The Tate Modern in London closed off direct access to “Sunflower Seeds,” an installation by this Chinese artist.Why?
More:
Visitors had been able to touch the work made of these.
The seeds represent certain concepts.
The artist co-designed a monumental structure.
But to return to the principal subject of this blog, namely contemporary art in China. However, in keeping with the recent theme of government suppression of dissent, I will mention the most recent exhibition of dissident artist Ai Weiwei now on display at Tate in London. The exhibition is an installation of millions of porcelain “sunflower seeds,” each one hand crafted and strewn out on the floor for people to walk over, crush, and in the process make an odd kind of music. Regrettably, music was not all that was being made in the process of walking through the installation. It turns out that crushing large quantities of porcelain sunflower seeds under foot also produces dust of dangerous proportions. Thus the installation is now no longer “open” as the artist intended. It is now one which can only be view by visitors, losing entirely its interactive component.
In a brief if vigorously appreciative review of Ai’s current work by Charles Darwent, there emerges the following comment:
On a political level, the seeds were a symbol of repression; on a human one, they offered a rare opportunity for kindness, the sharing of a tiny plenty. In Ai’s art – an art heartily disliked by the current government of the People’s Republic of China, whose police have censored his work and arrested and beaten Ai himself – these two opposing sunflowers resolve into one.
And so the work is read studiously as a political statement, one which involves both Mao (the “Sun” in a good deal of propaganda literature) and the broader issue of hunger in China. No doubt Ai Weiwei had such implications in mind when he conceived of the work. Indeed, little in Ai’s work or life can fall far from the political, as he is the son of one of modern China’s most famous (and, I might add, best) poets, Ai Qing, himself a man who was both one of the central architects of the shape of modern Chinese culture, and also the victim of excesses of government control of that “shape.” Ai Weiwei, having watched his own father suffer, is no doubt always mindful of what he can and cannot do in China, and, apparently, always interested in exploring the precise dividing line between these two.
My perhaps predictable complaint about Darwent’s otherwise very well-written article is that this particular observation, while true in the sense that Ai has had of late severe run-ins with authorities, is highly misleading as a broader statement on the state of art in contemporary China. The current exhibition, or anything generally speaking like it, could easily be displayed in China today. A brief stroll through even a segment of the now immense 798 art district on the east side of Beijing is enough to convince the casual viewer that art of a wide range of styles, messages, political persuasions and so forth is open to the public, and by and large for free. The message to those who for whatever reason are unable to jump on a plane and go and see for themselves is that China’s is a very vibrant and dynamic art scene, one which I would argue rivals that of just about any global city on the planet today (including London).
In the weeks since the award, a predictable pattern emerges, with pro- / anti- camps- digging in. Still, more cogent and careful analysis is wedged in among the morass. The observations by John Sexton, picked up by the Modern Chinese Literature and Culture list-serve, for instance, are worth noting. Sexton points out that not all of Liu’s work is terribly “peace”-oriented, such as his support of the invasion of Iraq.
John Sexton <[email protected]> writes:
Here are some of the relevant Liu Xiaobo writings. I’ve given a translation of the sentence on John Kerry that is most relevant to what I wrote earlier. It dates from the 2004 Presidential election.
“克里象西方的所有左派一样，把无原则的和平共处视为“国家利益”的主要内容，把 容忍 邪恶政权作为不同国家的共处与维护世界和平的最佳手 段。”
“John Kerry, like all Western leftists, views unprincipled peaceful coexistence as the main content of the national interest, and that the best way of getting along with different countries and maintaining world peace is to tolerate evil governments.”
Sexton goes on to point out that he is certainly not an advocate of imprisoning Liu (“Let me be clear on this, I think Liu Xiaobo should be immediately released from jail”), but appropriately complicates some of the rather reductive press on the subject.
Similarly, Adam Cathcart (my colleague, it bears pointing out), in his Sinologistical Violoncellist blog, takes the New York Times author Edward Wong to task for his article on Liu. The Wong article is of course noteworthy not only because its poorly written, but because it appears in the New York Times. As Cathcart duly points out in his extended reading of Won’g reading of Liu award, the language of Wong’s discussion is rhetorically concerning, quite apart from any of the specific “points” he advances. Cathcart’s analysis opens:
Surely you all have read Edward Wong’s report in the New York Times about the Nobel Prize award to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. The full text of the article is here; direct quotes from the article are included below in italics and followed by my analysis.
