The Self-Organization of Contemporary Art in China, 2001–2012

Bao Dong Rethinking Practices within the Art System: The Self-Organization of Contemporary Art in China, 2001–2012

The Origin of the Term “Self-Organization” in China The term “self-organization” was first used in the context of contemporary Chinese art in 2005 at the Second Guangzhou Triennial curated by Hou Hanru, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Guo Xiaoyan. Self-organization was one of the special projects of the triennial, and there were two panel discussions on the topic. The exhibition theme “Beyond” focused on the topic of alternative modernity in China and non-Western countries, and the term self-organization was defined by the following statements: “A number of independent art organizations, institutions, and communities have taken an active role in artistic creation and practice” and “their projects are often diverse, flexible” and “self-induced in nature.”1 Altogether, twenty-four self- organized groups2 were included in this project, and for the curators, the concept of “self-organization” was used to differentiate independent and autonomous organizations from those attached to government systems or political parties. This feature is also the fundamental difference between the various artist-run autonomous organizations and the organizations within the conventional art system as constituted by Chinese Artists Association, along with the various academies of painting, art institutes, museums, and so on. In other words, self-organization is considered a force operating outside of the conventional art system, just as the inception, growth, and flourishing of contemporary Chinese art is believed to have been achieved outside of official systems.

In terms of any independence from the conventional art system, self- organization is not a new phenomenon in the contemporary Chinese art scene. The various painting societies that developed after the Cultural Revolution, art collectives that formed around 1985, experimental art groups that were established at the beginning of the 1990s, artist-run spaces and autonomous exhibitions, and attempts to run non-proﬁt art spaces since 2000, all fall under the umbrella of this concept of self-organization. Even “artist villages” and “art districts” can be included, just as Gao Minglu considers such artist collectives alongside the collectives that existed around 1985.3

After the Second Guangzhou Triennial, the art scene witnessed an explosion in the art market, the sudden establishment of an institutionalized art system in 2006 and 2007, the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and then the unexpected ﬁnancial crisis that followed shortly after the Olympics. The concept of “self-organization” did not garner substantial attention in contemporary Chinese art circles until 2010, where it was mainly used by young art critics and the media to refer to collective practices, especially those of young artists, that had begun appearing countrywide in 2008.

40 Against the backdrop of a new system, the connotations of what “self- organization” meant fundamentally changed. Before analyzing this change and the causes of it, it is necessary to introduce the different forms of self- organization employed by young artists.

Categories of Self-organization Since 2008, a large number of young artists born after 1976, or the post- Cultural Revolution generation, have emerged on the contemporary art scene across the nation, and their self-organizational practices have received considerable attention. In only a few years, from 2007 to 2012, at least thirty-nine self-organized collectives were established in Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, and other coastal cities, as well as in major inland cities such as Wuhan, Chongqing, and Chengdu.

The collective practices generally deﬁned as “self-organization” can be divided into four separate forms, or, one might say that they fall into four categories: art communities, art groups, independent projects, and autonomic institutions.

N12 No.1, 2003, installation view, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing.

Art communities such as LVXIAO (founded 2002), Beijing, N12 (founded 2003), Beijing, and North Village Independent Workshop (founded 2008), Chengdu are made up of artists with speciﬁc conceptual common ground, and they tend to communicate on a regular basis and organize group shows online or in an exhibition space according to naturally formed geographical and personal relationships. The members do not collaborate on artistic creations, but, rather, maintain their own individual practices.

Art groups go a step further in that their members do produce work collaboratively, and thus become a creative collective. However, the levels of collaboration within the different groups vary in that there is a range of relationships possible between the individual artist and the group. For example, while the members of Double Fly Art Center (founded 2008), Shanghai, and GUEST (founded 2011), Beijing produce work collaboratively, they also maintain their roles as individual artists. In contrast, the artists involved in TOF (founded 2011), Shanghai, Utopia Group (founded 2008), Beijing, and Cell Group (founded 2011), Chongqing participate in exhibitions identiﬁed only by the name of their group. In a more extreme case, the members of Hexie Baroque (founded 2011), Beijing intentionally stay anonymous, completely separating the individual artist from any nominal connections to the collective.

