— Excerpts from a Conversation Between Lu Jie, Gao Shiming and Qiu Zhijie

Date: February 21st, 2009

Place: UCCA Auditorium

Moderator: Guo Xiaoyan (Chief Curator at UCCA)

Guests: Lu Jie (Director of Long March Space), Gao Shiming (Curator)

Lu Jie: Talking with Gao Shiming about Qiu Zhijie is a strange and familiar topic for me. I had the opportunity to visit Qiu Zhijie during the installation of Breaking Through the Ice . There was a moment of shock for me as I walked through the exhibition; a strange feeling that was very different from how I felt during discussions about the exhibition proposal.

Gao Shiming: I remember last year when the exhibition House of Oracles: A Huang Yong Ping Retrospective opened and UCCA invited Qiu Zhijie to give a lecture. I thought about how there were two interesting sets of textual documents which came out of Chinese art history in the 1980s and 1990s — both written by artists. The first was a collection of Huang Yong Ping's manuscripts from 1982 to 1984. This manuscript was included as part of ' 85 New Wave Archive , published by UCCA last year. The second one was written ten years later by Qiu Zhijie and based on the three note books he filled during his stay in Santaishan, Hangzhou , between 1991 and 1994. This text, entitled The Limitation of Freedom , became his first publication.

There are some interesting correlations between these two manuscripts, because they both drew from the same “sources”. Both texts used philosophical strands from Ludwig Wittgenstein, and both referred to Rene Magritte's visual work as well. The interesting question is why these two artists pursued such different paths and how their parallel inquiries produced remarkably different results.

There are two possibilities that account for this. First, both artists also drew on Zen Buddhism, but the emphasis Huang Yong Ping placed on Buddhism was greater that Qiu Zhijie's. Second, after Huang Yong Ping left China his referential context changed and he encountered new problems. In his case, he left one system and entered into another, leading him to take up a new approach. Qiu Zhijie, however, was never a nihilist at heart like Huang Yong Ping, who was active during the Dada period in the 1980s. And Qiu Zhijie stayed in China . Although he participates in many international exhibitions, the focus of his livelihood and his concerns continue to be China .

Qiu Zhijie's theoretical approach and his writings are almost unassailable. He has yet to find a critic who is his equal match. His works have shifted over a number of different periods, ranging from his Copying Lanting Xu a Thousand Times during the early 1990s; conceptual art and new media art between '95 and '96; a brief period of “anti-conceptual art”; “post-sense sensibility”; a transition period through “live art”; and finally self-discovery with the “Long March Project”. Later he combined his “Long March” experience with “live art” to create what he calls “total art”. The concept of “total art” covers both creative processes and education.

There were many turning points in the evolution of Qiu Zhijie's ideas, and his decisions were self-engineered and independently executed. This is perhaps the biggest difference between Qiu Zhijie and Huang Yong Ping. Within the new system, Huang Yong Ping was very flexible in the way he created different plans and solutions by applying strategies from the art of war to counter different language environments and specific moments in time, in a process that prioritized problem-solving. Qiu Zhijie, on the other hand, has his own creative process. I think this achievement alone guarantees a place for Qiu Zhijie in art history, but I also think this honor could also become an obstacle in his creative process.

I admire Qiu Zhijie's courageous spirit. I also admire the fact that UCCA can put on an ambitious exhibition in a time like this. Doing his best has always been Qiu's signature style. Many people do not agree with his tactics, but he is nevertheless very confident about his originality. He will always have new ideas, and new forces of creativity will surface in his work.

Lu Jie: It is incredibly meaningful how you talked extensively about large “systems” and “capacity for tolerance”. Qiu Zhijie has always been on the pulse of his times and his sincerity is impressive.

Qiu Zhijie, how do you see the time we live in now? When you were invited to do this kind of exhibition, did you want to use this opportunity to challenge or affirm something? Or did you have larger politics in mind?

Qiu Zhijie: Well, not only did I spare no pains in putting this show together, I also always created new missions. I always believe that people work best under pressure. In Thirty Letters to Qiu Jiawa , one of the titles reads “The more you consume, the more you acquire”. This is something Joseph Beuys said, and I am passing it on to my daughter.

I wanted to use this space because I have accumulated so many massive ideas for projects that only UCCA could accommodate my plans. After my proposal was accepted I was presented with the limitation of the space itself. The limitation of the space was decisive in forcing me to find a balance and fully utilize the exhibition space. Over the course of three months, the artworks were realized on site. In preparation, I made eight versions of the exhibition layout.

Speaking of “sincerity”, I think for the longest time people accumulated stereotypes about artists — stereotypes that treat the artist as a genius who is also somehow mentally deficient.

