Huangfu Binghui vs Qiu Zhijie

Huangfu Binghui: your current work takes as the point of reference the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, a historical and cultural landmark that itself carries much symbolic significance. This bridge goes hand in hand with historical events, cultural memory, the current reality of life and future development to form a complex picture. What impresses us most is that you piece together multi-tiered cultural memories and the seemingly familiar objects to form a hierarchy of relations in your work. Would you like to explain how do you handle these relation ships?

Qiu Zhijie: the current work is wholly dependent on one aspect. There are a number of images and these images link historical memory at one end and the present-day happening at the other. Whatever an image or physical object is, it shall construct a historical site for the audience. When these archives are established, the exhibition hall is no longer a white cubic. As a matter of fact, it has been permeated with history and reality to develop into a historical site. The site, together with the Yangtze River Bridge in physical and spiritual sense, forms a relation of these tiers. Those within the relation are undergoing constant changes, specifically, from an object to linguistic sign or image, and then to raw materials for the works until it becomes a physical object displayed in the exhibition hall. Therefore, the whole plan is of apparent labyrinthine nature. It may involve the possibly continuous small and comprehensible reading, however, such reading may be continuously interrupted. The reading experience will be turned into other parts of the whole plan, like archives or materials. Then another reading will be started again.

Huangfu Binghui: how do you make the existing signs in your works to convey new meaning? For instance, Gourd, has a meaning in Chinese culture or Butterfly has its specific meaning in Chinese legendary stories. Actually they are ready made materials. Whether it is read in the context of Chinese history or the current reality, the meaning of such a cultural sign will be endowed with a new, complex and mutual echoing effect on your works.

Qiu Zhijie: when materials are turned into signs, they are, to some extent, symbolized after some classical interpretation. For example, a butterfly may be in association with the story of Zhuang Zi dreaming of butterfly, or a raven with death. In this vein, the Ataraxic of Zhuang Zi means that the Taoist thoughts will be employed to cure the modern life. Actually it can be interpreted this way: Zhuang Zi himself also needs tranquilizer. They are organically interrelated but we are liable to symbolize it in an interpretation. What I attempt to do doesn't involve the operation of symbolization. Rather, I want to withdraw it from the symbol. The withdrawal here is never out of the purely artistic consideration. I just try to keep the symbol unattached to anything else, or in a zero state. The game I want to trigger is the interchanges between these materials. In my mind, coal is raven or raven is butterfly, and butterfly is ink, and ink is coal. Or we may refer to an archaeological pit as a gourd and a gourd is a bridge of nine turnings. I think that all these continuous references to one another are continuous mutual interference with interpretation.

Therefore, once an archaeological pit is interpreted as an ancient tomb, we find nothing buried in the tomb since the coal itself is the body of the forest. There is nothing unearthed from the archaeological pit and the coal itself is what is unearthed. In an archaeological pit, the coal shall be what is unearthed to expose what is buried inside. However, the coal itself is what is buried. Meanwhile, it is a container, and therefore a gourd.

The coal is of double properties as the object of burial and burying materials. The same is true of gourd. Actually we cannot draw a clear distinction between what is inside and what is outside gourd. We cannot enter the gourd and the butterfly cannot help itself out of it. The belly of the gourd is, to a small to the extent a mouth. In this space, another space is created by virtue of the exit, yet a space inaccessible to us. Therefore, it raises double questions. Actually, the rails of the bridge of nine turnings are neither inside nor outside. The bridge itself is not only what can provide a space for viewing other scenes but also what is viewed.

Huangfu Binghui: these properties and perspectives are constantly interchangeable. Therefore, if literally claiming that gourd represents Taoist thought, coal pit death or a tomb, or the bridge Chinese culture, we would be wrong. They are interchangeable and will be erased when you attempt to read them.

Qiu Zhijie: however, in order to frustrate such reading, it is necessary to provide directions. If you don't give any directions, people won't participate in reading. Rather, they tend to approach the coal in the state of nature by proceeding from the much formalized perspectives to measure the proportion, height, space of and the pressure from the archaeological pit. However, the directions are provided here. In the exhibition hall we have raven that may be created and destroyed, and the sound of the raven. All these perceptional elements are directional. However, you probably get lost as you follow these directions.