41 When the collective practice of GUEST, Guest, 2012, installation. Photo: Peter an art community involves some Le. Courtesy of the artists and Ullens Center for sort of common topic or shared Contemporary Art, Beijing. direction, and more participants are sought out to partake, self- organized independent projects can be the result. Independent projects stem from art communities, though tend to be more heavily focused on speciﬁc research on an issue, the establishment of new concepts, or the implementation of speciﬁc actions. For instance, the Museum of Unknown (founded 2007), Shanghai, and Future Festival (founded 2011), Shanghai among other groups, are interested in constructing new concepts and hence theoretical discussions are an important aspect of their projects. Art Praxis Space (founded 2009), Chengdu focuses more on social investigations and research. Provincial Youth (founded 2011), Chongqing, is also involved in constructing new concepts, but places more emphasis on social intervention, while ‘Everybody’s East Lake’ (founded 2010), Wuhan, is focused entirely on social intervention and actions.

In comparison, autonomous Museum of Unknown, Encounter, 2011, installation organizations such as Organhaus view in the exhibition A Museum That is Not. Courtesy Art Space (founded 2008), of the Guangdong Times Chongqing, Fei Contemporary Art Museum. Center (founded 2007), Shanghai, Observation Society (founded 2009), Guangzhou, Arrow Factory (founded 2008), Beijing, am art space (founded 2008), Shanghai, Sabaki Space (founded 2009), Guangzhou, Yangtze River Space (founded 2011), Wuhan, Video Bureau (founded 2012), Guangzhou/Beijing, Gland (founded 2011), Beijing, and Floor #2 Press (founded 2012), Beijing are relatively more institutionalized in terms of their self-organization—they have regular members, relatively stable venues, and long-term goals. They differ from the typical alternative spaces in that they provide a neutral space; that is, their aim is not to “replace” the gallery/museum, or to act as an “alternative” to the mainstream, but, rather, to accommodate autonomy of the space and promote its growth. Taiwanese artist Lian Decheng has emphasized this “non-conﬂict” and “neutrality” in his discussions of early alternative spaces that existed in Taiwan.4

It should be emphasized that there is a great range and ﬂuidity between the different types of self-organizations. Most self-organized communities exist in some sort of liminal state. Aside from the mutual generativeness of self-organizations such as those mentioned above, on a deeper level, one of the reasons for self-organized practice is a demand to break through certain predetermined conceptual and institutional conventions, and to realize a kind of power outside of the system that is heterogeneous and hybrid in nature, one always in ﬂux between formation and transition, and thus impossible to incorporate into existing systems. In short, the liminal is not just an aim of these self-organizations, it is also their inherent state of being. For example, the Double Fly Art Center, as implied by its name, resembles an art center. However it is an art group based within contemporary art

42 Art Praxis Space, Interactive Project, Black Land, 2011, video, 11 mins., 50 secs. Courtesy of Art Praxis Space, Chengdu.

Provincial Youth, Travel Plan, communities around China Academy 2012, social intervention. Courtesy of Provincial Youth, of Art (CAA), Hangzhou. Within the Chongqing. art communities of CAA, there are also self-organized projects such as Small Productions (founded 2008), which are closer to being independent. The participants in Small Productions also include those from other art communities of different regions in their projects. The Irrelative Group (founded 2011), which consists of alumni of CAA, was formed when its members were reunited

Provincial Youth, Travel Plan, in Beijing. In Chongqing, the Haus·M- 2012, social intervention. Courtesy of Provincial Youth, Commune (founded 2001), H2 Art Space Chongqing. (founded 2006), Organhaus Art Space, Provincial Youth, and 8mg (founded 2011) have also formed interdependent, mutually derivative and transformative relationships. There are similar examples Opening of exhibition Banana, 2013, Organhaus Art Space, in other cities as well. This liminality is Chongqing. also present in the participants involved with self-organizations. Many have moved between and experienced various self- organized groups. In fact, because of this cross-pollination, these self-organizations are highly ﬂuid, and can often unexpectedly take form and then gradually disappear, or change in form or approach.

Background and Strategies of Self-organization There are many reasons behind the popularization of self-organizations, especially those that started to appear after 2008. The most obvious cause was the economic crisis and the resulting standstill in the art market, which provided a rest period for an art world that had been hyped up for several years. People began to shift their focus onto other matters, including unmarketable artistic practices that had been developing for some time. It should be emphasized, however, that self-organization was not a reﬂexive

43 response to the financial crisis but rather something much more profound. Many self-organizing practices had started before 2008, and thanks to the financial crisis, ideas that had remained only at the level of discussion could finally be put into practice.

