Norway Report

The Long March Participates in the Light As Fuck – Shanghai Assemblage 2000-2004 exhibition at the National Museum of Contemporary Art Oslo, Norway.

Light as Fuck – Shanghai Assemblage	Installation and Preparation	The Long March Stop

April 15

The opening of Light As Fuck – Shanghai Assemblage 2000-2004 Exhibition is the first international stop of the Long March (the second stop is the Le Moine et le Démon exhibition jointly put on by the Musee d’ Art Contemporain de Lyon, the Guangdong Art Museum, and the Ullens Foundation curated by Fei Dawei in June 2004. The curators of the Norway exhibition are, the director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art Per Abjarne Boym and Chinese co-curator Gu Zhenqing. The venerable museum director Boym is a veteran of the Long March. In August 2002, he participated in The Long March – A Walking Visual Display Zunyi Curatorial Symposium. After this event, he extended an invitation to Lu Jie to participate in an exhibition in Norway. However, due to SARS this exhibition that was originally planned for last spring was delayed for one year. For this exhibition, Boym made ten special trips to Shanghai. This exhibition will also be the final exhibition of Boym term as museum director. The exhibitions selection of “Shanghai” was intended to explain Shanghai, but in actuality Shanghai is no longer a geographic concept, therefore Guangdong artists Chen Shaoxiong, Hangzhou’s Zhang Peili, and even the Long March has come to join in the fun. Other artists participating are Hu Jieming, Liang Yue, Song Tao, Xu Zhen, Yang Fudong, Yang Zhenzhong, Zhou Hongxiang, and Jin Jiangbo’s joint project Andante For Seeking the Peach Blossom Faery. Long March artists participating are Jiang Jie, Qin Ga, Qiu Zhijie, Shi Yong, Sui Jianguo, Wang Jinsong, Xiao Xiong, Zhou Xiaohu. At present, the exhibition is in the process of setting up, seeing Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest by Yang Fudong being shown on a ten meter screen was incredible. Because Oslo is a small city, the ten or so Chinese artists had nothing to do. The other artists could only go with Lu Jie to listen to jazz music and drink dark beer. Because of this, Chen Shaoxing joked that Chinese artists were improving. Instead of singing karaoke to pass the time, they drank beer and listened to jazz. The group of people laughed at themselves and made their way back from the street to continue setting up for the exhibition.

Since returning from Luding Bridge (site 12), the Long March has continuously begun to work in the “occupied” and unliberated areas in the international arena. Ever since its inception, the Long March has declared that the international space was one of its spaces (in addition to urban and rural spaces in China). However, for the past year, it has basically been using speeches, lectures, conferences and other programs to march internationally. This exhibition in Norway will be the first international exhibition for the Long March. Because of this, curator Lu Jie has been particularly diligent in handling matters. In the afternoon, when everyone else went to visit the Mengke museum, Lu Jie remained behind and continued setting up.

April 16

At breakfast, it was common to tell overstated stories. Yesterday, Lu Jie had said that the reason Zhou Hongxiang's The Red Flag Flies was well known abroad and not in China was because it made Chinese video art retrogress 100 years. But Zhou Hongxiang was able to understand that it was not meant as a rebuke. Today, Chen Shaoxiong used the topic of visiting the doctor to tell a story about a head nurse. Old Gu is a male head nurse.

I was dragged out of bed early in the morning by Old Gu. Everyone went to the subway station to participate in the opening of the Mayor of Oslo’s activity, “The Eyes of Shanghai.” It was a collaboration between Jin Jiangbo in Shanghai and Lao La here in Oslo. On the ground of both places was installed a tunnel like television screen and microphone, from here, one could see the subway station in Shanghai as well as the vice-mayor of Shanghai, artists, and audience. From Shanghai, viewers could see the mayor of Oslo and artists. Both places collectively greeted the other in a romantic way. There is an old Norwegian saying, “From Norway, you can dig a whole straight through to China." The rest of the speech was mostly things like: “Only because of art can the world be so small.” Actually, there were technical problems at the site, and it was only a performance given for themselves to see. The function of art is still a symbol and a metaphor. The activity had another part, in Shanghai there were people who used Norwegian to recite a Chinese poem, while here in Norway, someone used Chinese to recite a Norwegian poem. This task was given to Lu Jie. This forty year old fellow had no choice but to wake up early in the morning and passionately recite a poem at the subway station in Oslo. The subject was about selling water on the riverbanks for forty years, nudity, walking forward, etc. It truly was a moving event.

At the press conference organized by the museum, the Norwegian curator stressed that the individual reflections quickly produced by Shanghai artists in the development and changes of Shanghai society had saliency in different contexts. The Chinese curator stressed the independent nature of Shanghai artists and the Shanghai art scene. Old Gu did not forget to plug himself, “This is the first independent and complete display of Shanghai art on the international stage.” Both curators explained that nothing was not included in the Long March, and that of course it had a relation with Shanghai, changes, and borders. Therefore, because the participation of the Long March in the Shanghai exhibition “Light as Fuck,” geography was not restricted by geographic space. Furthermore, he said that these artists were all Long March artists…and so on.

