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以「陪伴與共生」作工作方法

與朱建林對談

 

日期:2021年3月8日 | 下午5時- 8時
地點:廣州,中國
對談者:朱建林(以下簡稱「朱」)、沈軍(以下簡稱「軍」)、李繼忠(以下簡稱「忠」)
對話校對:沈軍、李繼忠
整理:文雅樂

 


編者手記

「基礎建設」與「共情」

 

「彳亍以行」的發起源自於我們對於「公共性」的一種盼望,所以當我們想要開啟對話時,我們不約而同地想到阿朱(朱建林)。他參與發起的《馮火》[1]月刊自2013年起運營至今,每月以1元的售價供不應求;2019年參與創建了在地生活空間「菠蘿核」(Boloho),共同創立了探討公共空間的藝術項目「閃電傳真機」(以下簡稱「閃電」)[2],他也一直是黃邊站當代藝術研究中心的核心團隊成員之一。不過,用這些常用來定義藝術家的座標來定位阿朱是極不準確的。來過廣州拜訪當地藝術界的朋友可能都或多或少受過阿朱的招待,有時是一兩天,有時則最終成為長期共事的夥伴。

2018年開始,整體環境與個人生涯的轉變讓我們倏然之間不得不面對許多變化,也從最初的客居變為了這個生態中的一個存在。這個訪談是在我們廣州的新家進行的。兩個月前阿朱還在幫我們尋找合適的房子,同樣的事情他也為朋友們做過很多次。訪談之後,他說最開心的時刻,就是聽到新來到廣州的藝術界朋友分享對於廣州的認識。這是他一直以來默默在推動的事情,「藝術的基礎建設」。我們慣常使用「基礎建設」這一語彙,默許其主體是有權力者或持資本者,路徑是自上而下。而國內藝術界,個體或群體自發承擔基礎建設的責任,營造一個共生的環境並提供其長久存續的動力,這一舉動並非必然,卻是必要,亦極大仰賴發起者的「公共」意識。在我們在翻譯對談內容成英語的過程中,譯者Bill Leverett 協助我們把對談中常常提及「公共性」這一概念的不同面向清楚釐清:

一、 共同感(Togetherness)─ 這亦緊扣對談中另一個關於「陪伴」的概念,意指個體之間建立介乎長期友誼與合作夥伴的關係;而當中那富善意而不具目的性的相處建立起互相扶持的狀態。在對談的脈絡中,阿朱所指的「陪伴」有很強烈「見證」的意味,「陪伴者」不一定會在藝術項目上合作,但會見證着對方怎樣走下去;
二、 群體(Collective)─ 正正因為多個體之間建立了共同感,漸漸有機地聚在一起成為了群體;
三、 公眾面向(Public-facing) ─ 這所指的「公眾」是社會中的大多數,包括並不限於藝術界的持份者。而具公眾面向的議題通常指涉大眾的共同利益,或是在公共領域有可被討論的可能性。

以上三重層層遞進的「公共性」面向可以說是一個由個體往外發展的過程。阿朱和他的朋友們,通過人與人之間的聯結,尋找到一條營造地方氛圍的良性方法,即是傾向上述的「公共性」面向的「共同感」與「群體」。讓我們感觸最深的是,這些方法與這些人的個性、經驗與地方脈絡是密不可分。我們常常提到的「本地」(locality),我們看到廣州的藝術生態內,「藝術家」這身分亦比我們一般所認知的多元而且浮動。這來自於藝術的基礎建設的不健全,所以有各師各法與互相扶持的必要性,因此建立了很強的主體意識和地方性(localism)。在「陪伴」之中成就了「共享的地方性」(shared localism),才有了開放的和感同身受的。

我們跟阿朱對談的初衷不止是探求藝術實踐的普適與移植的可能性,而是從中感受到「美學」其實可以超越視覺與感受性的層面,可及一定的社會功能,這也是另一種創造性的藝術時刻。

 


朱建林 = 朱; 李繼忠=忠; 沈軍= SJ

忠: 前天阿朱提及他近期給某展覽投遞的計劃書,內容不是純粹做自己研究或實踐,而是透過聯繫不同的人和組織發展出概念,藝術作品不過是中途的展示,展覽也未必是最完整的展示場景。這種實踐對我來說有很強的「公共性」。而我(對於自己的實踐)分得比較清楚。我有一種(實踐)是研究歷史事件,或者從歷史事件帶出一些政治意識。另一種則是團體合作,譬如「彳亍以行」(StepBackForward.art)是探討整個生態的問題。我和阿朱教育、成長環境很不同,看待事情也有分別,但我們的作品和理念都有一種「面向公眾」的性質。

 

SJ: 我第一次來廣州的時候感受到廣州整個生態的表現(與北京、上海)很不同,缺乏成熟的市場機制,但是反而呈現出一種互相幫助的狀態。熟悉之後,我發覺這種互助、共事的方法,有一點「共生」的狀態,好像你們用相互依存的方式尋找可以代替已有藝術機制的可能性,而在這種狀態下你們又在嘗試例如通過上陽台[3]、閃電的模式去把它擴散。

我覺得《馮火》如果說是基於一起做些有趣事情的模糊感知,而從2018、19年開始一直到現在,阿朱跟不同的策展人與機構主動合作開墾「藝術的基礎建設」。公共意識有更深刻的轉變。背後的原因與變化是怎樣的?

剛才的問題也連接到你們怎麼看待所謂「本土性」這個問題。其實以前我就以一個外人的角度看廣州那種「本土性」很強,但同時覺得新一代社群內部共建或互助的狀態跟上一輩的藝術界倡導「本土性」是非常不同的。我想知道這種分別和你們是怎樣思考的?

 

朱: 我覺得我們作為藝術家的個體,每做一個抉擇,回想起來都會有一種和當初語境有種相關性的地方。在我們讀書的時候,2008年到12年之間,其實那是一段藝術圈相對看起來比較繁榮的時間,藝術家好像很容易被畫廊簽約……

 

忠: 北京、上海和廣州的那個狀態是不是都相似?還是會很不一樣?

 

朱: 不是的,其實我說的都是北京的。那時北京是一個很大的、全國的文化熱點。(現在看起來)我們廣東藝術家很強調「廣東」這個身份,但其實我讀書開始接觸到當代藝術家時,大家都是想成為北京的一份子。當時有一個趨勢,很多在本地有點機會或名氣的藝術家都會選擇北上。但我讀書時期有一個更強的本地話語潛藏在廣州。直到我自己開始組織活動,和我一群同齡的藝術家,有6-7個人,那時候就開始被本地的前輩,即是「大尾象」[4]或「廣東快車」[5]的藝術家注意到。但這都是和我們的老師 ─ 黃小鵬[6]有關的。他會將我們一些活動介紹給他的同儕,我們才意識到和本地的藝術家有直接的聯繫。這是很漫長的互相接觸了解過程,因為我們在讀書是看到的藝術界和中國的藝術現場是有割裂的,在廣州看到的藝術現場和在媒體看到的也有所割裂。那個時候主流的(中國)當代藝術視野內,廣州的藝術現場基本上在媒體上不容易看到,我作為學生,除了廣州三年展,是沒什麼渠道能接觸到。

你如果打開當時的藝術媒體,很難會找到這些線索,是要自己找這扇門,才會意識到原來有一個從80年代(就已開始的)「南方藝術沙龍」[7],或者更早的脈絡在支撐本地的創作。所以它並非一個從上傳遞到下面的、直接的訊息,(藝術學生畢業後)可能只會知道798藝術區有當代藝術展覽,都不清楚那時候客村那邊藏了個維他命空間,昌崗藏了個觀察社(Observation Society)。 我們的本地性其實是需要一個尋覓過程才會見到,它不是很顯眼的,因為他們的體量很小,直到2010、2011年時代美術館開始真正運作,之後有點不同。

我覺得2010年是個民營美術館或私人美術館開始冒起的一個階段,但08年的時候有幾股力量在週旋,一個是突然爆發的畫廊體系和正在探索的美術館體系,另外08年還有一股很重要的運動,是獨立空間的出現,因為資源有限,它的選擇會傾向年輕藝術家。所以我們在這個環境裏面有好的地方,我們看得到選擇性,相比現在來說,我覺得年輕人做的東西更容易被看見。

例如《馮火》最初被推薦到北京,就是通過王衛、箭廠空間(Arrow Factory)與五金(Wu Jin)。雖然我們沒有直接在箭廠空間做展覽,有放一些獨立出版。王衛將《馮火》帶過去,大家都很關心年輕人的創作,所以我們得到些支持和關注。但我在剛剛接觸到藝術界時看到的場景,我剛才描述的場景,這是關乎當代藝術的,撇除了學校、學院、國家體系的場景。

2014、15年香港的雨傘運動,雨傘運動對於我來說是一個很大的影響。因為無論是華爾街運動或者歐洲這種激進的雙年展,他們多數在藝術界和輿論界是一個激烈的討論,但香港的運動對我來說是有很複雜的衝擊。一方面是廣東地方的某種冷漠,無論是心態上或訊息上的一種隔絕,它打破了我一個由小時候既有的一個對香港的想像,它反過來要求我重新去理解香港的狀態,它給了我許多裂縫,令我有很多鬥爭。

它令我有兩個衝動,一個就是去(運動後的)香港看看,一個就是認真地看廣東更早的實踐,這令我的視界是有所轉移的。在2013、14年再回看2008年,覺得為什麼我們廣東人會經常關注著北京?所以2014年往後,如果看我行動的蹤跡,基本上是繞開了北京和上海的,非必要都沒怎麼去那兩個地方。

還有一個節點就是2016年,時代美術館有「大尾象」的回顧展。我跟「大尾象」的徐坦有長時間工作相處。其實(大家)都已經很熟悉了,他們那時候有個展覽,然後剛好藝術界(LEAP)找我來寫展評,借這個寫稿的機會去閱讀他們的文獻和直接採訪當事人,主要是採訪了徐坦(從而了解了很多本地藝術發展歷史)。

 

忠: 我覺得你剛才涵蓋了很多你的看法之餘,我相信當中一定有價值觀影響你做創作的方法,甚至影響你身邊的同儕。體制(獨立空間、博物館或美術館和畫廊)對藝術家在某程度上的影響?