Huangfu Binghui: I wonder whether the relations you have manifested in the works, like the relation ship to the archaeological pit and to the bridge of nine turnings, echo your words that sound reasonless, where is the capital of Madagascar?

Qiu Zhijie: That question requires no typical standard answer. It is an operation rather than a noun. As usual, I should put down a sentence to express my notion. But in the context of the bridge, the sentence sounds a little bit reasonless. Actually we can point to its functionality since the sentence can serve as a hook to attract your thought.

When you image a guy who cuts his finger to write in blood the following, when the love is gone, what I have to do is to leave me alone. The routine logic will implicitly remind you that the man who leaves such remarks will kill himself by jumping from the bridge. But at that time, he was simply immersed in his own mood. His mood was much exaggerated by the outsiders to desperation. But the true situation is less serious than our prediction. For instance, he may be frustrated by an unrequited love, the falling stock price, and overdue debt; or he may be scolded by his wife. On such occasions, what they need is something that can help them out of bad moods and they shall be offered a descending step or a hook to hold them tightly. Most people commit suicide out of a pure lack of vision. It is hard for him to accept the fact of being dumped by the girl. But if he moves no further to jump, a more wonderful prospect will await him. He grew short-sighted due to his unbridled impulse that he could see the way out. Therefore, we are really in need of something more far-reaching. And two questions where is the capital of Madagascar? and how long is it to 5,000 AC ? are essentially the same idea. The only difference is that the latter points to the temporal distance while the former the spatial one.

Each day we find ourselves in a frenzy of countdown. For instance, you have to clock in for office work and 5 minutes are allowed to reach the office; or there are just 5 days to the Olympic Games. The countdown drives us to believe that the clock-in is top priority. You are haunted by the envisaged seriousness of failure to clock in on time. But when you ask yourself, how long is to 5,000 AC ?, clock-in will appear less and less important. If you look beyond, you will transcend the fixed thinking pattern rather than following the patter blindly.

The thought shall be considered as representing the core value of the whole exhibition. As a matter of fact, what we need to do is to have us depart from the prescheduled destination rather than confining ourselves to the destination. The symbolization-based conceptual art involves a work of solving riddles that are techniques and working language. The process of perceiving works is often referred to as reading or interpretation which is by nature is a riddle-solving process. With the interpretation acquired, we proceed to introduce several resulting questions, such as whether the right to interpret rests with audience or the author, whether it is single-faceted or multi-faceted. These questions, as far as I am concerned, are, without any exception, meaningless on the ground that the whole game is not a riddle-solving endeavor at all. Reading won't occur in the process of either experiencing or contacting. It is an act of doing, say, taking a shower. When you finish the shower, you will feel relaxed, when you finish swimming, you will find your muscle stronger. In the above two cases, I am not reading shower or understanding swimming. Instead, we are on a tour to establish a relation, from which we may derive the experience of one kind or another that borders on reading experience or routine understanding. But they are not the routine reading and understanding in their own right. The riddle-solving art meets no bound. We may encounter some artists who are smart enough to set up some blocks on the road to destination, thus turning the reading or understanding an intellectual game. The worse ones will directly show you the destination. The conceptual art of this type is to encourage the audience to ride on the expressway. For me, as you know, I like driving land cruise car on the bumpy road rather than on the smooth expressway.

Huangfu Binghui: your plan for Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge is a massive and continuous project full of strong social purpose. It seems to represent a characteristic of your recent works. My question is that how can we draw on history or reality and what the relation between to reality looks like?

