Michèle Landolt (ML): For Liu Ding, your practice has developed across artistic production, curating and historical research. How have these different forms of enquiry informed one another over the years?
Liu Ding (LD): This is a long story. Since I was young, and by that I mean starting from the 1990s, I had engaged in artistic production, exhibition curating and organising. I was also an editor for a magazine publication. Starting around 2000, my friends in the art world and I formed artist collectives, while I was still closely involved in artistic production, exhibition curating and organising. It could be said that these activities, for me, have always been thoroughly woven together.
A rather significant change occurred after 2008. That was a time when young Chinese artists increasingly appeared in biennales and triennials, and participated in major international exhibitions. However, I started to feel I was merely being ‘invited,’ rather than actively engaging in a conversation or being part of a dialogue. I found myself at odds with this situation, and I started asking myself a series of questions. What did our predecessors do? How have we come this far? What is the relationship between myself and their artistic production?
Prior to the Little Movements, Carol and I had collaborated several times before. But Little Movements was a relatively bigger project for us compared to others. It was a two-year research project. In 2008, the global financial crisis hit the world. China, however, dodged a bullet and was not significantly affected. China back then was still riding the tide of its economic development and expansion. The art world in particular indulged itself in a capitalistic imagination, but little room was left for actual discussions on art itself. So I initiated practices that were self-organised and focused on critical thinking. These were considered good things. But again I asked myself: Why are we doing this? What’s the underpinning logic? What does it say to the reality?
Later, for the Little Movements, we aimed to inspire more discussions, which we realised shouldn’t stop at the topic of self-organisation. It’s very much interconnected with the entire art system and all the components it involves. My work then shifted its focus onto researching and searching for a ‘temporariness’ that formed the hidden driving force behind the artists’ works. Regardless if their endeavour was big or small, it eventually transformed into a confidence or positivity for continued exploration.
I committed myself to historical research, through which I tried to find answers to these questions: What kind of conversation do we want to enable? What is the contemporary for China? Where does the narrative imposed by the government come from? What is the connection between our ideology and art in the post-war era? Chinese contemporary art is still pretty much influenced by the shadow of Socialist Realism, and by Socialist Realism I don’t mean the stereotypical political ideology. The Cold War period has sown the seeds for a world of dichotomous oppositions, and yet the two sides are constantly mutually referential. I think we are still confined within the so-called ‘modernity’. What I strive to do is to examine Socialist Realism under the framework of this modernity, while extending it beyond the Chinese context.
ML: Carol, coming from art history and curatorial practice, how has your own thinking evolved through your longstanding collaboration with Liu Ding?
Carol Yinghua Lu (Carol): What we have been doing through our collaboration is to theorise the past and the present, and to historicise the ‘contemporary’, in that we notice in Chinese contemporary studies, the discourse only consists of stories but no theories.
The first instalment of the Little Movements was launched in Shenzhen in 2011, and later the exhibition toured to Gwangju and Bolzano. We wanted to re-examine the value of authority and to investigate where the authority that grants a sense of historical legitimacy lies. We rejected differentiating independent practices from institutional practices, because this kind of categorisation is external to the practices themselves; they do not act as the internal driving force of the practices. We wanted to empower an equal understanding of the art system, resisting its traditional pyramid structuring. In doing so, we calibrate the existing system with the intensity of practices featured in the project and the urgency of issues they were trying to bring up – and perhaps propose new alternative practices.
ML: Since you mentioned Little Movements: Self-practice in Contemporary Art, I just want to give the audience a bit of context about this. Initiated together with Su Wei in 2011, this project questioned how artistic value, authority and legitimacy are produced within the art system, while advocating for self-directed artistic and intellectual practice.
I want to ask you both that, today, many younger artists and cultural practitioners are developing self-organised, self-initiated and self-published practices. How do you understand the relationship, and potential tension, between these independent initiatives and established institutions?
LD: For me, I have recognised a stiffness/rigidity in both individuals and institutions. Human beings tend to maintain and retreat to the status quo in reality. This particularly holds true to the art world in China after 2008. Between 2008 and 2010, I myself witnessed its accelerated rigidification, caused simultaneously by the foreign economies’ collapse and the domestic economy’s soar. It was also the period of time when the West lost interest in China in all aspects. So we were left with the challenge of finding our real driving force as individuals. Modernity easily brings us a sense of security, a tendency to follow routines. I think this even becomes prominent these days in the post-pandemic structure.
Dealing with this rigidification, we need to rebuild our foundation from within. Certainly, every individual is unique, so the way towards the internal foundation is dynamically changing. Keep on critical thinking, calibrate your judgment on reality through art making, and examine the existing structure while rebuilding your foundation from within.
ML: For the 8th Yokohama Triennial, Wild Grass: Our Lives (2024), you drew on Lu Xun’s writings from a century earlier to consider despair, resilience and individual agency in times of crisis.
Looking towards the 19th Istanbul Biennial, today’s announcement of Wind and Rain from All Directions: Open Call for Wartime Art takes the writings of Lao She as another point of departure.
I want to ask Liu Ding, literature and historical writing appear to be important points of departure in your shared curatorial practice. What draws you to writers such as Lu Xun and Lao She, and how does their thinking help you formulate questions about the present?
