Zunyi Symposium

Session 1: Curating in the Chinese Context

Gu Zhenqing:
The theme for our conference is Curating in the Chinese Context. I'd like to introduce the format for today's meeting. After any dialogue or speech, you are free to raise your hand and respond or pose a question. If anyone wishes to speak at length on any topic, that would be welcome. Simply write down your thoughts and submit them to Mr. Zheng Shengtian and he will arrange a time. Each of our three meetings will have a separate theme, and the theme of this morning's meeting, like the theme of the conference, is Curating in the Chinese Context. The chair is Mr. Zheng Shengtian, and the discussants are Zhang Qing and Johnson Chang.

Zheng Shengtian:
I've just heard my introduction by Gu Zhenqing. And I'd like to say that in addition to the work I'm now doing in Canada, I'm also a trustee of the Long March foundation,the organizer of Long March project and this symposium. In this capacity, I'd like to warmly welcome everyone to today's symposium. The work I've been involed recently is not about the Long March, but about something that happened simultaneously with the Long March: modernism in Shanghai in the 1930s. The reason why I mention this is because in doing the work that we're doing on Shanghai in the 1930's, one of the things we've discovered is the importance of communications and exchange between China and the West. At the same time that all of the things were happening in Shanghai in the 1930s, the Long March were taking place here, in the Southwest of China. And the Long March was another kind of interaction, another kind of exchange. Over the last few years there have been many, many important events and exhibitions in Chinese art. The two gentlemen sitting to my right have been instrumentally involved in curating some of the most important events, so I'd like to begin today's dialogue by asking Mr. Johnson Chang to say a few words.

Johnson Chang:
Thank you, Professor Zheng. I originally wanted to speak on curating in the international arena and its connection to the Long March, but there is some distance between the "international context" and the actual history of the Long March, so I will address these topics separately. As far as our generation is concerned, the historical Long March is both the establishment of a new sovereignty and a creation myth for the current system. The Long March was about how to promote a new way of thinking, how find a new and appropriate response to modernization, and about how to apply that response to China. In terms of establishing a new order, the Long March was extremely successful. Looking at Chinese contemporary art from this perspective, this Long March is about taking the readings which art has developed of contemporary society, its integration of fantasies and dreams about this society, and making some adjustments. What I find interesting about this Long March is that it has abandoned the notion of a fixed exhibition space in favor of building a formless exhibition space that dwells in thought. When we curate Chinese art in the international context today, one could say we are taking some Chinese experiences, some Chinese interpretations, and introducing them anew. Perhaps this is not a simple process of introducing these things abroad, since modernism in China is fundamentally a Western import. And as China in the 1960s and 70s was shut off from the rest of the world, the situation today is in many ways a return, a coming full circle. If there is any meaning in this, it is that at last, China is returning to available resources, and returning to the land. You could also say that this exhibition is the beginning of a new Long March, a Long March that is necessary not only to contemporary China, but also to the West.

Zheng Shengtian:
Now we invite Mr. Zhang Qing from the Shanghai Museum, the curator of the Shanghai Biennial, to speak.

Zhang Qing:
I'd like to begin my talk based on a specific experience, my experience of curating the Shanghai Biennial on behalf of the Shanghai Art Museum. As a public servant, I'd like to say first and foremost that curating is about being a servant. Whether you are someone from the Long March in the early days, or you're an old survivor of the Long March, or you're someone involved in today's art, we're all servants of the revolution. For those of us participating in today's Zunyi conference, I think in addition to this being an opportunity for us to talk about the Chinese revolutionary experience, it is also a time to stop, to put an end to the importation of the Western philosophical thought that is imported in the form of dogmatic tenets. In the ideal world, we would be able to take Western philosophy and tenets of international modernism, and combine them with the unique local idioms of China. For me as a curator, that's my goal. And in our practice, we can attain new ways of explaining and creating understanding, and can we develop a model for Chinese art. To borrow a phrase from one of the world's greatest curators, Mao Zedong, we should first "cast our eyes downward and not look up to the sky." If you are unwilling to cast your eyes downward and have not the strength, then you will never understand the affairs of China. One thing that I've learned is that I should understand the mechanics of an independent area or field…China forces you to basically put aside your experience, the experience of past curatorial projects. It's important as servants, number one, that we understand China's cultural policies, China's laws, and that we curate in a way that is in line with the thought and the special characteristics of China. Electricians, construction people, all of these are in many ways a part of the final product.

