity to “upgrade” 798 and have justified its heavy-

25 The phrase “adjust some” was originally phrased as “clear some.”

26 It is said that support, mainly in forms of rent deduction, is given to artists, galleries and cultural organizations that fits the “development agenda of 798”; protection is provided to “core organizations” in

798 by signing long-term lease with them; and those that does not fit the development goal of 798, such as

“laundry shops and bath centers,” has been cleared out (Guo, 2011). Nevertheless, judging from the current situation of 798, such an exemplification of targets of cleaning out is by no means all-inclusive. More details may be written in the Admission and Discharge Regulations and Development Guide of 798, yet these materials are for “internal circulation” only.

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handed interventions, including removing unwanted organizations – those that do “not fit the development agenda of 798” – and bringing in more “industrial-izable” cultural companies that are service-oriented or focused on selling. This measure functions to limit the development space for studios, which are individual creation bases of contemporary art. In fact, the actual government intervention was and still is even greater and more meticulous than just outlined above, as will be explored in the next chapter. The composition of 798 has been altered greatly, and in all senses, this CCI cluster is no longer the same, as it was originally a spontaneous artist community.

This treatment of CCI is determined by the coexistence of the Reason of the Party and the neoliberal rationality, and it also reflects the working of socialist legacies – including government planning and other interventions – inside the neoliberalim. The neoliberal rationality is necessary for the Party to gain legitimacy domestically and internationally, yet it needs to be laced with “Chinese characters” so that it will not compromise the Reason of the Party in the long run, and it will work to optimize the political authority’s immediate interests. Therefore, after 798 was preserved with the condition of artists’ self-discipline, the cluster has been subjected to structural adjustment so that its current composition is both more economically profitable and “culturally safe.”

Demolition as a complement to the Cultural and Creative Industries plan.

Taking into consideration the special “requirements” of China’s CCI, the demolition of grassroots art districts not only demonstrates a similar logic, but, in a manner of speaking, it also complements the Chaoyang District’s CCI development plan. The demolition has

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produced a series of desirable effects in addition to the facilitation of land reserves and the increase the local government’s revenue. First of all, it has reinforced the common knowledge that everything – including art and arts clusters – needs to have government support in order to survive and thrive. In fact, many artists expressed their hopes that the government could plan new art districts and rent spaces to them at lower prices (Wang &

Yang, 2010; Gray, personal communication, December 31, 2013; Brown, personal communication, June 8, 2014). Given the possibility of their expectation being realized – that the government would have many art studios to cluster together and would rent precious lands to contemporary artists at favorable prices – not to mention other possible effects coming along with the government-planned art districts – it is significant that artists learned from past experiences to ask for government planning. This poses a contrast to the very first arts cluster, Yuanmingyuan, which provided a shelter to artists striving to escape from the all-pervasive government plan.

Furthermore, given the fact that the government has worked to increase the number of industrial-izable cultural companies in 798, which, purposefully or otherwise, took up spaces that could belong to individual studios, my hypothesis is that the demolition not only contributed to the land reserves of the local government, but it also destroyed the artistic reserve of 798: the grassroots art district supplied 798 with creativity and vitality, especially since 798 was already undergoing a gentrification process and many individual artists had to find cheaper places to set up their studios.

Additionally, the clustering of many art districts also functioned to gather the artists as a

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group, who – with all their resources and international influences – when acting as a group for some common appeals might impose unwanted pressure on the political authority. A likely illustration of this point is that in the Warm Winter project, the government put the organizers under surveillance and suppressed the circulation of information about the movement on traditional and social media platforms, with the aim to contain the influence of the project. Then, after the unexpected yet sensational Chang- an thoroughfare demonstration of sixteen artists, the government quickly facilitated compensation, thereby bringing the project to an end. Therefore, when many arts clusters accumulate in a not-so-large area, an incident can quickly escalate, which in turn makes it more costly for the local government to maintain social “harmony and stability.”

Last but not the least, the demolition of grassroots art districts, though a few of which has not yet been torn down, points to a gradual extinction of autonomous arts clusters located not far from urban center of Beijing. Specially, among the four spontaneous artist communities remaining in the 2000s, the most significant two – 798 and Songzhuang – have been incorporated into the government’s CCI agenda and thereby subjected to more systemic government intervention. As for the other two, Shangyuan is located on the outskirts of Beijing and does not concentrate on contemporary art, and

Caochangdi may be demolished at any time. Most grassroots art districts in the Chaoyang

District, which were too numerous and not influential enough to be managed by government, and which the political authority seem not want to be left autonomous near the center of Beijing, has been justifiably bulldozed as “unauthorized constructions.” The

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rest are pending demolition. What remains and is known to be safe are the several high- priced, real estate oriented art districts that are approved or even invested in by the government, and a few grassroots art districts – small in scale and not known to the media – that sit on the outer suburbs of Beijing (Liu, 2014).

In general, arts clusters in Beijing demonstrate the trend that those existing outside of the government planning regime have been gradually “taken care of,” either torn down or officially designated as CCI clusters. Allowed to exist are those with government involvement, either planned or “taken over” by the government. A few exceptions are made for remote, lesser known and thus less influential clusters. In the name of developing CCI, government permission, investment, designation, and “belated recognition” have been granted to arts clusters. All of these operations have either increased government revenue or lifted its reputation. Excluded from the neoliberal CCI exception and left to socialist land policies are autonomous arts clusters – not entirely worth preserving, yet not culturally secure enough to be left on their own. From the eviction of Yuanmingyuan’s “blind drifters” to the demolition of grassroots “unauthorized constructions,” what has changed is the status of contemporary Chinese art and artists: artists are no longer disposable blind drifters, and leading artists in this field are even recognized as “artist academicians.” What remains the same is the government’s attitude to unguarded autonomy. Taken over or taken down, this destination is not only tenable to autonomous clusters that concentrate on contemporary art, but also to autonomous art activities within the cluster being “taken over,” as will be discussed in the next chapter.

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CHAPTER 6: GOVERNANCE IN 798

– SOCIALIST HERITAGE IN THE NEOLIBERAL EXCEPTION

Introduction

Socialist Heritage in the Cultural and Creative Industries Cluster

In the previous chapter, I discussed the interplay of two rationalities: Reason of the Party and the neoliberal rationality, as well as the expanding neoliberal exceptions. In this chapter, I explore the embodiment of socialist legacies in a neoliberal exception: the

798 CCI cluster. The preservation and designation of this independent artist community signified that contemporary Chinese art was no longer primarily treated as an unorthodox culture form with potential antagonism, but its economic and strategic importance was recognized and incorporated into the government agenda. Before making a final decision on the designation, the local government suggested that artists work to improve the

“vibes” of the cluster for it to be officially accepted. Given this, it could be said that the community’s preservation – or its continuous enjoyment of the market economy – was contingent on the artists’ self-governance conforming to rationalities of the government.

Indeed, following these changes, government support was granted and even more opportunities came after its endorsement. Yet, the artists’ self-discipline was not completely reliable, as there could always be outliers; thus, external governance was still

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required. In this chapter, I examine the socialist heritages contained in the governance, as well as the effects of governance. “Socialist heritages” in this particular case mainly refers to two things: the Reason of the Party adopted by the local government and the organizational structure inherited from the socialist planned economy.

Reason of the Party. The Reason of the Party seeks to maintain the Party’s power monopoly, and certain techniques of governance need to be taken for this objective to be realized. In 798, the local government deploys various measures to guard against things that seem to defy the Party’s rule. The things, in the context of a contemporary art cluster, mostly are politically and socially critical artworks and activities that pose threats to

“cultural security.” Measures taken to deal with these threats range from changing the compositions of 798, to punishing and regulating unwanted behaviors, to putting all arts organizations under surveillance. This said, not all measures are explicit and some can serve multiple purposes – such as to realize short-term economic goals in addition to maintain cultural security in the long run.

“Socialist land master.” “Socialist land master” is a term coined by Y. Hsing

(2012). The scholar uses this term to refer to state-owned enterprises (SOEs), the de-facto owners of the lands where the enterprises stand. These SOEs used to be state units, which were links along the vertically arranged functional state agencies. As the planned economy collapsed, state units were corporatized into SOEs. Yet, the vertically arranged organizational structures persisted and continued to create tensions with local governments. For 798, its land master is the Seven Star Group and the local government

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is the Chaoyang District Government. Owning the land and all the properties on it, Seven

Star tends to fully exercise its rights to dispose of its possessions so as to maximize profits – such as renovating the district, making exceptions of secondary landlords and unfixed rents – while giving little attention to artists working in the cluster. Seven Star is not subordinated to the Chaoyang District Government and not even directly to the

Beijing Municipal Government, as explained later. Therefore, even the local government does not possess the authority to intervene in Seven Star business operations.

Governance and Effects

In this chapter, I analyze the governance of the two administrators: the Chaoyang

District Government and Seven Star, as well as their interactions. As just discussed, one of the goals of the local government is to maintain cultural security in the cluster.

However, in most cases this end is not achieved through traditional socialist means – such as commend and coercion of the state actor – but through guidance. Therefore, governmentality that governs by guiding people’s choices and actions holds much explanatory power here.

Governmentality, as opposed to sovereignty that features the use of repressive sovereign power, exercises bio-power and disciplinary power. Foucault expounded on the three types of power in his lectures in 1976. Sovereign power targets the territory and its inhabitants; it is a coercive power, which, in extreme cases, can take lives. Disciplinary power centers on the individual body; it aims to take control over bodies thus making them docile and useful. Bio-power is directed at the population; by regulating and

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managing life, it makes life proliferate.27 Discipline and bio-power complement each other and they constitute an alternative mode of governance – governmentality.

Additionally, in the governmentality framework, anyone can be the “governor,” including but not exclusive to state actors. Therefore, I investigate how disciplinary power and bio- power are exercised cooperatively by both administrators to achieve their goals of governance.

However, there are times when disciplinary power and bio-power cannot realize certain objectives – such as to dispel a troublesome artist – which seemed only possible with coercive and suppressive sovereign power. The political authority, then, resorts to the landlord’s power over its own property to solve the problem, as a way to depoliticize political issues. Nevertheless, Seven Star and the local government cannot always align their interests. At times the former’s operations may hurt or even force out many artist tenants, therefore impeding the government’s CCI development plan. Yet, the local government may not be able to intervene effectively enough, or, it could not check Seven

Star’s deeds without compromising its own governance. challenge the new norm being established.

