朱朱 “南京长江大桥”：邱志杰的两次书写
独自莫凭栏 ——李煜《浪淘沙》
为那些从未发生的事建造一座纪念碑。 ——约瑟夫·布罗茨基《寄自威尼斯的明信片》
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2007年5月，我在南京策划了“长江大桥”展览，邀约的艺术家中就有邱志杰。因为他此前的“那里”系列中处理到该题材，“他选择暗夜中灯火阑珊的大桥作为拍摄对象，并且以电筒光来手写的“Romantic”英文字样进行叠映，现实与虚幻、文与图、抒情与叙事在这里并置。”（见拙文《镂空》，“长江大桥”展览画册前言）“那里”系列是他的观念摄影“光的书写”中的一种，摄制于2005年，应该是他担任在南京博物院举办的“未来考古学：第二届中国艺术三年展”主策展人期间的作品，这个系列包含了五张南京题材和两张北京题材的摄影，显然是将这座故都与首都进行了一次有意识的对照，他在南京取材于明孝陵、总统府及长江大桥等地点，而在北京拍摄的是芦沟桥与天安门。 邱志杰与我同龄，生于一九六九年，比大桥只小了一岁，对于我们而言，毛泽东时代与其说是经验之中沉重的勒痕，不如说是一种在反刍之中不断强化的记忆，幼年的我们只是模糊地感知着压抑的现实氛围，但是，那段极权统治所产生的巨大影响，恐怕需要我们以一生的时间进行不断地辨析与反抗，尤其是对于邱志杰而言，他具有强烈的政治意识与社会学兴趣，他与卢杰发起的声势浩大的“长征——一个行走中的视觉展示”活动，正可以视为一场关于“革命”的考古，在那个过程中，他也一定深化了他对于前毛泽东时代的历史认知。而说到长江大桥，从它被建造的那一天起，就已经开始扮演了政治性的角色，它构成了造神运动的一环，它是政治神话的一个组成部分：关于毛泽东的神性地位，关于“自力更生”的民族情结，关于“人定胜天”，关于乌托邦……与长城或天安门那样的古代奇迹相比，它是真正诞生于毛泽东时代的新事物，以工业技术为本，以钢铁为材料，彰显机器时代极权美学的特征。在当时的艺术表现中，大桥以“万水千山只等闲”的巨人英雄姿态跨越江面，而两岸的工厂烟囱喷吐着浓烟，这种在今天为城市规划或环境保护意识所诟病的东西，在当初则是一种美感十足的意象，构成了“革命浪漫主义”的图腾。 “Romantic”（音译为“罗曼谛克”，意为“浪漫主义的、浪漫派的”）一词，源自西方中古拉丁文“罗曼司”（Romanice，意为“传奇”）一词，在17世纪的欧洲，它指涉了一种充满情感和浮夸的、富于自由想像色彩的文风，到了19世纪初期，它被用来描述一种文学、艺术和哲学的运动，这就是众所周知的浪漫主义运动，由此它开始对立于“Classical”（“古典的”）这一概念，直到真正的现代主义运动兴起，它的色泽开始转暗、开始变得暧昧，在激进的文化姿态里成为了一个反义词，然而，正如马泰·卡林内斯库（Matei Calinescu）在《现代性的五副面孔》（Five Faces of Modernity）中所辨析的那样，在十九世纪，“浪漫”一词几乎就是“Modern”（“现代、现代的”）一词的同义语，至少是在那个时期兼任了后来的 “现代”一职，波德莱尔就曾说过：“对我来说，浪漫主义是美的最新近和最当代表现。”事实上，就强烈的主观性意识方面，后起的现代主义对于浪漫主义有着明确的继承，或者说，在现代主义之中始终都具有浪漫主义的某些精神特性。而浪漫主义对于中国文化的影响，显见于民国时期，李欧梵曾经在《中国作家的浪漫一代》里具体考察了当年“西方浪漫主义遗产支配中国文学界的两种模式”，也就是“少年维特般的（消极而多愁善感的）和普罗米修斯似的（生机勃勃的英雄）”两种类型，前者多愁善感，很容易令人联想到中国的传统才子形像——温柔而令人伤心的恋爱，怀旧和到处弥漫的忧郁；他们在自己精神生活的范围内寻求庇护，因此被称为消极的浪漫主义者。另一种典型是普罗米修斯似的人或积极的浪漫主义者，这一类型的人并不缺乏感觉力，但强调的并不是他的敏感性。他是热心者，热情而举足轻重的人，最终的愿望是“把自己的性格加诸于世界、引导世界——甚至创造世界，成为一个新的普罗米修斯。” 在中国上世纪的二、三十年代，一个独特的历史现象在于，文人与知识分子们往往在成功地扮演了一段时期的“维特”之后，渴望自己能够成为“普罗米修斯”式的人物，我们不妨设想，去延安的丁玲们正是抱着这后一种“罗曼谛克”的念头去的，其结果却是自身被改造成意识形态的宣传工具，他（她）们为毛泽东时代的“革命浪漫主义”设计和编写了软件，这种政治宣传性的艺术在文革达到了全民化，并且无疑也淘洗过我们的童年，因此，邱志杰在照片上手写的“Romantic”，令我联想到赛义德所言的“理论旅行”，即在这个词的西方原旨与它在中国被政治策略化运用之间，不知道跨越了多么浩瀚、汹涌的历史与文化现实。
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自上个世纪九十年代开始其艺术活动至今，邱志杰给予我们的印像是他总是处在最为激进的位置上，以自身所散发的巨大能量和所携带的巨大的信息量，质疑一切可能的家长制权威，扩展艺术的边界，并且，深切地影响到了一群如今已经在中国当代艺术界中变得日渐重要的年轻艺术家们，这些年轻艺术家的探索摆脱了陈旧的艺术框架，运用了录象、装置、行为以及综合媒介手段，放大了艺术在自由想象力方面的特权，同时保持着与西方艺术的同步性对话。 写于那幅照片上的“Romantic”一词，不仅引导我们进行了一场“浪漫”的考古之旅，还在某种程度上揭示了他本人的形像，就个人气质而言，他的身上无疑带有“五四”时期从事思想启蒙运动的中国知识分子的影子，来得饶有意味的是，邱志杰似乎兼具或者综合了那两种浪漫主义的类型，维特式的消极浪漫主义可用来指说他的作品气质，而普罗米修斯式的积极浪漫主义可用来指说他的行为属性——邱志杰最初以“形式创造效果”来反对“内容决定形式”的社会主义现实主义模式，其后以“后感性”来反拨中国化的观念艺术，再后又推行建立于文化研究基础上的“总体艺术”，种种这些行动均在显示他引导与改造“艺术世界”的热情和雄心。可是，一旦回还到他自身的文本来，邱志杰似乎也就回到了他的消极浪漫主义的那一面，至少是在他那些最令人难忘的作品那里，充满了冥想与追忆的语调，幽独感伤的情怀，关注了潜意识的表现、时空的变幻感和禅宗的神秘境界，他的《重复书写一千遍兰亭序》（1990——1995），以及稍晚的“光的书写”系列，都是以新颖的现代语言形式，续写或者回归了文人的情怀，这种方式令人联想到“五四”时期的知识分子在运动中遭遇挫折时，转而到典籍中寻求寄托与安慰，而与前人最大的区别在于，邱志杰熟谙西方的现代乃至后现代的种种艺术手段，他对于传统文化的回归是以陌生得令人耳目一新的形式出现的，是在他与当代西方发生不断接触和碰撞之后的结果：
“九七年十月我去布鲁塞尔，有天晚上坐在一座教堂门口想，到底什么是我真要去做的问题。我想到整个艺术世界其实是在瓜分趣味类型的势力范围，比尔·维奥拉瓜分的是基督教无常感，波尔坦斯基瓜分的是追悼会气氛，基弗瓜分了史诗感。电影瓜分了运动影像美学，录像艺术就瓜分到了空间中的运动影像美学。每个领域是一套趣味，趣味和趣味之间也构成了趣味史。每种趣味就是一个势力范围，机智这种趣味就是被杜尚给圈地了，追随者再在这个范围里再瓜分。我就想，什么是我真正要去做的趣味，什么是我不得不去做的，什么是真能打动我自己也打动别人的，以及什么是那种就算打动不了任何人我也非做不可的东西。后来我就发现是人生无常的感觉，关于雪泥鸿爪的趣味。是那种带一点伤感，一点禅意，但是又清醒和冷酷的平静。”