 

朱: 是,有的。它作為一個「藝術的基礎建設」來說,其實到現在都還沒發展到一個基礎。廣州其實是每方面都不會有「完整生態」的東西,我覺得這個現實都延續了很多年了,這是個現實但不一定是一個制約。

 

忠: 我也想起我有位朋友的男朋友也是藝術家。她提到她的男朋友以上海北京作為一個模範來看,對於廣州曾經有機會成為這樣的一個體系,即是商業市場這個體系,但是到最後也沒有。所以她的男朋友就覺得廣州就好像成為了一個沒有一個如此體系下的犧牲品。

 

朱: 但其實香港是不是也是類似的情況?

 

忠: 香港就和你剛才所講的狀態就有點相似。

香港在上世紀已經有藝術市場。而當代藝術市場則傾向一些成熟的藝術家,甚至未必是香港人。很多交易都在香港出現,但到最後藝術博覽沒有為本地的藝術圈帶來太多正面的影響。香港在藝術市場這方面其實有很嚴重的缺陷,香港的藝術家其實不少,每年出很多新的藝術家,它大部分時間是對外不是對內,所以曾經出現一種景象,市場很蓬勃,有很多藝術家都想投入這個市場,但到最後發現這個市場其實是面向外面的藝術家和收藏家。年輕藝術家就比較困難,但另一方面他們不補足的地方就是來自政府的資助。

 

朱: 其實香港藝術發展局(簡稱:藝發局)的這種資源分配是從什麼時候開始?

 

忠: 其實很早的。藝發局應該是大概90年代左右開始。

 

朱: 即是直接派送給當代藝術的?

 

忠: 是的。當代藝術涵蓋的範圍很廣,有時候是舞蹈、電影、文學,諸如此類。

我想這個(公共資源的資助)也影響了實踐,正正因為有了這種政府資助藝術家的體制,才孕育到好像我這一類的藝術家,可以完全不依靠藝術市場生存。我可以依靠著研究項目,或是從事長期的創作,一套作品通常需要18個月的時間,才是我覺得比較完整的創作。後來出現了一個詞語,叫「研究式創作」(research-based practice)。

去年我留了一段時間在北京,我對內地藝術家了解多一些。我覺得這一種實踐在內地缺少土壤,因為沒有一個公營的資源。我相信有些私營的基金會,但能去到藝術家身上就比較少。或者假設時代美術館作為一個私營的機構,其實它也想委託藝術家做長期的項目,資助藝術家,它能夠令你完成那個項目,但不能令你生存下去。

 

SJ: 這個資源對於實踐的影響也體現在機構層面。阿朱提及的2008-12年左右出現很多替代空間(alternative spaces),其實這背後由2000年初一直到2010年前後,中國那些獨立的項目藝術家或空間常常可以申請到些外國的資助,譬如福特基金會(Ford Foundation),荷蘭的克勞斯親王基金會(Prince Claus Foundation)等等。很多藝術項目、曾經是獨立空間或藝術家空間的機構,甚至民營公益組織常常可以申請到福特資助。90年代北京最早針對女性的公益組織也是受到福特的資助,甚至承辦了世界婦女大會。差不多到2010年前後,就因為一些政治因素,外國基金會在中國資助項目或個人變得越來越困難。突然之間好多獨立的項目也要開始找方法如何支持自己、生存下去。到了差不多2014、15年已經是一個最後的景象,之後就更艱難,也同背後的基礎支持有很大關係。

 

朱: 到了那個時候,獨立空間基本上已經式微了。民營的美術館成了主流,背後多是企業在支撐。2010年左右還有一個跡象,除了空間多了,大陸的年輕人組織也開始多了,譬如說雙飛藝術中心,其實很多80後的藝術家也做過不同形式的小組,李然的「公司」和「PDF」,當時很活躍的Art-Ba-Ba論壇[8],很多年輕人做的小組會在上面發帖,有一個交流的論壇,所以在那個時期孕育了一些我們最早做活動和《馮火》。這群藝術家被稱為「年輕藝術家」,現在這個詞好像已經不再常用了。

「年輕藝術家」這個詞大概是在2012至14年間用來指代這一班人。即在「年輕藝術家」這個意境裏面的創作邏輯和路徑是由剛才那樣的機構、上升通道,它有一個這樣可見的環境去鼓勵創作。因為我們的學校在每方面也沒有支持的,很多時候是來自於同行之間的互相鼓勵。小組出現的時間其實也只是維持一兩年而已,大家就會批評:「你們都是『抱團』而已」。在我們的視覺裏會覺得這種描述很奇怪的,在這個艱辛的環境裏面自我組織,其實大家都不容易的。「抱團」在當時是帶有負面色彩的,意指你這個人不怎麼樣,通過靠着和更多人混在一起,才會得到些機會。

 

忠: 這個不就是藝術團體(art collective)應該要有的共性嗎?

 

朱: 但在這個詞的導向下,譬如說「抱團」的時間是短暫的,即很多次我和其他人起組團體,《馮火》或其他也好,別人問:「青春期的實驗差不多可以結束了吧?」《馮火》自己的邏輯和願望並不是一個短期的項目,我們從最初開始就想著當有一個《馮火》,我們就有下一個「火」,也一直延續下去的。所以我們開始意識到「我們得到了關注,而下一步是什麼呢?」這樣的一個體悟。所以到了2012年到14年之間,其實《馮火》到2014年就有一些展覽的機會,但我們始終都沒有邁向和畫廊合作,是因為很多原因的考慮,有過些洽談,但因為《馮火》只賣一元,而其實我們很自足,我們有自己的銷售網絡,生產供不應求,我們不覺得需要更多的一筆錢再將這項目變大。

 

忠: 假設有畫廊給《馮火》一個個展的機會,你有沒有想過把它超越了一本刊物,而變成其他東西?

 

朱: 其實有的,我們只要面對展覽,也要將它變成其他東西。譬如我們早期的策略是將其中一個欄目變成一個展覽,將它實體化,如果有機會找作者們和他們一起將內容變成一個展覽,我們就有點像策劃人和「陪伴者」的角色。後來再想了一些辦法就是我們不如乾脆脫離這個雜誌的結構,想一下其他的結構,將廣告的部分單獨拿出來做展覽,脫離雜誌的框架,那我們可以自己成立一個部門「影像部」,我們幾個人自己拍影片,我們想到的模板其實是TVB。TVB養了班演員,經常都是同一班人,而我們五個人,可以輪流演來演去,作為我們《馮火》名下的影像公司,但它是用來製作生產一些跟我生活有關、自己認為有趣的影像,所以我們是如此去生產我們的內容。基於這個框架,我們覺得其實在有限的條件裏面,我們完全是可以做得到自足的,而不需要更多的資源。因為我們《馮火》的精神就是這樣逼我們去想,在有限條件下應該怎樣去做,就算沒有好的條件,我們也可以以差的條件去應對。

 

朱: 正因為我們有五個人,好像就解決了很多問題,但後來回想才會意識到,啊原來我們在做一些互助、共同工作的東西,其實我們早期想的是些很奇怪的東西,可能我們想些很現代主義、很早期的概念藝術,甚至我們宣稱受到李傑的影響。其實是個很奇怪的思路來的,為何受李傑影響?這事也是很個人的,因為我有段時間常在印《馮火》覺得挺無聊的。對著部打印機,它又會壞,每一期都一樣。後來我接觸到李傑的作品,他用指甲挖他的工作桌桌面 [9],那我想,既然李傑可以忍受長時間挖桌子,那麼我印書也沒什麼問題吧?

 

忠: 即是那種是來自時間的煎熬?

 

朱: 是啊,因為在廣州你做一件沒有人會關注的事,然後要靠自己精神去支撐自己的那種感受,其實在概念藝術裏有很多資源去支撐你,發現很多藝術家都做得到,其實自己也不必焦慮吧?這事不賺錢?沒問題。要很花時間?沒問題。這事重複了?沒問題。它這樣就解決了。沒問題的,這件事本來不會做成任何的困擾,反而是每次的邀請或者突然闖進來的支持會使我們會有點緊張,譬如有段時間有些人會說:我幫你印吧,你在我那邊,我買部打印機,我幫你印。反而我們開始擔心他的承諾或他的說法是不是一個可以信賴的東西呢?所以我們開始思考這種人與人的關係,在一個怎樣的範圍可以承擔一種共同工作的邊界,可能很多是種友好或即時的傳達,但一旦放在長遠看,其實是不容易辦到的。

 

忠: 我曾經參與過或組織過團體,其實團體合作是非常困難和很難在短時間達到某些目的的,因為溝通才是團體的精神。通常我發覺團體其中有人有他/她自己的事情要做,就做不到團體的事,接着其他人就好像要擔起團體所有的工作。這個是其中一個情況。第二個情況是開始有些意念、方向上的分歧,他可能就說「我不想這樣做」,或者就像你說那樣,「借殼上市」。突然間有畫廊來找我,而我很想要一個個展,大家就鬧翻了,然後那個人就真的有個個展。方向的改變以及分配時間的問題,就很容易令一個團體無法營運下去,所以你剛才所說,一個團體經常有段青春期/熱戀期,過了熱戀期之後很難繼續維持下去。其實在香港我覺得是理所當然,因為在香港大家太忙去生存,不是說生活,是生存,大家要打很多份工,連做自己的作品都沒時間,怎麼去做團體的事?所以如果不是看到機會或很強的緊急性,(團體工作)的優先次序一定不會放很高,或者如果團體並不是有很穩定的資金來源去令它生存的話,基本上香港的團體很少因為一個意識型態、事件或他們覺得很值得研究的事件去維持很長時間。

你跟其他人合作當中會否有類似的情況?