27 To further clarify the issue, Foucault introduced the three types of power in chronological order. He advanced that sovereignty as a modality of power was effective during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Entering the eighteenth century, the demographic explosion and industrialization required new modes of power to take care of things out of the control of sovereignty both “at the level of detail and at the mass level.” Hence, there first emerged disciplinary power that attended to individual bodies and then bio- power to human masses (Foucault, 2003, p. 249).

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In addition to modes of governance, I also investigate the effects of governance. A norm has been gradually established in 798 after its designation, that it needs to be a culturally secure fashion cluster with tenants satisfying the requirements – tacit and outspoken ones – of both the local government and Seven Star. To a certain degree, the governance of the political authority is adverse to “sensitive artists,” but tenants that are not inclined to practice sensitive activities are more or less unaffected; in fact, those who fit the CCI development plan will receive government support. Nevertheless, all artist tenants are subject to the governance of the landlord, who in many cases is a sovereign- like entity in the cluster – except that they could not inflict physical punishment on the artists. They arbitrarily decide whether to renew a lease, to whom to rent a space, and when to offer favorable terms as well as when to withdraw them. Therefore, all artists may be affected, except perhaps those who have forged close connections with Seven

Star. Under the governance of both actors, there is little space for counter-normative activities, either in the form of the artists’ attempt to govern their own community, or in the form of individual resistance.

I organize this chapter in chronological order – governance between 2006 and

2009, and governance from 2010 to present. This arrangement is mainly because there was an administrative structure change in 2010. Afterward, the government’s governance became more complete and systematic and it became less dependent on Seven Star operations than it used to. In addition, Seven Star had to adjust its way of management after 798 received official designation in 2006. As time went by, more problems in its

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governance surfaced. In each time period, I examine the governance of both actors and the effects of governance embodied in specific incidents during that period.

Governance in 798 after Designation, 2006-2009

Administrative Bodies in 798

In July 2006, Dashanzi was designated by the Chaoyang District Government as a district-level CCI cluster, and it was allowed to use the factory title 798 in its name. Then, in December, the Beijing Municipal Government designated 798 a municipal-level CCI cluster.

A couple of months before the official designation, a 798 Development and

Administration Office (798hereafter referred to as the D&A Office) was formed collaboratively by the Chaoyang District Government and the Seven Star group. The D&A office was set in the also newly-established Cultural and Creative

Industrial Investment Company (hereafter referred to as the 798 Culture Company, as locals usually called it), which was owned by and received its revenue from Seven Star.

The staff of the D&A Office consisted of both Seven Star personnel and government officials, while the head of the office was from Seven Star. The mission of the D&A

Office was to provide “leadership and service” in 798 and to facilitate “coordination and liaison” work (“Propaganda Department promotes the development of 798,” 2006). The

798 Cultural Company was responsible for “planning and construction projects” in 798

(“CCI in 798,” 2009). In addition, there was Property Management – also staffed by

Seven Star – which took care of leasing and maintenance (CCI in 798,” 2009). The

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responsibilities of the three administrative bodies were not clearly divided. Generally speaking, daily affairs in 798 were handled by the D&A Office and Property

Management – the former dealt with tenants and their activities and the latter with properties and facilities. The 798 Cultural Company was not involved in the routine management of 798. Instead, it took charge of long-term development and construction projects.

Whereas basic information on the three administrative bodies was not difficult to find in news reports, the existence of the 798 Leading Group (798 ) – an affiliate of the Propaganda Department of the Chaoyang District and the group to which the D&A Office was subordinate – was rarely mentioned. The Leading Group’s mission largely overlapped with that of the D&A Office with one more aim: to maintain public security and cultural security in 798 (“798 Leading Group established,” 2006). Diagram 1 shows a visualization of the administrative structure of 798.28 The white squares represent the actual administrative bodies, and the grey ones represent their superior organizations.

Although it was widely reported that the D&A Office was founded cooperatively by the landlord and the local government, its connection with the local Propaganda Department

28 The diagram meant to illustrate only the vertical relationship, thus it did not suggest, for example, that the 798 Leading group parallel 798 the Cultural Company.

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was clearly downplayed and made almost invisible to outsiders.29 The involvement of the

Propaganda Department rather than, for example, the local cultural bureau, indicated that contemporary art was still to some extent treated as an ideological issue after its acceptance into the neoliberal exception.

29 I found concerning information only from a couple of earlier government webpages that was dated in

2006. In my interview with a administrator who was from the district government, I tried to asked if the

D&A Office (later transformed into Administrative Committee) was supervised by the Propaganda

Department, but this question was evaded.

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Diagram 1: Administrative structure of 798, 2006-2009.

At first glance, the administrative work of 798 seemed to be dominated by Seven

Star, which supervised and funded the three administrative bodies, while the Chaoyang

District Government only provided guidance and leadership. This also seemed to be the impression that the government sought to leave on the outside world according to various newspaper reports and my interviews with the administrators. This statement had some

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truthfulness, but was not entirely accurate. “Guidance” from the government was more comprehensive and intense than the word itself suggested, as the government not only directed the development of 798 but also attended to individual artists and arts organizations. Therefore, the word “governance” would be a better substitute for the officially advocated “guidance.” In the rest of this section, I analyze the modes of governance of the government and Seven Star over 798.

Governance of the Government: Structural Regulation through Delegation

As discussed in the previous chapter, once 798 received official designation with ten other cultural clusters, its composition was problematized through Chaoyang

District’s CCI development plan – being an organic artist community, it was dominated by artists’ studios that were difficult to industrialize. To cure this problem, the government decided to “protect some, support some, incubate some, and adjust some.”

Each “some” was never specified and key regulation documents co-designed by the government and Seven Star, including the Admission and Discharge Regulation, were made confidential. However, it was not impossible to trace the pattern of the government- initiated structural adjustment due to their actual practices with regard to “protection, support, incubation, and adjustment.” Generally speaking, support and incubation was granted to cultural enterprises and a few distinguished non-profit arts organizations; protection was offered to artists’ studios and art spaces that were not financially competitive enough to survive the fast gentrification, provided they fit the development plan of 798; and adjustment was targeted at spaces irrelevant to the arts or “unwanted.”

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Support and incubation: a planned industrialization of 798. Seven Star opened its spaces wide to embrace cultural organizations and enterprises which, according to the government standard, were more easily industrialized. It had welcomed over forty international art galleries, such as the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art,

Pace Gallery, Faurschou Gallery, etc. Some large, prestigious organizations were provided with favorable terms such as long-term lease and lower rents and they were placed at prime locations in 798. Yet, renowned art organizations were not the only type that fit the development agenda of 798. More easily industrialized still were culture- related enterprises – those providing services and commodities that were readily sellable.

Spaces went to advertising companies, consulting companies, and design companies that ranged from clothing design to furniture design and from cartoon design to industrial design. Till 2014, cultural enterprises of these kinds took up almost half of all the organizations residing in 798, according to 798 administrators (Red, personal communication, June 5, 2014; Yellow, personal communication, June 6, 2014).

Industrialization and commercialization took place not only inside 798, but outside of it. Factory 751 was located right next to 798 in the factory compound. With the same architectural style, it could have made a nice expansion of 798 as an art hub. Yet this large area was reserved for cultural industries enterprises only, whereas core arts organizations – such as galleries and artists’ studios – were kept out by regulations

(Zheng, 2010). 751 was named the 751 Design Park and from the very beginning it was positioned as a design and fashion center that would be a tourist attraction during the

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2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Though the two clusters had quite different auras back in

2006 – with fashion and consumption being the orientation of 751 and experiment and pioneer art of 798 – they were frequently mentioned together in government documentation. Since the major attraction of 751 was that it was located right next to the world-famous 798, it was not surprising for the government to do this cluster-bundling.

Yet, it is also worth noting that the fashion and design industries were listed as key industries on the Chaoyang District’s CCI development plan whereas contemporary art was not. Taking this into consideration, the bundling essentially aimed to transform 798 into a fashion and design center. This goal has already been partially realized – the artistic atmosphere of 798 has been replaced by a fashionable and commercial one and 798 was referred to as a fashion and function cluster in the most recent CCI development plan of

Beijing (“Development plan of CCI clusters in Beijing,” 2014). In the near future, a convention center, an auction and transaction center, and arts hotels are to be built in the cluster (Red, personal communication, June 5, 2014).

The development trajectory of 798 reflected the decline of art and raise of consumerism. Similar patterns might be found in arts clusters in other countries, but it is inaccurate to describe such a trajectory as a natural path, as many arts practitioners and commentators tend to believe. This is because, to a large extent, this process in 798 was planned by the government and implemented by the landlord, rather than resulting from the “invisible hand” – the market. In addition, the incubation and support of CCI enterprises, or the industrialization of the cluster, was also partly utilized to encroach on

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the space of contemporary art. Thus, in the long run, there was hardly soil for what was regarded as sensitive art to grow. This later point is particularly plausible when taking into account what the government sought to “protect and adjust” in the structural adjustment. I argue that by adjusting – including, but not limited to clearing out – some arts organizations, the government drove out artists’ studios deemed as unfit under the development agenda, many of which were sources of sensitive artworks and activities.

Simultaneously, by offering protection, it supported those willing to reorient their activities and discouraged artists’ further engagement with sensitive art by using lease and rent as leverage.

Adjustment and selective protection: content control updated. While many businesses irrelevant to the arts were cleared out of the cluster – including laundry rooms and bath rooms – they were not the only targets of “adjustment,” the connotation of which seemed to far exceed clearing up. Also targeted were independent artist studios and art spaces. In the documentary 798 Station (2010), the filmmaker interviewed several arts practitioners based in 798. Most of the interviewees had experienced content control.

Among them were several dissident artists with quite outspoken political antagonism. Yet the majority were artists and space owners whose artworks and exhibitions usually contained no clear political or social criticism. Sensitive artworks, such as those rendering derogatory depictions of Mao Zedong or those alluding to the Tiananmen crackdown, were asked to be removed. The requests, or rather orders, came from the

D&A Office, the Propaganda Department, and sometimes the police (Zheng, 2010).

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Property Management would cut off the electricity supply until the offending artists or space owners did as they were told. When artworks considered to be very sensitive or provocative appeared, Property Management would send sentries outside of the gallery to keep out any visitors. Strictly speaking, the exhibition itself was not shut down nor called off, yet the space owner usually had to withdraw it in order to resume business. In addition to the harassment, troublesome entities also faced much difficulty when seeking to renew their leases with Seven Star; many studios and art spaces were “adjusted” by these means. For example, outside the art space owned by the renowned dissident artists, the Gao Brothers, two uniformed guards stood sentry day by day for over a month. In the end, the artists permanently changed their space into a private studio. In another case, an independent music space owner was determined to stay at 798 in spite of the power failures and intimidations from the police after he showed a banned movie, but Property

Management refused to renew the lease and he had to move out. In less extreme cases, many artists simply chose to leave 798 for a combination of reasons: endless surveillance and interference, over commercialization and an explosion of the number of tourists in the cluster, and the ever-increasing rents.