对于邱志杰而言，这个置身于西方教堂门口的时刻，意味着一次肃清，如果说浪漫主义从现代主义，是一条我们深受西方的吸引所走的长长的路，从那座教堂门口，道路开始通往了自身的历史传统，邱志杰从中国美学趣味的核心和根源处找到他根本的立足点，由此获取了言说的保证，当然，这并非遗老式的复古，也不是为了国际艺术市场而临时拼凑出来的一副牌，在颇具分量的长文《“中国牌”之我见》中，邱志杰谈到了自己的回归过程，“我一步一步地放弃了宏观地解释文化的企图，试用个人生活去进行主动的微观文化体验。……从而可以去叙述微型的历史，细节的空间，个别的际遇和记忆，表层的色彩和姿势。”所谓“宏观地解释文化”，在事实上正呼应着雪莱对于浪漫主义使命的著名定义：“世界的立法者”，而放弃这种抱负，转向于充满偶然性、片断性的表达，似乎也意味着他的浪漫精神在消褪，在个人意识方面变得更具现代感。
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然而，对于邱志杰来说，尽管他的“消极浪漫主义”的一面已经演变为最为古典的美学趣味和最为当代的表现形式之间种种可能的结合，但是，他的“积极浪漫主义”的那一面却从未消停过，如此说此前他是以论辩、展览策划以及各种活动来实现他的理想，如今已然启动的“南京长江大桥自杀现象干预计划”则是以艺术的方式介入到社会现实之中，该计划由多种形态、多种媒介的作品、准作品、非作品所构成，形成方式包括了采集、创作、改编、合作等多种手段。“它既是一个漫长的文化研究过程，也是一个庞大的文化生产计划。”他介绍其全部方案的时候，听得我觉得他仿佛要将自己的一生都放在大桥上了。 长江大桥从建成以来，官方纪录中已经有2000以上的人在那里自杀。邱志杰决意以此点重新聚焦大桥主题，是以更富现实关怀的角度切入到这座具有意识形态纪念碑意义的建筑物。事实上，再没有什么比它成为自杀之地这个事实本身，更为绝妙地反讽了它在过去所扮演的那个共产主义乌托邦政治神话的美好化身，自杀者在这里所构成的一部微型的历史，与官方编撰的蒸蒸日上、与时俱进的社会主义史构成了强烈的反差，从另一方面而言，随着毛泽东时代的结束，大桥的政治象征功能和它在所承担的交通功能一起，正在逐渐地削弱、衰竭，而自杀者的身影如此频繁地现身于此处，无疑令我们加倍地震撼于信仰的幻灭、社会的动荡，以及生活的压抑和绝望。 在邱志杰这个庞大的计划之中，有一个重点在于他与民间救助组织将要进行的合作，也就是如何帮助那些从死亡线上被劝阻、挽救回来的人，那些自杀未遂者，那些从世界的尽头走回来的人，重新返回到自己的生活中去——这个计划在我看来已经越过了艺术的范畴，进入到真正的社会性活动之中，而将之包揽于“展览”或者“艺术的名义”之下，似乎构成了一个悖论。邱志杰本身亦敏感于这样的问题，他将之视为一次重新拷问“何谓艺术”的机会，并且，希望此次计划能够“超越媒介和风格，把现场艺术的现场性扩大为历史的现场。”在他的这种雄心的背后，我们可以窥见“激浪派”的艺术方式的影响，以及，更重要的，是博伊于斯（Joseph Beuys，1921—1986）那样的西方现代艺术英雄的主张，正如博伊于斯所说言，艺术“不应该仅仅是一种隐喻，它在日常生活中应该是一种进入社会权力战场并改造这个战场的实际手段”。然而，正如罗伯特·休斯在《新艺术的震撼》中所分析的，包括博伊于斯在内的二十世纪六、七十年代的西方先锋派，往往倾向于“把艺术世界错认为现实世界”，而艺术对于政治生活并不会真正的起作用，切入社会现实的艺术话语及行动并不能真正地改变客观的社会社会条件，最终所留下的仍然是艺术家的作品，或者说，艺术本人的形像。 从另一方面来说，即使艺术家并非功利性地预想了自我的胜利，他也可能只收获到自我的胜利。而这种方式又令我们回到浪漫主义话题上来，以艺术改造社会的理想正是积极浪漫主义的典型姿态，而真正的现代主义似乎是以艺术只活在它自己的话语世界里为前提的，尽管它并不排除对于政治现实和社会存在的表达。也许，邱志杰正在进行中的这个计划将会激起我们对于这些问题的重新思考，甚至，会改变我们对这些问题的看法。
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相比之下，版画系列《南京》是他启动整个计划的前奏，是整个计划的“早期造型”，可以视为是一些装置的草图，同时，也可以视为他对于南京本身的一次想象，一次充满历史和现实对比的“时空地图”的绘制。在我看来，这套版画充分展现了他的个人才华与想像力，相对于此前的“那里”系列的那个漫游者“灵光一现”式的表达，他的触须更为具体地深入到关于南京这座城市的特性的想象之中，他成为了一个追忆者。 “追忆”，正是南京为所有的到来者而设的一个角色，一个迷人的陷阱。在它漫长的历史之中，这座城市曾经一次次作为首都而傲视天下，有过无数繁华荣耀的时刻，明朝时利玛窦到达城下，曾经惊呼这里是“世界之都”，而在西方没有一座城市达到像南京这样的规模及其发达的程度。然而，这座城市的繁华似乎总是昙花一现，每过一段时间就陷入到被劫掠、被征服和毁灭的境地之中，陡留“山川空地形”之叹。而从瘐信作于约公元578年的《哀悼江南赋》开始，哀叹繁华转眼成空、凭吊曾经的美好岁月，就已经成为历代文人们到这座城市之后的一种独特情怀，有趣的是，关于南京这座城市最好的艺术表现，出自一位从未到达过南京的诗人的想象。公元824年秋天，刘禹锡在西塞山倾听江潮，写下了《金陵怀古》四章，其中的“潮打空城寂寞还”之句，堪称绝唱，依照斯蒂芬·欧文在他的《地：金陵怀古》一文中的说法，此诗奠定了一种关于这座城市的抒情范式，那就是一种“追忆”的传统基调，是南京向整个中国艺术传统贡献出的一种伟大情感，南京因此而成为了一个巨大的文化怀念的象征。 邱志杰在他的这套版画之中，有意无意之间地将自己放入了那份长长的追忆者的名单，其追忆的具体地点也都是历代文人们常到之处，而他以奇特的想像力参与到“追忆”之中，为我们带来了具有他个人鲜明烙印的“超现实”幻像，譬如，在《失败之城》中，原先安置于四方城中心位置的碑身消失了，驮碑的龟被复制成四只，依附于四壁，而每一个龟身驮取的不再是碑，而是镂空的碑形门洞，地面上刻有成串的涟漪形状，暗示着一颗石头以打水漂的方式所做的运动，令人联想到这座“石头城”在浩瀚的历史时空里所划过的轨迹，这样的场景表达不独是昔日的追忆者面对一处静态的遗迹时所生的忧伤而空幻之感，更是将物象进行了挪转变换，改写成一个关于中国古老的政治和历史的寓言，艺术家本人的观照显得哀而不伤，是从此时地地做出的一种怀念与质疑、抒情与分析的综合反应。 如果说“那里”系列是邱志杰所作的维特式的“彷徨”，那么，“南京长江大桥自杀现象干预计划”就是普罗米修斯式的“呐喊”，而《南京》这组作品可以视为“彷徨”与“呐喊”的一场追忆，他的思绪就流动在古老的朱漆木栏与大桥的铸铁栏杆之间。
