Kate Fowle

In 1998, six years after graduating from art school, Qiu Zhijie wrote a conference paper entitled ‘The Zone of Errors in Conceptual Art' in which he described a trend between artists in their worship of boredom: “After seeing such work I understood why the revolutionary masses would rather stay home watching soap operas and MTV; it's much better to watch commercials than a video of a chicken slowly dying, fluttering.”

Produced at the time when the art world in China was being radically transformed from an ecosystem into a battlefield, the text was Qiu's first public statement against this warped evolution and the cynical hijacking of art: “Such works only tried to prove that one artist was more clever than another, and of course tried to prove that he was more intelligent than the audience. Basically, there was no recognition that works can be composite: they can narrate things; carry emotions that can move and affect people; and they can even be visually pleasurable and stimulating. Certain works are called ‘conceptual' but these concepts only appear to be concepts; there really are no concepts in them. Conceptual art has got into a zone of errors.”

A year later Qiu co-curated the first in a series of exhibitions under the term “Post-Sense Sensibility” that amplified his sense of urgency in warding off complacency: “ Post-Sense sensibility is growing uncontrollably from the bottom of your heart, the stuff that you do not wish to admit, that which you cannot identify. Post-Sense Sensibility is a possibility.” Now considered to be seminal as the first shows to exhibit process-oriented practices, Post-Sense Sensibility: Alien Bodies and Delusion included over 20 emerging artists who were all opposed to the commodification of art, instead favouring ‘live' works that could create immediate, visceral experiences. The second, Post-Sense Sensibility: Spree , took place in early March, 2001 and involved many of the same artists and concerns, but this time Qiu also critiqued the exhibition format.

Spree took place at the Beijing Film Academy Theater and lasted a matter of hours. Uncompromising in every way, visitors were told to arrive by 3pm, after which the doors were shut and no-one was allowed to come or go. What ensued literally removed the gap between the audience and the stage through an intense barrage of simultaneous performances, video projections, and soundscapes, all broadcast to latecomers via a small monitor placed in front of the locked doors.

Considered to herald the emergence of new media and “in-situ” practices in China, Spree remains influential as a collaborative project that became a work in its own right. But, perhaps more significantly for Qiu, the project was an experiment in breaking down barriers between the artist and audience while making a distinction between participants and observers.

Public engagement was the motivation for another curatorial experiment, the Long March—A Walking Visual Display, in 2002. This was a three-month journey along the 6,000-mile route of the historical Long March, involving over 250 local and international artists in a series of exhibitions, screenings, performances, and symposia that took place along the way. As one of the central forces behind the project, Qiu's interests lay in the opportunity for direct social investigation with people from different class structures and histories, using this as a way to find meaningful form for his own practice.

While reactive to the intellectual and political contexts of the 1990s in China, Qiu's early texts and curatorial projects were also extensions of his individual works which consistently addressed the “smoke and mirrors” of a surface-driven culture. For example, Public Life (1994)—an architectural model of public toilets constructed in glass—was a proposition to reveal bodily functions that civil society hides; Qiu's signature photographic series, Tattoo (1994-2000), used his own torso against a wall as a canvas on which to overlay ways the individual is camouflaged within a community; and an expansive multimedia series, The West (1999-2005) surveyed hundreds of people to map, record, and visualize views on (and knowledge of) the West, prompted by Chinese media coverage of the 1999 U.S. bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.

In parallel, Qiu has produced numerous works that seek to recapture a sense of cultural depth though the use of Chinese traditions, particularly drawing on his training in calligraphy. In Copying the “Preface to the Orchid Pavilion” One Thousand Times (1990-1995), Qiu imitated the famous 4 th century work by Wang Xizhi, which is a long-time learning exercise for all aspiring calligraphers. The only difference between his five-year practice and other protégés was that Qiu used the same sheet of paper each time, so that by the end there was no evidence of his improvement. Similarly in 10 Tang Poems (2000) Qiu used another self-cultivation technique, writing each verse from memory, backwards, starting with the last character and reversing each word. By recording the process and then reversing the footage, the final video work shows the artist erasing the text character by character.