The disciplinary strategies used against sensitive individuals forced artists changed their behaviors or drove them out of the cluster, but they alone were not enough to govern 798 effectively, even in the short-term. For one thing, the government still needed a considerable amount of arts organizations to remain in the cluster to maintain its attraction and distinction. Thus, it was crucial to prevent arts organizations from being

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crowded out completely. In addition, many artists and spaces owners took off sensitive artworks only out of sheer expediency. Thus, similar problems would keep popping up that the D&A Office had to constantly cope with. Overall, governance would be most efficient when arts practitioners would voluntarily drop the idea of “making trouble.”

Both goals were achieved through providing “protection,” which first and foremost referred to rent discount. Rents in 798 were calculated per square meter per day and the rental rates were mainly decided by the location, condition, and function of spaces. Generally speaking, spaces in narrower, shabbier factory buildings that were not easily accessible from the main streets were cheaper than the spacious ones at prime locations, and spaces used for pure business purposes, such as coffee shops, had much higher rates than those with art exhibition functions. According to an administrative official, art galleries, art centers, museums and the like were the core organizations in

798, they were under protection and enjoyed rents lower than market prices (J. Xu, 2014;

Red, personal communication, June 5, 2014; Yellow, personal communication, June 6,

2014). Special rates were also offered to artists who had been tenants before the official designation of 798 (Red, personal communication, June 5, 2014). For example, one of the earliest artist tenants enjoyed a rate of around 1.5 RMB per square meter per day till

2011, while rates for newly moved-in organizations ranged from 2.5 to 10 RMB (Guo,

2008; Zhu, 2012, 2013).

The rental rate policy in 798 not only reflected the market rule but also realized government support for artists and non-profit arts organizations. From another

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perspective, it justified huge differences in rates and made the rate vary from case to case, which in turn produced room for behind-the-scene manipulations. With a certain extent of mutual agreement, both the government and Seven Star could exercise their discretion to decide to whom to offer favorable terms and whom to leave to be crowded out, or, using

Foucault’s rendering of bio-power, they could decide whom to “make live” and whom to

“let die.” In fact, those being protected through lower rents were offered rates with different levels of discount; specific terms were kept secret, and artist tenants usually did not know each other’s rental rate (L. Zhang, 2013; Red, personal communication, June 5,

2014).

Just as the extent of protection differed, not all the early tenants were eligible for protection. The Gao Brothers moved into 798 early in 2003, but they did not have a discount and they were not under any kind of protection. The brothers’ studio and their art space were shut down several times, and Property Management refused to renew their leases. All signs showed that Seven Star wanted to, or was asked to, expel the Gao

Brothers from 798. Yet, the Gao Brothers were approached by police officers who offered

“help” in exchange for the artists’ collaboration (Zheng, 2010). It would not be surprising if the Gao Brothers’ contractual problems and other troubles with 798 had been easily solved by accepting the offer. Running a space in 798 increasingly became an issue of money as all kinds of operational costs kept increasing. Thus, a discount in rent would be very tempting. Under these circumstances, an artist might well withhold their dissent to

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earn “protection” or “help,” or, if one was already protected, he/she might simply play it safe to maintain favorable terms.

Bio-power and disciplinary power facilitated and complemented by delegation. To generalize, the government’s governance over 798 was mainly achieved through the structural regulation of the cluster which “protected some , supported some, incubated some, and adjusted some.” This structural regulation was justified by the discourse of CCI. Although designated as a CCI cluster, 798 was not readily suitable to the government-designed development plan for CCI, and was therefore subjected to a sort of “structural upgrade.” Arts organizations that were vulnerable to market competition and that fit the development agenda assigned to 798 were protected so they could stay.

Renowned international art galleries and especially cultural-related enterprises that had direct CCI values were encouraged to develop in 798. Those considered unsuitable to the development of 798 were subjected to adjustment.

Implied in the different treatment was a classification that primarily divided the organizations into two types – those that fit the development agenda and those that did not. The development agenda included two criteria for the cultural organization: the outspoken one was “easy to be industrialized,” which would make 798 a more profitable cluster, and the unspoken one was culturally safe, as could be seen from the involvement of the local Propaganda Department and actual governing practices in 798. From a

Foucauldian perspective, support and incubation were exercises of bio-power over a group of qualified art galleries and cultural enterprises that were CCI-oriented and, thus,

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less likely to be culturally provocative. These organizations were incorporated into the neoliberal exception and allowed to thrive in the cluster. Intentionally or not, these organizations took up spaces that could be rented by independent artists and art spaces, and their growth in number also greatly contribute to the commercialization of 798, making the clusters increasingly incompatible to the emergence of sensitive activities.

Adjustment of arts organizations, on the other hand, was a show of disciplinary power, which was supplemented by selective protection. Artists and art organizations engaged in sensitive activities were subjected to various forms of punishment – from electricity failure to police harassment – which were used to eliminate concerning activities and to establish a norm within the cluster. Cultural security was what all the arts practitioners needed to abide by if they wanted to practice art in 798. The norm was reinforced also through rewards, in which cooperative artists and organizations were granted protection – rental discounts or lease renewal by default.

While it was not uncommon for bio-power and disciplinary power to be used to complement each other, unique in the case of 798 was that the exercise of both powers were facilitated by delegation – the government delegated part of its authority in developing CCI to Seven Star, the de-facto landlord. As the CCP gradually adopted the neoliberal rationality and expanded neoliberal exceptions, the government restrained itself from micromanaging and delegated many of its tasks to market entities. Therefore, instead of assigning spaces in 798 to CCI-relevant tenants that fit its development agenda and directly expel unwanted organizations, the government worked through the original

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landlord, who had authority over the properties and could decide whether its tenants left or stayed.

Compared with leasing a space to an organization, the termination of a leasing contract with a particular tenant was even more indispensable in realizing the government’s plan. It was a materialization of coercive state control, which was exercised through and justified by the landlord’s rightful disposition of its properties. As a result of neoliberal calculations, the Party also restrained itself from arbitrary use of sovereign power. Instead, it claimed it was “ruling the country by law” (yifa zhiguo, 30).

“Rule by law” is far from “Rule of Law” which is characteristic of neoliberalism in liberal-democratic countries and “a system of judicial arbitration between individuals and the public authorities” (Foucault, 2008, p. 171). Rule by law alone sometimes could not guarantee the realization of Reason of the Party. In the case of sensitive artworks, which were taken as denunciations and thus threats to the Party’s leadership, there was no law nor formal regulation forbidding the creation and exhibition of these artworks. Many of them made only obscure references to taboo topics and, therefore, these artworks or offending art makers could not be justifiably punished and eliminated. Disciplinary power from either the police or Property Management was exercised to correct and end unwanted behaviors. Yet, if an artist ignored all the harassment and continued to engage in sensitive activities, the D&A Office which supposedly provided only “leadership and

30 Although official media tended to translate “” into “rule of law,” a literal and more faithful translation of this Chinese expression was: “to rule/govern the state in accordance with law.”

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service” in 798 had its hands tied. In this situation, the troublesome tenant could only be left to the landlord to stop renewing the lease with him/her. This was how the effect of sovereign power was achieved without the government actually exercising sovereign power, and it completed the government’s governance when bio-power and disciplinary power failed to guide and correct behaviors.

Delegation with socialist heritage. I use the word “delegation” to convey the sense that the local government transferred its authority and responsibility to Seven Star.

As a business entity, it could solve political problems through economic measures, thereby accomplishing goals unsuitable to be performed by a political authority. Yet, the relationship between the local government and Seven Star was more complicated than simply delegation. Seven Star was not any enterprise, but a state owned enterprise.

Before its corporatization through economic reforms, it used to be a link along the vertically arranged state authorities that saw to different functions or sectors. Specifically,

798, along with the other five factories in the factory compound, was affiliated with the

Ministry of Electronic Industry which was directly supervised by the State Council of

China. All the vertically organized state units were physically located in areas under the jurisdiction of horizontal territorial local governments in charge of local affairs.

Therefore, though state units were primarily subject to corresponding ministries, at times they still needed to report to the local governments. In the command economy, the interlace of vertically and horizontally organized state agencies strengthened the central power while preventing the rise of local power. Yet, such an arrangement created

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much complexity and confusion in terms of responsibility, as well as subordination. This was especially true when many state units underwent the corporatization process, in which complete state ownership was transformed to a shareholding system, with the state being the biggest shareholder (Cao, 2000). In her recent book, Y. Hsing discussed the competition over land use between the territorial local governments and the SOEs – which she referred to as socialist land masters (2012).

In the case of the Chaoyang District Government and Seven Star, the latter lost the land battle as its reconstruction plan was overruled by the Beijing Municipal

Government, and the former used the land to develop CCI. However, this did not change the fact that Seven Star was still the socialist master of the lands on which its factories stood. It was also not subordinate to the Chaoyang District Government – though its chairman of the board was one rank lower than the head of the Chaoyang District – just as vertically organized state units were not subordinate to territorial local governments in the command economy. Carrying on with the socialist heritage, delegation was effective and also problematic at the same time. It was effective because Seven Star was first and foremost a SOE and therefore a good candidate to be commissioned with state responsibilities. It was problematic because Seven Star was not subordinate to the

Chaoyang District Government, and not even directly to the Beijing Municipal

Government due to the complexity involved in the matrix of the vertical and horizontal

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organizational structure.31 Therefore, in addition to accomplishing some government goals, Seven Star as a for-profit enterprise also had its own business operations and sought to maximize its profits. This created many problems for the artist tenants and was not always in line with the government plan to develop CCI. In the former case, the government might choose to intervene, or not, depending on its own calculations. In the latter case, the government did not have the authority to talk Seven Star out of its business decisions as much as it might have wanted to.

Governance of Seven Star: Infrastructure Renovation Endorsed by the Government

Changes after designation. Being the de-facto landlord and the owner of the factory compound, Seven Star once had full discretion on how to dispose of its properties to extract the most wealth. When the factories were no longer profitable, Seven Star let its spaces out to whomever wanted to rent. Tenants’ occupations and activities were none of its particular concern, as long as it could collect rents and take the spaces back when needed. Things changed when 798 was designated as a CCI cluster, the development of which was planned and guided by the government. Since then, the land owner – Seven

31 As a local SOE, Seven Star is supervised by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration

Commission (SASAC) of Beijing, which is set up by the Beijing Municipal government according the requirement of the central government and is supervised by its superior organization on the vertical line – the SASAC of the State Council. Local SASACs were supposed to be “independent” agencies and too much connection with the local government usually demonstrates an “over-administration” of the latter.

