By Yu Christina Yu

Qiu Zhijie is one of the most versatile artists active in China today. He works in a wide range of media, including ink and paper ( A One-Thousand-Time Copy of Lantingxu, 1990-97), rubbing ( Tombstone , 2001), performance ( Prophetic Catalogue of Pushing Back , 2001), video ( Syndrome , 2002), and photography. As a professor at the prestigious National Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou , China , he has also curated many exhibitions and published a series of books on his observations and analysis of contemporary art in China and the world.

This essay focuses on a small body of Qiu's recent light-writing works, where he uses a flashlight to write words in the air against a dark background. In a long exposure time, a camera is able to record the invisible, and otherwise untraceable, movements of the flashlight. Two aspects of these works will serve as the threads of my discussion: time and the passing of time revealed by the marks of light left on a two dimensional surface, and words and their meanings written in such a framed spatial surface. These two aspects are by no means separate or exclusive. On the contrary, as the hyphen that I use to connect the words of light and writing suggests, it is the harmonious collaboration of the two that makes the works illustrated in this catalogue remarkable and memorable.

Twenty-Four Seasons consists of twenty-four color photographs Qiu Zhijie created in a twelve-month period in 2005 and 2006. Against the dark, mysterious and anonymous backgrounds are bright two-character compounds, corresponding to the twenty-four seasonal markers, or jieqi , in traditional Chinese calendar. The calendar is also known as the agricultural calendar ( nongli ), for traditionally the system was closely observed by farmers, who were by far the largest population of China, for planting, farming, harvesting, and storing their crops. Some of the names of the twenty-four seasonal markers are straightforward indicators of time, such as lichun (the first of the twenty-four seasons) meaning the beginning of spring, and chushu (the fourteenth) meaning the end of heat. Others are more symbolic and poetic, such as jingzhe (the third) literally meaning awakening insects, while a few are even assigned specific cultural meanings through historical associations. For a Chinese, the most familiar among all of the twenty-four names is perhaps qingming (the fifth). While literally meaning pure and bright, it is the day of the year when the family pays homage to ancestors at their tombs. The literary tropes devoted to this particular day are too numerous to name here.

Although in today's China few people can name all of the twenty-four seasonal markers, in imperial China before the introduction of the Gregorian calendar they were important time-indicators of not only festivals and auspicious days for certain activities but, more importantly, seeding and harvesting that regulated the sense of time in an agricultural society. Closely observing the twenty-four jieqis in pre-modern China also had the implication of fulfilling one's duties as entailed by and expected in society, as regulated by the Confucian ideology of nangeng nuzhi (men plow, women sew). Thus, the meaning of following the twenty-four jieqis goes beyond the assurance of a prosperous agricultural year, and is closely related to the stability of the imperial reign.

Several surviving Chinese ink paintings demonstrate this importance, and sometimes even the priority, of promoting agricultural production. Of this group of paintings, the most interesting ones are handscrolls such as the Odes of the State of Bin: The Seventh Month (fig. 1), formally attributed to Li Gonglin (ca. 1041-1106) and an anonymous painting, Rice Culture , dating to the early fourteenth century, both in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Although neither painting is inscribed with the names of the twenty-four seasonal markers, they unmistakably depict the cycle of cultivating and harvesting rice in the countryside.

These handscrolls are relevant to my discussion of Qiu Zhijie's Twenty-Four Seasons because they share a similar visual language of representing temporal continuity in image C depicting the cycle of a year starting from spring when the season is appropriate for planting seeds until winter, punctuated by important times of major agricultural activities in between. In the ancient examples, the passage of time is captured in the physical format of a handscroll C the act of unrolling the continuous scroll echoes the experience of an annual agricultural cycle in the viewer's mind. When seeing Qiu Zhijie's twenty-four images in sequence, the viewer also experiences the same passing time of a year in a continuous fashion. Light-written words in the foreground mark the specific time and highlight the temporal continuity of the year.