One of the things that I learned in curating the Shanghai Biennial was the relationship between shipping companies, insurance, and customs. In addition there was the issue of finance, and as many of the cultural institutions in China do not have foreign exchange accounts, so to do an international exhibition in China, you must have the ability to negotiate in different currencies. For example, one of the sponsors was from Holland, and they provided their funds in the form of a wire transfer in Dutch currency. It was immediately changed into RMB by the Bank of China, and we could do nothing because the French shipping company wanted to be paid in Francs. So we learn as we go. Another aspect of course is dealing with the local government. In the Cai Guo-qiang exhibition I participated in earlier this year, the artist wanted to do a pyrotechnical work in Pudong, but the municipal government will not permit this kind of activity. So the problem was how to resolve this issue, and the Shanghai TV station had an opportunity to get Cai Guo-qiang involved in the fireworks display that was being planned for the APEC conference in September 2001, and in this way we were able to resolve that particular problem. It's also important to remember that the artists are the true heroes, and we are mere servants. If we don't remember this, we won't ever make the grade as servants.

Johnson Chang:
We can't continue the dialogue in this way; it's not the revolutionary manner! Zhang Qing and I have both written short papers, but we shouldn't just sit here and read them; we should talk about the issues. Actually the question we care most about is what are the curator's motives in organizing an activity. In other words, when a curator plans something like this, who does he hope will attend? What result is he looking for? Everyone says that "curating is a kind of power." But what kind of power, a power to do what? I'd like Zhang Qing to speak for a minute about the Shanghai Biennial, about the differences between the last one in 2000 and the upcoming one in November. Who is the intended viewer of the Biennial? What kind of final results are we looking for from this exhibition?

Zhang Qing:
This is a very good question. Let me give you a little background to the Biennial. The first Shanghai Biennial was very much a China Biennial. The artists and the participants were working in international forms, but it was very much a Chinese Biennial. The second Biennial was centered on ink, and the third Biennial was an actual biennial in that it involved people from the international arena. At the time when we began planning the third biennial, there were a number of Chinese artists, curators, people involved in the international art world, and working with them, we had the means to undertake a truly international biennial. I think one of the target audiences for this year's Biennial is going to be the students. The university students, but also the Shanghai citizen. The theme of this year's Biennial is Constructing a Metropolis, and there will be an architectural design competition involving university students of architecture. The third aspect of Shanghai, something that is very much a part of life for every Shanghainese, is the buildings in Shanghai, so we plan to do an exhibition, "one hundred years of architecture in Shanghai."

Johnson Chang:
I'm an outsider looking at the Shanghai Biennial. Looking at the Long March project, it seems as if it's aimed at expanding the space for exhibiting contemporary art in China. And looking at the Third Shanghai Biennial, it seems that the questions you asked were of a strategic nature, i.e., how, in the scope allowed by politics, can we gradually expand the space for contemporary art. This brings us back to what Lu Jie and Qiu Zhijie are doing now, which is very much an attempt to expand the space in which we can view and understand and engage with Chinese art. What are you doing in this regard?

Zhang Qing:
I think our purposes are the same. Based on what I saw last night at the slide presentation, I have a great respect for Lu Jie and Qiu Zhijie and what they have accomplished, to engage people otherwise outside the international art world. I think in that regard I share their purpose. Whether one is working on a biennial in Shanghai, in Chengdu, in Guangzhou, or like Lu Jie and Qiu Zhijie a biennial in the villages, it all has meaning.

Johnson Chang:
One of the characteristics of the 1990s was Chinese artists viewing the Western inner circle as being a Shangri-la, an ideal. A lot of Chinese felt like the circle of intellectuals with cultural authority had been off-limits to them before, and so the most pressing question was how to break into that circle. It's not unlike Western tourists going to Lijiang looking for Shangri-la. The fact is when you go to Lijiang, you find a lot of tourist trinkets and curios that are otherwise available in Shanghai and are unremarkable. So another challenge that obviously we face is to bring art inward into China. What I find most interesting about exhibitions that have recently taken place in China is that they're more organic; they're less like the Guangzhou trade fair, where they lay out goods for the rest of the world to come and see, and say that this is China. They're more about asking stimulating questions and interacting with the local public. Many of the exhibitions were essentially designed to initiate a dialogue in artistic circles, and many of the exhibitions were made for people in the art world. I think the obvious next step for exhibitions in China is to be able to engage with people outside the art world. So my question to Zhang Qing is, as a next step, is it conceivable that we go as far as to abandon the exhibition itself, so that artists may have events and do works and have activities for one another that are not exclusive that are accessible by the public, or to go out and actively engage with the non-art public, and among them find things that are artistic, things that can further the dialogue?

