JUAN XU 庸现

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    • Bald Girls Iberia Center 2012
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    • Bald Girls -Chain Reaction 2022
  • 文章
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    • 信息资本主义时代的博伊斯
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      • “托斯”在行动
      • 至少疼痛还是真实的
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  • 联系
  • HOME
  • ABOUT
  • PROJECTS
    • Bald Girls Iberia Center 2012
    • Bald Girls A Door 2013
    • Made in China 2013
    • Beuys in China 2013
    • Bald Girls Timelag 2013
    • Femme Totale 2014
    • Bald Girls meet Fluxus 2014
    • Bald Girls Pink Solution 2014
    • Bald Girls Nanjing Forum 2014
    • Fluxus Nanjing 2014
    • Li Xinmo Excluded 2015
    • Performance Day 2015
    • Performance Day 2016
    • Performance Day 2017
    • Art Tour Live Tour 3 / Join us to Kassel 2017
    • Feminist Activism in China: In Conversation with Li Maizi 2017
    • Tianjin Live Art Exhibition 2018
    • Denn ich habe schon alles schon gesehen Frankfurt 2018
    • Performance Day Frankfurt 2018
    • Capital @Art. International Frankfurt 2018
    • Feelings as Facts - Memory as Identity Tianjin China 2018-2019
    • Spectacle International Art Exchange Jiangxi China 2019
    • The 7th UP-ON International Live Art Festival 2019
    • 0 Edge Shift Europe A 2020
    • Sharing Crisis 2020
    • Bull 2021
    • WoYeShi#me too 2021
    • Becoming A Woman NO.1 2022
    • Becoming A Woman NO.2 2022
    • Bald Girls -Chain Reaction 2022
  • ARTICLES
    • Sharing Crisis
    • A Very Serious Game
    • Bald Girls
    • Who is Mary Bauermeister?
    • Iberia Art Center
    • Time Travel to Fluxus
    • Memory as Identity
    • We are the Revolution
    • Capital in the Digital Age @ Art
    • Money Is Time
    • Operation Thanatos in Action
    • Memory and Identity as artistic concept
    • From Political Critique to Spiritual Embrace
    • Perception is Reality
    • At Least the Pain is Real
  • PRESS
    • New York Times
    • F.A.Z.
    • Global Times
    • ML Art Source
  • PUBLICATIONS
  • Catalogue Bald Girls
    • Introduction
    • Declaration
    • Preface
    • Li Xinmo
    • Xiao Lu
    • Lan Jiny
    • Female Performance Art
    • History of Feminism
    • Feminist Movement and Feminist Art in East and West
  • Catalogue Capital@Art. Int.
    • Artists and curator
    • Preface
    • From Political Critique to Spiritual Embrace
    • Perception is Reality
    • Operation Thanatos in Action
    • At Least the Pain is Real
    • Money Is Time
    • Feelings As Facts
  • CONTACT
  • 关于庸现
  • 展览
    • 秃头戈女- 北京伊比利亚
    • 秃头戈女 - 一个门
    • 中国制造
    • 社会雕塑 - 博伊斯在中国
    • 秃头戈女- 时差
    • 红颜女强 –从杨贵妃到“秃头戈女”
    • 油烟才女 - 秃头戈女 遇见激浪
    • 秃头戈女- 桃色策略
    • 秃头戈女- 南京论坛
    • 激浪时间
    • 排斥
    • 威斯巴登行为艺术节2015
    • 威斯巴登行为艺术节 2016
    • 威斯巴登行为艺术节2017
    • 第三届现场艺术巡展參展: 谁要同去卡塞尔?
    • 女权行动在中国:与李麦子的对话
    • 天津现场艺术创作邀请展 2018
    • 我都看过了2018
    • 法兰克福行为艺术节 2018
    • 资本@艺术. 国际 2018
    • 感受即真实 -记忆与身份认同 2018-19
    • "景观”国际艺术交流展2019
    • 第7届Up-On 向上国际现场艺术节2019
    • 0界 移位 欧洲篇上 2020
    • 共享的危机 2020
    • 牛 2021
    • 我也是#me too 2021
    • 成为女人 第一集 2022
    • 成为女人 第二集 2022
    • 秃头戈女- 链锁反应 2022
    • Bald Girls -Chain Reaction 2022
  • 文章
    • 共享的危机
    • 记忆与身份认同
    • 谁是玛丽·包麦斯特 (艺术国际版)
    • 信息资本主义时代的博伊斯
    • 秃头戈女 - 和吴味谈男权视野的局限
    • 访谈包麦斯特
    • 托尼•克拉格
    • 庸现与李勇政、 周斌对话。
    • 关于“西方主义”
    • 从 清洗 谈肖鲁对 颠覆 之 再颠覆_
    • 重要的不是秃头-再次回应吴味
    • 驳徐乔斯
    • 严肃的游戏: 对话李勇政
  • 媒体报道
    • 中国来鸿 纽约时报 狄狄
    • 凤凰艺术 : 策展人篇
    • 与画刊谈《博伊斯在中国》
    • 答复新京报记者李健亚
    • 《山花》杂志 2012 10月号访谈
  • 出版
    • 艺术家& 策展人简介
    • 《资本 @ 艺术· 国际》 >
      • 数字时代的资本@艺术
      • 从政治批判到精神拥抱
      • 直觉就是现实
      • “托斯”在行动
      • 至少疼痛还是真实的
      • 作为艺术概念的记忆和身份
      • 金钱就是时间
    • 秃头戈女画册 >
      • 作者译者简介
      • 秃头女性艺术宣言
      • 秃头戈女序
      • 李心沫:一个中国批判现实主义艺术的先锋艺术家
      • 重释肖鲁
      • 艺术视觉与真诚 蓝镜
      • 女性身体艺术的承担与实践
      • 女性身体艺术的承担与实践
      • 中国玻璃眼球 中文版
      • 东西方女权运动的思考
      • 中国女权运动与女性艺术发展历程
  • 联系

