Post-Sense Sensibility

A New Artistic Phenomenon in the Nineties

Qiu Zhijie

What is post-sense sensibility? Post sense sensibility is the revenge-like

excitement you feel when your razor cuts a bloody line on your chest;

post-sense sensibility is the suspicion you have about the purity of your

own blood when you look at your elderly parents; post-sense sensibility is

the fact that everyone on the street looks exactly the same as you do;

post-sense sensibility is "more profit" and "cute boy"; post-sense

sensibility is internet dating. 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

Are we historic determinists? Will we make post-sense sensibility a

rational choice in the name of contemporary art? Is it the main direction

toward which reality is pushing us? Because satellite TV is force-feeding

dozens of channels to us, our fingers are playing on different remote

controls like hitting piano keys. The habit of getting online at midnight

means that we have not seen sunlight in half a month. Elevators in

skyscrapers continually make us weightless or over-weight. Airplanes alter

our jetlag into a bodily discomfort. Because of Clinton 抯 sexual affairs,

the Asian financial crisis and all of the above, humans have become post

humans, and post-sense sensibility is born. Post-sense sensibility is

inevitable, and it is prevalent everywhere. This deterministic

"because-therefore" formula is as simplistic as the term "cartoon

generation." Mechanical objectivism has already been attacked over and over

in art criticism, so how can this be right? In fact, the sensation we get

from watching cartoons or playing video games is nothing new. It is merely

the age-old story about demons, heroes and people who need help in the

tradition of folklore. Twentieth century TV picks up elements that are long

discarded by traditional culture, such as narration and dramatification, and

magnifies them through media. There is no post-sense sensibility here, only

one ancient wisdom ?to make money. To think that street punks who have

dyed hair and silver necklaces are post sensational, or that new art can

come out of intensive playing of video games is ludicrous. These are old

gambling tricks and tattoo culture, which do not alter fundamental humanity.

What I am trying to say is: new technology and the new environment that it

brings, such as new economics, for example, online hacking of banks, and new

politics such as concepts about freedom of speech and publication, only

provide the soil upon which post-sense sensibility can grow. Post-sense

sensibility is not a conclusion. Neither is it a prophecy. It is more like

a trap. You can jump into it, or walk around it. What actually happens is

the result of a decision or a change of heart ?already people are making

some changes. I even believe that such an emotional shift is a

pre-requisite to acquiring the material means to change the world.

Post-sense sensibility is not the prototype of future emotions. It does not

praise technology, nor does it denounce it. It does not believe in the

future, nor does it believe in the past. Post-sense sensibility is not

primal worship, nor the superiority of intuition over indoctrination, nor is

it meaningless outburst under cultural suppression. Post-sense sensibility

deals with the here and now. It is a possibility.

Post-Sense Sensibility is a State of Mind

Post-sense sensibility is a peripheral state of mind, but not another

culture. The concept of the Other in contemporary culture grows out of

eighteenth century individualism and nineteenth century Bohemian lifestyle.

It has evolved from an outcast to a democratic poster boy with the

validation of twentieth century anti-aestheticism. From jeans to punks, the

Other has been propelled into stardom by the forces of social change. Since

truth is in the hands of the few, those who hail the utopian Other have

fashioned themselves into a mythical group that appeals to voters. They

solicit support from sub groups all over the world, and provide idol worship

to believers. The culture of the Other, however, is always a self-indulgent

culture, just as its enemy ?the mainstream culture is equally

self-indulgent. Mainstream and the Other engage each other as

adversaries, but share the same state of mind: unequivocal self

identification. Mainstream and the Other play a love-hate game, and

together they preserve the order of contemporary psyche. The core of this

order is the identification of status. It ensures that every status has a

place and enjoys the freedom of speech. The space, however, is pre-divided

according to status, and the freedom of speech is the cake after

identification. Such identification continues to self-replicate and

solidify status. Only when you know who you are, and how you are different,

do you realize that you are the Other. But what happens before? The

protection of the Other does not solve the problem of identification. In

post-sense sensibility, we face the natural defect and artificial avoidance

of self identification. It does not use art to express such identification

after the fact, but directly engage in the process of identification using

art. Perhaps the concept of identification is flawed, since it suggests the

existence of a common model. This model itself, however, is illusory, as it

is only a psychological attempt to penetrate post-sense sensibility.

Post-sense sensibility is deconstructive and yet it is the only real state

of mind that reflects humanity and the self. Post sense sensibility is

sensation without the subject, or the challenge of intuitive actions against

the subject. It is a self-censorship and self-intervention. It views

future uncertainty as a status risk that is worth extolling. It

consistently avoids status and identification, and plans and initiates the

renewal of old experiences and self. Post-sense sensibility is at the

unfinished stage, it is perpetual puberty, it is the relationship between

self and imagination, it is the insanity of pulling one 抯 hair trying to

rise into the sky, and therefore it is a state of mind.

