From Political Critique to Spiritual Embrace -Juan Xu in Conversation with the Gao Brothers
Juan Xu: In 2018 you entered 12 photography artworks into the Frankfurt Capital@Art International exhibition. These works all shared some connection with China’s accumulation of capital over the past 20 or 30 years. Among them, a four-meter-long work titled The Eternally Unfinished Mansion made a big impact. It has been said that this artwork depicts “a thickly wooded cement forest embedded digitally as a city, a virtual collage of life in contemporary Chinese urban spaces; rendering life in these spaces in realistic ways. It’s as if this were a mirror image of the spectacle of China’s contemporary cities.”
This artwork depicts major events and phenomena in China, such as homesteaders who refuse to leave their homes due to pressure from developers, earthquakes, and the Olympics. These are all combined in such a way as to create a major spectacle, using visual language to talk about the “ghost cities” and otherwise empty buildings that have been left behind in the process of Capital accumulation—creating a sort of “ghost-city aesthetic.” I remember in one conversation, you each spoke of this aesthetic as being influenced by traditional Chinese paintings, in particular the painting Along the River During the Qingming Festival. Is The Eternally Unfinished Mansion intended as a modern interpretation of Along the River During the Qingming Festival?
Gao Brothers: First of all, thanks for curating this collection of our work in this group exhibition. The Eternally Unfinished Mansion is part of a series of artworks created between 2001 and 2009. Four works were created in all, using performance art photographic documentation along with digitally processed photography, which was then layered in repetition and collaged. It was in 2000, the first time we did our performance artwork Embracing 20 Years of Utopia, when we discovered that block of empty buildings. We felt the site had a lot of visual tension and social significance as architectural spectacle.
In making this series of artworks, we were working with the principle that we had discovered; that these “ghost-buildings” were emblematic of what happens during hyper-marketization. They are a sort of icon, one that arises post-Cultural Revolution and post-Mao in the age of extreme authority; it’s a sort of macro-social phenomenon in this political reality. The way we see it, the whole thing of “reaching blindly for stones while crossing the river” as a means of reform in Mainland China is very much like building an eternally unfinished mansion. It’s an institutional way of doing things that can never really embrace the world as a constitutional civilization; as it builds its homogenous cities, resulting in empty buildings. We situate ourselves in this eternally unfinished mansion. No one knows when it will ever be finished. No one knows when it will be torn down, or even when it will fall down of its own accord. So, we discovered this and proceeded to develop what you mention as a kind of “ghost-city aesthetic.”
Over a very long period of time, this cluster of ghost-buildings has become our chief site of study and video documentation. It is our primary image. Ghost-cities, as a phenomenon, point out a fundamental difference between Mainland China’s totalitarian capitalism, and Western constitutional government. Each depends on the invisible hand of a free market for the very existence of capitalism. Each, on the surface, are the same when it comes to capital accumulation. They are both in line with what Marxist critiques point out as original accumulation when talking about that first bucket of gold: “From the time capital first appears, everyone oozes blood from their pores, from head to toe.” However, if you take a closer look; thinking back to Max Weber’s Protestant ethics and Friedrich August von Hayek’s product of spontaneous social order; we see that one is purely a post-Mao period elitist power structure which sees money as power, conducting trade and operating in a purely capitalist mode. These differences are huge.
This four-meter-high artwork The Unfinished Mansion was completed in 2008. Of all works in the series, this one took the longest and contained the greatest amount of information and importance. It took about six months from original conception to completion. It was like writing a novel and making a film at the same time. There are both realist and surrealist moments in it, and you could divide its overall aspect into three parts: heaven, earth, and hell. We designed it as we went along; creating relationships between people in such a way as to have them resonate. In all, there are sixty-four main scenes, and there are homesteaders, as well. Although there’s Tiananmen Square, there’s also Europe’s Goethian Hall. While they’re Jehovah and Jesus, there are also the anti-Christian dictators Chairman Mao, Hitler, and Stalin. There are also images of marginalized peoples. In this way, we sought to bring many different kinds of identities together within the landscape of these empty buildings, to create an overall visual spectacle as a critical version of the traditional Chinese painting Along the River During the Qingming Festival.
