Yishu 39 Article 10

8/3/2019 Yishu 39 Article 10

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There is no doubt that art is not subordinate to ideology but neither is itabove society. So where is the artist?

Nikos Papastergiadis, Spatial Aesthetics:Rethinking the Contemporary 1

Jungle, a group exhibition, conceived as an event-in-progress where therelational specifcities between the artists and the works are constantly rewritten, is described as a close-up ocus on Chinese contemporary art trends. 2 The exhibition is produced by the collective e ort o more thaneighty artists rom di erent cities, including art groups and organizations,that have gathered to explore authorial renunciation o a fxed curatorial

ramework in avour o an inclusive model based on ree association andsel -identifcation with a participatory, open-ended character.

Beatrice Leanza

O JungleIn Praise o Distance:Refections on Anonymity andContemporaneity in Chinese ArtPlatform China Contemporary Art Institute, BeijingMarch 6May 31, 2010

This project aims to capture a representation o contextual practices andlatent synergies currently at play in art making by re using to press upon

them a structural defnition o shared meanings, and, instead, to stagethe interrelatedness o the various individual systems as a momentoushappening, networked through stylistic, generational, conceptual tendencies

rom past to present into a contemporary ecosystem. 3

The motivations and modalities o creation represented in Jungle, thenarratives that run through it, as well as the very structures it alters by way o its discursive strategy, resonate within a larger arena o critical activity that interrogates various artists, curators, theorists, and producers aboutthe current state o art, and its role in response to the specifc demands o locality against the increasingly heterochronous system o contemporaneity

Installation view o Jungle.Courtesy o Plat orm China,Beijing.


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and its various degrees o uncertainty with regard to the immediate uture.In recent years, the understanding o the contemporary has been debatedwidely in literature on cultural globalization, and it has been scrutinized asan unresolved historical outcome produced by the emergence o di ering,alternative models o modernity that stand, as historian Terry Smithobserves, in a relationship o antinomic exchange. 4 He continues: . . . incontemporary conditions periodization is impossible. The only potentially permanent thing about this state o a airs is that . . . the present may become, perversely, eternal. . . . a kind o incessant incipience, o the kindtheorized by Jacques Derrida as venir perpetual advent, that which isalways to come. 5

I am looking at the exhibition Jungle as a specifc case study in order tore ect upon orms o agency involving Chinese art and its own locality asconstituted within what Frederic Jameson describes as a specifc dialectico the break and the period, which is itsel a moment o some widerdialectic o continuity and rupture. 6 Following the observations by PaulGladston that appeared in a previous issue o Yishu,7 I am attempting to

substantiate a reading o the critical strategies and alternative practicesoperating within the (localized) dynamics o production, dissemination,and reception o art across di erent historical moments. This is intended topromote a theoretically consistent view o the deconstructive potential o contemporary Chinese art 8 and urther question the legacy o such ormso critique and interrogation as deployed in the site o the exhibition.

In order to evaluate the critical extensions o Jungle and what type o more or less explicit tensions it denotes as a product o the intersubjective

relations between artists and artworks, I will ocus on the constitutivecorrelation o two particular aspects embedded in its discursive ramework.These are where the collaborative nexus in orming the modalities o creation and the intellectual motivations behind it, and the spatial politicsthey are inhabiting rom the site o the show to the institutional settingsthat become involvedare mobilized.

The opening o Jungle coincides with Plat orm Chinas f th yearanniversary and represents a critical turning point or the direction thisart space strives to set or itsel , willingly putting into debate the newchallenges it should engage with as a conscious reworking/rethinking o its

Installation view o Jungle.Courtesy o Plat orm China,Beijing.


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role within the local context. Established in 2005 in its current premises inCaochangdi, Plat orm China is a privately led initiative that emerged underthe avourable conditions o a thriving marketplace that was imbricatedinto a broader economic process o cultural and creative emancipation. Thisembraced mixed modes o cultural entrepreneurship and set in motionnew imaginaries and trans-boundary policies that are now operating both

in and outside the domestic cultural milieu. Marking its third decade,contemporary Chinese art, since 2000, has entered what Gao Mingluhas labeled the Museum Age; 9 that is, a transition toward the o fcialimplementation and institutional construction o contemporary artitssystemic eatures and global networks together with the en orcement o adomestic class o creative and cultural labour.

