DSL Collection

An Archaeological Position on the Future

Chang Tsong-zung



In a relatively short career of 15 years, Qiu Zhijie ' s exhilarating range and volume of activities as artist, curator, critic, educator has dazzled the Chinese art world. The subjects he has touched upon are equally diverse, and they are in constant dialogue or dispute with prevailing art practices, which makes his career a personal ledger of intellectual currents that highlight this critical decade of cultural transformation. The most ambitious of his recent projects centers around the Nanjing Bridge, an architectural artifice recognized by every Chinese during Mao ' s era as the most potent symbol about China ' s modernization. In 1969 this bridge was the great engineering feat that heralded China ' s arrival at the modern age; it marks China ' s entry point to the future. To this project Qiu plans to devote several years of continuous work, slowly elaborating his materials into a substantial body of art. In this project several familiar themes of the artist converge; here they are being promised a degree of monumentality and complexity quite unlike his previous works. In Qiu ' s Nanjing Bridge project one senses the undercurrent of something important boiling; there is a gravity that suggests maturity. One may say Qiu has found his vehicle in Nanjing Bridge, or equally that the bridge has found Qiu Zhijie. The two are also peers; their age is just a year apart.



In 2005 Qiu curated the Nanjing Art Triennial with an exhibition titled ? Archaeology of the Future ? . To proclaim the future has become history is to recognize that China has stepped beyond its Socialist historical project, and entered an era beyond revolution. With the dream of China ' s Socialist modern future left behind, the mystery of the revolution lies in its archeological remains, the magic of the dream encased in neglected edifices. Through his Nanjing Bridge project Qiu has returned to Nanjing to take an archaeological position on the future. Here a national history of modernity meets a personal destiny. Here, at the terminus of future, Qiu explores critical issues of destiny, personal choice and art.



The Nanjing Bridge project involves intense research, both textual and fieldwork. This includes engagement with a voluntary suicide rescue operation stationed at the bridge. Officially 4,400 suicides have been recorded in the forty years of the bridge ' s history. Here all those who died as well as those rescued met their fate. It is the meeting of personal fates at a site that marks the entry to a glorious future that intrigues Qiu. By interfering with destiny and personal choice, the suicide rescue team triggers Nanjing Bridge ' s rich armory of historical complexity, and this is where Qiu enters his project.



Celebrated throughout the nation as one of New China ' s Ten Major Monuments, and promoted as a national symbol of Socialist future, the Nanjing Bridge was constructed and finished at the height of the Cultural Revolution; a time when Mao ' s politics of liberation through nation-wide collectivism took a radical turn, to support a new grass-root rebellion against settled bureaucracy and privilege. This national movement rapidly turned into factional power struggle and departed from the original promise of political self-determination for the people. But the Cultural Revolution did inspire radical rethinking about individual commitment to national collective goal and Marxist philosophy. One of the important turns in Chinese thinking after the 1980s was wide spread critical reflection about modernity as a historical project. As a young artist in the early 1990s, Qiu ' s mixed readings of Existentialism, Buddhism and Sausseur were reflected in his works about the limiting conditions of language and society. His graduation work (Vitae Nuova 1992) of transparent panels covered with images, inspired by new urban visual experiences, displays a technical virtuosity that the artist has not revisited until the new set of prints made for STPI this year. It explores the urban world within which we move and think, and frames the ideas and concerns we claim as our own. Over the years, in his celebrated series of photography, starting with Tattoo and Rainbow in 1994, Good in 1997, Intersection in 2000 and so on, up to the recent Group Photo in 2007, Qiu has demonstrated imaginatively how our physical beings are ineluctably constituted by outside forces and objective social conditions. Freedom is not given, but is a factor of choice, or a personal project for each of us. Freedom is gained according to each one ' s level of effort and wisdom.



They are witty works, and expose situations we all find ourselves in. At an epistemological level, modern linguistics has also persuaded Qiu that we are all limited by our mode of articulation. As an inspired intellectual Qiu realized early on that all historical projects into the future, whether Socialism or evangelical religion, are questionable and often damaging.

These lively works are underlined by a stoic realism that leans towards a pessimistic view of the world. For a world that has arrived at the future, looking over the precipice ahead, all is either uncertainties or possibilities. Looking back, the glorious road to modernity is shrewn with violence and unnecessary destruction. Qiu ' s response in the 1990s was a Buddhist one. His recommendation is to take an unflinching look at the real world, starting with unsavory aspects of our physical existence. Public Space (1994) directly comments on the body ' s fragility, showing us it is conditioned by social institutions for the public eye, such as this communal toilet in glass. The realistic gaze at the world reminds us that we are always at the mercy of the vagaries of time and fortune, a persistent Chinese poetic leitmotif, and a Buddhist theme Qiu learned studying calligraphy at a monastery as a secondary student. Over the years he has created numerous works referring to transience and loss, and in different contexts recommended different solutions. He cannot honestly offer consolation of painted futures, whether on earth or beyond death; he has often made the case against the obsession with the self, proving the illusory view of unchanging individuality. To those who have weathered the travails of the world, the consolation of philosophy may prove too obtuse; instead Qiu offers the consolation of art. For those who have lost the taste for life, such as those at the Nanjing Bridge who come determined to die for loss of love or hope, again Qiu offers the consolation of art.