LD: Very interesting question. My connection with literature has always been close since I was very young. My father, who recently passed away, wanted to become an author, a litterateur, but instead, because of the Cultural Revolution, he became a doctor. Throughout my teenage years and my 20s, I made friends with many writers. My life has always had a strong bond with literature.
Literature is also very relevant in our art historical research. Contemporary art is significantly influenced by modern art and literature. However, there is a gap in the historiographical writing of modernist art. Filling in this gap may help us understand what role literature plays in Chinese contemporary art and the Chinese contemporary world.
In retrospect, literature is an inspiration to my own experience. Recently, there was an exhibition in Melbourne, Australia, in which one of my friends introduced an idea from the 80s: ‘keep trying until you reach the texts and words.’ This signified a paradigm shift in the 1980s, in which we observed the transformation from humanist literature to the very understanding of literature language. At the same time, the 80s witnessed how art brought forth a grander cultural imagination of China. Literature in the 20th century is very appealing to me, especially literature during wartime and the revolution period. I think this is the literature that both is born from and bears the flux of time, and one that keeps growing.
ML: How do you translate these literary and historical references into an exhibition? What can exhibition-making make possible that differs from the forms of enquiry offered by literature or historical scholarship?
LD: I can share an interesting episode. When we were making a draft for the Open Call, we came up with our own descriptive imagination about wars. But these were intuitive descriptions. Then we read Wind and Rain From All Directions by Lao She, learned of what he wrote during the last century’s wartime. We were astonished to find how naive our own writings were. Although we say we are situated in a world of wars, this is in no way comparable to actually living in the wars. Being entangled in wars means you are constantly in diaspora, you have nowhere to live. During the 1940s, the war made Lao She a drifter away from his homeland. He had no time for artistic creation because all he could do was survive. The war is always more ruthless than in our imagination. This thought pushed us back to our desk to deepen our research. The war exists beyond our imagination, the so-called humanitarian care, or the issue of stance. The war concerns individual life, siphoning their last bit of space, water and food for survival. This is alerting us, too. We have habitually been relying on certain institutions or structures to survive. What shall we do if we lose it all?
Carol mentioned their work with Nikita Kadan, a Ukrainian artist, during the Frieze. Their work was still stuck in Kyiv even on the day before the opening reception.
LD: There is another thing I’d like to share. Ge Zhaoguang, the Chinese historicist, once described a scene that left a lasting impression on me. In the mid-17th century, China was enduring a dynastic shift from the Ming to the Qing reign. The Qing army conducted a massacre in a city in southern China, during which they virtually killed every single person there. However, the second day following the massacre, merchants went out onto the street to sell breakfast, standing on the exact ground where the massacre took place. What this scene showed me was the resilience of life.
Q&A:
Q: Could you elaborate on what you meant by ‘rebuilding the foundation from within’?
Liu: Each person is unique, so each has their own direction to explore. But I mean our existing foundation is oftentimes granted and conditioned by society, and we so easily rely on it. As an artist, or an individual in general, you need to find the thing you truly want to discuss. On what basis do you build your spiritual universe? What is your historic view? What formed your historic view? We tend to follow the subjects that are either on trend or considered mainstream in society, but as you grow, you need to rid yourself of these preset subjects and establish your own worldview.
Q: Could you elaborate on how your studies of modern and contemporary literature history inform your studies of art history?
LD: The narrative adopted in Chinese literature history is largely shaped by an official ideology. Of course, it has gone through a vicissitude of transformations. My research involves literature during the Yan’an period, the post-50s era, and so on. I think the research in this field has embodied a globalised perspective. Within Chinese modern literature, one often finds the two categorisations of ‘bourgeois art’ and ‘proletariat art’, but I think there are so many subtle ladders wedged between the two. As the political climate changes, people who study Chinese literature might recalibrate their research and revisit the same work through different lenses. Now looking back, you may see so many nuances, and how historicists and authors – people who once partook in forging a narrative found their own footing, their own coordinates within a system. This is the kind of sensibility that really draws me in.
Carol mentioned Hong Zicheng was a significant figure in consolidating the ‘Chinese contemporary literature history’ in the 1970s, and literature studies inspired her and Liu to find continuity in an era defined by ruptures.
Q: Let’s talk a bit more about Istanbul. Now, as wars ravage the world, we find ourselves living a parallel life. In the face of violence, some recognise the necessity of accepting this reality, while others try to hold onto a sense of dignity. Some artists are too distressed and have stopped working, while others work even harder to retrieve their dignity. What are your thoughts on it?
LD: I think recognising your own limitation is important. It is also important to acquire intellectual maturity and empathy, which will help us to navigate and confront the complexity of reality. Knowing your own limitation does not mean having your hands tied, but gaining a capability for you to mirror and reflect upon reality through your work. Although we are living a parallel life, this parallel life is still a part of each one of us. Making an exhibition is also a way of mirroring and reflecting upon reality, eventually enabling new possibilities. The Open Call at the Istanbul Biennale is an integral and critical part of the entire exhibition. It is only a starting point, but it will bring us something that is both relevant and parallel to today’s real world. We hope it can help us return to an original point of modern society before humanity was alienated.
Transcribed by Lily Sun