During the past two years, in particular, and partly as a consequenceo the international fnancial downturn o 2008, a sense o the urgency

or constructive dialogue is now gradually gaining momentum amongdi erent artists and local players in the art system. Much o this is due to

Sun Xun, Last Night , 2010,installation. Courtesy o theartist and Plat orm China,Beijing.


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the structural instability o a system that had rapidly grown according toa proft-driven production logic and that relegated critical discourse outo its ounding equation. Jungle is a proactive response, and a re ection o the urgency to bring shared preoccupations around the ragility o existingvalue systems or art and criticality onto common ground.

The artists that appear in the exhibition are those who have subscribed tothe call o the organizers and made themselves active interlocutors, bothselecting/producing works and suggesting the participation o others in adialogical process that constitutes the site and the very enactment o theexhibition itsel . The selection o works is a result o this con rontationalprocess and the subsequent discussions that transpired among theorganizers and the participants who gradually joined in. Occupying allthree spaces o Plat orm China and part o the adjacent yard, and eaturing

all variety o media, the exhibition includes video, painting, photography,sculpture, installation, and per ormance, and goes back as ar as a decade,

rom Yang Fudongs 1998 video I didnt orce youto new pieces createdspecifcally or the show.

The collaborative character o this curatorial approach and its resistanceto a thematic ramework turns the exhibition into a mani estation o a plurality o artistic practices whose a fnities and divergences are thedevices with which the actual confnes o the exhibition can be constantly

redesigned. As the press release states, Jungle stands here as a metaphor,interestingly one in which lasting territorial claims are almost impossible.The show there ore does not so much propose established positions andindividualities operating in and belonging to the contemporary as they partake in a conservation o the systems o knowledge that disciplineitinstitutions, galleries, academies, etc. More importantly, the exhibition

oregrounds the possibility o an active process o positioning onesel within the contemporary by producing a orm o deterritorialized knowledgeoutside its mainstream discourses and traditional spaces o consumption

through a claim o unbelonging. This expresses how an active orm o re usal o existing paradigms o power and critique is per ormed as a

Liu Ding, In Jungle , a serieso conversations initiated bythe artist with the curatorso the exhibition, artists, andart critics, taking place onirregular basis during theexhibition between March

6 and May 16, 2010, andrecorded on DVD. Courtesy othe artist and Plat orm China,Beijing.


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subjective dismissal; that is, it exitsthe spaces o the institutionso art rather than e acing themwith radical gestures (a tacticaldiscourse characteristic instead o

Institutional Critique, which is anart practice that enters the spaceso the institutions o artgalleries,

museums, the market, the press, etc., to disrupt, sabotage and there oremake obvious their circuits o dependence).

Returning to Terry Smiths readingo contemporaneity, with re erenceto the defnitions o it ound in

the Ox ord English Dictionary , hestates that it Calibrates a numbero distinct but related ways o beingin or with time, even being in andout o time at the same time. . . .They are all relational, turning onprepositions, on being placed to, rom, at, or during time.10 It isthis process o productive sociality that motivates the coming togethero Junglethe various vectors o

transaction and exchange mobilized through negotiations among the artists,their galleries, etc.that places this project in active engagement with theinherent instability in and o its time and ultimately enables a discursiveshi t that is no longer speaking about but speaking to its own subject.

The return to issues o artisticcreation that resist the material/ideological restrictions o their own

contemporary times has recurredthroughout the history o Chineseart in the trope o ApartmentArt rom the mid 1970s, whichsymbolized a orm o withdrawalthat also can be associatedwith other ormations o sel -confnement such as artists villages,underground activities (particularly

those rom the 1990s), and variousartist-initiated exhibition projects

during the 2000s that were o ten hosted in non-conventional or non-commercial art venues. These kinds o activities represent a orm o spatialdetachment to which art recurrently subscribes as a way to disengage o fcialmodes o discourse and aesthetic language by orging its own domesticity and space o existence. Sel -initiated and fnancially sel -supported, theseindependently organized projects are emplaced as communal gatherings

or the exhibition and discussion o art, per ormed as a coming togetherand being-in-common that upsets the social and aesthetic conventions o dominant commercial systems. 11

Liang Shuo, Temporary Structure , 2009, installation,300 x 200 x 200 cm. Courtesyo the artist and Plat ormChina, Beijing.