 

朱: 會的。在我的經驗裏面,團體不是一定能做到的,所以《馮火》以一個團體來說,我可以說它是一個奇蹟,它是不知為何存活了下來。譬如我剛才提到李傑,李傑是我最早期(的影響),最早的一些精神來源有白雙全、陳侗、胡昉。這些是在本土可以直接接觸到的藝術脈絡,他們也是用類似的方法運營一個看起來不那麼容易的事情。我在這些情報或工作方法裏面是積極吸取的。團體就要看很多人不同的狀態,不是每次人人都會與你一樣去了解一件事,他一定會發生你剛才所說的那個問題,就是有些團體走向分歧。

所以到現在看,我就會更理性去看《馮火》究竟它留了什麼給我,它形成了一個怎樣的工作方法支撑以後的我。

一般的團體都是以自己主體的投入為主,產出一個集體的形象;但《馮火》它是一個平台,它是有很多作者,有很多我們五個人以外的主體投入。這對我們來說是有一個鼓勵的作用。譬如有時候我們很累,作者們投稿的熱情或光譜的覆蓋面很廣,它給我們很多我們無法用簡單工作搜集得到的回饋,這也是持續了很多年後的成果。

 

SJ: 我覺得《馮火》是從不自覺地自發開始,到主動地發展出一個共同工作的機制。這個平台本身的可持續性就令到《馮火》能夠繼續運轉,同時這一種平台性質就其實可以比較有效地避免參與主體影響項目本身。

 

朱: 是的是的。這個是個重要的點,即不會有一個很強勢的人主導這件事。

 

SJ: 由於它本身就是個集體機制,很難說誰來主導。但我也很好奇,如同你剛才所說,你們工作當中都是想到一些有意思的東西,而那種想做的衝動作為你們的動機去做,而不是因為有一個新的展覽機會或合作機會,才去想到主意。第二,我覺得發起《馮火》或者其他合作性質的項目,好像沒有一個明顯的參照或目標。譬如我以前從事機構,無論項目大小,我們會設定很多清晰的任務。但我覺得《馮火》和其他項目,你們就沒有那種目標的設定。在廣州整個機制不盡完善,而上一輩的人好像已經完成了2008年至2012年的那種高峰,此時你們重新開始,好像要做一些沒有參照、先例的「其他事」,所以你們就會重新再由興趣出發那樣開始?譬如繼忠剛才所講,他發展一個合作團體,其實在他心中有一種很想和人合作做事的期望。我覺得那兩種動力是很不同。

 

忠: 是的。其實是因為我每次無論是個人或團體的項目,我也通常有一個非常清晰的目標。甚至我會想像到那個成果是什麼,和阿朱很不同。(編者註:背後與申請資助的要求也直接相關。)那剛才我一直都想,其實阿朱個人或他和團體的實踐,好像不是很適用於整體藝術界裏面的機制。我舉例,以展覽為一個成果展示的機制;以獎項為考量一個作品好壞的機制。或者「閃電」是不是個更加有趣的例子,我猜你們一開始有一個大概的概念,但後來如何發展都視乎大家如何參與。所以我就覺得其實現在這個藝術系統裏面的參與未能好好對應你的實踐。或者我用一個比較明確的例子,你那時候在華宇青年獎展覽的時候,你怎樣放置自己在這個獎項裏面?

 

朱: 我反正是我有種不適感。我可以做得完整點,但策展人一方面想我表現得比較「集體」點,即是展示效果比較亂點都可以。但另一方面又想我有一個個人面貌的呈現。它不同我在《巴西咖啡室》(Para Site,2019)的展覽中,我只需要表達我個人的創作就行。我有點掙扎,所以在現場重新佈置。

還有另一方面,我對這個獎項有很多猶豫。有些集體項目我是不想在那個現場呈現的,覺得很難在那個現場裏表達。我更加像一個自己的開放工作室,所以我的設計很好笑的,我是將我家的桌子放過去,其實我是想將那個空間還原成我工作室那樣,我每日在現場佈展,很多是現場做的决定。

雖然我自己在機構工作,也很支持年輕人的創作,但我本人的創作方向其實不是很針對展覽機制。我更想把我在《馮火》上的欄目好好的完成,或者開一個更好的欄目,這是我的創作理想。在現今的情形下,我又覺得自己還有很多事情可以做,它未必是展覽的或陳列的工作,都是剛才說過的時間節點對我的刺激。繼忠說到一個關鍵的點,現在的藝術體制對藝術家的要求,或者藝術體制的機構化,是近10年在變化、轉動,包括沈軍在機構裏面臨的工作,即也是近幾年才開始有的狀況,它造成了很多就業者的KPI (Key Performance Indicator,主要業績指標),因為越來越多所謂專業化的機構成為了主流藝術的現場。

 

忠: 我和沈軍昨天也討論到那種機構化、規範式的工作。舉個例子就是:為什麼普遍機構委託藝術家創作作品都不會超過9個月前?我個人的經歷,罕有策展人或機構,不包括獎項,邀請我參展的是超過9個月之前,但他們是想我做全新的作品。去年(2020年)是一個特別的時間點,很多展覽都因為疫情延期,那我就多了點時間。但多了點時間也未必是具生產性的,皆因我在展期未明朗的情況下,未必真的花時間做那套作品。那我就明白因為機構化的機制下,每年都有一個財政計劃,無法推進一年後的預算。策展人由找到藝術家、落實展期、獲得批核,那可能已經過了半年的時間,即是剩下只有半年或更少的時間。我覺得那情況對應阿朱就非常困難,因為你需要時間和別人合作,可能單單溝通來回都用兩三個月了。所以我就覺得其實是機制系統化、專業化、機構化,令藝術家做不到類似(長期合作式)的創作,除非機構邀請你展出一件舊作品。

 

朱: 這個問題我是想探討的,而且這個問題已經很嚴重的了,但我要找一個好的角度。整個藝術界技術性的官僚化目前是比較主導的,我在想這意味着它喪失了些什麼呢?其實我們是未認真地討論過或很難認真去討論的,因為這是一個時間的過程,而且是慢慢變成今天這樣的,然後這種這樣的技術化或官僚化或機構化的跡象曾經是上一代人或某一代人的追求。

 

忠: 是一種「專業」的表現(也是機構穩定運營的訴求)。

 

朱: 但到現實層面,因為中國的語境下,你的機構其實都是一個沙漠中的孤島的情況下,機構人員所承擔的工作是過負的。在這情況下其實很多工作是轉介了給藝術家或底層從業人員,因為其實很多美術館的資源的確是很有限,就算它有很大的決心和努力,但是我們社會的基礎條件支持,學院、民間或政府的資源實在太有限,所以工作層面上,再複雜的事情也是要靠一兩個人去完成,無法完成的工作一直往下傳遞,層層相扣。表面上它是一個很專業化的大型展覽,但最後在背後支持的也許就只有一兩個人或只有藝術家熬夜、自己貼錢、找人幫忙來完成。別說可以幫補生計,在一個項目裏可以免得虧本已經是不容易了,的確會讓人喪失很多動力去追尋這種職業生涯。我覺得還有很多可能性,只不過現在所主導的這種方向令大家覺得好像是要這樣走,而且要這樣走才會走到和更加專業的國際接軌,或一個不知道怎樣的當代藝術的彼岸,在這條路上狂奔。這種狂奔所留下的東西、所看不見的東西的光譜很廣,而我在黃邊站工作裏面其實一直在平衡這種事。因為我已經感覺到很強烈的這種感覺,每年投過來的項目,我們盡量去平衡,保留一些比較原生態一點的或更衝動的。可能很難用一種項目看清楚他最後會如何,但我們可能會有一半或比較大的比例照顧到這種可能性。

 

朱: 但如果從一個機構立場,這種看不到又不知道生產出來後會如何的項目都是拒絕可能會好些,所以我們在黃邊站就盡量令自己面臨一種不測或不知道結果會如何的一種工作場景。幸運的是我們黃邊站的幾位同事,就好像《馮火》的同仁那樣,大家都是認同這種不需要那麼牢固的操作方式,我們是願意接受這種「今年可能大家都做不成項目,那就下年吧。」我們便想辦法,我們也會主動去聯繫,或我們可以做更多有意義的東西,即我們會想辦法令自己充盈,這個努力是不會鬆懈的,我們的努力不以做成項目為標準,那樣我們可以做很多事。而「很多事可做」這種思路的來源就要靠大家一起去達成共識。這需要一個長時間慢慢地陪伴、互相梳理,它需要一個場景給大家去不斷的想這個問題,很難是通過一個美術館開一個討論會討論如何共同工作、如何協作去實現,雖然會上可以說很多話,但回到自己的地方其實沒機會和這班人一起做事。所以你會在廣州見到的就是我們做的很多工作是令大家更多相處,更多可以感應到對方的各種需要、各種存在,需要不單只專業上、學術上的需要,很多時候是生活上,譬如說你們看的房我可以過來幫你看一下,很多很細微的連繫,但它又不是一種利益、友誼,我覺得它的光譜其實是比想像中廣。

 

忠: 但我很喜歡你用「陪伴」這兩個字。我也參與過組織或團體,但都有一種在組織裏面單打獨鬥的感覺,其實也挺可悲的。

 

朱: 你覺得只有自己承擔那工作的感覺?