Nonetheless, influence from the superior territorial local government is unavoidable in reality. In the case of Beijing’s SASAC, one of its duties as listed on the official website was to “undertake other issues assigned by the municipal government.”

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Star – and the supervisor of the use of the land – the local government – started to co- administrate the cluster.

This co-administration changed Seven Star’s operation mainly in three ways.

First, by regulation, tenants in 798 had to be engaged in CCI-related activities. Thus supposedly, Seven Star had to stop renewing leases with CCI-irrelevant tenants and it could not rent the space to just anyone with the highest bid. Second, Seven Star could not charge some of its tenants at market prices, as these organizations were protected and supported by the government. During 2009 and 2010, for example, rents for large art organizations and for earlier artist tenants were reduced by 30% to 40% due to the global financial crisis and the economic depression within the art business (J. Xu, 2014).

Thirdly, as described in the previous section, Seven Star needed to handle – and at times expel – tenants engaging in sensitive activities when the government needed it to. While this last operation concerned only a small handful of artists and did not create a revenue burden on Seven Star, the first two, and especially the second, considerably affected its income (J. Xu, 2014). To make up this loss and extract as much profit as possible, Seven

Star fully exercised its power of disposition over the land and properties to such an extent that the landlord became a barrier to the growth of 798.

Devastating renovation. Between 2006 and 2009, Seven Star’s governance was first and foremost embodied in the renovation of the cluster, which created a burden on artists working in 798. Shortly after its official designation, over 120 million RMB was granted by the Beijing Municipal Government and the Chaoyang District Government to

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renovate 798 to make this “decaying” factory compound a “decent” landmark of Beijing.

The renovation work mainly consisted of two simultaneous projects, both of which were undertaken by Seven Star. One was an infrastructure renewal and environmental improvement project, and the other was to build a seven-story parking garage to accommodate tourists during the Olympic Games. The second project received an extra

60 million RMB funding in addition to the 120 million grants (“Land-use approval for construction projects,” 2008; 798 Station, 2010). Renovation planning and design were contracted by Seven Star to design companies of its selection or to those who won the biddings, without consulting with the artist tenants.32 Half of the original planning and design was rejected, just because “some officials did not like it” (Liu & Wang, 2008).

As it turned out, the renovation ruined the archaic industrial look that was a feature of 798, caused unbearable troubles to artists, and eventually resulted in unreasonable charges on the tenants. Complaints about the renovation could be easily found in blogs and writings of 798 artists. The documentary 798 Station recorded various artists’ comments, almost all of which were negative. For example, red brick walls were erected outside of a gray building in order to unify the color of old factory constructions.

However, the openings on the news walls were poorly aligned with the windows of the

32 Chen Yongli, the vice-general manager and then head of the D&A Office claimed that the renovation scheme reflected the “majority opinion” within a selected expert committee that consisted of “some 798 artist representatives, renowned contemporary artists outside of the cluster, and experts of landscape design” (Liu & Wang, 2008). However, 798 artists’ reactions and responses in various sources showed they were unaware of the “majority opinion” and were very unsatisfied with the renovation scheme.

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building, making it impossible to open most of the windows (Hong, 2012). The somber black pipelines in the cluster were all covered with shining iron sheet for a newer and brighter look. Many trees and grasses growing in the compound over time were replaced with well-trimmed decorative plants that were supposedly more pleasing to the eye.

Roads in 798 were repeatedly dug up and paved anew or just to switch broadband providers. Electricity and water supplies failed now and again, and the new broadband provider brought only lower network speed (798 Station, 2010). Some artists moved out of 798 due to the endless construction work and remaining artists complained to Property

Management about their predicaments caused by the massive renovation. Yet, Seven Star decided that they could do anything they wanted with their own properties.

Absent government intervention. It would hardly be surprising if the renovation turned out to be an opportunity for the various parties involved to line their own pockets.

This, as well as government inefficiency, might explain the absence of government supervision and audit on how such a huge amount of money was spent. When the government chose not to intervene was as telling as when it chose to intervene. It is important to note another probable reason for the absence of government intervention – the renovation, which was devastating to the artists, was not at odds with the government’s calculations. 798 was preserved by the municipal government partly for the sake of the Olympic Games and its renovation was not entirely different from the numerous other vanity projects conducted in the capital during the pre-Olympic preparation. In addition, the government always wanted to turn 798 into a lucrative

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fashion and design cluster and simultaneously alienate independent artists. The renovation, along with the official promotion of 798 on various media, may have indeed attracted more deep-pocketed enterprises and sightseers to the cluster. The dissatisfaction and even departure of artist tenants – which would have a profound negative impact on the long-term development of 798 – were not the local government’s primary concern.

Nevertheless, this is not to say that the government and Seven Star could always align their interests nor that their modes of governance were never conflicting. In fact, discord between the two administrators, as well as the artist tenants accumulated and became increasingly acute at a later phase as discussed later in this chapter.

The Crush of Artists’ Self-governance and Individual Resistance with Counter- normative Possibilities.

Counter-normative self-governance before the designation. When 798 was still referred to as Dashanzi, the artists sought to govern their community – and more specifically, to challenge Seven Star’s reconstruction plan and thereby maintain their community – through annual art festivals. The Dashanzi art festivals were completely independent in the sense that there was no government involvement; they were initiated, organized, curated and attended only by artists themselves. The independent festivals lasted for three years from 2004 to 2006 before the D&A Office took charge and entitled the event the 798 Art Festival.

As discussed in the previous chapter, the Dashanzi Art Festival was launched by artists as a strategy to protect the arts cluster against the demolition plan initiated by the

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landlord and endorsed by the central government. Although Dashanzi may have first been considered by the outside world as merely a physical location where artists congregated to practice contemporary art, artists at the art festivals presented it as a vibrant cutting edge artist community with international significance and brought it worldwide attention.

The art festival was initiated by Huang Rui, a leading contemporary artist and an early artist tenant who introduced the first art gallery to Dashanzi. In the 2005 festival, which was more organized and mature than the previous, Huang Rui assumed the role of chief director. Exercising his international influence, Huang Rui and his team recruited several curators from China and other countries, who organized 32 programs during the three- week long festival. In the meantime, artist studios and galleries in the cluster also launched their featured exhibitions or presented their own programs. The 2005 festival involved around 500 artists based in the cluster or elsewhere and attracted more than

100,000 attendees according to the record of the organizing committee of the festival

(Zhou, 2005; DIAF, 2006).

Knowing that the landlord of Dashanzi planned to demolish the factory compound within several years, artists decided to compete for the area’s future as the arts cluster began to develop vigorously. They successfully promoted and reinforced the identity of

Dashanzi as an artist community and even “the” artist community of China through the annual festivals. This artist community under the artists’ collaborative self-governance not only showed the outside world the vitality and potential of contemporary Chinese art, but also convinced the government – a decisive link for the success of the artists’

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preservation efforts – of its economic and diplomatic value which the landlord’s original reconstruction plan could not match.

Institutionalization of the independent art festival. After the cluster was incorporated into the neoliberal exception and became subject to the government’s development plan, there were generally two avenues for artists to exercise their self- governance to stretch the latitude offered by the administrators and challenge the new norm being established. This new norm was that 798 would be a culturally secure fashion cluster with tenants satisfying the local government and Seven Star’s requirements, both tacit and outspoken ones. The first avenue was still through the independent art festival, and the other was to through an artists organization, formed and managed by artists themselves. However, in practice, the space of artists self-governance barely existed.

First and foremost, the independent art festival was taken over by the D&A Office and turned into an official event full of socialist clichés and various tacit taboos. In

September 2006, the 798 Creative Cultural Festival was held by the D&A Office. It was held only four months after the closing of the 2006 Dashanzi Art Festival, organized by

Huang Rui’s team and arts practitioners from different parts of the world. In contrast to the successful independent festival, the officially organized one featured mainstream art forms, including a concert of propagandist military songs. It was poorly received by 798 artists and audiences (Cheng, 2007b). It may have been due to the sharp contrast in audiences’ responses that D&A Office decided to take over the Dashanzi Art Festival and

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merge it with the Creative Cultural Festival.33 While the D&A Office expressed willingness to let Huang Rui curate the art festival, Huang refused to become a “puppet.”

Failing to reach an agreement, Seven Star finally decided not to renew Huang’s lease, and

Huang moved his studio out in 798 in March 2007 (Zheng, 2010).34

The brand new 2007 798 Art Festival was organized by the D&A Office and sponsored by Seven Star. The D&A Office picked 20 or so renowned artist tenants as art festival committee members and hired an independent curator from outside the cluster.

The new curator did not possess as many international resources as Huang Rui. However, this was only a relatively minor difference between the 798 Art Festival and the independent Dashanzi Art Festival. Artists showed little interest to participate, not only because of their irritation with how 798 issues were handled by the D&A Office and

Property Management, but more importantly because a government-organized art event was bound to have various restrictions. For example, the D&A Office required festival curators to report all artworks and performance art for the local government to screen

33 The Creative Cultural Festival was held from September to October in 2006 and 2007. Therefore, two large festivals were held per year - the art festival in spring and the cultural festival in autumn. In 2008, the two festivals were merged into one; it was named the 798 Art Festival but took place in autumn.

34 According to newspaper reports and other artists’ accounts, there were five or six spaces in 798 rented under Huang Rui or his sister’s name, and not all of them were devoted to Huang’s own use or artistic purposes. Therefore, though Seven Star ended one of the leases in 2007, it was inaccurate to say the landlord forced Huang to leave. Huang Rui might have moved out for similar reasons as other artists who chose to leave, such as the shrinking of artistic latitude and the arbitrary way that Seven Star managed its property.

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ahead of the event (M. Yang, 2009a). During the festival, an inspection team sent by the local government also showed up to take down “problematic” artworks (Zheng, 2010). In addition, the government showed no intention to make the event artist-oriented. Only government officials and leaders of Seven Star were included on the guest list for the opening ceremonies. They delivered speeches and cut ribbons, whereas no artist was invited to do so. Many of the art practitioners were not notified of the annual festival nor the opening ceremonies. Some others were simply asked to present exhibitions in their spaces during the event without being informed of any details about the festival (Ibid).