The quietly performative and durational aspects of calligraphy are central influences to many of Qiu's works, most clearly in his ongoing “light-calligraphy” long-exposure photographs, and more subtly in the development of what he calls Total Art, which is becoming the core of his life's work. Ironically, this began when Qiu became head of the Conceptual Art Studio at the China Art Academy in Hangzhou in 2003. Bringing all facets of his practice to bear, Qiu renamed the program the Total Art Studio and it has been his laboratory ever since.

The premise of the Studio is to remove what Qiu sees as the false distinctions or boundaries between academic disciplines; between the quotidian, pedagogy, and creation; between master and student; and individual and collective practice. Emphasis is placed on developing skills for close observation and research (in the library and in the field,) as well as understanding ‘unlearning,' to avoid making assumptions and taking knowledge for granted. Output includes writing, actions, durational projects, archiving, and exhibition-making, as well as art objects. The results are myriad.

In terms of what the studio produces, as Qiu recently commented, in Chinese the word is not really Total Art but 贯 通 , or Guantong art, which is almost impossible to translate: “Roughly it means ‘to have a thorough knowledge of; be well versed in,' and ‘link up; thread together.' It's also based in ideas from Confucianism. All the traditional Chinese literati believed that art is a channel of self-cultivation and also the means of social transformation.”

In some projects the process of Total Art is also what constitutes the work, and others it is the means to explore larger themes. The former is exemplified in How to Empty Your Mind (2008) wherein for one month Qiu and the Studio conducted classes in the midst of a group show, inviting the public to share in daily activities, including writing backwards, making-mistakes, and knowing through walking. Notes from each session were cut into blackboards, which were then screen-printed and the posters given away.

Recently the Studio has undertaken a number of projects that involve the destabilization of grand narratives. One of the first was Tibet Study (2006-7) which asked if the concept of Tibet as a Shangri-La (a common visualization by Tibetan artists in the last 50 years) resonates with local people now. The most recent (2010-11) was in Quyang County in Heibei Province, where the two major industries (both in demise) are the transportation of coal and stone-carving, particularly white marble. For each, intensive studies into local history and culture are followed by weeks of group travel, talking with residents—from workers to government officials, industrialists to living Buddha's—questioning what constitutes ‘contemporary;' relationships to modernity; urbanization; and the role of historical consciousness. Source materials are gathered and events staged, before processing occurs back in the studio, resulting in archives, installations, performances, and often in further projects.

The most far-reaching to date is Qiu's Nanjing Bridge Project , which is ongoing since 2007. Now constituted by hundreds of artworks, numerous exhibitions, texts, and publications, the starting point is the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, built in 1968 during the Cultural Revolution and celebrated nationally as a symbol of China's modernization. Listed in the Guinness Book of Records for its engineering feats, the bridge is now also known as the world's top suicide destination. Exploring how complexities in historical significance overlap those of daily local realities, Qiu's involvement with the site ranges from supporting a Suicide Watch, to replacing a suicide note with the impossible question, “Where is the capital of Madagascar?” written in his own blood on the bridge's ledge, as a pause for thought and hope for re-evaluating the desire to jump.

The maps Qiu produced for this publication are elaborated from his working systems diagrams. Each unravel connections between concepts, influences, actions, outcomes, and predictions, while charting the collective histories, cultural memories, societal infrastructures, and individual desires underpinning his practice: The Map of the 21 st Century, and Map of Total Art represent overarching philosophies and associations; the maps of Utopia and Spirit Regeneration function similarly, but also track thinking behind specific projects (a performance festival in Hangzhou and the 2012 Shanghai Biennial respectively;) and the Map of the Nanjing Bridge merges topographical detail with past and future Project concepts and works.

Each map can be read as Qiu's “method of loci,” using the familiarity of place for memory association and recall, while at the same time revealing his personal version of psychogeography. Like many maps, each is intended as a guide rather than representing any physical reality (or artwork,) introducing the terrain of a practice too vast to otherwise comprehend.