Lecture notes on Qiu Anxiong presentation- dated 11.3.06

Class notes following visual artist Qiu Anxiong presentation in the classroom- dated 11.3.06, provided by NYU student Erica D Swallow. Thank you Erica for sharing your notes with us.

• “Jian Nan Cuo” (2005)
o Time: 13:10
o Birds on branches (flying onto and off of tree at times)
o Shot in black and white to mirror traditional Chinese painting that used black and white ink
o Constant beat is heard in the background (percussion/bongo)
o Heavy bass sound as if in a dungeon; haunting drone sounds
o Interestingly, he gives mention to the cast as: “Cast: Wind Cloud Tree Bird”
o He says that this piece is about Time:
• Modern people see time as a very fast thing
• We seldom look for natural development. We always need stories.
• This is a natural time flow, but in the film it seems very slow and much longer. Actually, however, it is just a normal progression of time.
• This is a basic Chinese philosophy used to look at the world, especially during the Song dynasty – One should try to blend in with the environment instead of taking a third person point of view. This is very typical of traditional Chinese art, as well. The artist will blend in with the environment.
• From a distance, you can’t see the movement of the trees as they gently sway in this video, but if really focus, you can see it. In this way, we should look at the natural progression of time in everyday life. From a distance, we may not see things moving, but if we put our soul into it, we can see how everything is moving and changing.

• “In the Sky” (2005) (This is the first animation that he ever made.)
o Music Tchaikovsky/Stockhausen
o Time: 8:18
o For this piece, he had no special plan. He did it out of pure feeling.
o All hand-painted
o He was influenced by an African artist, William Kentridge. Kentridge does not use complicated techniques. He uses simple elements and does not focus on a huge, complicated production. Anxiong admires this.
o He thinks Chinese animation was better before the 1990s. This is due to the current marketization and importing of ideas from foreign countries and companies, like Japan, for example.
o 1930-1940s: The first animation to ever be made in China was “Journey to the West” by two brothers.
o 1950-1980s: Ink animations develop in China
o “This work is not a story-telling work. Its like a dream of snapshots,” he explains.
o In one image, two heads on sticks protruding from a grassy hill are depicted, and one is taken away by a bird. When Sonia asked what this meant, he said that this signified the time upon creating the piece when his wife was gone and he missed her.
o He has no clear thoughts about the piece of art in theory, but reiterates that he made it just from his feelings.

• “Flying to the South” (May 2006)
o Time: 9:12
o Soundtrack of voices in background
o Flying books
o This piece was an installation at an Expo in May in Shanghai. It had statues installed along with the video, but the government shut the show down. The statues and film are prohibited to be shown together.

• Anxiong’s Ideas on the Point of Art
o Instead of looking at the history and progression of art as a form of expression to understand art as a media, we should look at the world. When we look at the world, we look at true history.
o We look at the world with a whole system of symbols. We have lost the instinct to see the world in a direct way for what it really is in essence. Instead, we see an expressive world, rather than a truthful one. We use too many symbols to define it.
o We only know part of existence. We don’t know all of it.
o Today we have so much knowledge. Knowledge has cut the world into pieces. We no longer have a world in its entirety. Our world is categorized and humanized.
o We need an original way of looking at the world: an origin. It is important to every culture to have this type of origin.
o Although China is developing into a very complex system, we still ask ourselves the same elementary questions about our origins. Still, we are puzzled.
o For example, we look at a computer and think it is easy to understand. We know what it does and we can use it. But we can’t see what is inside it and we do not know how it really functions. We look at our world in this way. We think we understand the world, but really we do not know its truths.
o Unfortunately, we look at our world from a point of knowledge and understanding, not from a participatory point of view. We distance ourselves from the world, and we no longer have a mutual relationship.
o He uses art to connect with the world in a more intimate way. This is his general understanding of art.

• “The Book of Mountains and Sea [1]” (2006)
o The song at the end, to him, was very “human”. It conveyed a different perspective than his own. He feels that it did not convey the same ideas and feelings of his art shown before it in the animation. It does not have the same sacred and objective feeling of his work. His friend from Chengdu wrote it after reading the book he wrote. The credits at the end mention “Jin Wang” and “Ou Bo” as the musicians credited in the film. I’m not sure which one created this song.
o He quotes Confucius from a story about Confucius and three of his students. They are all discussing the goals of the students. Confucius asks the first one what he wants to be. He says he wants to be a general. Confucius then asks the second student, who replies that he wants to be a secretary. When the third student is asked what he wishes for his, he says that he would like to go swimming in the river with his friends. The song is like the third student, an ordinary perspective. He thinks that if everybody had this perspective, maybe our society and world could reach its’ pinnacle. In this perspective, the ordinary becomes the ideal. The simplest goals bring the greatest successes.
o Some images discusses from the animation include:
• The explosion of New York City. It is not caused by an external force, such as a bomb. Instead, one may notice that it explodes from within. This symbolizes internal problems with society.
• The singular person that remains standing after the other terrorists fly away. Before class began, Anxiong told Eric and I that this guy does not represent anything in particular. Instead, he represents the many possibilities. He challenged us to think about it ourselves, expressing that it is up to the viewer to ponder over this matter. There are so many possible ways the story could end, and the viewer must consider these options. In my opinion, this is part of the beauty of this piece as it leaves us asking questions and challenging our views.
o The refrain from the song at the end is:
• “Who is sighing? Who is lamenting the parting of geese on autumnal journey?”