Gao Shiming: For a lot of people, their first reaction to this exhibition is astonishment. After being astonished, most people have a direct response, and there are often two types of criticisms. The first criticism is there are too many works. Artists, curators and theorists who come from an older generation complained that the works were placed too closely together. They would rather edit half of them out of the show. It is hard to determine whether this is one artwork, or many artworks. In fact, when I first saw the exhibition, my first question was: “Is he making an exhibition or is he making an artwork?” If it is an exhibition, is the space too theatrical? Is the space taken over by props? Actually, however, this exhibition is a composite of imagery, in which visual fragments are simply variations of a larger image.

Richard Wagner is a central figure in Qiu Zhijie's system of “total art”. We know that Wagner designed an opera house especially to perform his operas—Bayreuth Festspielhaus (Bayreuth  Festival Theatre ). He went so far as believing some of his operas could only be performed there. On some level I think Wagner was the first “live art” artist. Critics of Wagner attacked his work for being overwhelming and chaotic. Qiu Zhijie faces similar critiques today, but his works can be understood like Wagner's gesamtkunstwerk. Inside the Festspielhaus, all sensory experiences intertwined so that sound, lighting, imagery and space remain inseparable. The audience uses not only their ears to listen to the opera, but also their eyes to observe the performance on stage. All elements are combined to create a synthesized experience. This is Wagner's ideal.

I think on this level, Qiu Zhijie's exhibition is perhaps a Wagnerian exhibition. He wishes to give you a full experience. Of course this is not entirely homogenized, the interior is very complicated, and you can find endless details inside. These details conflict with each other.

Lu Jie: I agree with what you've said so far about Wagner and the “composite of imagery”. I think this is very symbolic and important for Qiu Zhijie. While we were doing the Long March Project, we spoke extensively about “metaphor”. Before our discussion of metaphor people were more concerned with symbols.

Today, as we look at the site of the exhibition, especially after you brought up Wagner, I want to spend some time on the topic of “sacrifice”. This is a concern that connects the exhibition (entitled Ataraxic of Zhuang Zi - A Suicidology of The Nanjing Yangzi River Bridge ) at Shanghai Zendai MOMA to this exhibition Breaking Through the Ice , as well as to his previous work at UCCA, How to Empty your Mind .

I want to remind us of the basic relationship between Wagner and Nietzsche. At the same time we must also take into account the historical specificity of Wagner and Nietzsche, weeding through older analyses to bring forth new interpretations of Wagner and Nietzsche, as well as questions regarding Nazism and Futurism.

Gao Shiming: Which later included Heidegger.

Lu Jie: The representation of historical feeling guides, and perhaps limits, how Qiu Zhijie interprets knowledge. You said an exhibition is made up of one artwork. “Relativism” and “dualism” purposely compress history in opposition with each other. The compression of history makes each artwork unique. Because each artwork exists within a particular moment in time, innovation can take place. This is the foundation for new concepts; you can negate other people's ideas, or construct an ability to constantly negate even your own past. So we have to be alert as to how we actually interface with other people's knowledge and other people's limitations, and be aware of our own inertia when it comes to appreciating art. We are often told what to think.

I think we tend to exaggerate his workload. To say that he works hard is just touching the surface. This is the way Qiu Zhijie works, whether he gets three months or three years. As long as you, as the viewer, can reflect on the totality of his work, and think about the concept of time in his work, all relating to the way Wagner opened up the multiple channels of a work to reveal continuities and dialectic relationships. I think it is a matter of sacrifice. In sacrificing segments from the work and giving up the possibility of expressing every word, image, and substance—the experience of this sacrifice is itself a kind of new voice for totality.

Gao Shiming: A moment ago Qiu Zhijie said that he discovered he is someone who is suitable for making solo exhibitions because he is flexible. This exhibition is constructed of so many details that touch you as you get closer. On the day the exhibition opened, I noticed a small detail in Diploma No.3 , a stainless steel seal that is magnified ten times. All the words have fallen off the surface. At the time I thought most artists these days would magnify this kind of detail and present it as a piece of artwork. But in this exhibition, the detail remained a segment of the work at large. Throughout the exhibition space there were many instances of this type of imagery, already digested.

Actually he wanted to do something like A Dream of Red Mansions , playing with dimensions of time, predestined relationships, and the feeling of being completely trapped. Qiu Zhijie was striving for this state, hoping to build a labyrinth.

This exhibition is a scene from his Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge Project. It is a horrific scene, and it is just a snippet of the larger picture! After experiencing this scene I think of the labyrinth and A Dream of Red Mansions , imagining the work to be a Gothic building, a thing that appears to be ceaselessly multiplying and growing. It took as long as five hundred years to complete a Gothic building, quite an unrelenting process. In our present time we look at Qiu Zhijie's proposal and it too appears to be endless.