At Least the Pain is Real

Juan Xu in dialogue with Li Yongzheng
 

Juan Xu: The theme of our exhibition is capital and Art, and your artwork in it is a video entitled Death is My Dream of Many Years[1]. French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, in his book Symbolic Exchange and Death (1976), writes that “My death is everywhere, I dream of death (…) to speak of prohibitions on suicide is to speak of a normative value. Whether it’s religion, ethics or economics; it’s always the same rule: nobody has the right to diminish either capital or value…” Do you think there’s a necessary connection between death and Capital?
 
Li Yongzheng: I do. When I submitted this work to the exhibition; although it derives from a tragic story, there wasn’t any one thing I wanted to say. I want the audience to think their own thoughts. If you really want to talk about death and capital in relationship with one another, then I see death as the logical conclusion to capital. That is, even if capital gets used to some extent, and profited from; ultimately, it’s no longer even present. If capital is instrumental in the context of social control; then to decide one’s own death is to subvert the system; to annihilate that final bit of capital we control, and to challenge an unfair social system geared around profit. I think it’s the only real means of resistance left to the vulnerable.
 
Juan Xu: “As each person is a piece of capital “[2] (just as every Christian believer has a soul to be saved), no one has the right to kill themselves. Suicide is an expression of resistance, against the orthodox value system, by destroying the one bit of capital one still has control over. This is unforgivable, with some people going so far as to punish suicide victims by hanging their corpses post-mortem. Therefore, in a society riddled with normative ethics and values, there will be a rise in suicide rates, as a challenge to the ruling order.” In Christian cultures, suicide is disrespectful towards God. It is a blasphemy against orthodox Christianity. In China, where there is no god; what does suicide represent? Is it also a challenge against the ruling order? When Buddhists speak of reincarnation, do you think suicide can play the same role?
 
Li Yongzheng: For a long time, China was a traditional agrarian society, and humans were the most essential resource in a system of manual production. So, whether in secular or religious culture, suicide is the ultimate evil. Right now, it’s difficult to talk about Chinese culture as a whole. Whether traditional or contemporary, this is a period of cultural disunity; one that indicates an imminent collapse of cultural systems. Everyone’s alone, floating aimlessly as a miniscule speck, with nothing to really depend on. Profit is the only standard by which to measure things these days. There are a lot of reasons to kill oneself. Beaudrillard’s comment on suicide as “the only ultimate way to realize one’s freedom” is a bit too rational and prideful, in reality. For those who have killed themselves, and the suffering of those who loved them, pain is as real as stones. The living go on with life. Even though ways of thinking about death are manipulated and set in place by systems, at least the pain is real. 
 
Juan Xu: Ordinarily, suicide victims are mentally ill. Foucault speaks of the “rational judge.” In Madness and Civilization, he mainly analyzes “marginalization” of the insane, sick, criminal and sexually crazed. He eulogizes and interprets the avid imaginations and poetic abilities of the insane. In your artwork, there are four children who never had a chance to come of age. Do you think they were mentally ill? Or were they just arbitrarily marginalized by society?
 
Li Yongzheng: They weren’t insane. The oldest was only 14. They were just a part of the most vulnerable part of society. Their life hadn’t even begun. It’s useless to wax metaphysically about their death. They were left behind in the countryside by their parents who went to work in the cities of China. There are millions of kids just like this in China right now, separated from their parents, with no chance of getting what kids their age need. They’ve been cast aside, thrown downriver. Theirs is the “naked existence” of those who have lost all rights.
 
Juan Xu: As far as Foucault was concerned; even without freedom over our own bodies, we still have animal rage. This is to say that Capital can live on as a miniscule remainder of itself, and “natural death” is a natural transformation in the perfection of capital. In China, with its rapid economic transformations over the past four decades; capital has accumulated in the hands of a relative few. There are those who can’t afford school or medicine, so they kill themselves. Suicide is a way of refusing to sell-out even more, to degrade one’s own body even further. Is it a way of subverting capital’s “perfect” natural transformation? Or is it perpetrated by the accumulation of capital?
 
Li Yongzheng: Death is not an accumulation of “capital,” but rather capital that has been used up. Control over death is an important element of social control. Safety, as its logical opposite, gets instituted as a by-product of death-control. This control of death is the worst element of institutionalized society; much crueler than any post-modern model of cultural control can ever convey. If you want to live, you have to live the system’s way. If you have greater aspirations than that, well then, they’ve really got you by the balls. 
 
Juan Xu: Are life and body just a part of capital?
 
 Li Yongzheng: Yes , they are. Our bodies and the life we live with them are a kind of capital. In fact, they are the most important capital our society has.

1. Jean Baudrillard : Symbolic Exchange and Death 1976


03.03.2019,  Frankfurt am Main

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