The place represented in the background is also a significant component in this series of works. Each of the twenty-four photographs has a unique background, corresponding to a specific location where the writing of that particular day took place. Each location is rendered differently in color and composition, and can be appreciated independently. Some of the images are pictorially pleasing and soothing, such as the Major Snow ( daxue ), the twenty-first image in the sequence, in which the Wenming Pond in the Beijing University is tranquil and serene. Some images are bleak and even disturbing, as shown by the yellow helmet lying in the middle of a water puddle in a factory in the Major Cold ( dahan , the twenty-fourth).

The specifics in the background images, their colors and composition, thus also remind the viewer of a fragmented continuity. Although the passage of time is suggested, only certain points on the linear time line are singled out for photographic rendering. This is where Qiu Zhijie's series departs from the continuous temporality represented in traditional handscrolls. In his modern creation, each of the twenty-four jieqis is an individual image, just like each of the leaves from a traditional painting album that can be appreciated independently for its excellence, while put together they form a coherent group. Thus, the passage of a year is not only celebrated in its entirety, but also for each individual moment.

Following the passage of time illustrated in the Twenty-Four Seasons is also retracing the artist's footsteps during the year. Like many Chinese artists active today, Qiu Zhijie has a busy traveling life. Between 2005 and 2006, his footsteps not only appeared in major cities in China, such as Beijing (e.g. the White Dew , the fifteenth), Shanghai (e.g. the Major Cold , the twenty-fourth) Qinghai (the Autumnal Equinox , the sixteenth) and Hangzhou (e.g. the Beginning of Winter , the nineteenth,), but also covered Macao (the Rain Water , the second) and Dartington, England (the Winter Solstice , the twenty-second). No matter where he was, on the twenty-four important days of the year, Qiu stepped outside at night, using his flashlight to write in the air the name of the day at a place technically suitable for light-writing. The locations he chose as backgrounds for his writing are diverse, ranging from a boathouse in Zhangzhou (the Start of Spring , the first) to the imperial Esoteric Buddhist temple Yonghegong (the Vernal Equinox , the fourth), from the dormitory of a factory in Shenyang in north China (the Minor Snow , the twentieth) to the center of Beijing (the Awakening of Insects , the third).

When the twenty-four images are put together, they form a diary of the artist. However, the content of the diary can only become visible when captured in visual forms. The camera becomes a necessary tool to record this intangible passage of time. The series reminds me of Song Dong's Writing Diary with Water , in which the artist uses brush and water to write his diary on a piece of stone (fig. 2). When the water evaporates, the diary disappears. However, photographs document and perpetuate Song Dong's writing experience. In this sense, while both Qiu Zhijie's Twenty-Four Seasons and Song Dong's Writing Diary with Water lament the ephemeral nature of time, they are also a celebration of its permanence.

Another work included in this exhibition can also be interpreted as a diary, or even autobiography, of the artist. That is Starry Night , a continuing project Qiu Zhijie first started on September 16th, 2002. It was the Mid-Autumn Festival (also known as the Moon Festival), one of the few traditional festivals still celebrated by the Chinese today. On the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month each year, family members gather together to enjoy the full moon at its roundest and brightest. A widely celebrated festival in China for more than three thousand years, this particular day of togetherness has been the subject of numerous poems since antiquity. Ironically, the most remarkable and memorable among them are those lamenting the separation of family members and friends who cannot be united. The moon is their only consolation, for even if people in different places cannot be face to face, at least they can gaze at the same moon and think of each other.

It was on this particularly sentimental and culturally significant day that Qiu Zhijie completed the Starry Night . Without question it made him feel nostalgic and sentimental. Isolated, he silently wrote down the names of everyone that once appeared in his life and he could still remember. I do not know if the arrangement of names in this photograph has a particular meaning. Do those written in bigger fonts and thus occupying more space represent people who are more memorable in his life? Are the fainter names tucked away in corners merely those of passers-by in his life, just like shooting stars leaving behind only faint and brief marks in the sky? No matter what the answer is, the presence of the names is perhaps more important than their arrangement.