[Ed Wong writes:] 1. BEIJING — Few nations today stand as more of a challenge to the democratic model of governance than China, where an 89-year-old Communist Party has managed to quash political movements while creating a roaring, quasi-market economy and enforcing a veneer of social stability.
This is quite an opening gambit, and its language (specifically its verbs) deserve a bit of attention. (Sometimes adjectives are worth the attention, such as the growing trope that China has a “voracious” appetite for natural resources.) Wong writes that the CCP “Quashes political movements” when the operative verb might also be described as “channel.” Does the CCP only crush, destroy, repress, or does it also understand, shape, reconfigure political pressures? The mention of the party’s age (it was founded in 1921) further makes Wong’s gambit a bit strange, as over the course of its history the Party has done a fair amount of stimulating, rather than quashing, political movements in its history. Perhaps this is not the place to enter into some disquisition on how the galvanizing experiences of the Cultural Revolution have made Chinese leaders since Mao adverse to mass movements (other than those which are nationalistic and relatively easily controlled), but, this party is more flexible and widely (if not uncritically) supported than Wong’s heavy-handed prose would have us believe.
As for the phrase “create an economy,” that’s historically impossible: the CCP inherited a sclerotic and dysfunctional economy from the Nationalists in 1949 and have since revived it. As for the phrase “enforcing a veneer of social stability,” Wong leaves out that social stability is in large part supported by the Chinese masses, but, more importantly, such statements also contain implicit threats to the regime: you could be exposed and overthrown.
In other words, with the opening paragraph, Wong makes plain that his article will also function on the polemical level, and that Liu represents defiance of something immense and consequential.
I applaud Adam’s careful analysis. Would that the New York Times editors could follow suit.
One more in my video series, this one with cameo by Lucia, an avid if still somewhat imperfect reader.
The short poem series that frames, textually, the video is ongoing. Numbering already in the thousands, Yan Li regularly groups and publishes these works in English and Chinese (English versions usually courtesy of Denis Mair, Yan Li’s most consistent translator). I hope to continue producing video work based on the poems and his paintings, both old and new.
The reporting on the Liu Xiaobo story has seemed to me a strange rehash of old issues. This is certainly true of authors in Western media, who are either ignorant or just dismissive of all that’s taken place in China in terms of liberalization (for lack of a better word) in the past 10 years or so. It is equally true of China’s inclination to lock down internet and other more literal traffic, a response we might call “old school” in the worst sense of the word.
A nice, concise counterpoint is provided by Jeff Wasserstrom as follows:
Source: Yale Global Online (10/13/10):
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/china-sees-globalizations-downside-part-i
i
Once a Winner, China Sees Globalization¹s Downside Part II
China¹s attempt at gaining soft power is tripped up by clash over human
rights
By Jeffrey Wasserstrom
IRVINE: Since the late 1980s, China¹s leaders have embraced
globalization in a bid to remake the nation, and it has recently sought
to leverage its growing economic power in a grand re-branding exercise.
China, the exercise tried to show, was no longer Mao¹s backward
revolutionary country, but a modern superpower. Unfortunately for China,
the same interconnected world that enabled its economic surge has
sometimes stymied the nation¹s public relations efforts.
The re-branding drive has overlapping, but somewhat different domestic
and international ambitions. President Hu Jintao and his comrades strive
to convince China¹s citizens that they can simultaneously raise living
standards, maintain stability and garner international respect. The
emphasis abroad, meanwhile, has been on convincing residents of foreign
countries, including people of Chinese ancestry, that the People¹s
Republic of China 2.0, though still run by a Communist Party, has been
utterly transformed.
The biggest successes of this re-branding drive have depended on
Beijing¹s ability to ride the tide and take advantage of distinctively
global aspects of the current era. Without far-flung supply chains and
fast-flowing foreign investment including that of ethnic Chinese in
Taiwan and other locales China could not have surged past Japan to
become the world¹s second largest economy. And without satellite
television and the internet, the visually stunning opening ceremony of
the Beijing Olympic Games and strong showing by Chinese athletes could
not have had the dramatic impact they did in 2008, helping dispel at
last the lingering visions of China as a technologically backward ³sick
man² of Asia.