Artists commented that the annual festival was “ruined,” was “garbage,” and was turned into a “mass campaign” or “trading fair” (Ibid). Also ruined was 798’s identity as a cutting edge artist community, a place that nurtured art activities considered “sensitive” and “insecure” by the administrators, and a venue where artists could voice their complaints so as to challenge the current governance that burdened them. Under the governance of both the local government and Seven Star, many artists left 798 who had alternative options for their studio location and who simply could not afford to stay. The rest neither possessed the resources nor the motivation to mobilize all the tenants to launch another art event of their own, provided the event could be approved by the government in the first place. The Dashanzi Art Festival was a channel created by artists themselves to make their community visible and thereby resolve the demolition crisis posed by then-governor, Seven Star. Yet, the institutionalization of the annual festival signified the blockage of this self-governing channel with counter-normative potentials.

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The current situation was adverse to the creation of a similar channel, and indeed, no such channel materialized. Unless the artists could find another way to express their common values and appeals, they would effectively forgo the possibility to govern their own community and change the cluster which had been altered by the administrators in undesirable ways to the artists.

Deprecation of tenant assembly initiated by artists. Forming an organization – an artists’ union – to collectively speak for artists’ interests, to actively participate in daily administrative affairs, and long-term development plans of the cluster was the other way for artists to govern of their community. Yet, a democratic organization of this kind rarely existed in the past history of the P.R.C. Consequently, people tended not to possess the mindset to strive for what they deserved through democratic processes and when they did, they usually had little idea how to operate as most lacked previous experience. This, to some extent, might explain the failure of Huang Rui’s attempt to form a tenants’ assembly.

When he was caught in the rental dispute with Seven Star in December 2006,

Huang Rui organized several symposiums during which the participants agreed to form a tenants’ assembly to fight for the rights and interests of the tenants. They decided who would be representatives in the assembly together. On January 9, 2007, Huang Rui announced the establishment of the assembly at the opening of his last exhibition in his

798 studio, Open. The next day would be his deadline to move out. Due to the time limitation and operational difficulties, only 50 out of the 200 to 300 organizations in 798

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had agreed to join the assembly (“Press conference of the Open exhibition,” 2007).

Nevertheless, Huang Rui still collected signatures from tenants attending the opening and submitted the signature sheet together with the constitution document of the tenants’ assembly to Property Management to claim the formal formation of the assembly.

Unsurprisingly, Seven Star refused to acknowledge the assembly’s legitimacy on the grounds that many tenants signed just to check-in and that the signatures were not on the same page of the constitution making it invalid by law (Cheng, 2007b). While the process of forming the tenants’ assembly was not impeccable, it was also quite clear that the governors – be they the government or Seven Star – could freely use their discretion to decide when to strictly abide by laws and when to allow some flexibility. Huang Rui moved out shortly afterward, and the tenants’ assembly was never mentioned again, perhaps because no one trusted this democratic way would actually work.

Permitted artists’ organizations: for decoration or for self-discipline? Then a natural question follows: did 798 have an organization that to some extent resembled and functioned as an artists’ union? According to a 798 administrator and a governmental brief, there existed three artists’ organizations in the cluster: an artist committee, an expert committee, and a gallery association (“Taking measures to ensure district security,” 2012; Red, personal communication, June 5, 2014). However, other than the titles, specific information on the three artists’ organizations such as their tasks, missions, members, and even time of formation were untraceable on the internet. In newspaper reports, these organizations were called by other similar names or even confused with one

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another. The interviewed administrator was vague on the three organizations. Two out of the four 798 artists who participated in the research had heard of one or two of the organizations but had no interactions with them. The other two happened to be members of the artists’ committee, yet even they could not or were not willing to provide specific information about this organization. The only information they offered was that the artists’ committee was initiated by the D&A Office, which would summon the twenty or so members to meet before important events, such as the annual art festival.35 It might be that artists were consulted for suggestions on these meetings, but – just as a former staff member of the D&A Office implied – the artists’ committee was more likely a sham

(Zheng, 2010).

Interestingly, on the website of the Beijing Law Enforcement Team of the Cultural

Market (), the three organizations were referred to as “self- disciplinar associations” that “should lead the industry and take the initiative to resist sensitive activities and problematic artworks in the cluster” (“Taking measures to ensure district security,” 2012). This pointed to another possible function of the organizations other than pure decoration – that they served to govern the artists according to the norm established by the administrators. Artists’ behaviors were influenced by their peers or

35 While both artists recalled that the artist committee existed before 2010, the administrator stated that it was established after 2010 as was the galleries association, but the expert committee was formed by the

D&A Office before 2010. The confusion to some extent demonstrated that the artists’ organizations were non-functional. Nevertheless, the specific time of formation does not affect the analysis of these artists’ organizations.

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altered out of peer pressure, just as in the case of the artists’ voluntarily-formed self- disciplinary group before the designation. This time, however, the members were more

“reliable” as they were mainly appointed by the administrators.

It is unknown whether or not the members of the artists’ organizations had behaved as they were expected to. Nevertheless, the government’s perception was that an artists’ organization could exist only when it could be used to accomplish the government’s own purpose. The existence of the three artists’ organizations created an illusion that artists could take part in the administration and development issues of the cluster and that their opinions mattered. In reality, a grassroots tenants’ union was not acknowledged, and a government-initiated artists’ organization was at best a decoration and at worst another governing mechanism through which the authority could manipulate public opinions.

At the absence of artists’ own governance. When the grassroots art festival no longer existed and a real artists’ union was absent, the problem was not only that artists lost the opportunity to govern their own community and to counter the unreasonable norm, but also that when individual artists’ rights and interests were violated, one did not have an association for support in confronting the much more powerful sovereigns. For most artists, their problems came from Seven Star, who tended to extract as much profit from its property as possible at the expense of its tenants’ interests. A case in point was the disturbing renovation projects undertaken by Seven Star before and after the Beijing

Olympic Games. Hao Guang was one of the artists who could no longer put up with

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Seven Star’s way of management. Instead of moving out of 798 or staying but to avoid confrontations with the landlord in fear of the latter’s revenge, Hao Guang decided to resist. His way was to write an open letter addressed to the head of the Beijing Municipal

Government, in which he accused Seven Star of “gangster-like” management and called for more government intervention. Specifically, he suggested the municipal government form a committee that could administer 798 more “professionally” (Hao, 2008; M. Yang,

2009b).

Hao Guang was probably not the only one that hoped a higher level of government would step in and end the delegation of power to Seven Star. He was not among the few “sensitive” artists in 798, yet all artists – sensitive or not – wanted Seven

Star’s deeds to be checked. The government again became the only promising solution in the absence of an artists’ union. Ironically though, some of Hao Guang’s accusations, such as the large scale renovation and the unreasonable beautification, were approved or even inspired by the higher government. It was not that artists believed the government would necessarily take actions accordingly, nor did they anticipate that further government involvement would not necessarily incur stricter control, but the imperative was to have a more open and fairer administration that they could work with. In China’s context, this goal was unlikely to be achieved without government involvement.

The open letter was responded to by a head of the Propaganda Department of the

Chaoyang District. This official expressed that Hao’s suggestion of forming a government committee was doable, but if Seven Star could be more professional in its

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management the problem might be solved too. He promised that the government would soon come to a conclusion after further investigation of the issue (Guo, 2008; M. Yang,

2009b). Before the government had reached a conclusion, Hao received an eviction notice from Seven Star. He later sued the landlord for their contractual and rental disputes, but eventually lost the case.

This incidence was used as an example of artists’ resistance because it was the most sensational one. Hao was interviewed by many in the media and press after the open letter, and his letter indeed brought some management crises in 798 to the higher government’s attention. In addition, Hao’s struggle could be broadcasted widely because his accusations were directed only at Seven Star. The government in his case was rendered not only irrelevant to current problems but able to rectify the problems. Many other artists, be they sensitive or not and renowned or otherwise, had all resisted the governance of the cluster in different ways. Some refused to be evicted unreasonably, some continued to practice sensitive art under pressure, and some organized an exhibition to draw more support, as Huang Rui did in his Open exhibition. However, the resistance included only battles of individuals. The cause of resistance was usually an individual’s suffering from injustice which could not get much support from one’s peers in the absence of a mutually supportive artists’ union, and which was either too “minor” or too sensitive to be reported by the media. As a result, an individual’s resistance would either end up with one’s capitulation or an eviction notice.

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Hao’s resistance ended with his moving out, despite all the sensation. The local government did not take any visible action within two years and its conclusion was to keep the management as it was. The conflict between artists and Property Management kept escalating and rumor was that some violent incidents took place with an administrator from Seven Star being beaten. It may be that the government finally realized the seriousness of the conflict or that it decided to strengthen its presence in 798 so as to better monitor and regulate the cluster, especially since some 798 artists participated in the “Warm Winter” protest earlier the same year. Regardless, in 2010, the district government adjusted the administrative structure of 798. An Administrative

Committee as a dispatch office of the district government replaced the previous D&A

Office that was affiliated with the Cultural Company of Seven Star. To a greater or lesser extent, the earnest appeals from Hao and perhaps other artists on different occasions created a favorable public opinion advocating greater government involvement to better regulate the cluster. However, as it turned out, greater government involvement only meant more systematic surveillance directly deployed and supervised by the government while the problems associated with the landlord’s arbitrary way of disposing its property remained unsolved.

Governance in 798, 2010-present (2015)

New Administrative Structure and New Governing Mechanisms

In 2010, a Coordination Leading Group () was formed in the

Chaoyang District Government to substitute the previous Leading Group formed in 2006.

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While the Leading Group was set under the Propaganda Department, it is not clear whether the Coordination Leading Group has the same affiliation, though this is probably the case. This particular information is not mentioned in relevant government briefs, nevertheless, the head of the new group is also the head of the District Propaganda

Department (“Formation of the 798 Coordination Leading Group,” 2010).

The Coordination Leading Group leads a 798 Administrative Committee, which is a dispatch office of the government located in 798. The Administrative Committee has similar responsibilities as its predecessor – the D&A Office – but as a government organization, it receives its revenues from the government instead of from Seven Star as the D&A Office did. The Administrative Committee has five functional divisions or offices: the Coordination Office, the Service Office, the Community Policy Office, the

Law Enforcement Office of the Cultural Market (), and the Office of

City Management and Manufactory Safety (). The new administrative structure is illustrated in Diagram 2. The Administrative Committee has one head and two deputies, one of which is a vice president of Seven Star. The

Coordination Office is staffed by four bureaucrats and the other five offices are staffed by officials from the corresponding local agencies, such as the local police station, the local city management, etc. (“Budgeting and personnel plan,” 2012, 2013, 2014).