Qiu Xiao ei, Shabby Shop ,2009, installation. Courtesy othe artist and Plat orm China,Beijing.

Jin Shi, 1 Back Alley 1 , 2009,neon light installation, 80 x 40x 9 cm. Courtesy o the artistand Plat orm China, Beijing.


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Seemingly, in Jungle, we fnd a process o relocation o both art anddiscourse in which criticality is activated by a collaborative nexus andthe creative empowerment o the collective through which establishedhierarchies and relations o power are rendered inoperative. The site o the exhibition consequently becomes an arena open to multiple orms o

inhabitation in which authorship and spectatorship are no longer articulatedalong fxed positions but, instead, are continuously retraced through oursubjective gaze. Essentially, through these re exive acts o distancing we areno longer recipients o dictated meanings but are le t to reely investigatepossible extensions o the subjective narratives that compose the exhibition

and there ore we become engaged in an unmediated process o learning.In the words o Jacques Rancire in The Emancipated Spectator, whatseems to be at stake here is not the capacity o aggregation o a collectivebut the capacity o the anonymous, the capacity that makes anybody equal

to everybody. This capacity works through unpredictable and irreducibledistances. It works through an unpredictable and irreducible play o association and dissociation. 12 So, in this picture, where is the artist?

Unlike others in the show, the work o Liu Ding titled In Jungle moreexplicitly tackles this question as a way to con ront the vocational aim o

the project with its own makers, somehow bracketing into dialogical piecesits possible extensions beyond the territorial and temporal borders o theexhibition itsel . The participants in this series o talk-shops initiated by Liu in collaboration with Plat orm China, which included artists and criticsas well as socalled creative pro essionals, were accommodated in a simplestructure o coloured geometric wooden cubes and benches placed next tothe library o Plat orm China that has been made public or the durationo the show. The frst meeting, held on March 13, 2010, included Plat ormChina organizers, Liu Ding, critic Carol Lu, and me and started o by interrogating the very motivations and desired outcomes the organizers

called or in the realization o the exhibition. It emerged that Jungle wasenvisioned as the frst in a series o projects to be realized on an annual basis,and it there ore unctions as a testing ground aimed primarily at juxtaposingartists o di erent generations, and consequently di erent subjectiveexperiences, onto a level feld. It also signifes that while Plat orm China hasestablished its brand as an alternative space strongly devoted to the supporto younger artists, it can no longer limit itsel to that i it wants to continueparticipating critically in the local contexta vital exercise that perhapsothers should adopt. Arguments emerged around the shared position o the

irre utable necessity o dialogue not only among artists, but all o the playerswho are active locally, and eventually moved into questions o whether the

Duan Jianyu, Newyork, Paris,ZhumadianThe Daughter o the Sea , 2008, oil on canvasand watercolour on corrugated

paper. Courtesy o the artist,Vitamin Creative Space,Guangzhou, and Plat ormChina, Beijing.


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methodology that the exhibition organizers chose is still a valid and e ectivemeasure or the establishment o new parameters o judgment and value, orwhether it simply, and more dangerously, risks making them inconsequential.

The issue at stake is certainly an urgent one, yet Jungle does not claim to

present a discourse about the latest or the newest in Chinese art. Instead,it does precisely the opposite by un raming the grand narratives o suchdiscourse into various subjects o work in order to con ront how they might speak to the perpetual movement toward the new as an embodiedexperience o contemporaneity. It concretely orges a plat orm upon which

uture actions could be taken so that critical encounters among variousgenerations and theoretical positions can be challenged.