Qiu Zhijie: To speak of Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, I don't think it is loaded with some social function as many of us had presumed. Camus once said there was only one serious philosophical question, shall we commit suicide or not? This question doesn't address any social theme in both content and significance. Rather, it is related to religion and comprehensive?solution. It is a philosophical question and personal one, and also one of our traditional concerns for luck and opportunity. For many years, I have been referring to the question of disappearance, the question about the things that are dispersed in the ocean of entropy. These questions coupled with the long attachment to tombstones are reflected in the Yangtze River Bridge. On the other hand, the platform is peculiar. Of course, the Bridge was built in 1968 when it was reasonably loaded with the specific social attributes. Viewed from this perspective, it is of some social attribute. Its philosophical attributes overstep, its social counterpart on the one hand and depends upon the latter on the other. When the focus is shifted onto the part above the social attribute, we shall consider the questions of how to turn the bridge into a totalizing art, to use social reality as our resources and to take the history as what is represented. It is worthwhile to discuss our operation method as regards how to turn our own work into part of the history in motion rather than being a static noun for historical reality.

Ever since 1993 when the video showing police brutality against the Blacks was exhibited at Whitney Biennial, the introduction of strange social phenomenon has been in a vogue in the circle of modern arts over the recent years. How shall we understand intervention? Does the art intervene in society or vice versa? When an artist engages in some work, in the capacity of an ordinary citizen, can his work be called art? In this respect, the Bridge can be cited as an interesting case because it involves the multi-tiered aspects. The core issue I consider is that the intervention takes place if it is considered as art since art itself implies intervention.

There is another tier of misconception or doubt that will arise when it comes to the understanding: how can poetic flavor be retained in the presence of intervention? Now that it is difficult to interpret the poetic flavor, how can we intervene it? I want to express that it is precisely the poetic flavor that explains the necessity of intervention. As in the case of where is the capital of Madagascar?, it is the sentence rather than we shall not die that is likely to produce the desired effect. Their presence itself proves another kind of possibility, the possibility of justifying the existence of another world, or a way out. Our understanding of reality is possibly often encased unduly in the concrete historical facts.

Huangfu Binghui: Interaction constitutes an important factor for experiencing your works, not only the current ones but also all your previous ones in which interaction remains a unique characteristic. Would you like to share with us the way you understand and apply this concept: interaction?

Qiu Zhijie: Actually I may intensify my efforts to increase the interaction. For instance, many things, like the piece of paper for tracing over the read characters may be intended for the use of the audience. However, I finally decided to give up since I believe that the interaction can be carried out at many levels, and the target audience comes from multiple backgrounds. When an artist engages in literary creation, he always keeps ideal audience in his mind. The audiences in real life are from multiple backgrounds and therefore their experiences may take various forms at multiple levels.

Actually we take ideal audience as our reference set in spite of little understanding by our contemporaries. We still take as our reference set for our creation the ideal audience in the past or in the future. These works are intended for them. Certainly, there are rare cases that your works are not echoed by any of your contemporaries. After all, we are live in one or another knowledge community. In spite of the imprecise and indefinite boundary between these communities, there exist an approximately agreed boundary that tacitly acknowledged by all of us. It is unreasonable to assert the absence of such a boundary. The target audience constructed by us needs to be activated by us. But the high degree of interaction afforded by a work doesn't signal its high quality. Even the well-praised interaction is not equivalent to the quality of the work. Similarly, those works with which people cannot interact are not necessarily considered as poor ones. One point I want to make here is that Mount?Qomolangma is still beautiful before being discovered by man. The task of an artist is not to win the favors from audience but to create high artistic quality.

The sole body interaction of the audience takes place in treading down Coal Raven. In the beginning, I pave the archaeological pit with coal and the audience is compelled to act as destroyers. The two workers defined as archaeologists work on the daily basis to turn the treaded coal powder and cinder into peat if they are wet, and into cinder if they are dry before being recycled and recast into coal ravens. The recast ravens will be trod down by audience. Comparatively obvious body interaction is encouraged in the archaeological pit, which shows departure from other works with little emphasis on interaction. When I design the route for the visitors to the exhibition, I have conceived of the idea of compelling the audience to tread down the coal ravens. As they enter the pit, they are involved in this game.

Huangfu Binghui: As I have observed, the audience response to the work varies. Some try to avoid while others tread down the coal ravens purposefully. Of course, the avoidance itself is a conflict.