First of all, what consolation does the artist offer himself, apart from his frenetic activities and pleasures of intellectual/artistic exploration? Qiu ' s secret weapon is very old fashioned; it is calligraphy. Qiu ' s first classic work was created as a student in 1992, Copying a Thousand Times the Preface to the Gathering at Orchid Pavilion. Commenting on paradigmatic model and creativity, he copied a thousand time this classic piece of 4 th century calligraphy (a requisite for all calligraphers since the 7 th century) onto the same sheet of paper until it is all black. Many major themes of Qiu were first articulated in this work: the idea of subdued individuality, of paradigm and education, of the cultural authority of calligraphy, of time and its cumulative force and, most importantly, of self cultivation, spiritual anchoring and liberation. These themes have been articulated in numerous ways over the decade, always done inventively and often improving with the years. The performing and time based aspects of calligraphy have provided inspiration for his long exposure photography and video, recently in his Total Art projects. 8 th April (1996), Heart Sutra (1996), 10 Tang Poems (2000), Grinding Stele (2001), the recent Archaeology of Memory (2007) and the on-going series of Calli-photo-graphy are but some of his many inventive uses of the art. Qiu notes that the meditative nature of calligraphy soothes him; and as an art with long cultural roots and elevated artistic standing, it certainly also helps to anchor Qiu as a creator in time and place, within a historical cultural context.



When the future is uncertain, directionless, cultural and social support is important for the individual; this is one reason Qiu repeatedly returns to the idea of the collective. As a past beacon of the collective, the Nanjing Bridge becomes a magnet for those who fail to find their own anchors. Qiu says: ? In the past there was ? revolution ? , today the keyword is ? success ? . For those who fail to succeed, Nanjing Bridge naturally comes to mind as the last stop; this symbolic place is so powerful, so big. ? Qiu discovered after spending a lot of time with the voluntary suicide rescue squad on the bridge that the most effective rescue method is to convince victims that tomorrow things may be different. This is consistent with Qiu ' s view for creative art. ? What role does art play in life? It should open up possible worlds, and these should be worlds that elevate and open up the present reality; it should be the antithesis of decadence. ? For his Nanjing Bridge project Qiu has created outlandish installations and imaginative prints to highlight the density and complexity of the history of the site. As art he wants to stimulate imagination, so that out of the powerful collective of a past future he may provoke the imagination for individual freedom, just like sensual desire secretly yearns for and gets titillated by taboos. To potential suicide victims he wrote the mystifying phrase on the railings: ? where is Madagascar? ? To stop for a moment to ponder what Madagascar has to do with anything in sight may open the window upon a new future.



In pursuit of personal liberation, Qiu dispels illusions of teleological faith to confront present reality. His astonishing volume of activities reflects this effort to come to grasp with the finitude of knowledge and physical being. His creative approach is to avoid falling into the trap of discursive logic. As an intellectual well versed in philosophical methods, he is well aware of the limits of thought and language. In order to remains focused on the outer frontier of thinking, Qiu opts to embrace any intellectual methodology that suits the occasion. His well known curatorial projects Post-Sense Sensibility is a landmark exhibition in challenging discursive interpretation and sentimental humanism.



Since the Post-Sense Sensibility exhibition ， in 2002 he went on board the Long March project with Lu Jie, and took both exhibition and creative arts to fields far beyond the beaten track. The following year Qiu embarked on his Total Art project with students at the China Art Academy. By Total Art Qiu means the use of all art media and all possible academic methodology to realize the full potential of the artist. He emphasizes the importance of engaging ? real sites ' , and the need to excavate creative possibilities beyond researched knowledge, in order to develop imaginative engagement. The Nanjing Bridge project grew out of this thinking.



Reviewing Qiu ' s career over 15 years, it is amazing to see how he has expanded upon his core concerns. From a painful as well as sentimental awareness of transience and fragility, Qiu has successfully created an art that is stimulated by this sense of finitude. His idiosyncratic researches have embarked on an archaeology of the mind that promises to excavate not only knowledge and sensibility, but mystery and possibilities that lie beyond. Qiu shows that, at the precipice of future, self-determination is the first step towards art. At Nanjing Bridge Qiu comes to faces others who have arrived at the terminus of future to decide on their individual fates; here he finds that the mystery of life and the power of art meet, and here destiny and morality of art also converge.



Unlike most artists successful on the art scene today, Qiu ' s vision reaches beyond artworks to embrace the social world. His Total Art is more than a program for personal deliverance, but a syllabus for building a moral human being. More than any artist of his generation Qiu is leading an artistic and intellectual life worthy of the great artist scholars of the Confucian tradition, many of them also met their destiny in Nanjing, a city that has fallen and risen numerous times. His creative expositions of his wayward researches not only illustrate the joy of exploration and imagination, but also the possibility for making a difference through art.