 

忠: 是的,有時候就好像自己一腔熱誠,大家好像各自的一腔熱誠,沒什麼重疊的地方。但我想說那種「陪伴」其實是一種如阿朱所說,透過非利益、非目標性的情況建立聯繫。不過你剛才所提到那種金字塔的模式,即譬如在機構裏一些無法消解的壓力,無論是實際的工作壓力或面對策展藝術方向的壓力,到最後也是會落到最底層的藝術家和從業員身上。

 

朱: 有個趨向就是逼到更多藝術家具備更多技術性或行政能力,現在的策展人甚至希望藝術家懂翻譯、校對、寫方案等等行政工作,令他省去幾個員工,那樣的藝術家便更理想了。我覺得一個好的機構化不是這樣的,只不過在中國,因為中國的機構缺乏太多資源和幫助,所以就會逼到裏面的員工或者合作藝術家很難有保障。我相信一個更好的機構化是可能更加民主化、公平開放的資源和支持。

 

SJ: 我覺得我們今天在說藝術機制的時候其實具體在說中國當代藝術機制,那個機制是和對完整體制的感知是很不同的,它原本已經是有所缺失的。而我在想這種缺失的縫隙同時也讓新機制有了可能性。我們上述的討論可能伴隨著藝術市場的到來就已經開展了。我覺得反而廣州就好像在這個遊戲外有自己的領地,它也是每個階段都有潛能,但到最後都未發展到這個市場出來,或許它的另一面是新的可能性。黃邊站有一個無法複製的因素是有資源支持,而廣州的非營利的生態其實也相對好。

 

朱: 就有個自覺性,黃邊站雖然是有時代(廣東時代美術館)的支持,但其實還是有限的。那時候有個好處就是大家都有個非營利的自覺性。我們的打算是:就算沒了這筆支持,黃邊站還有得做嗎?想這些很極端的情况。況且我們幾個人的收入都幾乎用光在不同的空間上。我也不知道現在年輕一代還有沒有動力和意願去做這一種沒什麼回報但又要不少投入的這種工作。我這樣說我覺得有些苛刻。

我不懂怎樣去描述這種感覺,在我的角度來想,這些通道就好像我們說,要靠自己去找,通過閱讀或主動的探索,沒辦法再複製一個你認為可以借鑒的模式,就在這個地方落地。

你要找到一個脈絡,無論這個脈絡是關於本地的還是從外面找到的脈絡,你也要努力找到,這個是我所認為共同工作的一個很重要的基礎,就是你的工作要建立在你所想銜接或連接的脈絡之上,或者發展這個脈絡。如果不是的話,很容易就會陷於你們剛才所說的那種孤軍奮戰。雖然大家都在討論公共性,但他就會覺得這種公共性沒有人在乎。但有時候我覺得公共性不是在於你打開門做生意,亦不是在於你覺得自己很無私,而是你要找到一個語境和一個問題,或一個共同指引的脈絡。如果不是就很難令大家共情這件事。其實參與度很多時候是在那裏打開,你用很多力也未必能打開,但可能你比較認真去疏通一些本地的脈絡,可能會找到這個突破點。包括我和朋友們有意識地在香港和不同地方做旅行團,直到我們開始做上陽台、閱讀間,很多工作是要建立在一個脈絡之上。如果不關心上一輩人關心的問題,其實會帶來令你的工作沒有根基的困境。

我們在廣州都受到很多非議或評論,我覺得也是一種協商的過程。正因為找到那個點,大家才會去評論或者去在意這件事。有些時候我們總結所經歷的非議和種種評價,其實都是在反思一個共同語境的問題。只不過我們提出了一個不同的方案或想法,但它的公共性在於其實大家都在意這事,大家就會有評論和非議。其實我們甚至和老一輩都會有對抗,但我覺得這種對抗也是對話的一種,我們要有這個勇氣去承接這個摩擦,要不是我覺得我們成長的基礎會很封閉。但當然也是有代價的,工作越公共化/公開化,其實你的壓力是很大,所以我這年為機構化這件事都承受不少機構式的壓力。

 

忠: 我可不可以理解你的創作為,大家怎麼看待生態這個問題或藝術家到底如何共同工作?

為什麼你會想開始那麼多不同的、和人合作的項目?譬如「閃電」?

 

朱: 「閃電」的時期是一個危機時期。對於我來說有幾種危機,一個是整體語境、大陸環境的一個危機。運動之後大家的收縮,我們應如何回應。第二就是我們內部也有的危機,從外界看來廣州是一個很像土著的一個群落。

 

忠: 你意思是被邊緣化?

 

朱: 邊緣化其實我們可以承受,但我們缺乏一種外部的視覺去做一個反思或反照。我們在那幾年有一個困頓,我們應該如何識別我們的大環境和如何自我認識,所以我一直有做很多交流和很多對接,有人來廣州我都盡量熱情招呼,不論交流深或淺。但我覺得不可以停留在一種介紹的層面,我就很想把這種討論放在一個長時間的空間裏去觀察。我最理想的情況是希望外面來的人在廣州可以有長時間的駐足。希望一個外來的人在廣州變成一個好像主人那樣,來邀請我們這些「土著」進行交流。其實在「閃電」我就是想一個外來的人如果在「閃電」住了一個月或者兩個禮拜,可能他會主動地將這個空間變成他喜歡的樣子,然後當他的空間、狀態變了,我再去那個空間和他相遇的時候,其實主客變了,而這種主客的變化會讓我紀錄那個時刻的討論。我覺得會比我帶大家去吃東西做導遊那種感覺是不同的。而我從藝術家的角度來說,那一刻是很有創造性的一刻,雖然它不是一個展覽或作品性的一刻,我很想看到或等到這樣的情境出現,而我覺得是會有收穫的。就不會是我單線敘述的一個 「地方性」,而是有共享特質的「地方性」。

 

忠: 這個亦是實際空間的重要性。疫情期間大家也會討論其實藝術空間是否不再需要「空間」呢?可以透過網絡解決問題?其實一直我都很反對這事,我想沈軍也是,阿朱也是。實際空間產生的東西其實有不能被取替的意義。但如阿朱剛才所說,「閃電」那個空間重新被另一個人塑造。但其實這種想法真的需要你有無私的情懷才可以,或者我覺得是一種遠見(vision)。假設我想經營一個空間,如果我不是在開始時已有一種心理預設,那我就會有些落差⋯⋯
朱:有些冒險)
是的,或者可能「閃電」就是三個人合作的。如果不是同時三個人都有這種遠見或者希望有冒險的精神,其實就不會實現得到。

 

朱: 這個的確是,尋找夥伴其實也是個課題,可能我花在尋找夥伴的時間其實並不比我研究自己的東西少,對於我來說,張涵露和施昀佑他們是我學習的對象,大家的夥伴,這個是一個很重要的基礎。第二就是我們在創建一個空間的那一刻,其實我們大概知道這個空間有個使命,雖然不會很明確知道它要生產什麼東西,我們也會因為那使命感到逼切性,要不然會很難推動,尤其在做「閃電」的時刻我覺得是在一個大家情緒很差的時間,尤其是阿佑說自己逐漸失去了只為展覽而來大陸的動力。對這個很熟悉的地方有一個越來越強的陌生感。

所以我們通過一些廣州本地的走訪串聯了些不是當下的歷史脈絡,我們探討一些歷史事件,慢慢在裏面找到一些精神的資源和支撐去重新想象。其實對於我來說我是覺得有迫切性的,如果在這種這麼灰暗的時刻,大家連來的動力也沒有,其實我們就會錯失了一個協商的空間。我不想回到因為鐵幕的降臨使大家失去空間與能量,而是我們要為這個時刻做準備。

 

忠: 我有很深感受,因為我個人覺得在香港現在的狀態,其實鐵幕就已經來臨,藝術界難免有種洩氣的感覺。

 

朱: 對啊,快要洩氣了,所以我們就要抓住最後的餘溫和互相支撐的支撐點。

 

忠: 同時間我覺得大家慢慢在製造一種「共同」的概念,一種大家大概知道其實在這個地方,很想用一些繞過了已有系統的方法,而做一些事情其實我們不需要問到底目的在哪,也不是單單因為我喜歡做就做,而是我有一些大概的願景(mission)、理想。開始之後其實群眾亦都有相似的認知。

如果有時間我想討論就是關於觀眾。
我覺得廣州的觀眾都質素很高之餘,大家其實有種需要。那不是「我看一件藝術作品」、「來打卡」的需要,而是他們需要獲得一些新的東西,哪怕是知識、感受或和人的交流。

以我黃邊站的分享會或者行走項目,觀眾很支持,很熱情,也有很多後續,大家的討論也不是可以一次完結。

 

朱: 這個和北京有什麼不同?

 

SJ: 有點難通過公開徵集去招到一些非藝術圈或非學院系統的觀眾,798藝術區似乎主動或被動與社會現場割裂開來。譬如我身邊很多本地人,他們問我在哪裏工作,我說798,他們也未必知道這個藝術區,可能這輩子都沒去過,做藝術常常有種隔膜。我覺得是和北京的體系、認知和知識結構有關。

 

忠: 這個項目是我和沈軍在很早的時候已經有想。當時沒有任何資助的情況下,我們想做一個跟人產生關係的一個平台。當然我們也很想了解大家的工作方法,而那種工作方法不是很公式化,倒如怎麼去寫一份計劃書,因為技術操作不能對應每個藝術家的情況、項目對象和環境,對藝術家的發展未必是一件好事。我們想在疫情以外,在實際生活可不可以產生多一點關係。

 

SJ: 是的。其實剛才阿朱提到一個他長久以來的關鍵詞,基礎建設,我覺得很重要。這種建設在營造生態之於,也是一種精神氛圍的改變,和很多合作項目慢慢累積形成了一種想像,無論是觀眾或是藝術家,大家知道「一起」意味着什麼,彼此建立一種親近感和共同工作的渴望。

 

忠: 那比較像心理建設。就如你要建一座橋,那道橋蓋得很美,但其實橋的根基(foundation)就是用草來建成。但大家遠遠看,只看到橋的頂部建了很多很華麗的建築。正正因為整個機制、大環境令大家要很快地獲取一些東西,而社會的生存成本太高,所以大家必須獲到某種成果。而整體的機制、生態裏,其實不缺獲得資源的地方,藝術市場也是有的,但因為大家缺乏了一些建立共同感的預設,所以一些展覽即使討論togetherness,但流於抽象,反而我們怎麼看locality比較有急切性。

 

SJ: 而這跟建立實體一樣很重要。設施可能是一個地點,同時間都是一個讓大家同一時間出現的機會。沒了以後其實大家就很少會有面對面建立共同感的機會。而大家同時間越來越挑剔,因為一起生活的邊界逐漸清晰的時候,大家對於我和其他人之間那個分別就越來越明顯。

 

朱: 但都和機構自己建立的那個規矩有關,他自己有建立一個規矩。不可以完全沒有架構。

 

SJ: 當然除了同輩,也有一種割裂是帶有階層身份色彩的,可能和不同的地方傳統也有關,前輩對於年輕人在做的事情是否關心與幫助,也有寬容度。這與資源的多寡沒有必然聯繫。

 