There is another visual theme hidden in this exhibition, that of the spiral or whirlpool. In the exhibition the tower image is a screw reaching for the sky ( One Line Sky ); pencil shavings ( Conductor and Consumptive Materials ), sea shell ( Internal Storm ), spring, ripple ( Ma Yuan after the Revolution ), untied rope, and monument ( The Monument to the Visitors ) are all spiral-like structures. I sense that with these objects, Qiu Zhijie seems to be using traces of spirals and whirlpools to hint at secrets that we do not know about the world, as if the way he leaves clues is reminiscent of The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. Looking at Gothic architecture also induces us to imagine that mysticism exists, in the same way I feel about Qiu Zhijie's exhibition.

I came back to the exhibition on the second day after it opened, and I inspected the waves. There were all kinds of messages underneath the waves. An archive of carefully selected messages was concealed beneath the waves. They were mostly personal information, confessions, letters to family members and other documents written between the 1960s and 1970s or perhaps during the 1980s about someone's private history. Yet the documents were buried beneath the ocean, to surface once in a while. The entire exhibition space is a ship. When we look at the debris we realize the ship is gradually sinking. After I read three or four documents I understood Qiu Zhijie's intention. It was very moving.

Qiu Zhijie: In Fujian , where I come from, there is a kind of banyan tree. Banyan trees always toss up aerial roots, and as long as there is soil around the tree, new trunks will emerge over time. Banyan trees never die. They form a forest that moves across earth, replacing dead trunks with new ones. A plant is very patient. It contains and conceals certain forces. This is a better metaphor than Gothic architecture.

I would like to respond to Lu Jie's question about “making an exhibition or making artwork”. I never distinguish between the two of them. I was making a group of thirty paintings. We had just finished with the rubbings, which we hung up in my studio. I said: “It is too bad that we don't have time to finish these paintings. I wonder if we still have a chance.” Someone said to me: “All you need to do is finish the rubbings for the bridge structure; they are already strong enough for you to exhibit them.” I carefully thought about this. In terms of the exhibition itself, he was right. But was I making an exhibition or was I creating? What I really meant was: Should I try my best to create, or to produce a cultural product that would become a “good exhibition”? I definitely chose to create. The exhibition is actually a by-product. Or the exhibition itself is a kind of production. It produces not necessarily artworks, but it is your life, and this is what you have created in a three-month period.

I told my assistants I always assume that I will die tomorrow. Before, we were making exhibitions as if we will never die. That's why, when I had a feeling, I had to unleash it, finishing quickly and leaving no regrets about the paintings. For the sake of the exhibition itself, showing the rubbings is a better strategy than making the paintings. For my own sake, as someone who might die tomorrow, it would a terrible strategy. This is a decision about choosing between an artist and an individual. That's why I adopted the concept “total art”. It basically means that you have to be an upright person, not just an artist. I am speaking in defense of myself.

Lu Jie: I think Qiu Zhijie raises questions about artwork's “boundary issue”. If we focus on this point we can transcend all the questions regarding seeing, sense, interpretation, over-interpretation, more than enough, less than efficient, stage, iconography, museum, exposition. Qiu Zhijie once said: “You can put me away as an enemy of modernity.” I think this is a rather shallow thing to say, but it is relevant.

Qiu Zhijie: Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge Project focuses on the issue of modernization. Bridge is a symbolic representation of modernization. Time after time we interpret modernization as “industrialization”. Modernization is somehow connected to “gigantism”. Look at what we have achieved with the “bird's nest” for the Olympics, the new Beijing airport terminal, the Titanic, huge bridges, all of these have to do with the concept of “gigantism”.

If we reach further into the Bridge Project, we will face the issue of death. Jumping off the bridge is an unnatural cause of death. What is an unnatural cause of death? What is fate? How do I discover my fate? What is the pursuit of one's destiny? How do I change my fate? How do I come to accept my fate? The question is about settling down and getting on with one's pursuits. There is a time for everything. When my daughter was born many things just naturally became part of this structure. Now in the exhibition space two major themes have been integrated in a polyphonic manner. As I planned for these works I was also giving my attention to the incredible first three months in my daughter's life. Here is my answer to Lu Jie: There are two questions that could have remained separate, but they are intermingled due to the power of fate.

Gao Shiming: I think he answered your question regarding how an artist defines his relationship with the world during his creative process. He is a creator and a reader at the same time. He observes the world he struggles to live in, which is contradictory in some ways. How does one create harmony within this contradiction? This is a classic inquiry.

In your artist's statement, “gigantism” is one aspect of “anti-modernization”. With the arrival of your newborn daughter in this world, a strange relationship exists between the broader socio-historical discourse and your individual discourse. It is as if, even in complete defeat there are still signs of life, the way vine comes crawling out of ruins. Our shared history and our individual life cycles intertwine. It reminds me of your watercolor paintings. My sense is that these “analects of total artwork” are also Qiu's own philosophy for education.

Lu Jie: Speaking of modernity, I want to be provocative by saying that while all the materials used in the exhibition will perish, only the watercolor paintings will survive. Therefore they are a kind of “material evidence”. Only the paintings are truly connected to Qiu Jiawa.