2008年8月 Zhu Zhu The Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge: Qiu Zhijie’s Double Écriture “Never look out alone” Li Yu, Lang Tao Sha “Build a memorial to things that never happened.” Joseph Brodsky, Postcards from Venice I In May 2007, I curated an exhibition in Nanjing on the theme of “The Yangtze River Bridge,” and Qiu Zhijie was among the invited artists. His earlier series “There” touched on this subject matter, and so he chose a nocturnal view of the bridge lit up as his photographic subject, using a flashlight to write the English word “Romantic” in light, thus combining reality and illusion, word and image, description and narrative. The series “There” belongs to a larger cycle of conceptual photography that involves writing in light. Completed in 2005, it dates to the moment when he was curating Archaeology of the Future, the Second Nanjing Triennial. This series also includes five other images of Nanjing and two of Beijing, suggesting an intentional contrast between the former and current capitals. In Nanjing, he photographed the Ming tombs, the former KMT government campus, and the Yangtze River Bridge among other locations. In Beijing, he photographed the Marco Polo Bridge and Tian’anmen. Qiu Zhijie and I are the same age, born in 1969, just one year younger than the bridge. For us, the Mao era was less a traumatic lived experience than a faint memory that grows stronger with every recollection. As children, we had but a slight concept of the repressed atmosphere that surrounded us, but the totalitarian rule of the moment influenced us greatly, driving us to analyze and resist it for years to come. Qiu Zhijie in particular has a strong political consciousness and sociological interest. The Long March: A Walking Visual Display, an ambitious project that he began with Lu Jie, can be seen as an archaeological excursion into “revolution,” and in that process, his historical understanding of the Mao years deepened. The Yangtze River Bridge has played a political role since the day it was built, becoming the subject of an idol-making movement, a part of a political mythology. It was used to glorify the saintly powers of Mao Zedong, to assert a national complex capable of “regeneration through its own efforts,” to argue for man’s triumph over nature, to posit a utopia. Unlike the Great Wall or Tian’anmen, the Bridge was actually built under Mao, stemming from industrial technology, forged in steel, manifesting the totalitarian aesthetic of the machine age. In the artistic expressions of that time, the Bridge spanned the river heroically with the attitude that “ten thousand waters and one thousand mountains are nothing,” and factories on either bank were generally pictured spouting the thick smoke of industry, a substance detested by today’s urban planners and environmentalists but seen as the ultimate in beauty then, a totem of “Revolutionary Romanticism.” The word “romantic” derives from Latin, and later the vernacular romanz (legend, story) which appeared in 17th Century Europe, referring to a literary school marked by its emotion and exaggeration, rich in free