忠: 不過這種亦都我覺得對於北京來講是很有獨特性的,因為它作為一個政治、資源,藝術市場的中心,可以在那個地方立足得到,自然有種以中心的角度看世界的態度─以外的東西都不及中心那麼重要。

 

朱: 是的是的。也許因為廣東老一輩的藝術家他們沒有那麼「成功」,他們不是沒有成就,只不過他們就是沒有那麼多資源上的成功。

廣東有個好處就是每當中國的國情開放的時候,其實廣東會有個機會,因為它不需要北上再外出,它自己就可以是一個出口點。「廣東快車」是一個不需要北京人認同的、不需要中心的認同,我們自己開一架快車去到世界的中心,所以它是一個特例來的。這個很好玩。

 

忠: 這個真的形容得很好。

 

朱: 但這個特例在思想上面,我覺得它是一個思想遺產,可以讓年輕一輩或晚輩知道,其實我們永遠都可以成為一個特例,而不需要循着上京、給你個官印來出去應對世界。而廣東我認為有這個思想的土壤,不單只是上一輩人,我覺得在很多層面上是互相印證的。而這會給你很多思想上的支撐。因為現實會給你很多打擊、打壓,但我們自己如何尋找空間,我覺得思想是個很重要的層面,你的行動力、體魄、智力、概念、思想上的宿願,包括我們做研究性項目什麼也好,但其實也和這有關,我們一定要在某種時空上的對話是要得到一種思想的資源。那我覺得廣東有這個寶礦,很容易就找到,有時候看文獻都會覺得「我們現在的問題都不是新問題」。它沒有逼我們否認自己,而是鼓勵了自己,對權力的褪魅。這種輕裝上陣的、無畏無懼的心態會覺得這裏是個樂土。

 

忠: 因為這個對我都很深感受,我認識一位藝術家,他在杭州國美畢業。他說「我很不想留在杭州,因為我很怕被杭州的體制同化」,結果他就去了北京。接著我就想,阿朱你剛才所說的那種就是主體性,你怎樣看自己、生活、創作和關注的事件。所以我怎樣的土壤會孕育了怎樣的藝術家。

另外,我覺得語言也是個重要的元素,廣東話是自成一個語言體系,怎樣重新看自己地方的文化、歷史和脈絡。

 

朱: 是的,這個也是很關鍵。但當然我們學科或者藝術界現在會有些時候把這些問題專業化、學術法、審美化,這個我自己也會警惕,譬如說一些事如果可以滋潤到你的實踐或者是令你發現問題去找到動力,我覺得是很好的。但是如果單一地專業化、學術化、審美化,都要視乎做的事情、行動和實踐,因為有時候機構化可是會將人想展示的面向和實踐切割,可是它變了個展品的時候,它又會脫離很多實際的情境。今天我們機構化的基礎和基建很有可能是來自所謂的私企,或好像邱志傑等前輩仍想在國家體制內找到當代藝術基建的可能,但是我們回到自身,我們不可以因為他們那種資源的投入,而忘記了自己都有義務去做基建。很多藝術家或年輕一代可能會渴望享受到有更加好的平台,提供更專業、提供更好的資源,但不可以忘記的是其實自己都要有建設、一種非供養的基建的可能。

 

忠: 即是由自己發動的。

那麼阿朱你覺得廣州本地的藝術家多不多人其實有這種的想法?

 

朱: 這個其實從上一輩就一直都在,而且一直延續到現在,博爾赫斯書店、大尾象,他們一直都這樣做。

廣東有個好處就是它一直都處於「半生不熟」的狀態,你也很難把陳侗放在一個當代藝術家或北京藝術家的樣本裏,有很多人也是。甚至你覺得「胡昉到底在做什麼呢?他是一個藝術家還是一個文學家呢?還是畫廊東主呢?」其實本來也有很多莫名其妙的身分,我覺得這事是很正常的。廣州有這個土壤,而令大家覺得基建的尺度不一定要大規模,也可能是自己經營的那一個小範圍。但人和人連結的方式,我在想為什麼大家會有這個願望。難道真的因為粵語環境?

 

忠: 我很好奇像阿朱這種具理想、很富公共性的實踐,除了由個人創作延伸到藝術組合,在廣東其實是不是很普遍。

 

朱: 有時候我會焦慮就是他們這一代會不會喪失了一種我們曾經見過的景象,但是我覺得很難替人回答這個問題。不知道為何,有很多工作場景不斷在反覆提醒我要知道一件事:其實你獲得的訊息和知識,不代表人家理所當然地去看這件事,所以我剛說有很多事可以做,這種公共性其實就是要求大家要彼此互相開放,要不是你就很容易以為人家是那樣但其實不是,這就會變成一種張力,這種張力其實是一種消耗。

 

忠: 對啦,其實就是永遠用自己的視覺去看年輕一輩。我們香港就是叫「世代鬥爭」。就是覺得自己經歷了一些苦難,而你沒有,就好像你們(年青人)什麼也不是了。其實每個年代都有每個年代的難處,只不過就好像阿朱所講,夠不夠開放去聆聽、了解更年輕的一代。

 

朱: 但我覺得要有這個自主意識,譬如說你真的要有開放的意識,所以你自己梳理包括這類的內容,要更公開坦承地讓更多人見到。當然你不可以說你自己的這些經驗是很唯一性或很重要。所以我今天的採訪一開始就說,我得以採訪「大尾象」,去寫他們的文章,是我對他們的想像和因為我要寫文章而去採訪他們的感受是不同的,這是如果你不開放的話,年輕一代是不可能會知道的。

 

忠: 其實真的要提供一個渠道。

 

朱: 但有些時候是靠個人工作方法的自我編輯,但公共環境裏面又有多少渠道可以讓人真正靜下心來思考這些問題呢?如果不是靠你的好奇心。那你也要做一個相對公共化的疏導,令大家有種善意,有一種彼此接近的開放性或善意,我覺得這一刻才能達成。因為無理由、無框架的對抗其實是一種消耗。

 

忠: 而我覺得我和沈軍這個項目其實我們由一開始經常提倡一件事就是將公共資源重新分配,其實是一種嘗試,但其實那種分配不單只是存粹給金錢。而公共性是必須要大家有方法被看見(make it be visible)。所以這個我不覺得是單單展示工作方法而已。我們收到的素材都挺具啟發性(provocative)。

因為我永遠是一個「在路上」的狀態,就好像過客。我不想令自己和(我自己是80後)90後和00後的藝術家產生斷層。

其實在自己的榮耀、物質生活或機會以外,究竟我們能不能夠締造一些大家嚮往的共同生活?我這樣說就有點虛假或抽象,好像很理想化或浪漫化一些事情。其實是很實際的,是很直接的,如果大家沒有那種氛圍,是不會有觀眾。生態可以看似是一個很大的議題,但亦可以很實在地營造出來。

 

朱: 其實最終的問題就是怎麼令到每個人成為公共性節點,除了你自己做那個網絡節點之外,其實你的工作可不可以啟發、連結到其他人去成為那個節點。其實《馮火》也是種陪伴,你一直在出版,人家一直看到,有很多東西是通過信譽、陪伴來實現的。不是說你做了這樣的事情很簡單,大家都做得到,問題是你可不可以一直做,一直做不意味著你會成為一個擁有不可企及的榮耀的成功者。你一直都做一件「大家都可以做得到」的事都可以有意義,或者都值得做,令人不會覺得疏遠了。有很多時候藝術家的職業發展有個不好的趨向,就是你越成功就越遠離你原來的社群,這樣其實是有點尷尬的。其實這個也是體制帶來的那種光環不可避免的一個奇點。

 

忠: 這個就是獎項的機制,我經常都在香港遇到的情況。

 

朱: 這就會很尷尬,大家本來是共生的,就變了競爭者。所以其實《馮火》有很多拒絕都基於這一點,因為我們的原初目標和我們現在所需,沒有那東西我們不會死,你要反而會死,這種拔苗助長,很危險的。所以其實需要一種遠見和判斷,這事對我來說其實不難找到,因為我身邊就可以拿我的老師黃小鵬做例子,其實他一直都在和體制、利益鬥爭的人。我覺得好像做一個這樣的人不會死,都挺優雅。這事和榜樣很有關係,如果你的老師就是一個這樣的,那麼你自然會想成為他。但我亦認為每個人都有自己的語境,譬如你的景況、所處的環境,譬如你在香港,你就很難從容,要分秒必爭。

 

忠: 我租一個工作室,8000元一個月,每天成本是幾百元,那我真的每天都要有生產。

 

朱: 所以其實這事的標準是相對可以浮動的,但有個共性就是大家可以通過創造力,或通過某種判斷力去過自己想過的生活。我覺得這個是共同生活的基礎,不是說你要學我的生活這個是共同生活,其實有很多東西是可以共享的,是開放的,這種生活也是共同生活的樣式,不一定是一樣的。我覺得在中國很多時候說共同性,很容易就會想到中國的集體主義。問題在於它去除了差異性。

 

忠: 將人的獨特性磨平。

 

朱: 對。那今時今日我們如果要說某種協作、協助共同,其實我覺得也要警惕某種「同質性的集體」。我們還是要回到很多很具體的情境裏面去處理問題,所以我們之間是沒有那種很奇怪的約束,但需要花時間去給信任對方,互相支撐才有那個感覺。大家背景、收入、本身經歷都不同,那麼如何令到相對弱勢的人感到平等呢?其實這事是需要很多協助很多付出,別人才會感受得到。要不然很容易落入一種,你們也提到的,「那為什麼要為你服務?我自己都過得好好的,為什麼要投入這事?」

我們現在反而面對一個怎樣的情況呢,就是很多積極的參與者找不到參與渠道,我們是相反,不是人不願意參加,而是想參加但「你們又做了活動嗎?為什麼不和我說。」反而是一種這樣的問題。

 

忠: 這些真的是夢寐以求。以前做了很多內容,跟著我都不知如何輸出,別人都不知道我在做什麼。那次行走我都很深印象,譬如突然有三十幾個人?我自己真的是驚訝。我自己在香港的公共項目就有時覺得挺挫敗,但反而在廣州就好像突然之間到天堂的感覺。

 

朱: 我們的心態也很平和。

 