On a deeper level, this shift was also due to the emergence of a rethinking within the practice of contemporary Chinese art. While the art industry had grown rapidly, there was also a loss of interest in and an irritation at the increasing industrialization and spectacularization of the art system. Related critique and introspection existed long before the ﬁnancial crisis, especially among more established artists. As the founders of Arrow Factory recall:

Arrow Factory came into being during the frenzied lead-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. It was a moment when China was utterly consumed by scale and spectacle, and soaked in the rhetoric of grandeur and success. The contemporary art world’s infatuation with overblown proportions, style conscious aesthetics, and commerce-friendly “creative industry” enclaves drove us to conjure up another scenario: the presentation of works by contemporary artists in an ultra- small space situated far away from the so-called art districts.5

Arrow Factory takes its name from its Floor #2 Press, The Painting of Xia Jianqiang, 2013, location, a typical Beijing hutong alley in publication. the city centre. The space was renovated from an existing storefront and is only ﬁfteen square meters total. The three founders, Pauline J. Yao, Wang Wei, and Rania Ho have kept the original shop- window design so that nearby residents and visitors can view through a glass door the exhibiting art project from the street day and night. By emphasizing the relationship with the local community, Discussion during the refusing commercialized operations, international workshop Red Line, 2014, Organhaus, never actively seeking media publicity, Chongqing. and keeping themselves removed from the spectacle of the art industry, Arrow Factory offers a conscious institutional critique. In contrast, Small Productions, founded in Hangzhou, is a collective based in young artist communities and also established in 2008, is a good example of autonomous organization. This practice does not emphasize, and even avoids, expressing any kind of standpoint or strategy. Despite the fact that the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou has served as the cradle for many of the most important artists since the 1980s, the art establishment there is still under development. For local young artists, there is a lack of support from the gallery/museum system. It was in this environment that Shao Yi and Zhang Liaoyuan decided to initiate self-organized exhibitions for young artists, which then became Small Productions. Although the simple goal of Small Productions was to stimulate the local art atmosphere, in reality, with a

44 “crazy” art market and stale, stereotyped gallery exhibitions, the project in fact developed an unconscious strategy: minimal costs, a relaxed attitude, frequent activity and the use of non-standard exhibition spaces. These came from “the limitations of resources that were available to maintain a creative state.”6 If we take Arrow Factory and Small Productions as examples of two typical states of consciousness and autonomy of self-organizations, then it is worthwhile to mention the similarities between them.

Zhao Liang, Middle Class Arrow Factory and Small Productions Angst, 2015, video installation. Courtesy of Arrow Factory, both present “smallness” and locality on Beijing. different levels. The former is a physically small space with a low budget that emphasizes its relationship with the local community; the latter produces “small” (casual, inexpensive, and quick) works and exhibitions while still maintaining Small Productions barbeque event, 2008. Courtesy of Small relevance to the local artist community Productions, Hangzhou. and ecosystem of art. This “smallness” and locality are formulated from a rethinking of institutionalization and a choice of strategy. Arrow Factory aims to counter “massive gallery spaces that have skewed artistic production towards quantity over quality” and “the ubiquitous presence of ‘white-box’ spaces which insist on prescribed encounters with contemporary art.” Their mission is “to present art in a context that reaches beyond the sanctified white-box setting of museums and galleries, seeking to bring artistic participation, exploration and experimentation up against the social and political realities of everyday life.”7 While their small space and low budget arise from limitations in resources, it does at the same time allow more flexibility in their operations. Small Productions, on the other hand, reflects the unhappiness and clarity with which young artists regard the gallery system, and especially their own reliance on relationships with traditional galleries. One of its founders, Zhang Liaoyuan, once asked, “If there weren’t any galleries in the world, would artists all have to stop working?”8 Small Productions is also very wary of institutionalization based on personal relationships. To avoid forming a small limited circle, their exhibition projects do not screen artists. Anyone interested can participate and any piece will be accepted, whether or not it constitutes a work of art or an exhibition. Anyone can borrow the concept of Small Productions, any artist can claim himself to be a member, and there is a conscious avoidance of making any conclusions or summations. This all enforces and protects the sense of pure autonomy, thereby distinguishing it from a rigid state of art production.9

Directed against the industrialization, monetization, and spectacularization of art, such self-organizations emphasize the sociality and localness of artistic practices (for example, Arrow Factory); directed against the gallery/ museum system, self-organizations emphasize the subjectivity and initiative of the artists (for example, Small Productions). Clearly, there is a rethinking of institutions and a critical consciousness behind these self-organized practices, which also constitute a strategic response. The aims of self- organizations thus vary with different contexts.

