| |
The New “Grand Narrative” in the Contemporary Era
Interview with Tang Qingnian
Zhou Yan
Time: June 6, 2008
Location: Dongchang Hutong, Dongcheng District, Beijing
Zhou Yan, abbreviated as Zhou below; Tang Qingnian, abbreviated as Tang below
Zhou: I saw this figure series in your L.A. studio at the beginning of this year, and I remember seeing some photographs of these last year.
Tang: That’s right, I printed a small booklet to show you. integrate
Zhou: This entire series utilizes “the vessel of skin” (literally, implying the human body) as its means of penetration, which I think is quite interesting. Usually works come in individual pieces, and for a work in a series, it is difficult to see the thread from beginning to end. You have integrated it with a clue. Not only have you provided a visual image, but you’ve also established a theme, which I think is quite admirable. You have lined up your work along this train of thought regardless of the materials used. As an audience member and critic, I need to have a good overall understanding of your series. I am more interested in what’s behind the artwork, rather than a straightforward visual impression. I also would like to know why you made the works as they are, why you think this way, and how the idea developed and was visually transmitted. Your understanding of the human body is manifest on a spiritual level. The follicles are found in the five organs and various bodily functions. More importantly, it is a vehicle of life with a soul. This may not seem a complicated concept, but one may not think about it this way. How did you make this association? I read your writing on your mother’s passing and
its influence on you. How do you associate the death of your mother with life and its meaning?
Tang: At the hospital, my brother and I stayed with my mother for many days while she lay on her sick bed. In the same ward, two other patients were in a vegetative state. At this point, my mother was on life support; her breathing was completely dependent on a respirator; her heart was kept alive by dopamine, but her condition was worrisome. As the dosage of her medication increased daily, her skin tissue began to decay. The doctor’s diagnosis was that she had already become brain dead, so we were faced with a choice: should we or should we not prolong the body’s decay with medication? It was a moment that reminded one easily of the essence of life. Life is indeed the Buddhist concept of “the human body.” Although our lives are not supported by medication, but by food, which is still a “vessel of skin.” Moreover, life is a matter of time – the human body, a mark of time. One unavoidable matter is the soul.
Zhou: That’s right.
Tang: If we had to speak of the soul, then it depends on what you put into it – what kind of soul is in this human body?
Zhou: Life without a soul is a meaningless existence, like plants and animals (the meaning of their existence is given by others).
Tang: Although, today people’s souls are manipulated by the material.
Zhou: People’s material desires.
Tang: Manipulated by desire, life becomes a vessel of material desire. From this perspective, it is a topic worth discussing.
Zhou: Using the term “vessel of skin” makes me somewhat pessimistic, or negative. Can it be understood like that? Or does the “vessel of skin,” based on your understanding, hold a positive meaning of life?
Tang: The negative or pessimistic aspect can be positive from another perspective: allowing others to realize the emptiness in life evokes thoughts on the true meaning of life.
Zhou: One must think about what the true meaning is.
Tang: That’s right, only knowing that human pursuits are beyond the “vessel of skin” can we realize what is intrinsic. What is our soul?
Zhou: Has this system of thinking taught you what to fill it with?
Tang: The teaching of Buddhism is indeed profound, though I am not an expert. My understanding of its basic concept is that it allows one to break away from the pursuit of the mundane.
Zhou: Certainly.
Tang: Moreover, Buddhism teaches you to be kind – some people call it the “greater love.” In fact, these teachings are all quite positive.
Zhou: That’s right.
Tang: Laozi spoke of the “vessel,” or the relationship between having and not having.
Zhou: That’s right, “emptiness.” House and vessel are both “empty.”
Tang: The fact is that life is also something empty, but meaningful because it’s empty.
Zhou: How have you transformed your concept figuratively speaking? And by using various materials to realize these figures – including the two-dimensional and three-dimensional in formulating your works – how was this transformation completed?
Tang: I wanted each work to discuss one specific issue while referring it to something symbolizing life. The body is somewhat abstract, yet one can still see its form. I didn’t want it to be male or female. It can be asexual, or resemble primates. It embodies certain skepticism about human evolution. This form – perhaps subconsciously – gives the impression of a self-portrait.
Zhou: I can sense that.
Zhou: Because of this symbol, it was possible to connect everything together and create a rapport that becomes a visual “discourse,” because it evolves around this symbol of life. The symbol of the body grants the artwork a spiritual element, allowing the audience to associate discourse with spirit.
Zhou: You have placed various materials and ready-made objects around as the background or foreground for these figures. Do you want to imply existence in a material world?
Tang: That’s right. The series you saw last year were mostly in this form. The work I made this year has elaborated on the exterior, but it is hollow inside - not entirely hollow, but only contains a few things and carries the message of the empty “vessel of skin”
Zhou: You have used many types of material and I can’t remember them all.