Zhang Qing:
I'd like to ask Johnson a question now. You have curated the Hong Kong pavilion at the Venice Biennial; given the form that you've just suggested, how would you realize that in a place like Venice?

Johnson Chang:
Of course we have to continue the revolution. I have to admit that I can be somewhat utilitarian in curating exhibitions. In doing exhibitions I'm somewhat self-serving. I look to myself, try to understand myself and what it is I'm trying to accomplish. So again the revolution must continue on that front. Getting back to China and what we're trying to accomplish here, one of the issues is the relationship with officialdom. And what's really interesting to me about this project is that most of the participants were actually graduated from China's official art academies and institutes, and that they are now engaging with a different face, as someone who is outside officialdom, and there seems to be an interesting dynamic that is coming out of this. What I mean to say is that the expanding art circle in the last twenty years has basically been created by artists from the official academies. So if you step back and look at it, it is clear that in alternative official art, as they say in Chinese opera, you'll have those who sing the role of the white face, who are the good guys, and those who sing the role of the black face, the bad guys. As things evolve, the stages for the black face and the white face are coming together, and it's quite obvious that the government is taking a far more active role in promoting Chinese contemporary art abroad. So in a way, experimental art is converging with official culture.

Zhang Qing:
My question to Johnson is if there is indeed a black face and a white face, and if we are to wait for officials to move forward in contemporary art, do we need to have another Long March?

Johnson Chang:
Indeed I think that therein lies the true meaning of this exhibition. Of course we need a new Long March! The question of this new Long March is not only how do we make ourselves rich, but after we get rich, what do we do? The Long March is the process of China's modernization, but after we've reached modernization, what next?

Zheng Shengtian:
I thought that was a very interesting dialogue. Now I'd like to open the dialogue up to everyone, but in particular to the many curators who have come to be with us today. I think we should start with the curators of the Long March, and ask them to respond what these two men have just said.

Lu Jie:
My earlier hope was that everyone would have a chance to talk, so I'll just answer quickly. I think the purpose of the Long March project is really to understand, to re-read, to re-interpret the relationship between modernity and China. Only when we understand will we know in which direction we need to go once the modernization process is achieved.

Johnson Chang:
Modernity to me is really a change in one's view of history. And so what I just said about getting rich might sound a bit misleading. I don't understand modernization as economic development, it's more holistic than that. We cannot afford to not address modernity, but the question remains, how should we do this?

Lu Jie: The focus of this Long March project is to reconnect the current practice with our collective consciousness, and to contextualize the relationship between modernity and China, and is there an alternative.

Qiu Zhijie:
I first of all would like to agree with what Lu Jie said, and of course bringing the historical Long March into international art discourse is one of the objectives of this particular project. It's not an issue of political history, but about how modernity fits into Chinese society. So the purpose of this whole project is to examine whether, within this Chinese history of modernization-which is the history of the Long March-there might be any experience that is indigenous to China which we can actually uncover, characteristics which can be called Chinese. In fact the globalization process for China began passively. And because it was passive, it always ends up being examined by others as something from outside. So that's why in the process of making exhibitions during the last ten or fifteen years, it's always been about how others look at us, how we are examined by foreign institutions. This is also the source of a great deal of conflict and complexity. This whole sense of not being fairly treated is actually a huge influence on curating. It is also mutual, because from the other side, the overseas experts who pick the artists for display in international shows also feel that they're doing their best to promote the artists, and that we must feel a corresponding sense of gratitude. Lu Jie and I both believe that in order to change the situation, the problem is not with other people but with ourselves; not in trying to be understood by other people but trying first to understand ourselves.

So the new Long March for us is actually an active search on our own initiative to seek a modernity which belongs to us, to seek a modernity that we want. Our main concern is what sort of new experiences we can provide for other people, not what we can get from others. That's why we have taken a very humble attitude by seeking out native, indigenous artists and resources from the countryside where one would not expect to find artists. This is a response to Zhang Qing's question just now, after Chinese contemporary art has been officially recognized, has been taken within the official arm, whether we still need a new Long March. This type of positive initiative in terms of presenting our own culture, this not being passively selected, was always a Chinese cultural attitude before the Opium War. So for us it's about this dialectic between the positive initiative and passive receptive attitude toward modernity. I think this is a much deeper question than the tension between the official and the unofficial, the government and the underground. We see Zhang Qing's work inside the system as another kind of Long March.