SJ: 我覺得今天對話是很有生產意義的,原想追索阿朱作為一個創作者的那種思路或者實踐的變化,但現在我們牽涉到很多生態與共同促進的主題。

你談到一些作為藝術家個體,但其實也是影響很多人,令到我覺得是很有希望,大家可以共同一起生成一些共同未來的計畫的藍圖。我們不能要求每個人都以公共性為共同目標,但我很感動看到像阿朱那樣的藝術家或者黃邊那樣的機構,自願自主地代替了一些理應要提供這些土壤的組織去承擔這件事。像黃小鵬老師他給阿朱一個榜樣,代際之間的傳續也是很核心的。

 

忠: 我之前曾經聽過一個講座,一位台灣的山區小學教育家說過一句話。他可以用身教令很多人去追隨或者模仿他,他稱之為一些追隨者(followers)。但他其實不需要追隨者,而是我再次引用阿朱所講─「陪伴」,他說他需要人陪伴,而那些陪伴的人其實是和他並肩一起去走。因為如果那些人只不過是追隨他而想嘗試模仿,就有點像所謂的「藝術家工作方法開源」,大家嘗試模仿那種工作方法其實是有點虛無的。反而大家如何在自己的範圍裏面擁有相似的願景、意識型態,嘗試令到更加多的可能性或創造性出現在圈子或者那個地方裏。所以那些是陪伴的人,而不是追隨的人。

 

 


1. 《馮火》月刊 (Fong Fo Monthly)。由朱建林與同學馮偉敬創辦於2013年創辦。
2. 全名為「閃電傳真機」(Flash Fax)。由藝術家朱建林、施昀佑與策展人張涵 露於2019年開始的獨立空間與社區項目。
3. 「上陽台」是位於廣州的共治空間與藝術社群。
4. 全名為「大尾象工作组」(Big Tail Elephants Working Group)。成員有陳劭雄、梁巨輝、林一林、徐坦。
5. 廣東快車(Canton Express)是一個由侯瀚如於2003年策劃的展覽。參展
藝術家有大尾象工作組、博爾赫斯書店、U–Theque與陽江青年。
6. 黃小鵬(1960-2020),著名藝術家,中國當代藝術教育的先行者與實驗者。 2003至2012年出任廣州美術學院第五工作室主任。黃邊站當代藝術研究中心 的創辦人之一。
7. 南方藝術家沙龍是1986年在廣州的藝術團體,成員有王度、陳劭雄、黃小鵬、
林一林、梁鉅輝等藝術家。
8. Art-Ba-Ba中國當代藝術社區,2006年由多位藝術家討論發起至今。
http://www.art-ba-ba.com/
9. 李傑,《抓桌面》,2006-2010年,木本丙烯,摄影紀錄,300張明信片。

 

 

 

關注 | News

‘Accompaniment and Mutualism’ as Artistic Methodology

In dialogue with ZHU Jianlin

 

Date: 8th March 2021 | 1700 – 2000

Location: Guangzhou, China

 

Interlocutors: ZHU Jianlin (hereinafter as ‘ZHU’), SHEN Jun (hereinafter as ‘SJ’) and LEE Kai Chung (hereinafter as ‘C’)

Editing: SHEN Jun, LEE Kai Chung

Collation: MAN Nga Lok Esther

 


 

Editor’s Note

Artistic Infrastructure and Empathy

 

“StepBackForward” originated with our desire for “publicness”, so as we wanted to start the discussion, we spontaneously thought of Zhu (Zhu Jianlin). He co-founded Fong Fo Monthly magazine[1], which has been in print since 2013, and sells out every month at RMB1; in 2018 he co-founded the Boloho living space, and the art project ‘Flash Fax’[2], which explores public space; he has also long been part of the core team of HB Station, an independent art institute in Guangzhou. But these clichéd reference points in his artistic career don’t really capture Zhu. More or less all visitors to the Guangzhou art circle are taken under Zhu’s wing, sometimes for a few days, sometimes becoming long-term collaborators. 

Since 2018, we have all had to face many changes, both in society and our personal lives, and go from newcomer to carving out a space in this ecosystem. This interview was conducted in our new home in Guangzhou. Two months ago, Zhu helped us find a suitable place to live, as he has done for many friends. After the interview, he said his happiest moment was hearing his newly-arrived friends from the art circle sharing their understanding of Guangzhou. This is something he has been quietly pushing for a long time, the ‘artistic infrastructure’. We’re used to using the word infrastructure to denote something done by someone with power or capital, from the top down. 

In China’s domestic art world, individuals and groups voluntarily take on the responsibility for creating infrastructure, building a mutualistic environment and giving it the power to endure. While this isn’t inevitable, it is necessary, and relies totally on the instigators’ awareness of ‘publicness’. In the process of translating this conversation into English, our translator, Bill Leverett, helped us unpack this word ‘publicness’ which we often use: 

 

  1. Togetherness – This is close to another concept referenced in the conversation, ‘accompaniment’, the establishment of long-term friendships and collaboration between individuals, a situation of mutual assistance based on good will rather than goal-oriented negotiation. In the conversation, ‘accompaniment’ has a strong flavour of ‘witnessing’; an accompanist will not necessarily collaborate on a project, but they will observe the artist’s progress and methods.
  2. Collective – precisely because of the togetherness established between different entities, they gradually and organically become a group.
  3. Public-facing – the public being the majority of society, including but not limited to stakeholders in the art world. Public-facing also often refers to matters of the public interest, and the possibility of being discussed in  the public domain.

 

The above three progressive layers of ‘publicness’ can be seen as a process of development from the individual outward. You could say that Zhu and his friends, through connections between people, have found a positive way of creating a local atmosphere, that is, the ‘togetherness’ and ‘collective’ parts of the ‘publicness’ described above. What struck us most profoundly was that these methods were inextricably bound up with the personalities and experiences of the people, and the local context. We frequently refer to ‘locality’, and we see that in the artistic landscape of Guangzhou, the ‘artist’ identity is more multifaceted and shiftable than most people realise, The unfinished parts of the artistic infrastructure have made it necessary to support each other by all means, and this has built a very strong sense of subjective consciousness and localism. Only when ‘shared local identity’ is achieved in the context of ‘accompaniment’, can we have openness and empathy.

 

The original intention of our conversation with Zhu was not only to explore the possibility of the universality and transplantability of artistic practice, but also to understand that ‘aesthetics’ can transcend the visual and sensory levels and serve certain social functions. For Zhu, this is another kind of artistic moment. 

 


 

 

C: A few days ago, Zhu mentioned that a proposal he’d submitted to an exhibition wasn’t something he would research and produce by himself, but rather a concept he would develop in liaison with other people and organisations. The artwork would only be partially displayed, and the exhibition may not be its ultimate unveiling. This to me, is what ‘publicness’ is about. Very different from my own practice. I have a kind of (practice) that is drawing out political ideologies through researching historical incidents. Another direction is collaborative projects, like StepBackForward, to interrogate the whole ecosystem. Zhu and I have very different educations and upbringings, and we see things differently, but our works both have a kind of ‘for the general public’ quality.

 

SJ: The first time I came to Guangzhou, I could tell the ecosystem functioned very differently (from Beijing and Shanghai); it lacks a mature market system, but instead there is a strong sense of mutual aid. As I learned more, I discovered that this form of mutual cooperation is a form of ‘mutualism’, as if you are using interdependence to find something that could replace the existing art system, and in this situation, you’re also trying to go viral in the manner of SoengJoengToi[3] and Flash Fax. 

I think that Fong Fo comes from a vague idea of doing interesting things together, and since 2018-19, Zhu has worked together with many different curators and organisations to prepare the ground for the ‘artistic infrastructure’. The change in public awareness has been even more profound. How has it changed, and what are the underlying reasons?

And tied to that is the question of how you see the so-called ‘local identity’. Before, as an outsider, I actually saw Guangzhou as having a strong local identity, but I also feel that the mutual aid and forming new collectives among the new generation is very different from the local identity of the older art generation. I wonder what you think of this interpretation?

 

Zhu: I feel that every individual choice we make as artists reminds us of the original context and has a kind of correlation to a place. When we were studying, from 2008 to 2012, it was a pretty prosperous time in art circles, it seemed like it was pretty easy for artists to get signed up by a gallery.  

 

C: Are Beijing and Shanghai similar to the situation in Guangzhou? Or are they very different?

 

Zhu: No, I’m actually talking about Beijing. At that time, Beijing was a big national cultural hotspot. (It seems that now) we Guangdong artists emphasise our ‘Guangdong’ identity, but as I met contemporary artists in my studies, everyone wanted to be a part of the Beijing scene. At that time, any artist with a bit of opportunity or fame would head up north. But during my studies there was a stronger local discourse hidden away in Guangzhou. It was when I started to organise activities myself, with about six or seven other artists of the same age, that we started to get noticed by the older local artists, the Big Tail Elephants[4], or the Canton Express[5]. But this was all to do with our teacher, Huang Xiaopeng[6]. He would talk about some of our activities with his friends, and only then did we realise there was this direct connection to local artists. It was a long process of contact and mutual understanding, because the art world we saw in school was cut off from the rest of China, and the art scene in Guangzhou was also separated from what we saw in the media. In the mainstream Chinese contemporary art world, it wasn’t easy to find Guangzhou art in the media. As a student, other than the Guangzhou Triennial, I didn’t have any access to it. 

Looking through the media, you wouldn’t find any clues, you’d have to find the secret door yourself, and only then realise that since the 80s, there’s been a Southern Artists Salon[7], or the even earlier networks that supported local art. So it wasn’t a direct line of communication, from top down; (when art students graduated) maybe they only knew that there were some contemporary exhibitions in the 798 art district, but they didn’t know about the Vitamin Space hidden in Kecun (客村), or that there was an Observation Society tucked away in Changgang (昌崗). To find the local scene, you really had to search for it. It wasn’t obvious, because it wasn’t very big, at least until 2010, 2011 when Times Museum started really going, then it was a bit different. 