imagination. Through the early 19th Century, the word was used to describe a literary, artistic, and philosophical movement, which we now call Romanticism. This movement existed in opposition to Classicism, and only with the surge of the Modernist movement a century later did it lose its luster, turning ambiguous, taking on a negative connotation in a culture set on progress. As Matei Calinescu argues in his Five Faces of Modernity, “romantic” in the 19th Century was essentially synonymous with “modern,” or at least can be seen as one of the modern movements of its time. Baudelaire once said, “For me, romanticism is the newest and most current expression of beauty.” And in fact, in terms of its strong subjective consciousness, Modernism can be seen as the clear heir to Romanticism, or rather, we can pinpoint in Modernism certain characteristics that are unmistakably Romantic. The influence of Romanticism was not felt in Chinese culture until the Republican period. Leo Ou-fan Lee in his book The Romantic Generation of Modern Chinese Writers analyzes two distinct modalities of influence of the Western Romantic legacy on Chinese literature, which he calls the Young Werther (negative and sentimental) and Prometheus (vital and heroic) schools. The former model easily brings to mind the traditional Chinese prodigy, loving tenderly but brutally, nostalgic and melancholy. They look to take shelter in their own emotional life, and for this reason they are called “negative” Romantics. The other classic example is the Promethean, positive Romantic. This type of person lacks not for feeling, but he does not stress his sensitivity. He is enthusiastic, playing a decisive role, hoping in the end to add his persona to the world, use it to guide the world, or perhaps even create a new world—becoming a new Prometheus. In the 1920’s and 1930’s, one distinctly Chinese historical phenomenon was that literati and intellectuals would often, after years of successfully playing out the sorrows of the Young Werther, then thirst to transform themselves into Promethean personalities. We might as well imagine that writers like Ding Ling who went to Yan’an brought with them a “Romantic” notion of themselves, with the result that they were easily transformed into ideological tools. They designed the systems and wrote the software on which Mao-era “Revolutionary Romanticism” would run. This strain of propagandistic art reached its height during the Cultural Revolution, rinsing over our childhoods. For this reason, the single word “Romantic” written by Qiu Zhijie in light makes me think of the “theoretical travels” of Edward Said, or rather, the near inconceivably vast cultural and historical gap between this word’s genesis in the West and its political and strategic reappropriation in China. II Since he began his mature artistic practice in the 1990’s, Qiu Zhijie has continually shown himself to be among the most radical of artists. Using the massive energy that he throws off as well as the considerable knowledge that he has accumulated, Qiu