‘Art is a Thinking to Enlightens the Future’: art as a brand, art as aspiration

Since the district’s official classification as a Creative Industries Precinct in 2006, 798 has spawned a range of cultural enterprises, many of which have taken on the idea of ‘art’ with which to brand their businesses. Walking around 798 today, the word ‘art’ is constantly flashing up before you, on billboards advertising galleries or design consultancies, on signs for gift shops, hotels, bars and cafes. Artopal, Artside, 798 Art Hotel, such and such Art Centre or Artspace … Visitors are repeatedly running into odd composite bi-products of the word ‘art’ – uses that suggest the term’s ability to ‘value-add’ to all kinds of entrepreneurial pursuits. In both English and Chinese, the word often looks raw and partial, slapped onto ventures and slipped into business titles in a way that suggests its newness – or even more so, its novelty – as a Chinese marketing category. At 798, the term ‘art’ has a faddish quality to it, a kind of hype and artificial freshness reminiscent of the thousands of so-called ‘Twenty-first Century’ housing developments, or many SoHos, under construction across the country.

To the extent that art is a brand at today’s 798, it is one that conflates notions of the global and the contemporary, and one that is consonant (or you could say ‘harmonious’) with national discourses of China’s economic development. At 798, the word ‘art’ occurs frequently alongside the terms ‘new age’ (xin shidai), international (guoji) or ‘contemporary’ (dangdai). Billboards advertising Coca Cola or Vitamin Water do so by situating 798 within a perceived pantheon of global and cultural cities (‘Available in New York, Paris, Japan, and now Beijing!’). In signs, advertisements and art-branded objects at 798, ‘art’ generally represents a component in a contemporary urban lifestyle, the latest in fashion and, by virtue, a hallmark of a Chinese cosmopolitanism.

‘Only Products, No Art’: honesty and irony in the new market

In the Beijing autumn of 2011, I saw the above billboard at 798, in which two images are accompanied by the slightly odd English: ‘Only Products, No Art.’ In Chinese, the sign is only slightly less mysterious, announcing that ‘Li Qing’s Products Are Not Art’, and then giving an email address, presumably as a contact for curious customers. At first glance it wasn’t clear whether the sign was supposed to be ironic or not. If it was it would contain an extra meaning, translatable to a certain audience; it would be a comment that cut both ways, both telling it like it is yet critiquing its own message in a coded language. If it wasn’t, however, it was simply a straightforward statement, upfront about its products’ social function and declaring plainly its lack of pretensions.

The context was what made it confusing. 798 is a collection of both local and international high-end galleries – a so-called ‘international art district’ – but it’s also a bustling commercial market selling contemporary art, furniture, homewares, art souvenirs and other dinky design objects. It’s already difficult at 798 to tell exactly where the art ends and the retail begins, the galleries blurring into shops and each often resembling the other. Was this a clever and Warhol-esque comment on 798 and its relationship with consumer culture – ala Chinese artist, Zhao Bandi, or American artists, Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holtzer, all of whom have rented advertising space with which to exhibit similarly ambiguous works – or simply the advertisement of a local entrepreneur? In other words, was the sign deliberately ambiguous, or only so because of its situation at a crossroads of expectations of contemporary art, and of market and avant-garde definitions?

An exhibition called Cola Project doesn’t at first sound entirely new: Coca Cola, consumer culture, the power of advertising—these have all been considered before, not least of all by Chinese artists assessing the impact of global capitalism on traditional aesthetics and values.

This recent show at Gallery 4A in Sydney’s Chinatown, however, took a different perspective, and considered cola the sticky liquid rather than the clout of its global logo. After analysing the effects of consumerism on images, it appears that what you are left with is the object, and the ‘stuff’ of material culture.

Cola Project is currently the signature work of young, Beijing-based artist, He Xiangyu, and one that has been doing the international rounds since first showing in Beijing in 2010. 4A brought it to Sydney as part of their ongoing program to situate Australian art within the context of the Asia Pacific, bringing Asian exhibitions to Australia and recognising the Asian in Australian work. This, He Xiangyu’s third major art project, helps underscore this geographical and cultural proximity, if only for its acknowledgement of the finite—and increasingly crowded—nature of our physical world.

Chan Koonchung’s The Fat Years struck a chord with many when it was first published in Hong Kong in 2009 and later in the English language in 2011. Many said it felt eerily like documentary, despite its deliberate exaggerations, while others pointed out that it tapped into widespread fears of Chinese world hegemony.

A satirical novel, set in the semi-future of 2013, The Fat Years proposes a Brave New World like China in which all dissent has been bought off with the promises of stability and consumerism. Emerging victorious from a global financial crisis of 2008, the country has now entered a new age of peace and prosperity, its version of ‘authoritarian harmony’ now legitimated by its economic success. Meanwhile, the majority of the Chinese population appears to have willingly forgotten about a one-month period of turmoil that raged across the country until ended in a bloody government crackdown.

Given the dramatic events of the last few months (e.g. the public ousting of party functionary, Bo Xilai, and the extremely public fleeing of blind activist, Chen Guangcheng from house arrest into the arms of the US Embassy in Beijing) I thought I’d have a word with Chan Koonchung and ask how the China of today appears to be shaping up against that predicted in his novel. How does he see the real China of 2013, now on the horizon? Is it maintaining its political legitimacy, internationally? And is it a coincidence that his main character, Lao Chen, shares a surname with the blind human rights activist, Chen Guangcheng?