Only with the presence of numerous stars can there be a starry night. Only with the presence of different people can Qiu Zhijie's life be colorful and eventful. The coming-and-going of these people makes him realize the ephemeral nature of time and its preciousness. In Qiu Zhijie's life, each person is a star. They shine and radiate with light, some longer than others, but eventually all of them will vanish. As the artist has said, even a fixed star has a limited lifetime C it will disappear one day and become a black hole.

In both Chinese and English idioms, light is often used as a metaphor to express the fleeting nature of time. In Chinese, guang yin si jian means that the passing of time is like a shooting arrow, and the character guang literally means light. In science, the light-year is used to measure astronomical distances because of the speed of light. 607 Now is a work that contemplates the transience of time. Surprisingly, Qiu Zhijie demonstrates it by showing not the difficulty of seizing and utilizing time as one may expect, but the banality and triviality of time. This seeming contradiction needs some explanation.

The work was created with the question: how to spend twenty-four hours? Twenty-four hours, an entire day. It is possible that a lot of things will happen, and it is possible that nothing will happen. Within twenty-four hours Qiu Zhijie chose to do one, and only one, thing C writing the two characters, xianzai (literally meaning now). The repetition of the written word, the repetition of the hand (and body) movement, and the repetition of the flashlight trace were attempts to capture and make use of the moment of right now. And yet, in the process of repetition, an entire day passed by. It is understandable that while conducting this repetitive, non-stop, and perhaps boring performance, the artist would dose off. It might have been a long day for him! The piece reminds us of the repetitive nature of everyday life. Under cover of an exciting series of events that might happen in one day, the essential activities of daily life remain the same and unchanged C we wake up to face the world, interact with people, and by the end of the day, seek refuge in dreams. Every day we wait for the most exciting moment in life to happen, but in fact spend time in the daily cycle of repetition and banality.

The similar composition shared by the photographs in the series highlights these qualities. Flanked by two saturated blue curtains are the light-written characters. At first glance, the images do not differ from one another. The differences in framing and cropping C the blue curtains take up a half of the image surface, or one third, or sometimes disappear completely C seems nothing more than an aesthetic strategy. However, further inspection reveals that the framing and cropping device in fact highlights the differences between each written word C the curtains serve as a reference to show their varied sizes and different orientations (some are horizontally written while others vertically). Within repetition and banality there actually exists variety.

The choice of the word xianzai is also of great significance, and reveals the essential temporal meaning of the work. When the artist held the flashlight and wrote in the air, time seemed instantaneous. However, after the writing of a xianzai was complete, what was now had already become the past. In fact, even before finishing writing the word, the previously written light-strokes had already disappeared into oblivion, replaced by the to-be-finished new strokes. Each moment of now is soon replaced by a new now, and in the end we cannot help but ask: what and where is now? Does it really exist? The word xianzai thus brings a new dimension to the power of the work C juxtapositions of now and the past, banality and variety, and simultaneously fleeting and enduring time.

When the three works we have been considering are reflected on together, it is apparent that they share a similarly dreamy and ghostly effect not only due to the dark backgrounds necessary for revealing the light-written characters, but also to their common theme of the passing of time and lamentation over it. Another element consistent in this body of Qiu Zhijie's new works is the usage of writing. Incorporating words and calligraphy in artistic creation is not new in contemporary Chinese art. As discussed by many scholars and art critics, Chinese artists' fascination with writing is deeply rooted in the tradition of Chinese culture, in particular the nature and history of the Chinese writing system. In brief, writing, and calligraphy as an art form associated with it, signified political authority and cultural cultivation in ancient times and still does so today. In his essay in this catalogue, Gao Shiming points out, in terms of cultural and historical significance, the correlation of Qiu Zhijie's writing with flashlight and the literati tradition, especially that of leaving inscriptions on rocks and mountains when traveling ( youxing in his words). While this observation has certain merits, I want to emphasize the difference between Qiu Zhijie's light-writing and the inscriptions and calligraphy practiced by Chinese literati.