We created this artwork series primarily to document a very peculiar and singular phenomenon occurring on the Chinese Mainland in real life society. We wanted to make this document available to posterity, as an alternative to official narrative discourses we’re exposed to in the form of propaganda, of a ‘harmonious and plentiful world’. We also wanted to take this opportunity to deeply investigate and compose a new hyper-spectacle as narrative structure, to offer this narrative structure as an antidote for Mainland China’s hyper-totalitarian reality.
Juan Xu: In addition to The Unfinished Mansion, the sculptural artwork Waving Hand (2007) also made a strong impact on German audiences. At first, I thought this was a portrait of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, but then I thought it was Chairman Mao. But in comparing it with the image of Mao in Christian Facing the Firing Squad, I determined it wasn’t, after all, Mao. Your artworks deal frequently with well-known public figures, like Stalin, Hitler and Mao. These sculptures give a feeling similar to that of the ordinary Chinese people rendered in the Terracotta Warriors. This work is just such a ‘common’ person who holds a golden brick in one hand, and performs the well-known Mao ‘wave’ with the other hand; a gesture this leader often made to his people. These kinds of proletariat masses, after long exposure to political brainwashing, will subconsciously iterate this mage of “magnificence.” Then they go about making money, and it’s like they get that first “bucket of gold.” Are you trying to express the notion of how capital and power lead to the “evil of mediocrity”?
Gao Brothers: In a way, yes. I think in curating this exhibition on “capital,” you really got a handle on what we see these days as a kind of post-capitalist globalism and also a kind of “Chinese-ness.” Audiences and artists with their artworks are able to re-evaluate the relationship between the artworks and actual reality, able to re-read the meaning of one’s artworks. You could say, this curatorial premise provided a unique context for a lot of these artworks, one that imparted a new tension to them—like this particular sculpture, for instance. In light of this exhibition’s premise, this artwork wasn’t only about the barbarity of power, it also satirized the arrogance of Capital. Your curatorial premise allowed this artwork to take on a greater range of hermeneutic possibilities. It also alluded to the fact that capital really is power, and power is Capital. The power of discourse and the power of capital are inter-changeable as symbols. As everyone knows, in a Chinese context, allocation of social resources and the forces of production are all in the hands of powerful elite. In the process of Opening-Up, Reforms, and the capitalization of power, many private enterprises have done quite well. But within this system, no matter how much an individual succeeds, no matter how much wealth an individual acquires; if he or she one day so much as slightly offends someone in power, every bit of this wealth and success will turn to dust.
In Mainland China, power is capital, and capital is power. This is not just some descriptive fable. It’s iron-clad fact. As you said, what looked a bit like ‘Terracotta Warriors’, these ordinary Chinese citizens…these figures are indeed modeled on common citizens. But they were chosen because their morphology kind of conveyed a sense of the ‘dictator’. This is exactly what we want to express—take someone who kind of looks like a dictator with symbolic power, have him stand there on TV and wave; and you have yourselves a powerful hegemon. This is a critique of how the media can be used to control a population, to brainwash it. It’s also like you said; we wanted to illustrate a spiritual kidnapping perpetrated by power and Capital, and to point out how the mark of a dictator is just really the ‘evil of mediocrity’.
Juan Xu: I agree that ‘power’ is just another expression for Capital. Actually, power is not just “a kind of Capital,” in China’s unique political environment, power really is the most sublime form of capital. I occasionally read the English-language version of the China Times Newspaper; and in doing so, I see again and again that China’s richest business people these days are all Communist party members. There isn’t a single exception to this rule. This just goes to illustrate the fact that without political backing in the form of Capital; then no matter how much “capital” in the form of money you have, you’ll still lack the legal protection that’s necessary to hold onto it. In this way, not a few millionaires and billionaires have turned out to be “Red” capitalists, who work hand in hand with the government in order to protect the wealth they’ve accumulated. At the other end of the spectrum, common people who have neither capital nor power are left twisting in the wind, the “losers” of Opening-Up and Reform. The photography artwork Path at Daybreak No. 1 (2001) is, I think, a performance artwork. It seems to be addressing homeless people hovering at the margins of society. Are these the ‘lost’ of China’s national capitalism?