Zheng Shengtian:
I'd like to ask some of the Chinese curators in the audience -people like Feng Boyi, Gu Zhenqing-to respond to what the two discussants, and now the two curators of the Long March, have said.

Feng Boyi:
As a curator, we do encounter a variety of problems and issues with this official dialectic. But to me, this is a technical, not a substantive, question. I agree very much with what Johnson Chang just asked about who is our audience. And I also agree with Zhang Qing's statement that a curator is a servant. But it is also very important that we take a peer relationship with the artists, in line with what we're trying to achieve. Curators are after all somewhat like artists in their own right: through their understanding of artists' works, they seek to raise a cultural critique, or stimulate artistic production, in line with the particular aims and goals of their curatorial concept. But more than that, curators are intermediaries. I participated also in the satellite exhibition called Fuck Off, which took place simultaneously with the Shanghai Biennial in 2000. The Chinese translation of that title was basically "to not cooperate," and as far as I understand, the position of Chinese art from the very beginning has been to not cooperate with officialdom. That's how it was interpreted, but in fact what we were trying to achieve was an uncooperative attitude with the Western institutions of power, the Western sources of art authority. Many of the exhibitions that had taken place up until that time were underground exhibitions. In the end it created a force where artists felt like they had to respond to the needs of the Western curators who came to pick artists for exhibitions abroad.

In curating, I think we're moving from being "uncooperative," to being more cooperative. I am working with University of Chicago professor Wu Hung right now to curate the first Guangzhou Triennial at the Guangdong Museum of Art in November. I think the situation in Guangzhou is unique. Here we have the opportunity to present a massive retrospective of Chinese art in the 1990s, and to do it in a public venue. It's an example of the kind of thing we might be able to achieve in the future. There are possibilities; it's not just black or white. There are many different possibilities, many different things that can happen. I personally work very much within the system, I work for the Chinese Artists' Association, and over time I've seen progress. Installation works are now an acceptable approach to art in China. Performance art still hasn't gotten to the level of acceptance yet. There are a lot of works that involve violence that are still very much unacceptable to officialdom. A piece of news: In Beijing, next year, the Artists' Association is going to do an international biennial, and the ministry of culture will be involved. They approached me and said I have experience in this regard, and would I participate. I said, when the time comes I will certainly participate, because I believe in the old Mao aphorism, "a spark can set the whole prairie on fire."

Zheng Shengtian:
I'd like to hear from some of our international curators. Your understanding of this "Chinese context" may be quite different from our own. The situation of Chinese art is changing; many artists are no longer intent on going abroad to find support for their work, but emphasize rather the domestic audience, be it official or non-official.

Wu Meichun:
I had some feelings when I saw the presentation last night of the pictures from the Long March up to this point. It has only been since the Shanghai Biennial in 2000 that experimental art has truly started to develop inside of China, and it has already reached a crucial moment. What is crucial is that in the past, the intended viewer of our experimental art was a foreigner, and only rarely did these works have any influence on people in China. I think more important than issues of official versus unofficial discourse are the organic relationships between the curator and artists, art institutions, galleries. All are facing the question of how to bring art to viewers. So after watching the presentation about the Long March so far, I was very moved. I have curated a lot of exhibits myself, and I think that this exhibition depends entirely on the diligence of the curators. It is like a field experiment to see how long they can continue. Most important about the Long March is the behavior of its curators, which will influence a great number of artists and others. But after hearing Lu Jie and Qiu Zhijie speak, I am skeptical of the influence that this exhibition will have on the artists and their works. The works introduced in their events still cling to the previous art system and exhibition protocol. Perhaps these works were previously displayed in museums; now they have been dragged somewhere else and displayed. How to create a chemical reaction with the viewers or artists along their route, and not merely to display works in an environment that they do not understand, that is the challenge. I think this is what they are striving for, as evidenced by the way they constantly amend their curatorial plan in line with actual experience, and this is extremely moving.

