Christina Li

As one steps into QiuZhijie's first Dutch solo presentation at Witte de With, entitled Blueprints , the visitor first is confronted with a five-meter long hand drawn map, Map of Total Art - forming the crux of Qiu's long term investigation under a myriad of identities, as an artist, teacher, cultural archaeologist, curator and thinker – as he brings forth the concept of ‘total art' as an artistic practice rooted on cultural research which forms the basis for bettering mankind and the world we collectively inhabit [1] . The exhibition is a multifarious presentation of atlases of philosophy and world thought, drawn from major political and historical narratives, set alongside specific maps charting recent critical sociological observations and phenomena of China's burgeoning economy and experiences with modernization. These ink-based wall maps, provides a glimpse into Qiu's thought processes, influences, intellectual foundation as well as his continued interest in calligraphy, that have informed his work in the recent years.

A number of the featured maps, Map of 21 st Century , Map of Utopia , Map of Total Art, Map of Chinese History, and Map of Reactivation , not only offers a summary from Qiu's point of view on the development and genealogy of ideas that form our contemporary world, but also serve as cornerstones for the 9 th Shanghai Biennale, which operates under the central theme of “Reactivation”, with emphasis on (art) education as a space of energy generation as well as a motivational force for social transformation. As one of the co-curators of the Biennale (together with Boris Groys Jens Hoffman and Johnson Chang), Qiu has employed Map of Reactivation , represented through droves of pipes, boilers (Boiler of Reform), respiratory and digestive systems (marked with terms like Redigestion, Collage, Filter and Learn) and mountain ridges (with nodes such as Education, Depletion, Creativity), as his visual essay. This map, presented alongside Map of the City – the map of a historical tourist city, based on Amsterdam; Map of the Academy – a map of inquisitive learning spaces and concepts surrounding unconventional forms of learning; and Map of Inter-city Pavilion – a globe marking the selected cities, e.g. Istanbul, Shanghai, Palermo, Antwerp, Berlin, Auckland, and Bandung, among others, taking part of the guest curated city pavilions; all of these maps underpin the different forms and models that are taken into collective revisiting in the exploration of the biennale theme, with particular interest in the process of shared, horizontal knowledge production and a proposition to apprehend our world outside of nation states and national identity but through the microcosms of cities. These maps function as blueprints of an ongoing desire to inject reinvigorated possibilities in the consideration of the ways in which an exhibition's architecture could be founded upon the collective debate and individual contributions, where research and artistic practice co-exist and create cross pollinations within the framework of the “Reactivation”.

The featured maps in Blueprints contain complex universes of thought with the intent to establish a renewed understanding of how to view the world at present where terms, concepts and political, philosophical cultural and religious ideology which originated from Europe and Asia occupy and enter the same mapped plane. By proposing a shift beyond long standing fixed opinions to juxtapose seemingly different conceptions, historically and culturally, creates a new opening in which we can contemplate on our relationship with history and the world, outside of the East-West divide. With the case of the Map of Total Art, a map that summarizes Qiu's philosophy of artistic thinking and education, unprecedented linkages and leaps are made through the associations of Taoist philosophies are set to compliment Duchampian and Beuysian ideas of art, as well as media theories challenging and breaking past the clearly defined academic disciplines of Chinese and Western schools of art historical education. The use of layering in Qiu's maps, a technique used in taking abstracted information and weaving them into a complex fabric of relations, where there is no presence of focal point, hierarchical structure or single organization, [2] allowing for open interpretations or hybrids to be made. The way in which the information are laid out where thoughts with similar or absolutely divergent origins, timeframes coincide, while taking into account the multiplicity of reality, forming a new genealogy of thought and encounters, as bookmarks, jumping stones, read according to each visitor's selective interaction, to multiple open ended destinations and permanent new readings.

QiuZhijie's artistic practice is deeply intertwined with socio-cultural research work to gain insight on the ever-changing country of China, as seen through his projects, “Why Go to Tibet – Survey of Tibetan Subject Matter in Painting” in 2007, and “Ataraxic of ZhuangZi - A Suicidology of The Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge” in 2008, which is translated into and presented as a wall drawing, Map of Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge , in the exhibition, where the numerous issues and problems that have emerged from the ongoing transformations of modern China, are presented through the metaphor of a dam and river bridge of Nanjing, the first double-track highway and railway bridge constructed solely by Chinese companies, which is on one hand a national landmark, yet on the other hand, it is the site for the world's highest reported number of suicides, revealing the frictions between national pride and individual turmoil within the country in the face of progress within Chinese contemporary society. Terminology such as Mental Health, Suicide Prevention, Destroyed Countryside, Return Home, Optimization, and Industrialization, indicate some common experiences that the contemporary migrant worker are going through, as they try to cope with the everyday expectations and frustrations, nonetheless as in many of his maps, Qiu offers salve to offset the negative, destructive and seemingly despondent facts, where friendship and temporary withdrawal offer important regeneration for contemporary subjects, in this case, he mentions sites such as, Mount Philosophy, Academy of Total Art and the Pagoda of Think It Over, which offer a moment of philosophical reflection and psychological assuagement,

The lenses are also cast onto a different view of China - Shanghai, the home city of upcoming Biennale - becomes another site of Qiu's miniature sociological research, all encapsulated within Map of Sun Yat-sen Park . Forming an image at odds with the Map of Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge , the map of this city park in Shanghai sketches a different cross section of the Chinese society populated by young netizens, middle-class families, foreign expatriate workers and elderly members which all gather within the park, which functions both as a public arena as well as a space of leisure. It is precisely this space of leisure making, artificial nature and cultural consumerism, which presents the tensions between the pace of development and the perception of Chinese tradition and culture, as seen through the uncanny coexistence of western holiday landmarks alongside ancient tombs, tea houses, Qigong and Tai chi classes separated for cancer patients and foreigners, speakers' corners, lottery of world cultural heritage festival, and the ubiquitous contemporary art museum. The conglomeration of activities conjures an image of a confident, contemporary Chinese society, heralded under the four different zones designated by Qiu: the Transformation of Family to Country, Birth of Leisure, Birth of Landscape and Rebirth of the Society. It is only on the edge of this map, one sees the instances of dissonance with the fast-paced the society, illustrated by the ideas that occupy the margins of this map, simply marked as the Birth of Wilderness, or a mentioning of the Lost Natural Historian, to the Hometown of the Plant, not only symbolizing the society's increasing dislocation and disinterest with nature as well as functioning as an subtle reminder of the boundaries in which the world that Qiu has knowingly chosen to present here to us in this map series to drive his points across.

In an eloquent manner, Qiu's Blueprints has assembled sprawling links and nodes of both Easten and Western intellectual thought, with careful regard to avoid simplified notions of universalisms and a delicate balance between his subjective understanding of the world and China at present. As we witness the of transformation of modern China through industrialization, rural urban migration to the rise of the leisure class, one cannot help but to draw similar comparisons to pathways that have been adapted by Western countries in the 19 th Century. However, more and more so, it seems irrelevant to speculate whether China, and other countries will follow the path of the Western countries, which are evidently undergoing an existential crisis. Qiu's inquisitive attitude to knowledge, and through his organics blending and intermingling, of schools of thought and displines might provide us with new insights by reinvigorating existing ideas, as to how to chart our world as human beings.

[1] QiuZhijie is a professor at the School of Inter-media Art, the Director of Total Art Studio and member of the supervisor team in the Art and Social Thoughts Institute oat the China Art Academy, Beijing.

[2] James Corner, The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique and Invention. In Denis Cosgrove, (red.) Mappings, London: 1999. p.235