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Diagram 2: Administrative structure of 798, 2010/201236 – Present (2015).

Similar to Diagram 1, this diagram shows only the vertical relationship. The focus of this section is the two functional administrative bodies – the Administrative Committee which represents the local government and Property Management which represents Seven

Star – as well as the artists’ resistance which is not included in this administrative

36 The first government document recording the five functional divisions was the 2012 budgeting and personnel plan compiled by the Administrative Committee in May 2012, and the 2011 plan was untraceable online. In other words, it was unclear whether the five divisions have existed since the formation of the

Administrative Committee in 2010 or two years after that. A related speculation about the timeline is provided in a later discussion.

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structure diagram. The 798 Cultural Company is connected by dash lines as it does not participate in daily administration.

A new mode of administration: a disciplinary gaze towards the end of cultural safety. According to the government brief, the purpose for the adjustment is to reinforce “standardized administration” in 798 and to provide “better service.” The

“standards” of administration are not explained in this document nor discussed elsewhere, however, it is not difficult to tell that cultural security has become an absolute focus of the Administrative Committee. An article from the government website of the Beijing

Law Enforcement Team of the Cultural Market (2012) discusses the new administration mode in great detail, as discussed below.

1. A “1+1+3+265” mechanism was devised to solve the “few staff, heavy

inspection workload” problem faced by the Administrative Committee.

a. The first “1” means one “collaborative network” that consists of the local

law enforcement team of the cultural market, local law enforcement team

on manufactory safety, local city management, local police, local fire

control agency and Property Management. The network is “coordinated”

by – or to put it more explicitly, is under the command of – the

Administrative Committee.

b. The second “1” means a “cultural inspection web” that covers the whole

of 798 and divides it into six areas. The six areas are under the

surveillance of the Law Enforcement Office of the Cultural Market and

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twelve assistant inspectors sent by Seven Star. The inspection team

performs daily inspection in 798 to find, report, and dispose of sensitive

artworks and activities which should be “solved in the bud.”

c. The “3” refers to the three artists’ associations mentioned in the previous

sub-section. The associations are supposed to lead the industry and resist

sensitive works.

d. Finally, “265” means the development of cultural safety informants in the

265 artists’ studios, art spaces, and galleries, who will report sensitive

activities in the organization to the Administrative Committee at once via

internet, text message, and phone calls.

2. The inspection system became more complete and effective. First, during

important events,37 the heads of the Administrative Committee lead and

recheck the daily inspection. Second, organizations that used to have sensitive

works and activities are put under tighter surveillance. Third, art festivals are

scrutinized more thoroughly to prevent artists from re-displaying art works

being pulled off. Inspections cover not only the interior but also the outside,

including the bulletin boards and the flag post. Finally, the surveillance is

more “humane” in that the Administrative Committee built good work

37 “Important events” might include, but are not limited to: the National Congress of CCP; the “two sessions” (People’s Political Consultative Conference and the National People’s Congress); important days of commemoration, such as the National Day and the unspoken anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre; and other national and international gatherings.

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connections with arts practitioners. By responding to the latter’s reasonable

appeals and helping them to solve problems, the Administrative Committee

has won much understanding and cooperation. Four art organizations in 2011

and 2012 declined to exhibit works of controversial artists, “such as Ai

Weiwei.”

3. The Administrative Committee has broadened its channel to collect

information in order to take initiative in various situations. Not only art

organizations are under surveillance, but attention is also paid to various

media outlets to observe public opinion. In addition, the Administrative

Committee members receive training on contemporary art so as to perform

their duties more professionally and efficiently.

It is unknown whether this sophisticated design of surveillance and control was set up in 2010 with the formation of the new Administrative Committee or in 2012 when the first official account of it appeared. The latter seemed more likely, because in 2012, the 18th National Congress of the CCP took place, in which the Party’s leadership change occurred and Xi Jinping became the new highest leader in China. Many measures were taken to make sure this most important political event went smoothly. However, the official rendering on the new governing mode generalized above is not to be considered completely accurate. Since the Chinese governmental organizations are held accountable to their superior authorities and not to the public (Cai, 2004), the Administrative

Committee was motivated to exaggerate its assiduity and efficiency, especially in regard

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to crucial events such as preparing for the 18th National Congress. In practice, it was difficult for the inspectors to pay close attention to every single art organization in their

“jurisdictions” during their daily inspections. Developing 265 informants in the 265 art organizations was also difficult to achieve as it required considerable cooperation from enough individuals.

Nevertheless, as I found in my research that most parts of this official account faithfully describe what continues to happen in 798 after the National Congress, especially the “1” collaborative network, the “1” cultural inspection network, and the four specific methods of surveillance and control generalized in Entry 2. As for the details seemingly too ideal to be realized, they at least demonstrate the Administrative

Committee’s conception of what an effective mode of governance entails and toward which they should endeavor.

A panopticon and classification within the panopticon. The new mode of governance in effect constitutes a panopticon-like mechanism through which people are kept under the disciplinary gaze of the Administrative Committee. Designed by Jeremy

Bentham, a panopticon has a circular architecture with a monitor room at the center and individual cells on the periphery. It is a structure that enables monitors to observe each inmate without letting the latter know whether or not he/she is being observed. The layout of art organizations in 798 do not follow the strict spatial structure of a panopticon, yet the major effects of a panopticon are achieved. Art organizations are constantly visible to the Administrative Committee though the latter might not actually see them all

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the time. The organizations are observed, assessed and treated differently, but they are well aware of their incessant visibility (Foucault, 1984).

Organizations in 798 are classified and treated differently according to their natures, aptitudes, and their records. The 265 art organizations – those possessing art creation or exhibition functions – are the focus of surveillance and control, as it is within them that informants are supposed to be developed. Meanwhile, the over two hundred cultural enterprises – those “easy-to-be-industrialized” enterprises being “supported and incubated” in the cluster – are not specifically addressed in the plan. Among the 265 art organizations, those with records of problematic activities, as well as those arts practitioners known for explicit political inclinations, are subject to closer inspection. For example, a camera was installed right outside the space of dissident artist Black’s space, making the interior observable all the time. In another case, the only police office in 798 was located next to the space of the Gao Brothers, who were known for their political criticism. Arts practitioners cannot anticipate on what day an inspector will walk into their spaces. Far less can those receiving special attentions tell whether or not they are being observed through cameras. This continuously functioning mechanism makes most of the artists feel compelled to observe the norm established in the cluster, which is to avoid politically or socially critical works and activities. It also explains why such works have rarely been seen in 798.

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Characters and effects of the new administration mode.38 Surveillance is nothing new to 798. It existed before the establishment of the Administrative Committee and even before the official designation of 798. However, the new surveillance mode has an increasingly preemptive character that helps to curb problems at a very early stage if not entirely beforehand. With more manpower in the inspection team and with inspectors responsible for particular areas in the cluster, the Administrative Committee is able to identify problems in a timelier manner. This effect is further augmented by the informants gained in the 265 art organizations who are supposed to report suspicious activities immediately, though right now it seems not every organization has one.

Furthermore, inspectors also tend to adopt a more “humane” manner of handling their tasks. In most cases, they present themselves as goodwill friends that visit the organizations at times to chat with the owners and ask about their difficulties (Blue, personal communication, January 2, 2014; Red, personal communication, June 5, 2014).

They might offer help in exchange for tacit cooperation or they might ask for information about other sensitive artists – information that will be rewarded with future help. The friendship or partnership between the inspectors and arts practitioners is hardly surprising given that most arts practitioners are not particularly politically-oriented and many who

38 Because the particular ways of surveillance and control during 2006-2009 were not articulated in any documents, it was impossible to make a strict comparison between the previous and current modes of administration. Nevertheless, based on existing information, surveillance had become more systematic and comprehensive at least since before the 18th National Congress of the CCP and being “humane” was never emphasized in the past.

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are unsatisfied with government interventions have already left 798, voluntarily or otherwise. These “humane” approaches effectively reduce the tension between the two seemingly irreconcilable parties. It also helps to minimize resistance and to lower the potential costs of dealing with further problems.

Updated de-politicization in handling violators. Not mentioned in the government brief, however, is how contraventions are dealt with. It is notable that the

Administrative Committee coordinates an onsite network that involves the local law enforcement team on manufactory safety, local city management, local police, local fire control agency and Property Management in addition to the local law enforcement team of the cultural market responsible for the inspection work. Inspectors kindly ask the owner of an art organization to remove a sensitive piece in his/her space. If the owner refuses to do so or repeatedly creates similar trouble, other participants in the network then come in handy to confront the owner with nonpolitical issues – potential safety problems of the space, etc. – so as to interfere with the owner’s regular business (Black, personal communication, June 3, 2014).

The depoliticized punishment of political problems is not an invention of the

Administrative Committee and similar examples could be found before the administrative structure adjustment. However, while the previous D&A Office usually needed to inflict punishment by the hand of Property Management, the new Administrative Committee has a network of multiple participants to resort to. Therefore, the formalization of a network

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not only lessened the D&A Office’s reliance on Seven Star in terms of punishment but also supplied the pool of pretexts for punishment.

The new administrative mode featuring a more meticulous agenda of inspection, a more amicable way of accomplishing duties, and a formal network to resort to when violations take place is more capable and powerful than the D&A Office was, especially in terms of surveillance and punishment. At the same time, the Administrative Committee as a dispatch government office is independent of Seven Star. By this design, the

Administrative Committee can, in theory, check the behavior of “money-driven” Seven

Star – represented by Property Management – and mediate disputes between artist tenants and the landlord, as many artists expected. However, it does not necessarily always function in this way.

Seven Star’s Governance and the Government’s Dilemma

The new administrative structure presents an organizational separation of the local government and Seven Star, as well as a stronger presence of the former in the cluster. It allows the local government to conduct more intense and systematic surveillance and control without increasing its reliance on Seven Star or delegating more tasks to Seven

Star. However, it does not mean the government can, or will, better regulate the landlord’s behavior and the leasing environment in 798. Seven Star has almost unrestrained power in its leasehold relations with the tenants. Not only does it decide to whom to let out a space and how much to charge for the space, but it can arbitrarily make exceptions – such as offering favorable terms – and withdraw them. This is not entirely

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different from the local government providing “protections” to entities that fit its agenda.

If the government’s control affects people engaged in sensitive activities, then Seven

Star’s exceptions make all artist tenants vulnerable in the leasehold relationship.