Guan Yuda:
Listening to the curators speak, including Lu Jie and Qiu Zhijie, I feel like we haven't been able to get out of a certain conceptual framework. If we speak about the current curatorial system, the situation of the entire art world is leaning more and more toward relatively stable exhibition methods. This is also to say that the power of the system and the flexibility of the system are expanding. We need only look back for a moment on the situation in the art world between the 1960s and today, and we will discover, the 1960s were a time when the entire system adjusted itself, and the situation in artistic and cultural circles changed accordingly. I think one of the issues is that in this particular culture, exploring local issues is important. So I think the approach that Qiu Zhijie and Lu Jie have taken in this Long March is very similar to an official approach, for example in the way they collaborate with CCTV, or with certain local cultural institutions. They use emblems, signs, elements that can be instantly recognized internationally, and will carry some force. And I think that's been done by some of the curators here today. It's an obvious example of something someone might leverage for their artistic purposes. But in leveraging this, what impact do we have on artistic discourse.

To me, the Long March seems like assigning essays to a classroom full of students based on a theme. Artists can participate, be on-site, not on site, can interact, not interact, or even just can completely avoid interaction. That said, and I think that the subject of curating is a very complex issue, and something that we probably won't be able to resolve in this discussion. I do think that the experience of travel, movement through China, that in itself is a very valuable experience. So by moving from place to place, there is this theme of the changes involved, it's different and separate from place to place. And that's the real interesting and important thing that's going on here. I do like the aspect, the fact that we have moved from the city. Often exhibitions in China are done against the background of the city and centered on issues in the city, so there is something good about this move. From a cultural standpoint, this is a step forward, and an important one.

Zheng Shengtian:
We're well beyond our time. We only have about ten more minutes and I'd like to get some input from some of our overseas guests.

Charles Merewether:
On to the last commentary, because in relation to what I saw last night and the Long March project to this point, one of the things I find striking about it is-and I'll use the metaphor of traveling as a way to begin-what it seems to me, and I'm not particularly interested as a non-Chinese person in the question of whether there's a new model here. But it seems to me that there's a new dynamic here that I have not been aware of in terms of contemporary Chinese art practice. And that is the model wherein artist and curator, both of whom are people from the metropolis, are functioning in two manners in terms of travel. That's to say that they're traveling both locally, going through different towns and cities that connect with the local, but that they're also producing something in terms of the record of it that can travel internationally or transnationally. So what seems critical here in terms of being a Chinese metropolitan artist or curator, is the ability to be Janus-faced-that is to be able to look in two directions, to be able to function in two directions simultaneously, both in terms of a real connection with the local, and maintaining a connection with the West or the international. So the manner in which I understand this project is that the local is being translated through the metropolis, into the international sphere, and the international being translated back into the local. And what strikes me about this project is that it seems to me-someone said that this is an issue of the domestic, a domestic issue-In English there's an expression which is "getting one's house in order." So the thing that I find most significant is that this project is actually an act of recovery of historical consciousness, that is, how does one recover historical consciousness without forsaking modernity.

Jo-Anne Birnie-Danzker:
I originally wanted to speak about how the curators from outside China consider the discussion that's gone on in light of postcolonialism and exoticism. But what was striking me as I was listening today was not that everything was so exotic but that it was remarkably familiar. The idea that the curator should be a servant is a central issue at the moment in Europe and North America where curator-stars are becoming more the rule than the exception. And I certainly consider myself as being the servant of a shipping company! Another aspect which is remarkably familiar is that at this moment, as an aspect of the reform of the entire department of culture for the city of Munich, we're actually engaged in a long-term process with the aid of moderators looking at the fundamental questions of who are we serving, what is our audience, what are we actually doing, what is the function of an exhibition? So I think we're engaged in a similar process, and I'm very grateful that I can be here, because I think that all the work is on the same level, with the same issues. And essentially, as Charles Merewether just noted, the recuperation is from the local to the metropolitan to the international and back to the local.

Per Boym:
I'll ask some questions because there is one aspect of the seminar that interests me and which I am very concerned with myself from the Norwegian perspective. And I would say like someone else that there can't be "a Chinese context;" there must be a hundred or so Chinese contexts. And the effort to try to combine seems doomed. Even in a small country like Norway, I would say that curating in a Norwegian context would also be very misleading because the contexts are so very different. So the force of my question will be: the Long March, as a model, historically, was a great achievement that restored an empire. But do we need empires in the art world?

Zheng Shengtian:
For time reasons, I'd like to leave everyone with that question. After lunch we'll reconvene here.

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