45 A Diaodui Collective, Arrow Factory Grotto, 2012, installation. Courtesy of Arrow Factory, Beijing.

Faced with the centralization of the Small Productions event, July 25, 2009. Courtesy of Small discursive power of art, an emphasis Productions, Hangzhou. on regional identity becomes the chief concern for many of these self-organizations. For example, Provincial Youth, Chongqing, borrows its name from the French cultural concept “la Province,” to put emphasis on the differences between the central and the local. Similarly, the name of the self-organization Yangtze River Space, Wuhan, also underlines its regional cultural context, as the name comes from a radical publication produced in Wuhan during the Cultural Revolution. The organizers of Yangtze River Space do not focus on political radicalness, but, rather, on a locality in terms of its cultural context.10 For these organizations, locality is not only embodied as regional identity, but also reflected in the way their art practices interact with society at large. For instance, projects by Art Praxis Space such as Kunshan—Under Construction and The Route to Mountain Liang constitute social research into the rural-urban areas around them; however, no ideological framework of urban/rural, modern/tradition, government/ people is established beforehand. These artists stress artistic intervention into specific social issues and the overall social fabric. This emphasis on locality is also apparent in interventions into specific social events, such as the Xia Jianqiang painting exhibition organized by Yangtze River Space.11 Although its involvement in social events was inevitable, the exhibition did not emphasize a specific political standpoint; instead, it resembled more a party thrown for friends and family.

In contrast, self-organizations based on social intervention often offer a response directed at social experience. The Cold Winter art project initiated by artists based in Beijing at the end of 2009 was a self-organized event countering a forced demolition of their studios the artists were facing. In 2010, the ‘Everybody’s East Lake’ project in Wuhan was directed against the violation of public environmental resources. This type of self-organization does not seek a kind of artistic subjectivity, but, rather, addresses public rights in the social realm. Art serves as a source of rhetorical power, and can effectively attract greater levels of social concern. A related issue is that as art becomes increasingly industrialized, art districts are slowly transforming from what was once simple artist communities to industrial developments

46 Left: He Chi, Next Door, 2016. Courtesy of Arrow Factory, Beijing. Right: Poster for Small Productions barbeque event, 2008. Courtesy of Small Productions, Hangzhou.

operated under government policy. Governmental power and real estate capital have predominance, and artists have gone from existing in a self- organized state to existing in a “being organized” state. This transformation is what underlies the formation of these artist-led self-organizations. On one side was pressure from within the art system, and on the other side was external social tension. Since 2008, the appearance of clear social conﬂict has demonstrated the desire for civil rights by society at large. As a part of the larger society, artists are also involved in these issues and events. They have no choice but to rethink the issue of “art’s intervention in society,” because on a certain level the social system has already intervened into art. Creating art is no longer the only method to practice art. Self-awareness and action towards the art system have become requirements of being contemporary. Within this context, the rethinking of institutions by these self-organized collectives has deeper connotations.

Provincial Youth, From Another impetus underlying "Self Identity" to " Cultural Sovereignty," public these self-organizations is often a performance, Chongqing, October 16, 2012. speciﬁc artistic medium or form. For example, LVXIAO focuses on cartoon art, and the Three Minutes Art Group (founded 2009) specializes in discussions and practices involving the moving image. Celebration is an experimental project focusing on performance art while the Nan Shan Painting Group (founded 2011) emphasizes issues related to painting. There are also many self- organizations with clear agendas related to the institutionalized art system. Video Bureau focuses on collecting and archiving video art ﬁles, and Floor #2 Press puts out contemporary art publications. The Youth Sale Store (founded 2009) offers an independently operated system for artists to sell their work. Golden Palm + Golden Razzies of the Year Award (founded 2009), organized by a group of young art critics, tackles the increasingly monopolized media discourse in the hopes of creating a more diverse space for public opinion.

The rethinking of the gallery/museum system is also embodied in the conscious decision to use outdoor and public spaces. Exhibitions such as Pride, Poetic Graces, and The End of the Earth organized by Xiong Huang

47 Group, Beijing (founded 2007), and Dragon Fountain Bathhouse curated by Forget Art—like Arrow Factory and Observation Society—were held in non-conventional spaces and represent the same desire to detach from industrialized art districts. There is also a conscious underlying institutional critique; in fact, Xiong Huang Group and Forget Art, Beijing (founded 2009) later organized separate events with this aim clearly in mind. For example, the exhibition Spring and Autumn inserted performances as an intervention into a gallery/museum exhibition, and Forget Art Fair was a parody of the standard art fair exhibition format.

