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Xu Bing: Transcending Culture

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Xu Bing: Transcending Culture Scott Albright Xu Bing: Transcending Culture “When describing the brutal nature of war, we should not exaggerate or glorify its horrors. In describing the arduous nature of revolutionary struggle, we should not exaggerate or glorify its sufferings. The brutal nature of revolutionary war and the heroism of the revolution, the arduous nature of revolution and revolutionary optimism—these are a unity of opposites. But we must be clear about the nature of the primary contradiction, for failure to correctly grasp it will give rise to bourgeois pacifism.”1 Introduction Xu Bing, Criticize Capitalism, Strive for Socialism, March Xu Bing was born into a into 1976 at a Combat Pace, 1975, Mimeograph on paper, bourgeois capitalist family in illustration from the Chinese literary journal Brilliant Chongqing, Sichuan province, Mountain Flowers (Lanman Shanhua), 27.4 x 19.6 cm. in 1955. Despite the fact that his Courtesy of Xu Bing Studio. father, Xu Huamin, had been labeled a counter-revolutionary and member of the “black gang,” Xu Bing actively participated in promoting Communist revolutionary propaganda. At age eleven, Xu Bing was already “applying bourgeois accessories to revolutionary ends” by using the counter-revolutionary seal carving tools to create revolutionary woodblock prints of Mao Zedong.2 Like millions of other bourgeois youth, Xu Bing was sent to the countryside to be re-educated as a farm worker during the Cultural Revolution. It was in 1974, at the age of nineteen, that Xu Bing arrived in the countryside of Huapen, where he created propaganda posters and taught calligraphy to the peasants he lived with. These were the “favourite, golden, and best years” of Xu Bing’s life because he was able to do what he really wanted to and because in the countryside he “could really feel the goodness of humanity, and people transcending politics, hierarchy, and class.”3 Xu Bing admired Mao’s idea of using art as a tool to serve the people and went as far as to call him a “Chinese sage” or “a wise man, so to speak.”4 But it was the propaganda posters that made him realize how powerful words could be, and he noted that at this time “if you wanted to kill somebody, you did it not by gun but by brush.”5 38 Vol. 10 No. 5 Xu Bing, Where Does the Dust Xu Bing used his skills as a propaganda artist and calligrapher to develop Itself Collect?, 2004, 9/11 dust, stenciled text, scaffolding, his talents in contemporary avant-garde art and was later recognized as process photos, dimensions variable. Installation view at a master in the manipulation of language and scripts within his work. the National Museum and Gallery, Cardiff, Wales, 2004. His experiences during the Cultural Revolution helped him to grow from Courtesy of Xu Bing Studio. being a simple promoter of revolutionary struggle to an artist imbued with philosophic and cultural ideals that transcend culture, nationalistic thought, and political subjectivism. Xu Bing uses his talents as an artist to erase cultural barriers while confronting the tensions caused by clashing civilizations and globalization. Particular attention should be given to his 2004 installation Where Does the Dust Itself Collect? in order to show how art can be used to reflect upon, warn of, and possibly change the direction of world conflicts and international affairs. From Dust to Dust September 11, 2001, was a day of reckoning for the United States and for the world at large. The attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center affected people at every corner of the globe from Beijing to Berlin, and it was not just Americans who were attacked. Almost every type of nationality, ethnicity, and religious group was represented either in the World Trade Center or on the streets below when the twin towers came crashing down on lower Manhattan. Xu Bing happened to be in New York that day, and while observing the remnants of the towers he realized the symbolic significance of the thick layer of dust that settled in the streets and took the time to collect some of it for his next major art project, Where Does the Dust Itself Collect? Vol. 10 No. 5 39 In that installation, Xu Bing spread across a gallery floor the dust he had gathered which was then inscribed with the words, “As there is nothing from the first, where does the dust itself collect?” These two lines, taken from a Chan Buddhist poem, or koan, are used to express “the relationship between the material world and the spiritual world, exploring the complicated circumstances created by different world perspectives.”6 The complex layers of symbolism in these two seemingly simple lines can be interpreted in many different ways, but, simply put, Xu Bing is explaining that from dust we are born and to dust we shall return. The original koan was