Qiu Zhijie: to be frank, some parts in my plan are designed for the purpose of interaction and the interaction with audience is not highlighted inside the exhibition hall but on the bridge. The interaction on the bridge is real interaction. I have the assumed suicider to trace over the red characters, and draw a picture of the bridge rails. To them, it is nothing less than a gate of hell. The interaction in this part is very direct and frequently experienced by the audience. I have been casting doubts about the interaction activities inside the hall, the interaction program Blocking gunfire in the new media art, in particular. In this program, the body movement of the participating audience will be deformed. Whatever video camera or mechanical device is employed, the core apparatus is cat eye and probe. This is what we call Block gunfire. The game is exciting, but its impact on the human psyche is actually lessened. For this item, I exercise restraint as much as possible.

Huangfu Binghui: you seem to like transforming the space completely, to the very extent of totally modifying the attribute of the museum. When people come to the museum, they may be surprised by a scene which is totally different from what it was like.

Qiu Zhijie: We might call a spade a spade. Actually I have changed nothing in Thought Tank but the archaeological pit proves to a great departure from the traditional one. The Gourd hall was originally designed to be changed. I intend to create a kind of watermark effect with the blue optical image. Considering my years of video recording, I have no difficulty in operating overhand projectors. However, I gave up the original plan after having come to recognize the lack of necessity in doing so. It is, anyhow, a matter of construction difficulty. My consideration is that we cannot create an overtly man-made environment. By overtly man-made, I mean the stagy, which is a fault that should be avoided.

To tell the truth, the coal pit is sort of a spectacle. With the flourishing market of installation art and the growing purchasing power, people can pay several thousand RMB to buy an installation to arrange for their exhibitions, thus the problem is we might as well call it a landscaped exhibition. My ideal scheme is to transport 40 tons of coal to the site, then have the coal compacted by tamping and finally dig a pit. However, it is a pity that the coal pit follows the current practice as a result of technical infeasibility. As you know, the museum lies on the second floor and the usable area is 190 square meters. If 40 and more tons of coal is placed in such a limited space, the bearing limit of the floor will be reached. Technically, if I make my ideal scheme a reality, I have to install scaffold first before throwing coal to create a hollow archaeological pit. As early in 1998, I directly made a pit at Yao Joaquin in Beijing, which I called it Pit 1 Yao Jiayuan. The pit is the one in its own right.

Huangfu Binghui: It sounds interesting. You dug a pit at Yao Jiayuan and originally set up a pit here. You refer to archaeological investigation as a verification of and movement toward the previous knowledge. Could you tell me the difference between the archaeological pit here and the pit at Yao Jiayuan?

Qiu Zhijie: the pit at Yao Jiayuan is intended for us to discover. The archaeological pit is composed of the earth layer by layer which separate one culture from another. All layers at the pit here remain the same and the creativity is much emphasized. What was in the past that has not been determined but created. Two workers who act as archaeologists are two creators. Unlike the common archeologists who routinely detach and brush off the earth to expose the relics, our two archaeologists create physical ravens with coal as materials. Therefore, the archaeological task of recognizing and discovering the past has been turned into molding the present or future. Of course, it involves another aspect, that is to say, it means a cycle, the cycle of materials and shape itself of the coal since the audience is always destroying while these two workers creating.

In the process of making the pit, I was haunted by a worry that it is nothing but a stage and thus our work is no more than a forfeit. At the last stage, the living ravens and 100 and more butterflies are placed within the space between sandwich walls. The space created by the scaffolds becomes a usable and necessary room. When more than 100 butterflies and ravens fly within the sandwich walls at the pit, the back stage disappears. So the artificial scene is not built for creating landscape but turning the idea into a reality. To speaking of this will drag us back to the interaction we just mentioned. I grow such suspicious of interaction that I hope some parts of my works will be concealed from the public view.

In the so-called contemporary art, each technique shall be put to effective use. If I spend 20,000 RMB in buying living ravens, I will let them see the ravens and definitely, the cost incurred thereof shall be recovered from my audience. Obviously, it is strongly utilitarian. In some of my recent works including this work, the part I don't want my audience to view immediately constitutes an important part of the work. It is not within the eyeshot of the audience but it exists objectively there. The audience is expected not to see the whole of the work. The invisible part is so important. With its presence, the work doesn't become a stage. In this way, the work itself represents a life. The life provides us many mysteries and there are a number of things are what doesn't arouse our awareness or perception. But they are simply being. Although we see no roots but branches, leaves and flowers of a tree, the fact is that the tree won't live without any roots.