China¹s re-branding drive has depended on Beijing¹s ability to take
advantage of distinctively global aspects of the current era.
Yet when this re-branding drive stumbles, as it has periodically in the
two years since the Olympics, this too is often due to the special
nature of the current period of globalization.
The Nobel Peace Prize going to prisoner-of-conscience Liu Xiaobo,
someone Beijing lobbied hard to keep from receiving the award, is the
latest example of how difficult the Communist Party finds it in these
robust global times to call the shots with international bodies. Before
Liu got his prize, the 2000 Nobel for literature went to the Paris-based
author and critic of the government, Gao Xingjian. This carried a
special sting due to what Julia Lovell, author of a book about Gao¹s
win, calls ³China¹s Nobel Complex.² China¹s leaders have argued for
decades that the PRC has become the kind of country that should be
producing Nobel winners in many fields. They see it as cruelly ironic
that, while some Chinese are indeed becoming Nobel laureates, they are
honored not for breakthroughs in areas such as economics or medicine,
but for writings that Beijing insists are vile, the creations of
miscreants or criminals who the West wrongly lauds as heroes.
Back to the 2008 Olympics and its symbolism, all did not run smoothly,
of course, from the Chinese government¹s point of view. There were rough
spots in even this most successful to date of all Chinese ³soft power²
spectacles. For example, the torch relay, the longest and most elaborate
in Olympic history, was supposed to be a grand symbol of China¹s
reengagement with every part of the world.
In the end, though, only some stops outside of China went as planned.
Protesters angered by Beijing¹s policies toward Tibet and other issues
held demonstrations, some rowdy, to mark the torch¹s arrival in cities
such as Paris.
On the whole, though, domestic and foreign media reports tended to line
up fairly neatly once the Games began. The main storyline was that, by
successfully mounting such a grand show, China demonstrated how
dramatically it had changed and that it was again a central player in
world affairs.
Such a message was supposed to be carried forward by two subsequent
events dubbed ³Olympics² of a sort: the prestigious 2009 Frankfurt Book
Fair, called an ³Olympics for Literature² by Chinese media, and the 2010
Shanghai World Expo, often referred to in China as an ³Economic
Olympics² or ³Olympics of Technology.²
If all had gone according to plan, the Frankfurt fair would have
generated domestic and international headlines trumpeting the growing
profile of Chinese literature and increased respect for China¹s cultural
traditions.
Things began to go wrong for China a month or so before its October
opening, when a seminar linked to the event was scheduled to take place
including writers who have drawn Beijing¹s ire. Poet and
dissident-in-exile Bei Ling was among those invited to take part, and so
was Dai Qing, the China-based environmental activist whose writings are
banned from publication in the PRC. Beijing expressed displeasure at
this lineup and called on German organizers of the session to pull
invitations to the writers the government found objectionable. At first,
fair representatives did an about-face and sought to placate the Chinese
government by revoking the invitations, but in the end, the authors came
and spoke.
The result was a public-relations disaster, as the big story of the fair
became Beijing¹s ham-handed efforts to limit freedom of speech in an
international venue and bully Germany undermining in basic ways
visions of the PRC 2.0 as a country that has become much less
ideologically rigid and a more congenial participant in global affairs
than was Mao¹s China.
Flash forward one year, and we see a parallel situation but with a
higher profile in the international news. From Beijing¹s point of view,
October 2010 was supposed to be a month when the news coverage of the
PRC dealt with upbeat topics such as China closing in on claiming record
visitors for a World¹s Fair a record that currently stands at 64 million
and is held by regional rival Japan for the Osaka 1970 Expo. Readers can
find those stories about the Shanghai Expo, of course, but almost
exclusively in the Chinese press. The biggest story internationally is
Liu winning the Nobel Peace Prize, despite or perhaps partially because
of Beijing pressuring the Norwegian committee in charge of the award to
give it to someone anyone else.
Beijing has claimed in venues such as the Global Times, an English
language paper linked to the Communist Party that Liu¹s win reflects
anti-PRC ³prejudice² and ³extraordinary terror of China¹s rise and the
Chinese model² in the West. However well or badly this rhetoric plays to
domestic audiences, to most foreigners it comes across as strident and
paranoid and does nothing to help brand China as a modern country.