While emphasizing the critical consciousness of these self-organizations, we must also not neglect the self-sufﬁciency that many of them embody. Even in the kind of self-sufﬁcient solitary play of the group A Diaodui (founded 2007), there is also an awareness of institutionalization and autonomy, and their practices can still be talked of in terms of this category of the rethinking of institutionalism. Liang Shuo, a member of A Diaodui has stated:

An artist must maintain a careful critical attitude towards the prevailing trends around him or her, rather than blindly following them. This attitude expresses a person’s free will and is appropriate, but when you insist on going against everyone else, it can fall into another kind of stereotype and that is not freedom. So I believe the core value of A Diaodui’s practice is “no obstacles in sight,” always adjusting and reacting to our surroundings. Nothing is worth adhering to.12

The key emphasis here is on independence, but this must be gained through continuous reﬂection. The anti-authoritarian attitude of many self- organizations is related to their awareness of the possibility of autonomy. For self-organizations, this conscious repudiation of institutions must confront the phenomenon of institutionalization itself, because it is precisely this institutionalization that centralizes discourse and power, and, as such, it has been the object of awareness and reﬂection in self-organized practices from the beginning.

Along the same lines, the self- Nan Shan Painting Group's In the Tree exhibition, 2011, organizations of recent years differ Chaoyang District, Beijing. from the art collectives that existed in mainland China around 1985. The collectives of the past demonstrated clear partisanship, with manifestoes and a “heroizing” of core members. They talked about a collective will, and, more importantly, the discourse revolved around the formation of a movement, popularizing a speciﬁc artistic idea and emphasizing its centrality. Gao Minglu’s summary speaks to this point: “The collectives of the ’85 movement were not merely a kind of organizational form, but also a spirit. They were like small-scale combat teams, each with

48 Video Bureau, Beijing, 2012. its own clear agenda and viewpoint.”13 There were a few leaders in different regions who essentially dominated each collective’s discourse, and they saw themselves as set apart from the general public. As Shu Qun put it, “We see ourselves as ‘supermen’ while calling the general public sheep.”14 A strong emphasis on centrality was also very common in these different collectives, especially in centralized exhibitions such as the Zhuhai Conference and the 1989 China/Avant-Garde exhibition. Huang Yongping once mocked the 1989 China/Avant-Garde exhibition by saying that a “swarm of art communities invaded Beijing, ﬁghting for fame.”15

Li Jinghu, Forest, 2012, In comparison to the 1980s, the self- installation view, Observation Society, Guangzhou. organizations that emerged after 2008 are much more relaxed. There is no emphasis on centralization, and even if someone serves as the founder or organizer, the importance of that role is not particularly emphasized. Institutionalized titles such as “curator” are avoided. These collectives also reject the idea of holistic artistic principals and resist establishing any. Their greatest difference from the collectives formed around 1985 is their anti-authoritarian nature and their lack of interest in precipitating a movement. Similarly, most of these groups do not base themselves on well-deﬁned art concepts, which is apparent in their often whimsical choice of names. For example, the name TOF is an abbreviation either for “Time of Flying” or for the group’s studio number 215 (Two One Five). The name 8mg comes from the tar content of a brand of cigarettes. The establishment of many of these groups was a response to the current exhibition system and its working methods, and embodied a strong sense of ﬂexibility. For example, the group GUEST spontaneously formed during a residency program presented by Organhaus Art Space; Cell Group was inspired by the organic organizational patterns of cell production; and the Big Project Group was established based on similar earlier collaborations. Their main thrust is the art projects themselves, with an emphasis on internal balance and collaboration rather than a prioritization of the individual. Furthermore, the members of Hexie Baroque purposefully keep themselves anonymous in an attempt to make such prioritization impossible and meaningless.

Although the self-organizations that formed after 2000 have mainly consisted of young artists with diverse focuses and targets, their organizational form is in general completely different from that of their immediate predecessors. The term “self-organization” in this new context implies two main points— namely, autonomy and collectivity—but the established systems and concepts that this autonomy faces are constantly in ﬂux, which is why the responses and aims, together with the nature and strategies of these groups, are always in a state of transformation. With this in mind, it is necessary to discuss further the connection between the transformation in the art historical background of this century and these self-organizational practices.