speaks with the authority of a skeptic who doubts every possibility. He has expanded the boundaries of art, profoundly influencing a group of young artists who are becoming ever more important, urging them to cast aside their outmoded frameworks and take up the forms of video, installation, performance, and multimedia. Qiu has enlarged art’s space for independent imagination, and maintained a synchronous dialogue with Western art. The word “Romantic†written in light on that photograph leads us not only to begin a “Romantic†archaeological exploration, but to a certain degree, reveals the artist’s true persona. Speaking merely in terms of his presence, Qiu certainly carries the shadow of the May Fourth intellectuals engaged in an Enlightenment project. But different from them, he is able to integrate both modes of Romanticism. His works manifest a Wertherian, negative Romanticism, while his actions display a Promethean, positive Romanticism. Qiu Zhijie’s early embrace of the notion that “form creates effect†stood in opposition to the “content dictates form†dogma of Socialist Realism. He then went on to articulate a notion of “Post-Sense Sensibility†in resistance to a rotely Chinese notion of conceptual art, and later a theory of “total art†based on the intellectual foundations of cultural studies. All of these interventions speak to Qiu Zhijie’s passion and daring to change the “art world.†And yet as soon as he returns to his own practice, Qiu slips back into this other mode of negative Romanticism, the meditative, ruminatory tone of his most unforgettable works, this mood of isolated feelings, this attention to expressions of the subconscious, spatio-temporal dislocation, and the mysterious realm of Zen Buddhism. His work Writing the Orchid Pavilion Preface 1000 Times (1990-95), like the “writing in light†series that followed, employed a modern linguistic form, continuing or returning to his humanist investments. This method evokes the practice of May Fourth intellectuals in encountering setbacks, then returning to the classics in search of comfort. Different from his predecessors, however, Qiu Zhijie is well-versed in the devices of Western Modernism and Postmodernism, and so his return to traditional culture comes as a pleasant surprise effected by one who has traveled beyond its grasp. This return is the outcome of his continued contact and conflict with contemporary Western discourse. As he once wrote: “When I was in Brussels in 1997, I sat one day near the door of a church, thinking about what sorts of questions I really wanted to take up. It occurred to me that the entire art world is actually sphere of interest divided into many forms of taste. Bill Viola has laid claim to the impermanence of Christianity. Boltanski has laid claim to a feeling of mourning, Kiefer to a sense of epic. Film lays claim to the aesthetics of the moving image, video art to the way these aesthetics play out in particular spaces. Each sub-sector has its own taste, and the spaces between all of these collectively form a history of