Tang: One of the works is surrounded by balloons. A hollow shape of the body is formed with thin plastic, but inside are barbs.
Zhou: Are there specific ideas behind your selection of material?
Tang: My selection of material varies based on each work’s requirement, because each work tells a story.
Zhou: One work has a specific story to tell?
Tang: Not necessarily a story, but an idea – a particular idea.
Zhou: For example?
Tang: For example, the flower piece – many flowers surround the body’s contour, which is filled with roots made with thorns. But the flowers are fake, even though they are visually pleasing.
Zhou: You are trying to contrast the “real” and “fake”?
Tang: The fake flowers are used to highlight the contours of the human figure, whereas the interior of the contour is filled with roots, which I thought was interesting.
Zhou: It has a sort of tension? The exterior and the material are illusions, whereas the roots of people, or their essence are true.
Tang: You can make such claim.
Zhou: One of your other works, if I can remember clearly, utilizes objects related to computers?
Tang: That’s right; I have two such works. One uses motherboards to shape the human figure, contoured with plaster and copper wires – a body as a wall, like a “firewall” for viruses. I want to convey our communication of convenience; we put up a wall to separate ourselves and the world in spite of this accessibility. The other work uses disks, with the background of letters written with a brush, mostly writing from ancient times. These two works manifest the material medium of semiotics and are vehicles for language. In the span of a decade, communication has transitioned from having used letters for thousands of years to an electronic medium. Many things have been eliminated, and writings on a disk are illegible to people. Moreover, what was left behind (historically valuable objects) are also illegible for various reasons. The background is filled with old traditional objects, but I have mystified them and let them fade out, “exit” and disappear.
Zhou: What other materials do you use?
Tang: I also used CDs on which the middle is hollowed in to the shape of man, where I placed a small human brain. The sulci (valleys) on the brain are memory bodies, and the lines on the CD are also bodies of memories.
Zhou: Many ideas can be considered here. The valleys on the human brain are primarily memories of personal experience, of course saturated with collective memory, whereas CDs record collective experience, artificial visual and audible products. Therefore, there is a relationship between personal and mechanical production, or mass production of personal experience and collective memory. As the body of memory changes, its object also changes and personal experiences are compressed. Collective and mechanical products expand and becomes reinforced.
Tang: I also made two works with plastic bags. This time, I used paper bags, but both works focus on consumerism.
Zhou: In recent years, I return to China quite often and have heard from Ren Jian of his “Green Project,” for which he plants his own vegetables and herds goats for milk. He tries to buy as little from others as possible, and he tries to use minimal pesticides, fertilizers and hormones to try and return to a natural way of living. It is an attitude towards consumerism and mass production.
Tang: First of all, it is relevant to the hot topic of organic food in recent years. If our planet depends entirely on organic food, it will be insufficient for humanity. As the population grows, modernization causes urbanization, and urbanization reduces industrialization of agriculture. Consequently, so-called organic food without fertilizer, pesticides or genetic modification becomes impossible. Therefore, consuming organic food for health reasons is a luxury. In the U.S. only the wealthy can shop in certified organic food markets.
Zhou: This is different from Ren Jian’s thinking, as he is discussing the minimization of production within mass production. It is contradictory because in the process of globalization, the method of mass production is adopted. Why? Because there are many people to supply, and to return entirely to primitive ways of production is insufficient for the population. On the other hand, mass production results in large-scale pollution, exhausting large amounts of energy. The difficulty in promoting environmentalism, green and peace movements is confronting these issues.
Tang: Most importantly, it involves many issues of interest. Capitalism implies constant expansion, and capital is needed for profit. To maximize profit, production must be expanded, and once production is maximized, consumption is also maximized. At the same time, it leads to an increase in waste. Some objects are thrown out not because they are broken, but because they get dirty and we are too lazy to wash them, or they have passed their prime, so we buy new ones. This is wasteful behavior.
Zhou: Your work usually carries discussions of people or the essential issues of people, but has extended to other areas such as exchange and communication; personal experience and collective memory; consumerism and the contradictions of environmental protection, mechanical production and green projects. These are intellectuals and artists with consciences and devoted concerns. In my view, these are the new “grand narrative” in the contemporary era, as some have retired into personal space and individual experience. If one enters from ones experience and extends into society and public fields, taking on a critical attitude towards dilemmas and the crises we share, perhaps one becomes the extension in the logical thinking of idealism found in the modern art movement in the 1980s. You have lived abroad for many years, this spirit has been projected into a broader, global vision which you continue to explore and reinforce. Admirable, indeed!
Tang: Thank You
(Translated by Fiona He)
|
|