 

I think around 2010, private museums began to emerge, but in 2008 there were already some forces starting to come into play, like the sudden explosion of the gallery system and the emerging museum system, also  2008 brought a very important movement, the first independent spaces; because of limited resources, they tended to attract younger artists. So there were advantages in that environment, we could see plenty of choices compared to today, I think what the young people did was more visible

 

Zhu: As an example, when Fong Fo was recommended to Beijing, it was through Wang Wei, Arrow Factory, and Wu Jin. Although we hadn’t done any exhibitions in Arrow Factory, we’d done some independent publications. Wang Wei brought Fong Fo over to Beijing, and everyone was interested in what the young people were up to, so we got some support and attention. But what I saw when I first encountered the art world in Beijing, the situation I’ve just described, it’s all contemporary art, and doesn’t include the schools, the academy, the national system. 

 

Zhu: Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement in 2014-15 had a big influence on me. Because whether it’s Occupy Wall Street or those provocative European biennales, this kind of extreme two-year demonstration, everyone in the arts or media were discussing it heatedly, but the Hong Kong movement, as I see it, had very complex impacts. On the one hand, there was a sort of coldness in Guangdong, whether it was an emotional detachment or a disregard for the information. It shattered the image I’d had of Hong Kong since I was a child, and forced me to rethink my understanding of the Hong Kong situation; I struggled to put all the pieces together. 

It made me want to do two things. One was to go see Hong Kong for myself [after the movement was over], the other was to seriously re-examine Guangdong’s previous practices; this altered the way I saw things. Looking back at 2008 from 2013 and 2014, I wondered why we in Guangdong were paying so much attention to Beijing? So since 2014, if you track my movements, I’ve stayed clear of Beijing and Shanghai, and have only gone to either one if I had to. 

Another important point was in 2016, Times Museum presented a ‘Big Tail Elephant Retrospective’. I’d spent many hours working with Big Tail Elephant’s Xu Tan. I was familiar with all of them already, so they had that exhibition, and just then LEAP Magazine invited me to write a review of it, and I took that as an opportunity to read all their documents, and directly interview the major members, mainly Xu Tan, (and thereby learned a great deal about the history of local art development).

 

C: I think the viewpoints that you’ve just talked about, some of those values must have influenced the ways you make art, maybe even those around you? Does the system (independent spaces, museums, galleries) influence artists to some extent?

 

Zhu: Yes, it does. We call it an ‘art infrastructure’, but it doesn’t really provide a foundation. No aspect of Guangzhou’s ecosystem is ‘complete’, and it has been like this for many years. This is a reality, but it isn’t necessarily a restriction. 

 

C: I’ve got a friend whose boyfriend is also an artist. She says her boyfriend considers Beijing and Shanghai as models, and says that Guangzhou could have developed that kind of system, a commercial market system, but in the end it didn’t. So her boyfriend thinks that Guangzhou suffers from its lack of such a system. 

 

Zhu: But is the situation the same in Hong Kong?

 

C: Hong Kong is a bit like the situation you’ve just described. 

Hong Kong has had an art market since last century. And the market tends to favour established artists, not necessarily Hong Kongers. Many transactions take place in Hong Kong, but in the end, art fairs don’t have a lot of positive influence on the local art circles. In fact, the art market has a very serious problem: Hong Kong has a lot of artists, and produces new ones every year, but most of them are looking out, rather than in, so a kind of scene developed where the market was very prosperous, and lots of artists wanted to get into the market, but the market was oriented towards foreign artists and collectors. So it’s very hard for young artists, but this is compensated for with government support. 

 

Zhu: When did the Hong Kong Arts Development Council (HKADC) start giving out that kind of grant?

 

C: Very early. The HKADC started sometime in the 90s. 

 

Zhu: And it goes directly to contemporary art?

 

C: Yes. Contemporary art covers a broad range: dance, movies, literature, all sorts. 

I think this (public funding system) has an influence on practice. It’s precisely because of this system for government support of artists, that artists like me are nurtured, and can survive without being dependent on the art market. I can rely on research projects, or take on long-term projects, a project may take 18 months before I feel it’s complete. There’s a new term, ‘research-based practice’. 

Last year I spent some time in Beijing, and I understand mainland artists a little better. I think this sort of thing can’t get off the ground in the mainland, because there isn’t that kind of public resource. I believe there are some private foundations, but few that can actually provide resources to artists. Or, suppose that Times Museum acts as a privately run organisation, and it commissions an artist to do a long-term project, and funds the artist, it can enable you to complete the project, but it can’t enable you to make a living. 

 

SJ: The impact of resources on practice is also apparent at the institutional level. Zhu pointed out that a lot of alternative spaces appeared around 2008-12. Actually from early 2000 to around 2010, independent artists, projects and spaces could often apply for foreign funding, for example the Ford Foundation, the Prince Claus Foundation in the Netherlands, etc. Many art projects, or organisations that had been independent spaces or artists spaces, even private charities, could often receive Ford’s funding. In the 90s, Beijing’s first women’s charity was funded by the Ford Foundation, and hosted the World Women Conference. Some time around 2010, for some political reasons, it became more and more difficult for foreign foundations to support projects or individuals in China. Suddenly many of these independent projects had to find ways to support themselves and survive. By about 2014-15, the scene was coming to an end, and it became even more difficult, largely because of the level of basic support. 

 

Zhu: By that time, independent spaces had already basically dwindled. Private museums became the mainstream, and most of them have corporate backers. Around 2010 there was another sign – in addition to the increase in art spaces, more mainland youth groups started up, like the Double Fly Art Center. Actually many artists from the 80s have run different kinds of groups, like Li Ran’s ‘Company’ and pdf, the very lively (at the time) Art-Ba-Ba forum[8], many young people’s groups would post there, there was a forum for exchanges, so that was when some of our earliest activities, including Fong Fo, came to be. These artists were called the ‘young artists’, but that term isn’t often used these days. 

 

Zhu: The phrase ‘young artists’ was probably used to describe this group of people around 2012-14. The creative logic in that concept is of a pathway, from that kind of structure, moving up into a foreseeable environment where creativity is encouraged. Because our school provided no support in any aspect, often it was us encouraging each other. The small groups that appeared actually only lasted a couple of years, everybody would say ‘You’re just a baotuan (抱團)’. The way we saw it, that description was very strange, in that harsh environment it wasn’t easy to form your own group, not for everyone. ‘Baotuan’ was a derogatory term then, it meant that you weren’t much on your own, only by mixing with other people would you have any chance.    

 

C: Isn’t that what all art collectives are supposed to have in common?

 

Zhu: But under the influence of this phrase, which is that a ‘baotuan’ is a short-lived thing, many times I’ve formed a group with other people, Fong Fo or whatever, and people ask “Isn’t the time for these youthful experiments over?” The logic and desire of Fong Fo was not a short-term project; from the very start we thought that each time we had an edition of Fong Fo, there would be a next edition, and so on. So we started to be aware of the “We’ve got their attention, now what?” concept. Around 2012-14, actually Fong Fo had some exhibition opportunities in 2014, but we never moved towards collaborating with galleries, because there were a lot of reasons, considerations, we had some discussions, but because Fong Fo sold for RMB 1, and we were self-sufficient, we had our own sales network, we sold every copy we could print, we didn’t feel we needed any more money to make the project bigger. 

 

C: Suppose a gallery gave Fong Fo the opportunity for a solo exhibition, have you thought about making it more than a publication, turning it into something else?

 

Zhu: We have, whenever we’re given an exhibition, we want to turn it into something else. For instance, our early strategy was to turn one of our columns into an exhibition, to make it physical, if there was an opportunity to work with writers and turn their content into an exhibition, we would be like a curator and an ‘accompanist’. Later, we thought about ways we could break the structure of the magazine, make it into other structures: take out the advertising and make it into an exhibition, remove the layout of the magazine, and create a ‘Moving Images Department’. Some of us make videos, and the format we were thinking of is actually TVB, which nurtures a stable group of actors, they often perform in different programs, and the five of us can take turns acting, under the banner of our own Fong Fo moving images company, but it would be used to create videos that come from our own lifestyles, that we find interesting, so we would be creating our own content. With that structure, we feel that in limiting conditions, we could be self-sufficient, and not need any other resources. Because our Fong Fo spirit forces us to think of ways to operate with limited resources, even if there are no good conditions, we can deal with the bad ones

 

Zhu: Just by having five people, it seemed like we solved a lot of problems, but reflecting on it later, I realised that we were engaging in some mutual aid and collaboration, we actually thought up some strange things early on, maybe we were thinking of modernism, very early conceptual art, we even claimed to be influenced by Lee Kit. Actually that idea came from a very twisted chain of thought. This is very personal, because for a while I found printing Fong Fo to be boring. I was at the printer, sometimes it was broken again, it kept happening. Later I ran across Lee Kit’s work, where he scrapes out the surface of his work table with his fingernails, and I thought, well, if Lee Kit could bear the long hours of scraping[9], printing this magazine wasn’t such a big deal, was it?

 

C: That’s the kind of suffering that comes with time?

 

Zhu: Yes, because in Guangzhou you do something that nobody pays any attention to, and then rely on your own energy to support yourself emotionally. Actually in conceptual art, there are many resources for support, and a lot of artists doing this, and it’s nothing to worry about, right? It doesn’t bring in money? No problem. It takes a lot of time? No problem. It’s repetitive? No problem. It’s all good. No problem, this matter is no cause for alarm, in fact every time someone offers support, or rushes in with it, we get a bit nervous. For instance, for a while some people would say, I’ll help you with the printing, you come over here, I’ll buy a printer, I’ll print it for you. But we start to worry, is this promise, this patter, something that can be trusted? So we begin to wonder, to what extent can this kind of one-to-one relationship define a kind of collaborative endeavour, maybe a lot of it is friendliness or urgent communication, but when you look at it from a long-term perspective, it’s not easy to do. 