Secondary landlords in 798. A very common exception concerns secondary landlords (erfangdong, ) who rent spaces from Seven Star and sublet them to arts practitioners at much higher prices. When Seven Star decides to make a profit from its obsolete factory spaces, it welcomes tenants with a variety of occupations – not only artists – and it also leases spaces out to its own employees as a sort of employee benefit.

Since 2006, tenants whose occupations were irrelevant to the arts have been cleaned out.

However, this rule did not extend to those who had strong connections with Seven Star.

They acquired long-term contracts that regular tenants could not get. They now sublet the spaces and profit tremendously from them. Likewise, resourceful new tenants signed contracts with Seven Star only to sublet the spaces to real arts practitioners, although subletting is clearly prohibited in the contract. These primary tenants are more frequently called secondary landlords. It is commonly believed that given surveillance intensity in

798, Property Management has adequate knowledge on who is really using a space.

Nevertheless, Seven Star sometimes allows subleasing to happen because some of its personnel take shares from secondary landlords.

The secondary landlord is so called for a reason. In many cases, the real user of a space does not hold much bargaining power over the secondary landlord. The former usually has to accept the latter’s various – sometimes unreasonable – terms in order to

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stay in 798, such as rents higher than what Property Management charges. This is because once their subleasing relationship is made public, Seven Star ends the contract and reopens the space to the market. The real user may not be able to secure their seat in the cluster.

During 2013 and 2014, a subleasing wrangle broke out in 798. The concerned secondary landlord was suddenly “found” to have several spaces in the cluster, which she sublet to five different art organizations. The longest subleasing relationship started early in 2007. It seemed that this secondary landlord had built some connection with former

Seven Star leaders, who had stepped down in the 2011 Seven Star leadership transition

(“A survey on the secondary landlords in 798,” 2014). Then in 2013, one of the real users

– a gallery owner – brought his contractual dispute to Property Management as he believed 70% of his rent was cropped by the secondary landlord and shared with her secret supporters (“Secondary landlord evicted its tenants,” 2013). While the real entanglements between the secondary landlord and the old and new leaders in Seven Star were unknown to outsiders,39 the real users became the biggest victims as they received hostilities from both the secondary landlord and Property Management. The secondary landlord tried to evict the “snitching” tenants as a revenge while Property Management cut off the electricity supply to the earliest real user and shut the space down to seek new

39 The secondary landlord, denying her secondary landlord identity, accused the new Property Management leader who took office in 2011 for seeking to raise rent within the term of the contract and for the latter’s harassment.

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tenants. Other violent incidents and the Rashomon effect of this scandal are beyond the scope of this dissertation, but the end of the story was that three out of the five organizations – all popular art organizations – withdrew from 798 as they could no longer afford more damages.

Unsettled rents. Another exception is about the rent. As addressed earlier in this chapter, Property Management provides rental discounts to early artist tenants whose organizations are in line with the development goals of 798. This offer is part of the local government’s “protect some” policy, but at times it can be used as covert leverage to prevent sensitive activities or to reward desirable performance. There are not publicized or itemized qualifying requirements for discount eligibility, nor is there a unified discount rate. Sometimes, a discount offer is a verbal promise without contractual protection, because a special rate as such is “inconvenient to be included in the contract” (J. Li,

2012; Y. Xu, 2012).

Xu Yong was caught in this subtle trap. As one of the several artists who contributed significantly in promoting 798, Xu received a rental discount offer from

Property Management in 2008 at a time when many art organizations moved out due to the economic recession. It was prescribed in the three-year contract (Jan. 1, 2009 – Dec.

20, 2011) that a 50% discount would be applied to his rent for the year 2009.

Nevertheless, Xu still enjoyed the same discount during 2010 and 2011 under Property

Management’s acquiescence. By the end of 2011, however, the newly appointed leader of

Property Management asked Xu to pay back the rental difference for 2010 and 2011 and

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notified him that his rent would be increased 2.5 times in 2012 (L. Zhang, 2013). Xu refused to accept the unreasonable terms and thus failed to renew his lease. Even so,

Property Management, again in acquiescence, allowed Xu to stay without a contract.

Finally, at midnight of November 1, 2012, they locked Xu’s space down. Xu was notified less than 10 hours in advance. The particular reason for Property Management’s decision to cancel Xu’s discount is unclear as there were several artists and art organizations still enjoying the favorable terms. Xu Yong retreated from 798 in 2013. His leave created a disturbance in the art circles similar to Huang Rui’s forced exit six years ago.

Government’s Dilemma. These incidents, as well as many others not discussed here, show that Seven Star assumes a role almost like a sovereign in 798, except that it cannot inflict physical punishment upon inhabitants in 798. It possesses all the spaces, singlehandedly manages them in most cases, and strives to make the biggest possible profits from them. This is at the expense of losing artist tenants which is not a major concern of the landlord, as it can easily find new tenants. Although 798 is an officially designated CCI cluster and the local government participates in the cluster’s administration, Seven Star’s power is not limited, though it impedes the long-term development of 798. It is possible that local government has their hands tied on this issue.

First, Seven Star is a state owned enterprise. Thus, possible repressive and intimidating measures that might be useful to private enterprises lose their effects. In addition, as discussed earlier, Seven Star is not directly subordinate to territorial governments. Thus, the local government might not have the jurisdiction over Seven Star. This said,

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government’s impotence is not because it cannot intervene in the landlord’s business operations any more than it is because the former is not the latter’s superior.

Most importantly, it is unlikely that the local government can check Seven Star’s deeds without compromising its own governance. Specifically, the government’s “protect some, support some, incubate some, and adjust some” is to a large extent realized through

Seven Star’s power as the landlord. Without any open terms of qualifications, select large art organizations and well-funded cultural enterprises are given priority in renting spaces from the landlord, select qualified organizations are offered longer term leases and lower rental rates, and unwelcome tenants are cleared out by ending their contracts. Since there have not been any clear unified standards – except perhaps for what is considered sensitive artworks and activities – these favorable and disadvantageous treatments are highly individualized. They thereby allow ample room for exceptions and other behind- the-scenes operations, including operations solely decided by Seven Star.

An Individual’s Resistance

In 2008, artist and critic Black moved to 798 and began to run a small art space on his own. Like many others, he took the lease, not from Seven Star, but from a secondary landlord. This secondary landlord always operated through a representative and never had direct contact with Black. Black also did not know any information about him, except for a name.

Dispute with the secondary landlord and reactions of the 798 administration.

Since late 2010, Black started to exhibit works recording or commenting on social

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injustice inflicted by the political system. These included the sufferings of the blind human rights activist, Chen Guangcheng, and circumstances surrounding the 2008

Sichuan earthquake. Black had experienced a lot of pressure from different authorities – from cluster administrators to local police to security department. Yet, he persisted in exhibiting “sensitive works” and perceived it as a social responsibility of him and his space. Starting in September 2012, Black was caught in a series of financial and contractual disputes with the secondary landlord. Black insisted his secondary landlord waswithin the police system as he asked Black to provide information on other

“sensitive artists,” as well as the investor of his space.40 For no good reason, the secondary landlord delayed to renew Black’s lease, but when the old lease expired, he continued to accept Black’s rents and allowed him to stay for three more months. Finally, the representative refused to sign a new lease with Black after Black paid a large sum of off-record “deposit” (Black, personal communication, June 3, 2014).

It is not the goal of this dissertation to investigate whether or not there was a sort of conspiracy against Black. Yet, reactions of the 798 administration to Black’s leasing trouble were meaningful. In order to solve his problem, Black reached out to the

Administrative Committee and Property Management, and later the Cultural Company.

40 To keep this chapter concise and focused, I do not provide a more detailed account on the dispute between Black and his investor, which was very complicated and does not directly relate to the rest of the analysis. In short, Black believed this investor, a former friend of his, was manipulated by political power.

The investor found many excuses not to provide a contract to him immediately, but later gave the only copy of the contract to the secondary landlord, causing another major financial problem for Black.

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After negotiation, Property Management agreed to accept Black’s rent directly and allowed him to stay. However, none of the administrative bodies positively responded to

Black’s other requests, including the requests to mediate disputes, to provide the contact information of the primary tenant, and to issue a temporary contract to prove his legitimacy in the cluster. Without this proof, Black was not able to find other investors and cooperators. After nearly two years’ struggle, Black could no longer afford the rent and he was finally expelled by Property Management on grounds of rent arrears in 2014.

Naive business decisions or struggles of an idealist? It is easy for one to conclude that Black’s sufferings were to some extent self-induced, in that he made a series of unwise business decisions. First, Black signed the contract without knowing the secondary landlord’s real identity, which made him unable to sue the latter. He then accepted the secondary landlord’s unreasonable monetary requests, in the hope that the latter would honor an oral promise to renew the lease. Third, he decided to pay rent to

Property Management, even when failing to acquire the temporary contract to continue regular business. Finally, he did not leave the district immediately when he found he could not afford the rent, thus he was literally “kicked out” and all his personal belongings were taken by Property Management. However, instead of deducing that

Black was naive in business affairs, there is another perspective to consider.

Black described himself as an idealist. He wanted to use his specialty to promote civic development and social justice in Chinese society. He believed 798 was the perfect site to make a difference as it used to have a reputation as an independent artist

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community and had more visitors – from different occupations and with different purposes – than any other arts cluster. Black decided to stay in 798 as long as he could, and the only way to keep his spot was to agree to unreasonable requests of the secondary landlord and Property Management – unsound business decisions. Otherwise, he would have “voluntarily” left 798 long ago. Black did not stop pursing his goal even during the two years of contractual crisis. Despite many warnings, he held a couple of “sensitive” exhibitions and conducted a series of protestant performance art. He tried to exchange ideas with most visitors who stepped into his space and he also engaged in lengthy communications with the Administrative Committee staff to convey his exhibition philosophy and to negotiate the meaning of “cultural security.” In fact, Black felt some

Administrative Committee members respected what he was doing and even helped him in his negotiation with Seven Star (Black, personal communication, June 3, 2014).

Effective resistance and impossible resistance. Since he started to exhibit sensitive works in 2010, Black was effectively challenging the norm in 798 and constantly pushing the bottom lines of the authorities in charge of the cluster. His resistance was not in vain. Although he was visited and warned by administrators and police and received notice asking him to send exhibition plans for preview, Black continued to engage in what the authorities did not want him to do. Black did not stop at warnings, threats, and financial constraints, but he could not continue the same way of resistance if the landlord wanted him to leave.