taste. Each taste is in turn a sphere of influence. Wit was claimed by Duchamp, and his followers can only go on to subdivide this sphere into ever smaller stakes. And so I started thinking, What is the taste I actually want to claim? What is it that I absolutely must do? What can I do that will move myself and others, and what is that even if it moves no one, I still feel I need to do? Later I discovered that for me it was about the impermanence of life, about vestiges of the past floating just below the surface, about that sort of somewhat sentimental, somewhat meditative, sober, cold tranquility.†For Qiu Zhijie, this moment in front of a Western church was nothing short of an awakening. If we say that Modernism, stemming from Romanticism, was a never-ending road along which Qiu had been deeply influenced by the West, then this revelation at the church doorstep was the juncture at which this road turned back on his own historical tradition. Qiu Zhijie went on to find a starting point at the core of Chinese taste, taking from it a certainty with which to speak. Of course, this was no befuddled return to the past, nor was it a card pulled to play on the international art market. In a powerful extended essay entitled “The China Card: My View,†Qiu Zhijie talks in detail about his process of return. “Step by step, I abandoned my designs on macro-cultural interpretation, and attempted to use my own as a field in which to actively engage in micro-cultural experiences. …Out of this I began to narrate micro-histories, to engage with specific spaces, to grow interested in particular encounters and memories, surface colors and shapes.†Qiu Zhijie’s earlier notion of “macro-cultural interpretation†recalls Shelley’s famous definition of the mission of Romanticism as a “legislator for the world.†In abandoning this burden and turning toward arbitrary and fragmented expression, Qiu Zhijie’s Romantic spirit began to disappear, his consciousness growing ever more modern. III However, even as Qiu Zhijie’s “negative Romanticism” has led him to create works that combine an almost classical aesthetic sensibility with the most contemporary of forms, his “positive Romanticism” has never let up. Until now he has realized these ideals through writing, curating, and other sorts of activities. The present “Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge Suicide Intervention Project” uses the methods of art to engage with a social reality. This project brings together works, virtual works, and non-works of every position and medium, and includes elements of collection, creation, adaptation, and cooperation. Qiu has called this project “both a long-term program of cultural research, and a massive outline for cultural production.” Listening to his introduction, I wondered it he was perhaps preparing to spend his entire life working on the Nanjing Bridge. Official records maintain that over two thousand suicides have occurred on the Yangtze River Bridge since its completion. Qiu Zhijie made up his mind to approach the theme of the