Shanghart on Moganshan

For this week, I visited Shanghart on Moganshan Road for the solo exhibition by contemporary Chinese performance artist Yang Zhenzhong. Revisiting this elusive gallery again brings back memories of the first time. The distasteful cappuccino with drops of hardening black goo, the rumbling and cumbersome warehouse elevators, the cordial and welcoming foreign gallery owners and the storage and exhibition of many impressive works of modern art all return to my memory.

I arrived at Shanghart after striding through the familiar alleys lined with art galleries and walked into the spacious solo exhibition gallery to witness the photos and videos made by Yang Zhenzhong. Born in Xiaoshan in 1968, Yang Zhenzhong now lives and works in Shanghai. He graduated from the oil painting department of the China Fine Arts Academy in Hangzhou in 1993, and started working with video and photography in 1995. Yang Zhenzhong’s works have shown in all major biennales and triennials such as Venice (2003), Shanghai (2002), Guangzhou (2002), and Gwangju (2002). Yang’s solo exhibition in Shanghart is his first cooperation with the gallery.

Different artists have different preferences and perception. Yang emphasizes the focus and compliment of the subject in his artwork with the background. Using photography, Yang manipulates the background and the subject to portray ordinary people and daily life. Vibrant colors and entrancing settings enrich and accentuate the central characters in the photography and animation. Through the implementation of the environment and present objects and subjects, Yang illustrates contemporary China through a snapshot. As if fusing culture, modernity, psychology and existence in a single image, Yang reveals our world in one picture. As one of the audience, I felt perplexed but captivated by his photos. In his series titled Light and Easy, Yang has his characters upholding the immeasurable weight of urban and material society.

Fascinated by the photograph of a man lifting a reversed Pearl Tower and Pudong Financial District, my eyes refused to leave the picture. The complex combination of building colors contrast with the simple but effective dark sweater of the man. Visual contrast strengthens the contrast of the subject and setting. As if holding a feather, the man easily lifts the urban structure with his palm. Yang employs photography to scrutinize contemporary Chinese society. Yang emphasizes individuality over the intricate urban composition. As if the contemporary material and urban growth is a mere façade and holds little weight and impact, Yang accentuates the merit of the individual. Such an emphasis shows both his contemporary deviation from communist ideals and also his criticism of current modern Chinese dependence on material wealth and gain.

Using metaphorical imagery, Yang challenges contemporary normality through the splendor of contorted reality. As a picture is worth a thousand words, each viewer will no doubt interpret the images differently. Let us join our thoughts and share our experience to divulge our world beneath contemporary materialistic desires.

Shanghai Biennial

Hyper-Design is the theme of this year's Shanghai Biennial. Design is so often judged by the functionality of a finished product. Artistic value, while perhaps not in opposition to functionality, at least seems to be somewhat inconsequential to the supposed value of design: function. But the act of designing, our curators say, is human controlled creation. Necessarily creation imitates creator, and as such, there are socio-cultural phenomena, philosophy, all the mundane and spectacular of humanity apparent in created structures. Thus art is embedded in the whole of design, and art is inextricable from function. I believe the curators are trying to express that design as a work of art cannot be judged merely by the worth of a tangible finished product, but by the way a design reflects the creative values of the artist who created it and society from which it emerged. “Hyper-Design” is a movement toward this nuanced, socially cognizant appreciation of design, and the Biennial showcases manifestations of this idea from China and around the world.

China’s transformation into a modern, urbanized culture, and its sudden, blistering economic surge is clearly reflected in art from its citizens and foreign observers. Recurring throughout Chinese artworks at the Biennial were pieces that dealt with the rapidity of China’s urbanization, disconnect between traditional Chinese values and new Western ones, and flood of industrialism and consumerism that is sweeping through China. Judgments on China’s transformation ranged from fear and resolute disappointment, like Qiu Anxiong’s apocalyptic animation

The New Sutra of Mountain and Ocean, to reverent fascination, like Allesandra Tessi’s Rose of Shanghai, a radiant visual installation in homage to Shanghai’s Oriental Pearl Tower.

One of the more profound installations in my estimation is Lee Kyong-Ho’s Moonlight Sonata 2006. Occupying an entire darkened exhibition hall, the first perception the visitor has is audible, as he or she is met by a symphony of whirring click-clacks upon approaching the darkened exhibition hall. The installation features rows and rows of electric toy bulldozers, excavators, and cranes, lit by tiny floodlights and the huge projection moon on the opposite wall, all buzzing indifferently and battering the ground. Projectors are placed at different areas around the miniature vehicles, and project an eerie shadow of the lonesome scooping of excavator arms on the surrounding walls.

Despite the loud assembly, the feeling in the room is serene, as night construction sites usually are, and exertions of the tiny machinery emit a soothing rhythm. Moonlight Sonata 2006 is an example of art in our every day life: the symphony of machinery and human creation that’s performed each day, or in this case, night. Beyond that, Kyon-Ho’s installation reflects the seemingly overnight growth of China and Asia: a relentless nocturnal game of catch-up, played while the rest world was sleeping.

The designs of this year’s Biennial all reflected the state of change in China, and the apprehension, wonder, and intrigue of the artists shine in their work. The 2006 Shanghai Biennial is about a culture in flux, and I think a question for 2008 will be: How much has change become the norm in China?