Huangfu Binghui: Is the invisible part more meaningful to artists than the audience?

Qiu Zhijie: it doesn't only sound meaningful to me. Its meaning lies in its construction of another world. It is an essential of the newly constructed world. If the newly constructed world is required to be complete, the essential element is indispensable and it claims its presence. Johnson Chang once said to me that his sole question on the exhibition is that the archaeological pit is constructed by installation. However, he shows his approval as I remind him of butterflies and ravens. The invisible part thus becomes the criterion for judging the ideal audience.

Huangfu Binghui: it is similar to sacrifice. We have to go through a set of procedures. Procedures are especially important to a sacrifictal ceremony. Firstly, you shall stand on your knees before pouring wine. Each process shall be handled and your piety be represented throughout the whole ceremony. I believe that the visitors to the exhibition will first be shocked by the large manufacturing scale and huge work on investigation made before the commencement of the project.

Qiu Zhijie: over the past years, the artists have been dragged into certain misconception, by resorting to one technique or another. It is no exaggeration to claim that all possible methods are employed in the images, from traditional Chinese images such as Lungful, calligraphy, black and white painting, Taiji, and the Book of Changes, to the images representative of Red China like Tiananmen Square, panda, Chairman Mao and red, and to the images representing the Chinese policy of reform and opening up and the resulting rise of China (which is accompanied by the China threat theory), such as bird nest(National Stadium for the Beijing Olympics), Oriental Pearl Tower, unfinished deserted building and nail household. All these images in your hand are like sharp swords you may depend on to the extent that there is no need for you to cultivate internal force. We tend to draw on the ready made resources and unique techniques to complete our works. All in all, we make our works with a wartime mentality. I come to retreat from the war over the past years, or at least I try to avoid the operation method of using stratagems and switch to something meaningful, something that shall be compelled by historical and personal circumstances. They shall be made regardless of shame, loss or gain. You may make mistakes and the victory shall not be taken as a criterion for judging works. I don't know my correctness in my feeling that the contemporary artists tend to make themselves military commanders.

Huangfu Binghui: I can understand what you've driving at. You address the current situation in China, the status quo of contemporary arts and also the common problems facing the world art circle. I presume that I fully understand your attitude, your choice. My question is, how you intend to face these problems in the context of greater culture?

Qiu Zhijie: Artists always work by their own systems. The modern artists are always worried about their work. An artist keeps confidentiality about his schemes. If the scheme is known by his counterparts, they can produce the similar works. In artistic design process, he constantly calculates how to defend and protect himself, attack and destroy others so that he can take the better of other artists or win the favor of his audience. Therefore, he is in the calculating state. But when he calculates, he has slipped into the second tier of artist, because he is afraid of getting hurt. For an artist, the higher artistic realm is that he shall not be afraid of getting hurt, to speaking nothing of calculating. We should engage in the artistic creation by the high-quality standard. As far as I am concerned, the artist of the high attainment shall be the one who will tell his fellow artists what's on his mind. It doesn't matter at all. You may join in the work. I am not sure whether I can meet this standard. At least I find myself away from it now. But I will strive for this goal in my future work.

Huangfu Binghui: many critics have proposed in their articles the idea that an artist should nail down a point of access first. He shall simplify his artistic work into the business in which he can win international market with his China Wisdom. As an artist, I guess you have your own reflection on the Chinese artistic works on the international platform. How do you look at China Wisdom?

Qiu Zhijie: I feel that Chinese people now are living in the culture where people are likely to talk about what you may gain from your work. This is a representation of utilitarianism. We tend to be driven by the questions like what can we bring in and gain, whether we shall occupy the position of center, or how we can advance from periphery to center, what shall be exported and imported in return. These questions reflect the utilitarianism. As a matter of fact, more attention shall be directed to the following questions, what we provide to the world, who is our target audience, what problems arise in the present-day world, what traditional Chinese solutions may be employed to address the problem, or what schemes we are developing may be helpful to people in other cultures. Still, we should ask ourselves what I can contribute rather than what I can gain. In order to be a giver, we must improve ourselves, reflect on ourselves and reinterpret our tradition. In the meantime, we shall learn how to create, create a new tradition. All in all, we shall turn ourselves into helping hands to others.