In most of Qiu Zhijie's light-writing works, words function as an index of the time and place of the specific photograph in which they appear, rather than emotional responses to a site visited at a specific time as the inscriptions written in ancient times would imply. For example, in the Twenty-Four Seasons , the words written in each photograph are the particular name of the jieqi when the photograph was taken. If the seasonal markers appear against a different background, that is if written at a different locale, the words and their meanings would still be valid. Of course, this is not to deny Qiu Zhijie's careful choice of location for each photograph; on the contrary, the detachment of the particular meaning of the written words from their pictorial backgrounds reveals the artist's aesthetic sensibility and ability to create a visual harmony of words and images.

Similar observations can be made on other light-writing pieces Qiu Zhijie has created in the last two years, but not included in this exhibition. In one of them, the English word home is written in front of the entrance to some typical modern apartments in China , indicating that behind the closed doors are the cherished homes of some anonymous individuals (fig. 3). Similarly, spatial specificity is indicated by the word up seen at the top of a staircase (fig. 4).

For those who have some knowledge of the development of contemporary Chinese art in the past three decades, Qiu Zhijie's light-writing photographs perhaps remind them of writing or anti-writing works created by artists in the 1980s. These pieces, either in the form of pseudo-characters (e.g., Xu Bing's A Book from the Sky , 1987-91 and Gu Wenda's Pseudo-Characters , 1984-86), or phrases taken from their original Cultural Revolution context (e.g. Wu Shanzhuan's Red Rumor: The Big Characters , 1986), extract meaning out of characters and destruct/reconstruct them for the purpose of inserting new meanings and functions. If writing and calligraphy in general denote cultural and political authority, these artists took the opportunities offered by the recent loosening of the social environment during the 1980s to challenge such authority.

Only twenty years later, writing assumes an almost opposite function for Qiu Zhijie C it becomes a means to lament and preserve the lost meanings and values of traditional culture. Characters and words are no longer void of meaning. Rather, it is from these written words that the meaning of the works is derived. As observed above, few Chinese people today can name the twenty-four markers of the seasons. Qiu Zhijie, however, deliberately spent a whole year recording the passing of time by writing down these names and thus immersing himself in this traditional system. On those particular twenty-four nights, Qiu Zhijie held, and literally wrote, his own private ritual to commemorate the once significant moments. In the Starry Night , writing is the effective and powerful way of revealing and recording his memory of the past. With the help of modern photography and Qiu Zhijie's use of long exposure time, the act of writing makes it possible to transform the past into something present and permanent, at least until the time when these photographs are forgotten. Writing also makes the presence of now significant and poignant in 607 Now . The meaning of writing with light is to preserve the past and the now.

Among Qiu Zhjie's curatorial projects are the groundbreaking exhibitions Phenomena & Image (1996) and Post-sense Sensibility C Alien Bodies & Delusion (1999). His writings include three volumes C Zhongyaode shi xianchang (The Scene is the Most Important), Ziyoude youxianxing (The Limitation of Freedom), and Gei wo yige mianju (Give Me a Mask) C all published by the China People University Publishing House in 2003.

Gao Shiming in his essay calls this group of works calli-photo-graphy, combining the words calligraphy and photography. I share his view that writing and light are the two key components of the works discussed here.

For discussions of the usage of words and calligraphy in contemporary Chinese art, see Britta Erickson, ed. The Art of Words without Meaning, Meaning without Words: The Art of Xu Bing ( Washington D.C. : Smithsonian Institution, 2001); and passages in Wu Hung, Transience: Chinese Experimental Art at the End of the Twentieth Century (Chicago: The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art The University of Chicago, 1999).