49 Left: Xiong Huang Group, poster for the project Pride, 2009. Courtesy of Xiong Huang Group, Beijing. Right: Xiong Huang Group, poster for the project Poetic Graces, 2009. Courtesy of Xiong Huang Group, Beijing.

A Rethinking of Institutions The contemporary art industry has been growing rapidly since the year 2000, coinciding with the younger generation of artists’ gradual transition from school to careers in the art world. Meanwhile, the Internet, which developed at the same time, has provided a powerful organizational platform and tool for communication. However, as was pointed out earlier, the phenomenon of self-organization does not apply only to young artists, nor is it new. Self-organization has been a common practice in contemporary Chinese art, and before the massive expansion of galleries and museums, almost all contemporary art exhibitions were realized through self-organized groups.

In fact, the art collectives that existed around 1985 were also formed by young artists.16 The ’85 New Wave Movement was referred to as the “Youth Art Movement,” and art collectives were called “youth art collectives.” The ofﬁcial name for what is now commonly called the Zhuhai Conference was The 1985 Young Artists’ Ideas Symposium and Slide Show. The age of the artists, however, was not the most important concern, nor was the proportion of young artists to older ones; instead, the key was the formation of a consciousness of autonomy. Young artists and critics at that time especially emphasized this kind of consciousness, even though this emphasis itself appeared as a kind of authoritarian demand. As Shu Qun states, recalling the process of organizing the Zhuhai Conference: “If we were to make the event happen, we had to place the authority in the hands of the young artists, otherwise it would have become a mess and wouldn’t have reﬂected the novel spirit of the ’85 Art Movement.”17 What artists of the 1985 era confronted was an establishment of an art system consisting of artist associations and art academies, as well as the similarly stale aesthetics and ideology underlying them. Since they only had a few art magazines of their own to rely on, their collective strategy naturally took the form of trying to initiate movements.

This collective strategy began to transform in the 1990s. The young artist Qiu Zhijie described the situation thus:

Art critics were very powerful in the Chinese art scene at the beginning of the 1990s. Artists sought the help of critics they trusted in times of difﬁculty, and the fame of a young artist also depended on the recognition of these critics. In 1992, art critics passed and published a convention establishing a fee-charging standard like that of a professional association. This document shows that it was widely believed that artistic creations had to be brought into the public discourse through critical reviews before being “introduced” into the art market.

50 This belief was the reason for the numerous Art Critic Nomination Exhibitions in the mid-1990s.18

Forget Art Fair, 2011, The discursive dominance of nine-square-meter standard exhibition booth, Linda these critics gave rise to Post-sense Gallery, Beijing. Courtesy of Forget Art, Beijing. Sensibility exhibitions, which can be seen as a self-organizational practice of young artists directed against the power of these critics. The focus of their objections quickly shifted from the dominance of critics to the epistemologization of art. Qiu Zhijie believes that the discursive power of critics lies precisely in this kind of epistemology. In this light, even within Post-sense Sensibility exhibitions and similar art experiments, the shift of power in the art ﬁeld was very apparent. Perhaps, as Qiu Zhijie suggested, it was “essentially a power struggle between artists and critics.”19 Ironically, what critics saw was another turnover of dominance in the ﬁeld:

The Art Critic Nomination Exhibitions tried to inﬂuence the development of contemporary art through a continuous use of a purely academic “collective criticism,” which also represented a kind of cultural ideal. In reality, it was difﬁcult to achieve an academic purity, and it was even harder to “persevere” in this work because the critical power still eventually ended up in the hands of those with money.20

If we were to look at the Art Critic Nomination Exhibition in the early 1990s as a self-organized practice, their inquiry was to a large extent directed at the surfacing capitalist powers. Their emphasis was hence placed on cultural ideals and academic purity. For artists, however, the rise of the art market gave them a kind of autonomy that was equivalent to critics’ authority. Nevertheless, it was not sufficient to solely depend on the market, which could lead to the danger of being assimilated by capitalist power. Therefore, art experiments in the contemporary art field that were initiated and organized by artists such as Post-sense Sensibility would naturally appear. Of course, the relations within Chinese contemporary art fields in the 1990s were far more complicated, and the above examples have been offered to indicate the fact that the content of the autonomic inquiry differs when seen from different perspectives. For example, the Post-sense Sensibility exhibitions did not only target the epistemologization of creation and criticism in contemporary Chinese art, but also attempted, as Qiu Zhijie pointed out, to construct a “Chinese art wave deeply rooted in local resources, but also with a global ambition.”21 From a globalized perspective, the aims of the Post-sense Sensibility exhibitions were no longer the autonomy of the role of the artist, but the autonomy of the cultural role of contemporary Chinese art itself.