Gao Brothers: You’ve nailed it. In Mainland China’s unique political environment, power is the highest form of capital; however, you’ve slightly misread our 2001 artwork, Path at Daybreak No. 1. But your misreading is quite interesting. Maybe because the artwork uses the street as its background, with a body kneeling on the ground, so you read the subject as a vagrant. In a way, this reading extends the meaning of this artwork even further. This photograph comes as a result of the 2000 performance artwork, Embracing 20 Minutes of Utopia. We went on to take a series of photographs of subjects in the act of embracing. At that time, we were often invited to do artworks at performance art exhibitions, while our other performance artworks were done spontaneously. We decided we wanted to clearly demarcate whether an artwork was performance art or photography, because performance art requires photographic documentation. Yet, on the other hand, a lot of photography has performative elements as part of its staging. It’s hard to say whether or not we subconsciously, in the photographing of Path of Daybreak, had in mind the kind of down-strata people in society you’re talking about. Regardless, how can you read the lost and marginalized people of “National capitalism” into this artwork?
I don’t really agree with this interpretation. Real capitalism would need some sort of international signification, one that reads as openness, like that of a free market. In a real sense, a free market requires checks and balances, a constitutional government, democracy, and rule of law in order to protect its existence and operation. None of this exists in Mainland China. Ever since 1989, the West has adopted a policy of appeasement in doing business with Mainland China. Chinese intellectuals also vainly cherish the illusion of economic development, as if Opening-Up and Reforms maintain some sense of legality and reasonableness. This happens because what’s going on seems on the surface to resemble the free markets of the West. But they’re both ignoring that which hasn’t changed one bit—the totalitarian essence of the situation. This is what happens when you’ve already gone all-in, and the Western constitutional government finds its hands are tied, and Chinese intellectuals lose all hope as they’re mired in a hopeless situation.
Juan Xu: Western appeasement has really handed over a lot of power to China, to the point where there’s no controlling this power. This is an interesting point of view. Unless I’m mistaken, it seems that Ai Weiwei shares this viewpoint. Indeed, the West hopes that once China’s middle-classes have arisen and matured, this will facilitate China’s transition to a constitutional democracy. The West models this trajectory on their Western historical image. But China’s sense of nationhood is a special case. French author Frédéric Beigbeder once said that China is the world’s only nation that is simultaneously extremely-capitalist and extremely-Socialist. Qin Hui performed an even more precise analysis of Chinese society. The Western “right wing” advocates for a free market, emphasizing freedom. The Western “left wing” advocates for social welfare and protection. China is a country with no freedom, no social welfare, and no
protection. In China, power and capital go hand in hand, and this partnership gangs up with art. Alongside China’s rapid economic development, Chinese contemporary art has transitioned internationally over the past thirty years from periphery to center.
Gao Brothers: Art history proves that no matter how much an artist rebels against the art market, commercialization, or capital; there’s no way he or she can exist in isolation from the art market, commercialization, or capital. It doesn’t matter whether the artwork has a material orientation or not. Even if it’s just a concept, the moment this concept is shared publicly, then there’s the potential for it to enter into relationship with the market, and the artwork then takes on the nature of commodity. capital is a two-edged sword. It can help contemporary art to operate, and it can alternatively disrupt the internal logic of contemporary art. Alongside rapid economic development, Chinese contemporary art has exploded internationally. Maybe it’s a bit of an exaggeration to say that Chinese contemporary art has already situated itself at the world’s center. In fact, if you look at things now, Chinese art is already moving back from a climactic moment. Contemporary art is a product of political freedom. It’s a product of Western constitutional democracy, developed as an idea of art which spread like a wave throughout the entire world. Mainland Chinese artists have accepted this way of thinking about art, and developed it to a great extent within a short period of time; precisely because Mainland China’s politics, economics and cultural development have taken on overall connotations of this world-wide wave. Once these indicators have been proven as false indicators, the fervor for Chinese contemporary art will be unavoidable. Chinese contemporary art began in rebellion and challenge to authority. Then it moved into the market and concentrated on technique, entering into a phase of mediocrity and institutionalization, as if just going through the motions, trying but failing to signify authenticity. Once the authorities gained control over this power of creative production, of the production of symbols…then what we have is fake contemporary art. Only when there is non-institutional political freedom is there any possibility of freedom in art.