Even though the display o the show was not regulated by any specifctemporal or thematic organizational logic (the di erent modalities o sel -displaying, as mentioned in the exhibition announcement, are an aspectconstitutive o the cumulative, relational process in orming the show), theworks seemed generally grouped by media and generational proximity.An ensemble o video works occupied the ground oor in Space A o thegalleries, where various single-channel and installation-based pieces wereplaced side-by-side. Site-specifc installations inhabited smaller or discretespaces located under staircases and between interlocked rooms on thesecond oor, while most o the installation-based works were distributedon both levels o Space B. Painting and photography were installed in

both spaces and in the remaining smaller rooms. Most o the works theartists chose as representative o their own practice or that more aptly contribute to the spirit o the exhibition have been created in the past threeto our years, with a ew exceptions such as Kan Xuans Nothing! (2002),Lu Chunshengs Coughing Curved Line (2001), and Yang Fudongs I didnt orce you(1998), all expressions o each artists early experiments with newmedia, and all o which contain their distinctive individual signaturesKanXuans synaptic tempos, Lu Chunshengs humanistic surrealism, and YangFudongs textured readings o the urban soul.

While the proposition o having no underlying concept might be use ulin articulating an interpretation o all the works on show, there appearrecurrent practices that privilege installation as a medium to thematize thesel and deploy the ritualistic quality o di erent strategies o mapping asa orm o private writing into what I shall call counter-cartographies o identity. These strategies o mapping use various media and materialstape recording, writing and drawing, collage, etc.and they arrive inscribedwith the processes o continuous exchange, mediated interactivity, and theelusive materiality o the everyday as a way to counter its homogenizing

orces through reiterated acts o sel positioning.

For example, in Shabby Shop(2009) by Qiu Xiao ei, Jin Shis Back Alley 1and 2 (2010), and Liang Shuos Temporary Structure (2010), we see ordinary symbols, objects, images, and colours ound in urban neighbourhoodssuch as pulsating neon lights and dangling signs, all sort o goods used incommon households, like mops, towels, soap, candy boxes, liquor bottles,etc., distributed in the galleries as i the act o selecting and recollectingthe highly personal selection made by the artistcould supply a provisionalsynthesis or a moment o pause in the eeting, hyper-consumptiveprocesses o contemporary li e. Other pieces employ painting, drawing, and


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photography to convey the changing nature o time and place in presenttimes through more diaristic narratives. This is the case o Duan JianyusNewyork Paris, ZhumadianThe Daughter o the Sea (2009), a compositework o partially redrawn maps and painted illustrations on oundcardboard; Zhou Yiluns series o orty acrylic hand-drawn illustrationssketched on existing photos or pages taken rom magazines; and Chen WeisI Feel That Geometry Is a Di fcult Subject (2009), a series o studio portraitsin which personal objects and memorabilia are the ritualized subject.

Embedded in these works is a per ormative quality o private, ormalizedpractices o sel -defnition o the kind described by Jonathan Hay: . . .thee ect o the layering o representation and per ormance is very o ten one o distantiation. . . . In a longer historical perspective . . . it is a response to theinstability and unbelievability o available social roles, an index o doubt andindependenceand as such, a modern phenomenon. 13 This is not new orexclusive to current practices or to the artists Ive discussed here, and can be

ound recurring throughout the history o contemporary Chinese art and

artists. Among those who can be ound in Jungle include Wang Qingsong,(Iron Man , video, 2008), Li Yongbin ( Face N.16 and N.17 , 2008, single-channel

Background: Zhou Yilun,Serious Piss and 39 Other Pieces , 2010, oil paintings,drawings, and mixed mediaon various sur aces. Courtesyo the artist and Plat ormChina, Beijing. Foreground;Qin Siyuan, Unicorn , 2007,fbreglass. Courtesy o theartist and Plat orm China,Beijing.


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videos, 2008), Zhang Peili ( Floating Objects Outside the Window , 2009, videoinstallation), Wang Gongxin ( G2010 , 2010, video installation) and Jin Shanwith his ongoing project One Mans Island (2010, video installation).

One Mans Island is presented as an installation o ten single-channelvideos shown on monitors arranged in a semicircle above which loops alarger projection. The project is conceived as an evolving series o personalenactments, staged per ormances, or situations in which the artist in hisstudio is the only protagonist. In the videos, he engages in a series o eccentric,seemingly psychotic and unintelligible, scripted gestures, in which a circuito both liberation and erasure o the sel is drawn. This type o psychologicalportraiture, which I see as a mani estation o the artists space o sel -preservation, also fnds its expression in a recent resurgence o existentialistand introverted, spiritual imagery as seen in the work o a younger generationo skilled oil and ink painters such as Jia Aili, Qiu Anxiong, Sun Xun, and BiJianye, examples o which are all present in the exhibition.