The Chinese contemporary art ﬁeld went through an overall transformation after 2000, as contemporary art itself surfaced from its “underground” status. There was the construction and ﬂourishing of a contemporary art market system, the initial formation of the gallery and museum system, an increasing openness toward contemporary art in academic circles,

51 and a gradual acceptance in the general public and media. There was also increased support for the art industry on the part of the government and a ﬁrmer censorial hand as contemporary Chinese art began to take a more prominent role in the international art world. This transformation was in fact an integrated spectacle formed by political power, money, the media, and discourse. Once an art system and its discourse becomes part of the spectacle, the autonomy of art is deeply threatened, and, at the same time, objective criticism no longer holds validity. Artistic practices have to be carried out within a conscious rethinking of this institutionalization. Practices that lack this conscious reconsideration, regardless of their intention or position, inevitably become part of the spectacle.

Given this new understanding of the situation of the Chinese art world around 2000, it becomes clear that the self-organizational practices that arose after galleries and art museums dominated the contemporary art system are different from those that came before. It is also clear that the current generation of young artists now exists in a new environment. The demand for autonomy has gradually shifted its focus away from a public authority or collective and individual authority, and toward an abstract, anonymous, and institutionalized authority; that is, the domination of the spectacle itself. The specific expression of this domination is not an external or disciplinary pressure, but, rather, an invisible pressure internalized in ideas and practices. These self-organizations’ rethinking of institutions is thus present more as a form of internal autonomy and reflexivity rather than as an external critique. Given that, self-organizations are no longer just a substitution for and supplement to the gallery/museum system, nor are they a kind of dependent practice, an addition to the art ecosystem, or a makeshift measure taken by the disadvantaged. In fact, these self- organizations in and of themselves represent a self-sufficient practice, constructing an independent ecosystem that must not be overlooked.

For the generation of young artists who graduated around 2000, the contemporary art system they are facing has been slowly taking shape, putting them under a kind of institutional pressure. These young artists have therefore widely participated in self-organizational practices in reaction to this pressure, leading even some artists who already have steady collaborative relationships with galleries to continue to join these organizations. As Qiu Anxiong, the organizer of Museum of Unknown, once said, “When you form a self-organization, you withdraw from the role. That is to say, you are constructing an internally-motivated way to create art outside of the system.”22 The work of these self-organizations does not reject the idea of a gallery/museum system, though in reality the initiative displayed by self-organized collectives clearly differs from the “being organized” state in the gallery/museum system.

The rethinking of the increasingly rigid and stereotyped contemporary art system, the reaction towards a solidifying power system in the art world, and the push of powers outside of the system, all imply the appearance of introspective practices within contemporary Chinese art. In this sense, self-organizations have constructed a kind of space for self-reﬂection within contemporary Chinese art. More importantly, self-organization touches upon a core issue, namely that a critical consciousness within an

52 art system has become a prerequisite for current art practices. A so-called “contemporaneity” is possible only through a self-conscious critique of the mechanisms of production, circulation, consumption, and acceptance of art. In this sense, self-organizations constitute a new foundational practice.

This text was ﬁrst published in Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art 1 No. 1, (March 2014).