It is what ancient Chinese people did. It is a change in standpoint. I think that what lies at the very depth and nucleus of Chinese culture is the sense of transcendence over the temporal and spatial change. Although we may sigh with emotion over the fleeting cloud and the vicissititudes of life, we have a lot of methods to transcend such vicissitudes and transitoriness in our life. Our life exists in the process of coming and going. In reunion and parting, in lovesickness and getting along with others, we will develop a minute experience of life, a life philosophy of allowing for grief without being too painful. This is the core of the so-called China wisdom. Our pursuit of life of high quality is not measured by some fixed indices. We never take the victory as the standard to evaluate a hero. This is a set of understandings of a healthy life. I think these core values are not exhausted by our predecessors. They may lend themselves to the present world. With these values as the basis, we can propose effective solutions to address our prejudice against other cultures and peoples, to cultivate the ideal of developing a world of harmony but not sameness, to put an end to cultural wars and racial segregation, and to combat terrorism.

In view of this, I suggest we should assume another profile to take a more positive attitude rather than narrow-minded self protection. That is to say, I make all I have available to you. You apply my contributions to check their feasibility in your culture. If they fail to accommodate your demands, I will strive hard to recreate, recombine and rethink. I am convinced that this is the something innermost in my Yangtze River Bridge plan. Yangtze River Bridge plan involves a section of history and also a reality. It is immoral to apply stratagems in this plan. We have no stratagems to apply there but combine our body and soul in its history.

Huangfu Binghui: What's your stand on concepts such as cross-media, inter-disciplinary and cross-field?

Qiu Zhijie: Cross or inter is an unavoidable consequence. The present discipline-based division is by nature temporary, or instrumental. The man's creativity is by no means bound that we shall not jump at a definition. We often refer to artistic work, medical work or archaeological work, but there is no need for us to draw such a clear distinction. Therefore, I don't endeavor to categorize my exhibits at the exhibition this time and I even can't figure out how many pieces of works I have prepared for the exhibition. Some labels you see are temporary. Take Hall 1 for example, we label two gourds as big and small respectively. In strict sense, they however are counted as the same piece of work. Furthermore, it is the same as the ink grinding machine. Do you think the characters made of coal powder on the wall behind gourd are the same as it, or the ravens below the characters are the same as those in the pit? If the boundaries between pieces of works are blurred, I don't know exactly how many pieces of works I have made, and which belong to archives or thought tank. Take the Bridge of Nine Turnings for example, the bridge is safe to be considered as a piece of work, but the relief images on it are actually part of archives. Another work that troubles us is the house lizard made of old newspapers. No one feels assured in classifying it into achieves or works. As a matter of fact, we have works, non-works, and pseudo-works in the exhibition hall. For instance, when I put a coal in the archives case with old books in it, do you think I regard the coal as a historical relic of Yangtze River Bridge. Put it differently, do you think that the case is turned into an installation art since I put a coal in it. To these questions, no one ventures to give definite answers.

Do those beds I collect belong to the works in the traditional sense? Do they become an artistic work due to my adding a clock onto it? Of course, I never trouble myself in answering these questions. I don't care whether they are works or how many pieces of works can be figured out. Where is the boundary between works? This question is not important in the least. As artists, we are duty-bound to provide people a kind of life. And such a life will engender another kind of life. Therefore, I point to totalizing art here since it is really hard to draw a clear distinction. Could you tell me, as you have observed, where the exhibition hall is, on the Thumb Square or Yangtze River Bridge, in our heart or media.

Huangfu Binghui: That's great! If we completely follow the trodden line of thought to judge an artist, we will calculate how many pieces of works he makes and draw a clear distinction between artistic works and non-artistic works.