None o the works in Jungle make an assertion o explicit political content,and I would suggest that most o these artistic expressions are predicated


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inside a rather specifc tradition, the same independent, individualistictradition, continues Hay, o pre-twentieth-century Chinese artists, oneo iconoclastic sel -positioning . . . unconcerned with politics exceptduring changes o dynasties, whereas in act they addressed politicalissues constantly. 14 What seems to be crucial today is or artists to regainconsciousness o their intellectual responsibility to be active players in thefeld o public contemporary debate, to rethink their role in society, andrechallenge those ine ective, sel -legitimizing modes o positioning withinthe closed discourse o art per se and its sel -evident rules.

While it would be hazardous to assert that projects like Jungle can aloneoreground or defne a clear-cut moment o change or transition toward a

radical historical break, I do believe that they move within an arena o criticalengagement that explores the possibility and desire or change. Such projects

operate within a certain dialectic o the break and the period, o continuity and rupture, as Fredric Jameson defnes it. Among the individual systemsand experiences that are represented in the exhibition, and through which ametaphorical, collective claim o sel -positioning seems to have been put inplace, there might emerge the implicit or explicit recognition o moments inwhich a whole collective temporality is tangibly modifed. 15

Notes1 Nikos Papastergiadis, Spatial Aesthetics: Rethinking the Contemporary, in Antinomies of Art and

Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity , eds. Terry Smith, Okwui Enwezor, and NancyCondee (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 36280.

2 See the Jungle exhibition announcement on the Platform China Web site, www.platformchina.org.3 Ibid.4 Terry Smith, Contemporary Art and Contemporaneity, Critical Inquiry 32 (2006), 696.5 Taken from a revisited and extended version of the article quoted in the previous footnote in Terry

Smith, Introduction: The Contemporaneity Question, in Antinomies of Art and Culture , 9.6 See Fredric Jameson, A Singular Modernity: Essay on the Ontology of the Present (London: Verso,

2002), 23.7 See Paul Gladston, Permanent (R)evolution: Contemporaneity and the Historicization of

Contemporary Chinese Art in Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art , March/April 2010, 7480.8 Ibid. My italics. Gladston gives in his article a critical reading of a recent essay by historian Wu

Hung that appeared in the anthology Antinomies of Art and Culture ; he critiques Wus view of thedevelopment of Chinese art as one that is not only historically unsubstantiated, but also promotes a theoretically inconsistent view of the deconstructive potential of Chinese art. I am appropriating hisexpression to contribute my own reading and considerations around the issue.

9 See Gao Minglu, Periodization and Contemporary Chinese Art, in T he Wall: Reshaping Contemporary Chinese Art , ed. Gao Minglu (Beijing: The Millennium Art Museum, 2005), 42.

10 Terry Smith, Introduction: The Contemporaneity Question, 7.11 For a more in-depth analysis of contemporary Chinese art as a spatio-political problematic and of

the correlation between collaborative and spatial practices and its historical development, see myNon-Antagonistic ContradictionAlternative Spatial Practices and Provisional Communities inContemporary China, in Negotiating Difference: Contemporary Chinese Art in the Global Context ,eds. Jeong-hee Lee-Kalisch, Birgit Hopfener, Franziska Koch, and Juliane Noth, forthcoming in 2011.

12 Jacques Rancire, The Emancipated Spectator, Artforum (March 2007), 279.13 Jonathan Hay, Double Modernity, Para-Modernity, in A ntinomies of Art and Culture , 117.

14 Ibid., 118.15 Fredric Jameson, A Singular Modernity , 18.

Le t: Chen Wei, I Feel That Geometry Is a Di fcult Subject No. 2 , 2009, archival inkjetprint, 70 x 60 cm. Courtesy othe artist and Plat orm China,Beijing.

Right: Jin Shan, One Mans Island , 2010, video installation.Courtesy o the artist andPlat orm China, Beijing.

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Yishu 39 Article 10