written by Huineng, the sixth patriarch of Chan Buddhism in China, in response to another verse by a monk who claimed to understand the true nature of Buddha’s wisdom. The first verse, written by Shenxiu, reads, “The body is the bodhi tree. The soul is like the mirror bright. Take heed to keep it always clean, And let no dust collect upon it.”7 In this verse the bodhi tree represents the body, or the place of enlightenment; Siddartha Guatama, the original Buddha, found enlightenment beneath a banyan tree, or bodhi tree, after meditating for forty days. Shenxiu shows that enlightenment can occur in the here and now and that our minds are mirrors that are originally pure but become dirty from the dust of the world. To allow original enlightenment or one’s true Buddha-nature to show, one must polish the mind, thus removing the impurities of the world. Although Shenxiu was publicly commended by the Fifth Patriarch Hongren for his understanding of Buddha’s wisdom, in private Hongren told him he did not understand it at all.8 Huineng, however, did understand the meaning of true Buddha nature and was given the robe of the sixth patriarch after writing his verse that reads, “The Bodhi is not like the tree; The mirror bright is nowhere shining; As there is nothing from the first, Where does the dust itself collect?” What Huineng means in his koan is that bodhi, or enlightenment, has no point of origin, and since everything that comes into existence also stops existing there can be no awakening that takes place at a specific point in time and space which is original Buddha nature. The mirror, or soul, has no support, and so one’s own experience also cannot be original Buddha nature. Because Buddha nature is constantly pure and clear, it cannot be blocked or dirtied over with dust, and therefore Buddha nature transcends the lived world and is thus always pure and clear through good conduct and constant practice.9 If one were to take the last two lines of Huineng’s koan and place them into the context of the events surrounding September 11, many more meanings would arise, but Xu Bing was not addressing the events of that day when he created Where Does the Dust Itself Collect? Rather, he was exploring the relationship between the spiritual and material world. In this sense he was asking how people from different religious beliefs, ethnic groups, and cultural backgrounds can live in this world together harmoniously.10 From this perspective, one can see how Xu Bing is carrying on his revolutionary zeal for creating art to serve the people by providing positive reflection upon the horrors of 9/11 in a way that can lead people to think about how to prevent such events in the future. In many ways Xu Bing’s installation questions the reality of the events surrounding September 11 and calls on 40 Vol. 10 No. 5 Chen Shaoxiong, Anti- people to explore for themselves, in true Chan Buddhist style, why the World terrorism Variety, 2002, 2-channel video, colour, 5 Trade Center was attacked and to seek the original purities within themselves mins., 14 secs. Courtesy of the artist. to transcend the nationalistic thinking that leads to retaliation and war. Post 9/11 Art and the Warning of Further Military Conflict September 11 served as inspiration to many artists across the planet. Patriotic images of Americans holding flags were painted, drawn, and sprayed across canvases and walls. Memorials were erected, sculptures were created, and poems were written in remembrance of the events of that day. Chinese artist Chen Shaoxiong produced several photographs and videos of skyscrapers throughout China bending and avoiding incoming commercial airliners as a way of exploring the dangers of globalism and as a reflection on 9/11. His 2002 Anti-terrorism Variety uses a two-channel video to show Shanghai’s famous tower swerving out of the way of a plane, but in some of his works the buildings do not move fast enough and are digitally exploded after impact.11 New York-based Chinese artist Zhang Hongtu participated in two exhibitions memorializing the events of September 11. In his 2002 photographic installation Missing Mona Lisa, organized by Exit Art in New York, he overlapped pictures of people who went missing after the 9/11 attacks with Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, to create a contemplative “mourner gazing at the victims of the World Trade Center attack from a long-ago past.”12 Lia Chang, another New York-based Chinese artist, documented the lives of Chinese-Americans living in New York through photographs displayed in the exhibition Recovering Chinatown: The 9/11 Collection, which was held at the Museum of Chinese in America, New York.13 Also, the museum’s Web site hosts a number of poems written by Chinese-Americans living in New York, including one by Evelyn Yee titled “Canal Street Calls,” which reads, “And yet, there are reminders.
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