I don’t understand where Ai Weiwei’s coming from when he addresses this. Perhaps he negates some sort of heroic circumstance. I also have an understanding of the context in which Frédéric Beigbeder made that statement. Frankly, I don’t agree at all with what he says—that China is “the world’s only nation that is simultaneously extremely-Capitalist and extremely–Socialist.” He’s obviously been misled or deluded by certain representations. I hold the opposite point of view. China is not a socialist nation. Nor is it a capitalist one. We talked about this earlier. I see that China flaunts socialism as a form of propaganda; but this socialism bears no resemblance to the socialism we see practiced in Scandinavian countries. China drives itself forward with capitalism, but this capitalism is bereft of the constitutional democracy we see in Western capitalism. It seems as if Qin Hui’s way of seeing things is a bit more in line with reality: “China is country without ‘freedom’, and it’s a society without ‘social welfare or protection’.”
Juan Xu: A lot of your artworks, whether Grabbing the Girl or Christian Facing the Firing Squad, even the Family Memories photography series; all take issue with social problems. However, there is one exception to this pattern--Embrace. This performance artwork is about love and warmth, conveying a “feeling of compassion” lacking in your other artworks. Do you think that “love” has the ability to alleviate the monopoly of suffering in Chinese society perpetrated by capitalism?
Gao Brothers: Embrace started in 1999 as a sort of ongoing project that we’re constantly developing. This performance artwork was originally part of an invitation to join a Beijing performance art event in Huairou district.[1] We felt moved to bring out a feeling of kindness buried deep within us. Then, in 2000, we called upon volunteers back home in Jinan from the northern suburbs, along the south banks of the Yellow River, to help us carry out our large-scale public performance event. Nearly two hundred strangers followed us into the wilderness, embracing.
The main reason for the ever-present critique in our artworks is precisely because we live in a social and political environment that is “anti-love.” It’s a social and political milieu that fosters competition and struggle, inspiring nothing but mutual resentment. Mainland China has always been an environment that pits the top dogs against the underdog, and vice versa. We hope that our critique can help lift this ideological control. Our political critique artworks are essentially the same as our warmer and more idealistic Embrace performance works. They all have as their goal the construction of a more human social order, to create warmer and more humanitarian relationships.
Performance art requires a sort of trail-blazing, a kind of mutual sensibility and artistic warmth. In an interactive performance event, a kind of resonant mutual warmth will result in an open artwork. Embrace, over the past 20 years, has continued as an ongoing artwork, a public event that has spread all over the world: London, Marseille, Tokyo, Rome, and New York. We hope this open project will continue to spread its message and help us to understand humanity everywhere. We don’t know at what point in its expansion Embrace will actually succeed in counteracting the monopoly that capitalism has perpetrated on society. It’s even less certain whether Embrace can dissolve or melt the ice-cold blocks formed in peoples’ hearts. All we do know is that Embrace is beautiful. Those lines by the poet, Auden, serve as a constant warning to us: “We should embrace and kiss one another, otherwise we die.”
[1] Huairou is the name of a district in Beijing. However, the Chinese word 怀柔 huairou also means “cherishing kindness.”