Bridge from this perspective, coming at this ideological monument from a perspective endowed with concern for reality. In fact nothing more ingeniously mocks the earlier role this architecture played as incarnation of the myth of utopian communist politics than the reality of the suicides that take place from atop it. These suicides form a microhistory that stands in sharp contrast to the official narrative of increasing prosperity and progressive socialism. In another sense, since the end of the Mao era, the Bridge’s power as a political symbol, like its capacity as an artery of transport, has gradually weakened and exhausted. The frequency with which people choose this place to take their own lives cannot but remind us of the extinction of belief, the upheaval of society, and the inhibition and despair of life. One key part of Qiu Zhijie’s sprawling project calls for collaboration with a grassroots organization dedicated to saving suicide victims, an organization that works to return to normal life those who have been talked away from the ledge, those who have attempted suicide and been pulled back into the fold, those who have walked to the edge of the earth and returned. In doing so, this project transcends the realm of art and becomes a social action, such that when it is “exhibited” or otherwise presented “in the name of art,” it becomes a contradiction. Qiu Zhijie has always been sensitive to this problem, seeing the project as an opportunity to pose a question about the purpose of art. He hopes that this project can “transcend the quandaries of medium and style, expanding the site of art into the side of history.” Behind this ambition we can glimpse the influence of Fluxus, and more importantly, of the aspirations of modern art best personified by Joseph Beuys. As Beuys said, art “should not be only a metaphor, but a real tactic with which to enter into and change the battlefield of power that is society.” Nonetheless, as Robert Hughes argued in his The Shock of the New, the Western avant-garde of the 1960’s and 1970’s often erred on the side of “mistaking the art world for the real world,” even though art was incapable of intervening meaningfully into political life. Artistic discourse and practice that engaged social reality were not capable of changing objective social conditions, and in the end left nothing but works by artists, or rather, the image of the artist himself. In another sense, however, even if the artist did not initially predict his own victory, he might nonetheless have attained nothing other than that. This method brings us back to the topic of Romanticism, as this ideal of using art to transform society is precisely the posture of the positive Romantics. True Modernism, on the other hand, espouses the prerequisite that art live only in an autonomous world of discourse, even if it does not rule out expressions of political circumstances and social existence. Perhaps, in completing this project, Qiu Zhijie will push us to reconsider these questions, or even change our opinions of them.