The road from the Opening Ceremonies of August 8, 2008, to this year¹s
Nobel Peace Prize award has not been smooth for Beijing¹s re-branding
drive. One common thread in the story of this campaign, though, is that
both high points and low points involve global events and new technologies.
After all, Liu is in prison not for a paper petition he helped draft and
for which he collected signatures from people wielding pens. Rather he
was given an 11 year sentence on charges of ³subversion² for his role in
Charter 08, a bold call for expanded civil liberties intended from the
start to be distributed online, via the internet, a new media technology
that censors in Beijing work overtime to control, especially at time
likes this. Not long ago the same medium was dubbed ³God¹s gift to
China² by an activist and writer once less known but now world famous
Liu Xiaobo.
Jeffrey Wasserstrom is a professor of history and department chair at
University of California Irvine and the author, most recently, of ³China
in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know,² published this year
by Oxford University Press.
Rights:Copyright © 2010 Yale Center for the Study of Globalization
Though somewhat far afield from the focus of my blog, I suppose this morning’s announcement of Liu Xiaobo’s receipt of Nobel Peace Prize cannot go without at least brief comment. This is going to incur the typical tsunami of blog and news posting, particularly in Chinese. At the moment, though, and just for example, it is nary a blip on the mainpage of the China Daily (under 即时快讯). For a more sustained “analysis,” one turns to English and other foreign language press. A representative example would be Forbes.com blogger Gady Epstein’s post on the subject. Mr. Epstein’s comment :
“Many of us around the world, including perhaps even members of the Nobel committee, have shown something akin to tolerance for China’s authoritarian instincts over the last decade, as the memories of Tiananmen Square faded and the era of the Chinese boom dawned.”
brings to my mind a question, and one no doubt shared by many in China: whence our tolerance for China’s instincts (whatever they may be)? Or what, conversely, of China’s tolerance for our instincts, for instance awarding international prizes to people in Chinese prisons (rightly or wrongly). I personally can see substance in both arguments, though the latter receives relatively little “play”, so to speak, in the West. One wonders what a high-profile Chinese prize awarded to, for instance, Mumia Abu-Jamal, might result in. Regardless, the fact that there are Chinese in prison for their political views is not exactly news. Meanwhile, it may be worth observing that events such as the poetry reading mentioned below, feature writers who were formerly blacklisted and or otherwise censured and who are now literally on a stage erected by, indirectly at least, the Chinese Communist Party. As news goes, it is news, just not deemed quite newsworthy.
In September I also made my third—if I recall correctly, and I may not—visit to the Black Bridge District (黑桥) in East Beijing to visit the Sichuan painter Zhong Biao (additional post below). I have published two articles on this painter, both of which have appeared in Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art. Below are some photos of his studio, and segments of his recent works of art. The outside photos are of the grounds of the studio, from late afternoon to late night (the latter taken after about 10 bottles of some very fine wine).
One of the most notable aspects of this studio, common to many such structures in the Black Bridge district, is the fact that they are all slated for demolition in the coming year.
I am also working on a series of videos which feature both the poetry and the painting of the contemporary artist Yan Li. This particular video features his reading of “I Am Snow,” a poem which dates back to 1976, but was entirely re-written in 1989. The link to the video is here.
Mang Ke, Oil on Canvas 80 x 80 cm
Convergence
“Rhetoric ： paintings by contemporary poets”
修辭： 當代詩人畫展
One of the major goals of my on-going project is to observe ways in which contemporary Chinese visual art and poetry work together. Demonstrating that this topic is relevant to prominent cultural figures in contemporary China is an exhibition at 798 at 纯粹当代艺术空间 (rather inexplicably in English: “Chunchi Art”) which opened September 25, curated by Jiang Nan 姜楠 and Sun Lei 孙磊, and featuring poetry art convergences of a variety of types. Among the poet-artists on display, Mang Ke 芒克 is arguably one of the most famous. Above is his Untitled (2010.1.6), a completely abstract work:
Late September I was in China for the second annual PoeticChina, a reading and roundtable conference of contemporary poets held in conjunction with Fall, 2010 Mid-Autumn Festival. The event was held by the China Millennium Monument in Beijing 北京世纪坛. I was reading poems written by my colleague, Rick Barot, and translated by myself. The link to these in Chinese is here.
I also attended a number of events and met many contemporary Chinese poets engaged with contemporary art. More on these elewhere.