Everyone had fish for lunch at the museum cafeteria. Last time Lu Jie visited the site, he received the kind hospitality of the owner. This time the owner had his wife specially bring some Zhejiang Province local homestyle food for them. When the owner took out a package of pickled mustard greens, all the artists applauded. Afterwards, everybody decided to go out and have fun. Old Gu arranged to go see a pirate ship. Some people thought that it was a nursery school teaching center. Liang Yue suggested that they go see the Norwegian forests, but Lu Jie suggested that they could just go home and see the spring blooming of trees. In the end, everyone went to see the ocean, only Lu Jie remained behind to work. Thus, the museum workers went crazy for Wang Jinsong’s Slogans of the New Long March. They could not tell if Wang Jinsong was being serious or facetious, but those words sent shivers down their spine. They felt that the English translations were not enough, and they continually demanded that it be translated into Norwegian.
Here are some samples of Wang Jinsong’s Slogans:
- Welcome the even greater development of Chinese art in the new century
- We must not ignore the daily increasing cultural needs of the people, we must not ignore the overall advances and development of Chinese society, and we must not ignore the culture of this nation or other nations. Regardless if it is traditional or foreign, what we need to learn is only their best model examples and not all of their average values!
- 21st century Chinese art must be grounded in the realities of 21st century living and 21st century people!
- The value judgment of “daring to act before others,” is currently misguiding the choices of Chinese avant-garde art.
- Only avant-garde art can bury avant-garde art!
- The thorough invasion of the ideological trends of Western modernist, postmodernist, and ultra-leftist art has shaken the aesthetic idealism of Chinese artists towards the unification of truth, good, and beauty in socialist art and art in general!
- Restore art to pursue the unification of truth, good, and beauty; this is the great aesthetic ideal!
- The culture of socialism cannot be without heroism, it cannot be without vitality, it cannot be without compassion, it cannot be without idealism, and it cannot be without the spirit of truth, good, and beauty!
- It is not that the time period cannot give birth to great works, it is that our artists themselves lack a great artistic objective and the spirit to fight for it with the utmost of fortitude!
- Modern art has made a “soft landing” in China!
- The unification of the contrasts of form and content will forever be the primary basis for pushing the development of human art upwards towards truth, good and beauty!
- Oriental intellectuals and Chinese artists should be confident in taking things philosophically, being their own masters of thought, and being intelligent people who see and think clearly. They ought to firmly believe in their own aesthetic ideals, in their own good and brilliant creative abilities, and in the artistic rules, and arduously practice exploring. This is absolutely able to create classical works that will deeply move all the people of the world!
- As the country increases its global position and its comprehensive national strength grows, the fine arts will also gradually gain attention.
- We must strengthen the consciousness of the export of national art treasures!
- Artists cannot continuously and blindly seek to imitate, they ought to see the light and see the direction. What is ugly? What is beautiful? What is fake and degraded? They must have a clear understanding. All those who are self-centered, who are greedy and self-indulgent, will invariably meet their doom!

April 17

Viewers came swarming to the opening of the exhibition. The effect of Xu Zhen’s Sixth March was different from when it was exhibited at Shanghai. There were truly too many volunteers here. A volunteer pretending to have a mental disorder closely followed every person who entered the exhibition room. Only after the viewer left the museum could they finally ditch the person. Some people that were followed became so anxious they began to run; little did they think that the mental patient next to them also started running. They both ran until they stopped in front of Hu Jieming’s Long March work The Best Strategy is to Be on the Move. Suddenly, they both turned their heads towards me and asked how come this “Long March work” is not in the Long March space? Only then did I realize that they did not really have any mental disorder.

This was also my first time to see Hu Jieming’s work. I did not even know that he had made such a work for Long March. I thought about it for a while, but I still did not know exactly how large and broad the Long March is. Could it be that there are several other Long March works that I have not seen, and that there is no need for me to know about? At tomorrow’s symposium, our topic will be concerning retreat. Hu’s The Best Strategy is to Be on the Move is a very interesting Long March work.

Xiao Xiong’s work was entitled The Long March – A Family Portrait. Trading a portrait of his own family with those brought by the audience is only one portion of this work. This work will continue to be carried out and exhibited at different countries, among different ethnicities, and at different spaces. Qin Ga’s performance lasted for 2 hours. Barebacked, he lay across the entrance of the dimly lit Long March room as a bright spotlight illuminated the map of China tattooed on his back. Some people stopped and would not go forward, others directly and instinctually stepped over his body, and some stopped and carefully studied the Long March route on his back.

The entire design of the Long March space was like a dark tunnel. Spanning the two exits was Qiu Zhijie’s Left and Right and Xiao Xiong’s Enter and Exit on two ten meter long picture rugs. Qiu used his left foot to leave behind a footprint that side right on the road of the Long March, and his right foot to leave behind the word “left.” This reminds us of the transformation of ideology in the Chinese context. The final result of Xiao Xiong’s bartering journey along the road of the Long March was two thermometers. Here, he displayed several hundred images of the process of his exchanges. Sui Jianguo’s small Jesus Christ in a Mao suit was placed in front of a picture showing Sui Jianguo’s Marx in China flowing down a river. Jiang Jie’s baby sculpture left the picture of the Xiao family raising the baby posted on the wall and slept peacefully on the floor of the darkened room. Zhou Xiaohu’s Utopian Machine and Shi Yong’s The Long March in Shanghai were both video works. The former was a historical imagination that used animation. The latter was a visual record that used names from sites along the Long March. Wang Jingsong’s Slogans of the New Long March ruthlessly assaulted viewer’s nerves. It reminded us of the dual context of the Long March and the contradiction between behavior and the multiple meaning of language.

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