09.04. 2019 Frankfurt am Main
Gao Brothers: Art history proves that no matter how much an artist rebels against the art market, commercialization, or capital; there’s no way he or she can exist in isolation from the art market, commercialization, or capital. It doesn’t matter whether the artwork has a material orientation or not. Even if it’s just a concept, the moment this concept is shared publicly, then there’s the potential for it to enter into relationship with the market, and the artwork then takes on the nature of commodity. capital is a two-edged sword. It can help contemporary art to operate, and it can alternatively disrupt the internal logic of contemporary art. Alongside rapid economic development, Chinese contemporary art has exploded internationally. Maybe it’s a bit of an exaggeration to say that Chinese contemporary art has already situated itself at the world’s center. In fact, if you look at things now, Chinese art is already moving back from a climactic moment. Contemporary art is a product of political freedom. It’s a product of Western constitutional democracy, developed as an idea of art which spread like a wave throughout the entire world. Mainland Chinese artists have accepted this way of thinking about art, and developed it to a great extent within a short period of time; precisely because Mainland China’s politics, economics and cultural development have taken on overall connotations of this world-wide wave. Once these indicators have been proven as false indicators, the fervor for Chinese contemporary art will be unavoidable. Chinese contemporary art began in rebellion and challenge to authority. Then it moved into the market and concentrated on technique, entering into a phase of mediocrity and institutionalization, as if just going through the motions, trying but failing to signify authenticity. Once the authorities gained control over this power of creative production, of the production of symbols…then what we have is fake contemporary art. Only when there is non-institutional political freedom is there any possibility of freedom in art.
I don’t understand where Ai Weiwei’s coming from when he addresses this. Perhaps he negates some sort of heroic circumstance. I also have an understanding of the context in which Frédéric Beigbeder made that statement. Frankly, I don’t agree at all with what he says—that China is “the world’s only nation that is simultaneously extremely-Capitalist and extremely–Socialist.” He’s obviously been misled or deluded by certain representations. I hold the opposite point of view. China is not a socialist nation. Nor is it a capitalist one. We talked about this earlier. I see that China flaunts socialism as a form of propaganda; but this socialism bears no resemblance to the socialism we see practiced in Scandinavian countries. China drives itself forward with capitalism, but this capitalism is bereft of the constitutional democracy we see in Western capitalism. It seems as if Qin Hui’s way of seeing things is a bit more in line with reality: “China is country without ‘freedom’, and it’s a society without ‘social welfare or protection’.”
Juan Xu: A lot of your artworks, whether Grabbing the Girl or Christian Facing the Firing Squad, even the Family Memories photography series; all take issue with social problems. However, there is one exception to this pattern--Embrace. This performance artwork is about love and warmth, conveying a “feeling of compassion” lacking in your other artworks. Do you think that “love” has the ability to alleviate the monopoly of suffering in Chinese society perpetrated by capitalism?
Gao Brothers: Embrace started in 1999 as a sort of ongoing project that we’re constantly developing. This performance artwork was originally part of an invitation to join a Beijing performance art event in Huairou district.[1] We felt moved to bring out a feeling of kindness buried deep within us. Then, in 2000, we called upon volunteers back home in Jinan from the northern suburbs, along the south banks of the Yellow River, to help us carry out our large-scale public performance event. Nearly two hundred strangers followed us into the wilderness, embracing.
The main reason for the ever-present critique in our artworks is precisely because we live in a social and political environment that is “anti-love.” It’s a social and political milieu that fosters competition and struggle, inspiring nothing but mutual resentment. Mainland China has always been an environment that pits the top dogs against the underdog, and vice versa. We hope that our critique can help lift this ideological control. Our political critique artworks are essentially the same as our warmer and more idealistic Embrace performance works. They all have as their goal the construction of a more human social order, to create warmer and more humanitarian relationships.
Performance art requires a sort of trail-blazing, a kind of mutual sensibility and artistic warmth. In an interactive performance event, a kind of resonant mutual warmth will result in an open artwork. Embrace, over the past 20 years, has continued as an ongoing artwork, a public event that has spread all over the world: London, Marseille, Tokyo, Rome, and New York. We hope this open project will continue to spread its message and help us to understand humanity everywhere. We don’t know at what point in its expansion Embrace will actually succeed in counteracting the monopoly that capitalism has perpetrated on society. It’s even less certain whether Embrace can dissolve or melt the ice-cold blocks formed in peoples’ hearts. All we do know is that Embrace is beautiful. Those lines by the poet, Auden, serve as a constant warning to us: “We should embrace and kiss one another, otherwise we die.”
[1] Huairou is the name of a district in Beijing. However, the Chinese word 怀柔 huairou also means “cherishing kindness.”
09.04. 2019 Frankfurt am Main