Post-Sense Sensibility is an Ability

Post-sense sensibility is not reason, nor is it pure sensation. Because the

subject of sensation is yet to be imagined and non-existent, we do not know

how to feel, or who is exercising reason. Post-sense sensibility is against

reason, because it remains at the level of confusion, lost, indulgence and

sentiment and refuses to make judgements. It is the experience of things,

the discovery of self within things. Post-sense sensibility is against

sensation, because it rejects analysis, conclusion, induction or assumption,

and refreshes rational knowledge as intuitive materials. Post-sense

sensibility is not unconsciousness. Unconsciousness is the layer beneath

consciousness, but post-sense sensibility is above consciousness, it is the

possibility of consciousness, the stuff that consciousness is going to form.

Post-sense sensibility is sudden and complete revelation, and vigorous

living. The revelation we get from breaking out of unconsciousness and

desires is a major discovery of the outside world after being freed from

self-entrapment. Our further contemplation of sensual experiences refines

them into rational knowledge, which becomes a common form in the world.

Such rationality allows us to know other things by knowing one thing, and

expands our horizon. Post-sense sensibility breaks the limits of

rationality, and carries the highly acute and rapid sensational power of

knowledge elucidated by reason. This is the discovery of sensual content

from the constructs of knowledge, the final breakage from self, life in the

relationships between things, and existence in action. Sensations are

usually influenced by race, age and health factors, and reason is usually

effected by education, culture, language, status and other social factors.

Post-sense sensibility is however determined by chance and imagination. It

operates at the place where sensations and reason grow destitute ?

consciousness is post-sense sensibility 抯 unconsciousness. Post-sense

sensibility assumes the position of reasoning in order to reveal things that

are impossible, and the style of sensation in order to enter into the

confusion of rationality. It does not mean, however, that every attempt

will succeed. Post-sense sensibility therefore is an opportunity, and an

ability.

As an artistic movement, post-sense sensibility first and foremost rejects

conceptualism. It throws away critical cultural behaviors that take clear

positions, such as environmentalism and animal rights. It also discards

clear identification such as feminist art, xx generation art, and xx local

art. It detests realistic or descriptory documentary art about social and

cultural facts. It especially opposes making art as hypocritical knowledge

or theoretical tool. On the contrary, post-sense sensibility is the actual,

total and non-replicable experience. Second, post-sense sensibility 抯

emphasis on experience is different from the instinctive reaction of

expressionism. Instinctive stimulation, whether bloodily violent or coldly

extreme, is nevertheless an ordinary experience. Post-sense sensibility

enters into the cleavage and expansive power of experience, which redefines

instinct. Lastly, post-sense sensibility completes the artwork upon the

first try as an agent of imagination. Prior experience is irrelevant.

Conversely, it deals with the lack of experience in life. Precisely because

no experience can satisfying such absence, post-sense sensibility becomes a

desire and art form in real life.

Post-Sense Sensibility Focuses on Three Areas as an Artistic Phenomenon

Extensive bodily experiences. Transformation comes from inside, and is both

an artificial alteration and natural extension. From the structure and

disintegration of the body, to the control and deprivation of the body in

relationships; from the feeling of otherness with regard to oneself, to the

hallucination about ecstasy and depression? Extensive bodily experiences

explore the territory between the body and soul through artificial or

natural means. The traditional separation between body and soul is the

battle between opposites: either the soul is divine and the body is

polluted, or the soul is in pain and the body is in pleasure. The territory

in between these two extremes as well as their unity is yet to be explored.

Post-sense sensibility is a difficult expression ?does expression belong to

the body, or soul?

Constructive memory and imagination. Post-sense sensibility is manifested

in a chance encounter with imaginative memory. What happens is intervention

that completely changes the environment and the outcome, not merely

absentmindedness based on pleasure. Such intervention makes memory

subjective instead of objective, and removes the need to verify the origin

of information. Memory hence becomes a storage that cannot be inventoried,

because each memory action distorts memory, and it becomes more and more

obscure and mysterious. In conjunction, you can also experience possible

ways of living through fantasy. Such fantasy is a farewell to the scattered

remains of reality and a prudent exchange with the future. Prudence is

evident in the playfulness of such fantasy, to learn possible ways of living

by borrowing environments and assuming roles. How do we fear? How do we

get excited? How do we endure loneliness? How do we wait? In such

fantasies, post-sense sensibility avoids the prejudice of one-dimensional

imagination, and arises to the position of a disinterested spectator.

Overall shivering effect of the situation. Post-sense sensibility cannot

define itself as a particular sensual art form such as a sound, sight, taste

or movement. Neither is it the sum of all these sensations. The shivering

happens in the traceless atmosphere that arises from the overall situation,

and the stuff at work is the relationship between sensations, not any single

sensation. This is a result of both meticulous design and accidental

encounter, which puts the visitor in an awkward position, since the distance

for clear self identification has disappeared. As the visitor is thrown

into the situation, and is deprived of his sense of reality, he is

influenced only by active sensations. Post-sense sensibility is therefore

intuitive.

In conclusion, post-sense sensibility as an artistic phenomenon has nothing

to do with opinions, positions, sexes, occupations, relatives, theories or

ways of living. It is connected with conflicts, speech tones and light. In

the end, post-sense sensibility is not even an artistic phenomenon, because