In October 2008, photographer Wang Jiuliang began a project investigating waste disposal in and around Beijing. Following the trucks that collected his daily rubbish, he discovered eleven large-scale refuse landfills scattered around the close suburbs of the city, each one growing daily alongside the skyscrapers, housing developments, and general urban boom that surrounded them.

Beyond this, Wang also uncovered an underground industry in which rubbish was being removed from the inner city and taken to hundreds of illegal dumpsites around the urban fringe. Here, people were making their homes and their living, building houses from discarded construction materials, wearing clothes they had gleaned in the trash, and making their dinners from the city’s food scraps. They raised pigs on leftover organic matter. Local shepherds brought sheep and cattle to graze between the bottles and plastic bags.

From Cao Fei’s entre to the art world in the late 1990s she was pitched as ‘new generation’—a representative of the much needed next wave of artists to carry on from the theoretical dilemmas (and hype) generated around the contemporary Chinese artists who had preceded her. Drawing on the languages of pop and youth cultures, she signified a new voice on Chinese society, one that was savvy with globalisation and could comment on Chinese consumerism with the tools of the system itself.

More than 10 years on, Cao Fei is astoundingly accomplished, having spent the greater part of her 20s engaged in elaborate experiments with multimedia, collaborative performance pieces and deep explorations into the world of virtual reality. While primarily a video artist, Cao Fei’s interest in theatre has extended her work to the stage, often toying with the distinction between the digital and the real. Films inspired by the cultures of hip hop, pornography and gaming have given verve to her artistic vocabulary; meanwhile her cool eye is manifest in a number of shrewd documentaries. Cao’s works have been included in biennales around the world and dozens of catalogues and compendiums include essays under her name.

Yan Jun is a creative polymorph. Search on his name on the Internet and you’ll come up with a list of roles – from experimental sound artist, to critic, to curator, to performance poet – and stories of his pioneering in China’s underground music scene from the late 1990s to early 2000s. In 1998 he began the independent label, Sub Jam, initially to publish zines and later for music CDs; and in 2004 he established Kwanyin records for the release of more experimental works. From June 2005 to December 2010, Yan and his Sub Jam community organised a series weekly of performances called Waterland Kwanyin at the Beijing Bar, 2Kolegas, serving up rock, experimental and electronic music to an ever-morphing crowd of listeners.

Both Sub Jam and Kwanyin continue, supported by a regularly updated blog (see here for Yan Jun’s own), as do gigs, and the general greasing of communal and creative activities for which Yan Jun has become widely known. Meanwhile Yan remains one of China’s most important experimental artists, pushing the limits of sound, language and music in his own performances and recordings. Translator, Maghiel van Crevel once said Yan Jun makes things happen, and there is no doubt that Yan has this generative role. Raised in Lanzhou, but based in Beijing since the late 1990s, Yan is something of a creative catalyst, preferring the early and ambiguous stages of invention and putting a high value on the amorphous in artistic communities.

Shen Shaomin first came to acclaim in the 1900s with his Unknown Creatures and Experimental Fields series – sculptures of mythical creatures and bizarre biological scenarios made of bones. Since then, he has produced a diverse and large body of work, expressing both horror and fascination at the perversities of science, the brutality of humans against nature and the unsustainability of human civilisation.

Shen Shaomin migrated to Australia following the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. Like many of his Chinese-Australian peers, however, he relocated to China a few years ago to take advantage of cheaper materials and studio space, and the dynamism of China’s international art scene. Shen maintains a connection with Australia, and is increasingly represented in Australian exhibitions. I spoke to him during a recent visit for the 17th Biennale of Sydney – images and interview below.

Zhang Ding in Last Words (Phase 1)
4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art
July 16 – August 28, 2010.

Born in 1980, Zhang Ding belongs to the most recent generation of Chinese video artists, growing up beyond the shadow of the Cultural Revolution and in a world saturated with images of the West and a new aspirational China. Rather than commenting on China’s history, or even its recent economic reforms, Zhang’s work is marked by feelings of alienation from contemporary society, a sense of retreat into fantasy, and an ongoing struggle with desire. For Zhang the political is personal, and highly mediated. Mixing video art and installation, Zhang creates worlds of light and sound, surreal cinematic dreamscapes, and intimate performance pieces. Originally from the Western province of Gansu, Zhang now lives and works in Shanghai, a city he has made something of a muse for his work.

You Meng-Shu is a Taiwanese-born artist who has been based in Sydney since 2006. Trained in Taiwan as a ceramicist, she uses traditional skills and materials to comment on the impact of America on her native culture – or ‘Coca-Colonization’ as she references it in her art. This work bears the hallmark of her Chinese background, but is also about globalisation and the challenges it poses to culture in general.

You is something of a product of globalisation herself, having lived in Taiwan, the United States and Australia. She speaks English with a slight mid-Western accent, is savvy with a number of different languages and cultures, and is able to adopt different cultural identities as required (Taiwanese, Chinese, American, Australian).

I spoke to You in her final few months in Australia, seemingly at the end of her years-long critical examination of Coca-Colonisation, and in the process of moving on to other shores (both creative and geographic). This felt like a moment at a cross-roads, and an opportunity to look back on her major work of the last few years.