Notes

1. Hou Hanru (2005), “Beyond: An Extraordinary Space of Experimentation for Modernization,” in Yichun Yan, Yin Liu, and Guangdong Museum of Art, eds., Beyond: An Extraordinary Space of Experimentation for Modernization—The Second Guangzhou Triennial (Guangzhou: Lingnan Fine Arts Publishing House), 37. 2. The participants in this edition of the Guangzhou Triennial were Art Commune (Hong Kong), Art River Loft (Kunming), Bizart (Shanghai), Alternativearchive (Guangzhou), Blue House Art Space (Chengdou), Borges Libreria Art Space (Guangzhou), Freecinema (Shenyang/Guangzhou), L’image (Guangzhou/Beijing), Long March Foundation (Beijing), Old Ladies House (Macau), Para Site (Hong Kong), 1A Art Space (Hong Kong), Videotage(Hong Kong), Loft345 (Guangzhou), RCM Art Museum(Nanjing), Red Sky Art Space (Haikou), Happenning Group (Hong Kong), Tank Art Space (Chongqing), Third Line Art Group (Guangzhou), Vis-à-Vis Art Lab (Xiamen), Vitamin Creative Space (Guangzhou), Jia Shen Fang (Guangzhou), and 21st Floor (Guangzhou). Among these, RCM Art Museum is a for-proﬁt institution and Tank Art Space is an art district within an art academy. Guangdong Art Museum (2005), "The Second Guangzhou Triennial: Self Organization," press release, November 18, 2005, available at http://www.gdmoa.org/gztriennial/second/self-cn/self-cn.htm. 3. Gao Minglu, Bawu Meishu Yundong/The ’85 Art Movement, Volume 2 (Guilin: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2008), 9. 4. Lian Decheng, “What Do Alternative Spaces Alternate?,” Yanhuang Yishu/Dragon: An Art Monthly 44 (1993), 38–41. 5. Rania Ho, Wang Wei, and Pauline J. Yao, 3 Years: Arrow Factory (Beijing: Arrow Factory, and Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2011). 6. Zhang Liaoyuan, “Small Productions, Don’t Stop,” press release for The 5th Small Productions Event, December 29, 2008, available at http://www.douban.com/group/topic/5000989/. 7. Pauline J. Yao, “Small is the New Big: the Arrow Factory,” Contemporary Art & Investment magazine blog, April 14, 2009, available at http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_5eb0bc130100cpsp.html/. 8. Zhang Liaoyuan, “Small Productions, Don’t Stop,” press release for The 5th Small Productions Event. 9. Shao Yi and Shi Qing, “Budget Flexibility of Self-organization: Shao Yi and the Small Productions— Shao Yi in conversation with Shi Qing,” in Ruijun Shen and Cong He, eds., Pulse Reaction (Guangzhou: Times Museum, 2012), 130–36. 10. Gong Jian, “Regarding the Intentions and Goals of Yangtze River Space,” in Dong Bao, Dongdong Sun, Paula Tsai, Juan Guo, and Philip Tinari, eds., ON|OFF: Collective Practice in China 2002–2012 (Beijing: World Book Publishing Company, 2013), 264–66. 11. Xia Jianqiang is an 11-year-old boy whose father, Xia Junfeng, is a street vendor who was involved in the killing of two chengguan ofﬁcers, a case that has received wide attention from the general public since 2011. The exhibition Xia Jianqiang’s Drawings opened at the Yangtze River Space on August 20, 2011 and lasted for three days.

12. Liang Shuo, “Regarding Chen Zhiyong’s three viewpoints,” A Diaodui’s blog, November 15, 2007, “http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4d821ae101000bjz.html/.

13. Gao Minglu, Bawu Meishu Yundong/The ’85 Art Movement, Volume 2, 9.

14. Shu Qun, “Nothern art collectives and the ’85 Art Movement,” Contemporary Art and Investment, 14 (2008), 48. 15. Huang Yongping, “Huang Yongping in conversation with Shi Jian,” in Dawei Fei, ed., The ’85 New Wave Archives II (Shanghai: Century Publishing Group, Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 2007), 27. 16. Gao Minglu, “The New Wave Art Movement and New Cultural Values,” Wenyi Yan jiu/Literature and Art Studies 6 (1988), 127. 17. Shu Qun, “Nothern art collectives and the ’85 Art Movement,” 50. 18. Qiu Zhijie, (2004), “A Traveller’s Guide in Purgatory," in Huangsheng Wang, Haohua Zhu, and Yue Jiang, eds., Yearbook of Guangdong Museum of Art 2004 (Macau: Macau Publishing House, 2004), 156. 19. Qiu Zhijie, “The Origin and Mission of Post-sense Sensibility,” Meiyuan 5 (2001), 2–5. 20. Jia Fangzhou (2003), “Power of Criticism: Perspective of Criticism and Role of Critics in the Evolution of Fine Arts,” Wenyi Yan jiu/Literature and Art Studies 5 (2003), 113. 21. Qiu Zhijie, “The Origin and Mission of Post-sense Sensibility,” 2–5. 22. Qiu Anxiong, and Shi Qing, “Budget ﬂexibility of self-organization: Shao Yi and the Small Productions—Qiu Anxiong in conversation with Shi Qing,” in Ruijun Shen and Cong He, eds., Pulse Reaction (Guangzhou: Times Museum, 2012), 141.