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Since October 2012, Black started the request to renew his lease, but the secondary landlord repeatedly postponed to discuss the issue and finally rejected Black’s renewal request on March 2013 – a couple of months after old lease expired. The timing when the contractual problem began to surface was suggestive. It was not immediately after Black’s earlier sensitive exhibitions, but after he proved by his actions that he would not be stopped by other measures. It was also a time when almost all state and semi-state actors were busy preparing a “harmonious” environment for the 18th National Congress of the CCP in November 2012, when the Party’s leadership transition would take place.

They were also preparing for the 12th “Two Sessions” in March 2013, when the new top

Party leader would become the top leader of the government and the army. To prepare for these events in 798, the Law Enforcement Agency of the Cultural Market, starting in the early September 2012, “inspected the whole cluster, communicated with art organizations, assisted the Administrative Committee to preview exhibitions, and made sure exhibition contents were not problematic’’(“Law enforcement agency intensifies supervision on 798,” 2012).

It is hard to ignore the timeline and possible connections between the different incidents. The sudden contractual problem might be a depoliticized method that the authority – perhaps the 798 administration or more likely the local security department – adopted to handle Black’s “problematic works” and the potential for further problems after he ignored the pre-event screening notice. When traditional disciplinary measures did not work as expected, the political problem was made an economic one, and the

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“trouble maker” was “handed over” to the landlord – the sovereign-like existence in 798 who could “let stay and make leave.” More significantly, even when Black was contract- less, Property Management did not evict Black. It handled the issue more “humanely” by accepting Black’s rents and letting him stay without even a temporary contract until

Black had no more money to pay. The socialist goal of content control was thereby achieved via a “market means.” At least it appeared to be. The 798 administration’s de- politicization measures and humane manner in handling Black’s problem were almost impeccable. For an outsider, the artist himself was to be blamed. Or maybe the secret secondary landlord could also be blamed as an unscrupulous individual – not as representative of the power and system behind him. This also explains why Black’s case did not attract media attention nor even the attention of other artists in 798. The problem was made too personal to be worth public deliberation, though anyone may be faced with a “personal” difficulty of their own.

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Conclusion

In this dissertation, I use governmentality and genealogy as the analytical frameworks to guide my investigation of arts clusters in Beijing, from 1990 to present

(2015). I realize that existing literature is unable to explain many conflicts and discontinuities in the history of arts clusters. Thus, my intention is to achieve a deeper understanding of arts clusters themselves and to account for the changing relationship between artists and the political authority. This is a topic that has long interested me and which I find can be effectively addressed when the typical Foucauldian “how” question is answered: how have artists been governed?

I started this inquiry with a pre-pilot research trip in which I had in-depth conversations with over twenty arts practitioners, from artists to curators and from critics to private sponsors. Without a clear research question, but only a general curiosity about the lack of social/political commentary artworks in contemporary Chinese art, I contacted artists and curators who could easily be called “dissident.” While I do not deny the antagonism they feel toward the political system, I consider them to be more rightly described as being concerned about social justice. Purposefully, I chose those who had not drawn much media attention because they were less privileged than the few sensational names, and I could only learn about their experiences by talking with them in person. In fact, I did learn about all kinds of stories and experiences, some of which I

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later found online, and others that I never did. This pre-pilot trip was followed by two more research trips. Each time I had clearer ideas with my study, and each time I came up with more focused questions. When I finished my fieldwork, I came back with more than

15 hours of interview tapes with selective arts practitioners and administrators, as well as a small book of field notes. I had enough empirical data to guide my research.

With this empirical data and my previous knowledge, I began studying available documents. I checked the blogs and social media of many arts practitioners – those I interviewed and those I did not – and I began the tedious work of reviewing various laws, policies, regulations, development plans, entries on yearbooks, and Party leaders’ speeches in regard to culture, politics, economics, crime, migration, land, and “spiritual civilization.” Almost all of these official documents were filled with typical socialist wording – vague, propagandist, self-repetitive, and distracting because of the above reasons. Yet, through the lens of discourse analysis, they were also much more informative than they appeared to be. They outlined what was encouraged and what was condemned, what was considered truth and rendered unspeakable and thereby unthinkable, what was set as a priority and what was problematized – all of which were clearly inscribed in the documents.

It was through these various discourses and practices together with historical empirical data that I identified the two dominant governing rationalities: Reason of the

Party and neoliberalism. The concept of Reason of the Party – a phrase based on the idea of raison d'état – had existed in my mind previously, but only as an instinct or as

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common sense. Through document study, I found accessible “hard evidence” for what was taught to me in my History and Politics class in middle school concerning the Four

Cardinal Principles that were advanced and set as unquestionable by Deng Xiaoping. As time has passed, Reason of the Party has been expressed in more euphemistic ways, but it is still embedded in many official documents and reflected in various practices. As an example of a practice, there have been debates concerning whether China is neoliberal as well as the “universality” of neoliberalism. In this dissertation, I use neoliberalism as a way of thinking about governing, which informs ways of governance. Specifically,

Foucault articulates that the neoliberal rationality is concerned with how the exercise of political power can be modeled on the principles of a market economy, and that it works toward turning individuals into economic actors who will calculate their resources according to market-based principles (Foucault, 2008). In other words, China does not have to possess certain features – such as being a judicial society under the rule of law – in order to be discussed in terms of neoliberalism, since neoliberalism is not a doctrine consisting of a certain set of tenets. Neoliberalism does not even have to be “the” dominant rationality in order for it to be commonly held among the people.

Reason of the Party in general seeks the CCP’s own growth in wealth and force, and it entails an unlimited public authority. The neoliberal rationality calls for obeying and giving into playing by economic rules and thereby involves a public authority with boundaries and limitations. Yet, rather than conflicting with each other, the two rationalities augment each other. By yielding more spaces of autonomy in which people

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can exercise their entrepreneurship, the CCP avert people’s attention from political and ideological issues. This also reinforces the Reason of the Party as a mentality commonly held among quite a few people who attribute an improvement of their standards of living to the Party. From another perspective, by providing autonomous realms and setting discussions and activities that could compromise its rule as “off-limits,” the CCP also guided or pushed people to become economic actors who prioritized economic benefits over other considerations, like social justice.

With a general understanding of how Reason of the Party and the neoliberal rationality co-exist and interplay, I seek to provide a fine-grained interpretation of the power relations between artists and the political authority, or of how artists have been governed by the two rationalities through a genealogical analysis of arts clusters in

Beijing. Foucault advocates for attending to “discontinuities” and “subjugated knowledges” in a genealogical project so as to attain a perspectival knowledge – savoir.

Savoir explains the constitution of different events and restores the discursive conditions out of which specific knowledge – connaissance – are generated. By identifying “anchor events” concerning the emergence and disappearance of spontaneous artist communities and grassroots art districts initiated by real estate developers from 1990 to 2015, I weave in incidents in different historical periods and analyze discourses on the clusters and their inhabitants. Based on all the above, I render interpretations on how the CCP used neoliberalism as an exception to socialist reign and gradually expanded the exception to

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different domains. I also examine how artists gradually adopted the neoliberal mentality and behaved accordingly.

Specifically, I argue that culture was gradually transferred from the political/ ideological domain to the economic domain beginning in the early 1990s. I also argue that contemporary art – generally regarded as antagonistic during the 1980s and the

1990s – was also incorporated into the neoliberal expectations through the discourse of cultural and creative industries, hence the preservation and designation of important spontaneous arts clusters. More importantly, I find that within the neoliberalism there still exists social legacy. The political authority will not leave autonomous arts clusters as they are, where dissident activities are always possible. Therefore, they have either taken over

(designated) or taken down (demolished) autonomous arts clusters that were formed without its approval, and demolition is in fact used as a complement to the neoliberal CCI plan. All this has made more artists, consciously or otherwise, subscribe to the neoliberal mentality and prioritize economic calculations.

After the genealogical analysis, I zoom in to analyze a particular section of the perspectival history of arts clusters: governance in 798 after its designation. My goal is to understand how artists and their activities have been governed at a particular site, and I approach this topic by analyzing socialist heritages within neoliberalism. In the case of

798, I regard two things as “socialist heritages”: the existence and working of Reason of the Party, and the “socialist land master” – the Seven Star Group – which co- administrates 798 with the local government. I argue that the local government has

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mainly exercised bio-power and disciplinary power to control potentially antagonistic activities. In other words, a socialist end is achieved without “socialist means” – the use of suppressive sovereign power by the political authority. Yet, when disciplinary power and bio-power fail to function effectively, it is still through the power of Seven Star – representing the “market” rather than the political system – over its property that the socialist end is accomplished. I exemplify this point through the experiences of dissident artist Black. His resistance was effective in the sense that he had been constantly challenging the “cultural security” norm in 798, despite all warnings. Yet, his resistance finally became impossible when he was forced to leave 798 due to a series of suspicious contractual disputes. Therefore, I argue that under the co-governance of the local government and the landlord, there is little space for counter-normative activities, either in the form of the artists’ attempt to govern their own community, or in the form of individual resistance.

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Appendix A: Arts Clusters in Beijing

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Artist Communities in the inner suburbs 1. Yuangmingyuan 2. Dongcun 3. Tsinghua North Gate 4. Dashanzi/798 5. Caochangdi in the outer suburbs 6. Songzhuang 7. Shangyuan Art Districts in the inner suburbs 8. Brewery 9. Yihaodi 10. Feijiacun 11. Shangri-La 12. Huantie 13. Heiqiao 14. Seven trees 15. Chuangyi Zhengyang 16. 008 17. No.95 Changdian 18. Xiedaoxi 19. Jiangfu 20. Dongying 21. Naizifang 22. Suojiacun 23. Shengbang 24. Beigao No.1 25. Sunhe No.1 26. Dongfeng 27. Dongba Miaopu in the outer suburbs 28. T-3 29. Huojichang 30. Luomahu

• Arts clusters that have asterisks (*) after their names have been designated as Cultural and Creative Industries Clusters: the two artist communities as municipal- level ones, and art districts as district-level ones. • Art districts 15-27 were demolished during the time 2005-2014.

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Appendix B: Distribution of Selected Arts Clusters in Beijing

265

11 Changping

Shunyi

10 12 Haidian 4 6 14 9 2 5 7 Mentougou 1 3 8 13 Chaoyang Shijingshan O 1=798 2=Caochangdi Fengtai 3=Huantie Tongzhou 4=Suojiacun 5=Changdian 6=Dongying Fangshan 7=008 8=Jiangfu Daxing 9=Brewery 10=Yihaodi 11=Shangyuan 12=T3 13=Songzhuang 14=Yuanmingyuan

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