Qiu Zhijie: if we take a man as creator, he may engage in mass production, sporadic transformation, tip-and-run insertion, extension or group insertion of artistic works. The exhibition is arranged to accommodate the reality. If you offer me a space, I will arrange exhibition in light of the local reality. If there is no such a space offered, I will plan others. Even if there is no room provided at all, I can still conceive of other things. Take the program of Writing In Blood where is the capital of Madagascar on the bridge, it doesn't cost any materials but your mental power. What you need to do is to perceive with your heart and a knife will suffice. However, the coal pit costs more than 20,000 RMB. In addition to the mutual support from a whole set of things, the force of a work needs to be backed up by the life that lies behind it. It doesn't matter how much money you spend in the exhibition hall.

Huangfu Binghui: what we talk about involves three aspects. That is to say, the question you explore in your works is the topic of the representation of historical events. One is to represent the relationship between history and reality; another is to represent the relation between history and artistic practice and the last one is to represent the relation between history and our opinion. The question of these relation ships will concern the methodology of representing and reconstructing history if lifted to a higher level; and involve your creation in the process of representing history if lifted to further level. These three levels of relations are actually what enlighten me as I observe your works. Our talk today doesn't directly pertain to the question on the surface of the works alone. Actually, your artistic thought has been formed in the years of your artistic practice.

Chinese contemporary art has been developed for years. In the past 20 years, there have been multiple interpretations on it. Some say that the whole contemporary art represents the western likes or tastes and its commercial value has hit tens or hundreds of million RMB. What is the biggest problem and challenge facing the Chinese contemporary art when it is performed on the international platform? What are your comments on it as an artist?

Qiu Zhijie: It doesn't seem to me that this is a problem with Chinese contemporary art alone. It is a global problem facing the whole contemporary art. The problem is that artists have been gradually institutionalized. Contemporary artists are, to some extent, the standard products. They are supposed to play bad boys and fashion stars as the surroundings compel. They try every means to make themselves accommodated to the roles preset by the modern exhibition system. The art is restrained and transformed by this system to the extent that there exists a gap between man's requirements and artist's requirement. When a man becomes an artist, he will live by another set of standards of life. Therefore, the most difficult dil emma to break through is to properly address our relation with the system. We shall create a system to highlight an artist as a man rather than support the system. The system, of course, is what we can transcend. The question is whether we continue our efforts if our works are totally unmarketable either in arts market or museum. If there is no museum, shall we engage in artistic creation? If there is no exhibition fair, shall we still engage in artistic creation? These questions are what we shall ask ourselves. On the part of me, I will give a definitely positive answer. I will do if my works are not marketable. To make a living is easy. I may try some luck on stock or run a small store. I believe that my imaginative activity will be fulfilled in the way that my specific economy and materials can sustain my artistic venture.

We may take advantage of the system to work for us, but we must be conscious that it castrates us in some ways. We shall center on the principle that an artist is a man in the first place. The first step is to make an artist a complete man, a man who is brave to shoulder responsibility, live by moral principles and make contributions, and finally, a man with charms. The emotion and morality shall be much valued in the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge plan. Our aim is to make ourselves men with justice, morality and lofty thoughts and feelings. We shall not allow ourselves in a frenzy of pursuing victory in the competitions within the circle of arts and the untold competitions of various types in the world. Instead, we shall take as the ultimate goals the Olympic motto: higher, faster and stronger. Only in this way can we as players truly understand what makes us happy.

Huangfu Binghui: An artist shall persevere in their artistic belief. I think I agree to your notion. As I have observed, many artists won't go in for artistic work if there is no market offered to them. But for you, artistic work itself is the choice of a life.

Qiu Zhijie: yes, it brings me happiness. But it just touches upon one aspect. As for Chinese artists, we are burdened with an extra mission, the domestic mission of filling the fissures that exist between Chinese artists. Globally, we shall repair the gap between artists and men. In respect to Chinese circle of arts, we must address the divergence in our artistic standards. For instance, there exist some conflicts between our current artistic love and those loves for great master Hongyi, Leonardo da Vinci, Huang Binhong and Boeys. If these conflicts exist, we will be denied happiness. We will be never complete and sound, potentially faulty. We shall coordinate and nurture them into a cluster of harmony.