 

C: I’ve participated in collectives, and organised them, and actually it’s very difficult to collaborate with other members or achieve a goal in a short period of time, because communication is the spirit of the collective. I often find there are people in the group who have their own things to do, and can’t work for the group, so someone else has to do all the work. That’s one situation. Another one is there may be different opinions about direction, and someone might say ‘I don’t want to do it that way’ or use the group for their own ends. Suddenly a gallery came looking for me, and I really wanted to have a solo show, so everyone had a big argument, and finally that person had a solo show. It’s very easy for changes of direction and the question of allocating time to make it difficult to keep a group running, so like you said, a group usually has a honeymoon period, but after the honeymoon, it’s difficult to keep it going. Actually in Hong Kong, I feel it is very common, because everyone is too busy to make a living, let alone enjoy life, everyone has so much work to do, they don’t have time to do their own projects, how can they do the collective work? So if they don’t see it as an opportunity or a matter of urgency, [collective work] will not be a very high priority, or if the collective doesn’t have a very stable source of funding to keep it going, there are very few Hong Kong collectives that can stay together a long time because of an ideology, an event, or something that they think is worth researching.   

Do you get into situations like that when you work with other people?

 

Zhu: It happens. In my experience, collectives don’t always work, so Fong Fo, as a group, I can say, is a miracle, the reason it’s still around is a mystery. For instance, I just mentioned Lee Kit, who is my earliest [influence], other early sources of inspiration were Pak Sheung Chuen, Chen Tong, and Hu Fang. These are the artistic networks that you can directly tap into in this area, they also use similar methods to do difficult things. I was actively absorbing their knowledge, their methods. A group has to look at many people’s different situations, it’s not that every time people understand a situation the same way as you do, they’ll have the same question as you. Some groups just go different ways. 

So far, I’ve been looking more rationally at Fong Fo, and what, ultimately, it’s given me, what working method it has developed to support my future endeavours.  

 

Zhu: Most collectives focus mainly on what the majority of their members bring to them, and produce a collective image; but Fong Fo is a platform, it has many writers, a lot of input from people other than the five of us. This serves to encourage us. For instance, sometimes when we are tired, the enthusiasm of the authors submitting articles, and the broad range of coverage, gives us a buzz we can’t get through ordinary work. This has sustained many years of success. 

 

SJ: I think that Fong Fo began with unknowing spontaneity, but grew into actively developing a system for collaborative working. The sustainability of the platform allows Fong Fo to keep going, and at the same time by its nature it can very effectively avoid being influenced by the participants.  

 

Zhu: Yes, yes, this is an important point, there can’t be a dominant person steering it. 

 

SJ: It’s a collective mechanism, so it’s hard to say who is leading it. But I’m curious, as you just said, you’ll all think of interesting things in the course of your work, and that urge to do something serves as your motivation, rather than having an exhibition or collaboration opportunity and thinking up an idea for it. Secondly, in starting up Fong Fo or other collaborative projects, it seems to me that you didn’t have a clear reference or objective. For example, in the organisation I used to be part of, whether the project was large or small, we’d break it down into many clear assignments. But I think that Fong Fo and your other projects don’t have that kind of set goal. The Guangzhou system isn’t perfect, and it seems like the older generation was at its peak from 2008-2012, when you started, seeming to want to do something unprecedented, a pioneering ‘new thing’, so will you start something new from interest all over again? For example, Chung just talked about starting a collaborative group, he really has a desire to work with other people. I feel these are two different motivations. 

 

C: Yes. Actually it’s because whether I’m working on my own or with others, I usually have a clear goal. In fact I imagine what the result will be, very different from Zhu. (Editor’s note: this background is related to funding application requirements.) I’ve always thought that, in fact, this way of working, whether Zhu or his group, isn’t a good match for the art world’s funding systems, like the ‘method for considering the quality of a work of art’. Or take ‘Flash Fax’, is that a more detailed, interesting example? I assume when you started, you had a rough concept, but how it develops depends on how everyone participates. So I’ll try an even clearer example, that time when you were at the Huayu Youth Award exhibition, how did you position yourself within this competition?

 

Zhu: Well, I felt uncomfortable about it. I could have done it better, but the curators on the one hand wanted me to show a bit more ‘collective’-ness, which would give it a more chaotic effect, but on the other hand, they wanted me to appear as an individual. Not like my exhibition in the ‘Cafe do Brasil’ (Para Site, 2019), where all I had to do was show what I myself had created. I was a bit conflicted in the Huayu Youth Award exhibition, so I made some on-the-spot rearrangements. 

There’s another thing, I’m very hesitant about that award. There were some collective projects I did not want to display in that exhibition, I felt it would be difficult to express them there. My installation was more like an open studio itself, so my design was funny, I displayed the table from my home, I wanted to remake that space like my own studio, every day I installed my work at the show, lots of spontaneous decisions were made on site. 

 

Zhu: Although I work in an organisation, and I support youth creativity, my own creative direction isn’t really aimed at the exhibition process. I’d rather make my Fong Fo column more complete, or start a better column, that’s my creative ideal. In the present circumstances, I also feel that I have a lot of things I could do, not necessarily exhibitions or displays, it’s all the stimulation from the points in time that we’ve talked about. Chung mentioned a key point, the current requirements the funding process puts on artists, or the institutionalisation of the funding system, has changed in the last 10 years, pivoted, including the work that Shen Jun faces in organisations, it’s really been the last few years, it’s created a lot of employee Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), because more and more so-called professionalised organisations are becoming sites for mainstream art.   

 

C: Yesterday, Shen Jun and I were talking about that kind of institutionalised and standardised work. Here’s an example: when an organisation commissions an artwork, why does it always have to be finished within 9 months? In my experience, very few curators or organisations, apart from awards, have given me more than 9 months prior notice before an exhibition, but they expect something totally new. Last year (2020) was a bit special, because of the pandemic, a lot of exhibitions were delayed, and so I had more time. But extra time doesn’t necessarily mean extra productivity, because if there isn’t a clear timeframe for the exhibition, I might not spend my time working on the projects. Now I understand that with the institutionalised funding system, there’s a financial plan every year, and it’s impossible to budget anything for next year. For the curator to find the artist, fix the exhibition date, and get authorisation, can take half a year, so there are only six months or less left. I feel that situation must have a serious impact on Zhu, because you need time to collaborate with other people, just establishing communication can take two or three months. So I think when funding is getting systematised, professionalised, institutionalised, it prevents artists from doing that kind of (long-term, collaborative) projects, unless the organisation invites you to exhibit an old work. 

 

Zhu: This is a question I want to discuss, and it’s a serious one, but I want to find a good perspective on it. Technical bureaucratisation is now dominating the art world, and I wonder what that means we’ve lost? We haven’t discussed it seriously, or it’s hard to discuss seriously, because it’s a lengthy process, it’s slowly become the way it is today, and the signs of technicisation, or bureaucratisation, or institutionalisation are the things that the previous generation, or some generation, strived for. 

 

C: It’s a sign of professionalisation (and also the appeal of a stably functioning organisation).

 

Zhu: But in reality, because in the context of China, your organisation is like an island in the middle of a desert, the staff all have too much work to do. In this situation, a lot of the work is delegated to artists or entry-level staff, because a lot of non-profit institutions are really under-resourced, even if they have a lot of determination and energy, but the support required for the foundations of society, educational facilities, private or government funds just aren’t sufficient, so at the coalface, no matter how complicated something is, it takes one or two people to finish it, and the work that can’t be finished is delegated in a bureaucratic manner. Apparently, it’s a very professionalised large-scale exhibition, but in the end, it may be only a couple of people providing support, or artists staying up through the night, paying people with their own money to get it finished. Don’t say that it helps them earn a living, it’s pretty hard to avoid losing money on a project, it certainly makes people reconsider doing this as a career. I feel there are still many possibilities, however, right now it’s just that the direction we’re being led in makes everyone feel that they have to do it this way, and this is the only way to succeed, and to reach a more professional, international level, maybe there’s some unknown contemporary art paradise, and we are rushing madly towards it We leave things behind in this mad rush, a wide spectrum of unseen things, so in my work at HB Station I’m always trying to balance this. Because I already feel this very strongly, we try as hard as we can to balance the projects we work on every year, putting aside some of the more primordial or impetuous ones. It can be hard to see clearly what a finished project will look like, but we can encourage half or more to get to that kind of possibility.

 

Zhu: But from the point of view of an organisation, this kind of project that you can hardly control, and you don’t know what it will be like when it’s finished, maybe it’s better to stay away from it, so at HB Station we force ourselves to be a place for projects with unforeseeable outcomes. Fortunately, some of our HB Station colleagues, just like the ones at Fong Fo, we all accepted that you can work without that firm plan in place, we all intentionally accepted that ‘If we don’t finish it this year, then next year’. We think of ways, we proactively do outreach, or we do more meaningful things, the more productive we can make ourselves, that energy can be relaxed, our energies don’t have to go into projects, we can do a lot of things. And the source of this ‘we can do many things’ thinking depends on everyone arriving at a common understanding. This requires a long-term, steady accompanying, sorting out with each other, it takes a scene where everyone is constantly thinking about this question. It’s hard to talk about how to work together at a meeting convened at an art museum, which methods to employ, even if I can say a lot at the meeting, when I go back to my own place I don’t have any opportunity to work with those people. So what you see in Guangzhou is that we have been doing many projects that help people relate to each other, help them feel the needs of others, the existence of others, not just the professional or aesthetic needs, instead, often the lifestyle needs, for example when you were looking for a house, I came and helped you out, a lot of tiny connections, but it isn’t a kind of benefit, or friendship, I feel its spectrum is wider than I imagined. 

 

C: I like how you use the word ‘accompany’. I’ve been in groups or teams, but there’s always the feeling that I’m fighting on my own from inside the group; it’s a real shame.

 

Zhu: The feeling that you’re the only one responsible for the work? 

 

C: That’s it, sometimes it seems like you’re all worked up about something, and everyone is worked up about their own thing, but there’s no overlap. But that ‘accompanying’ is as Zhu says, a non-profit, non-goal-oriented way of establishing a connection. But the pyramid model you just mentioned, like some unresolvable tension in the organisation, whether it’s real work pressure, or the pressure of curatorial art direction, in the end it comes down to the artists or the entry-level staff. 

 

Zhu: There’s a trend to require artists to have more technical or administrative skills, now some curators even require artists to be in charge of translation, editing, plan-writing, and other administrative jobs, which will save them a few salaries, that’s the ideal artist. I feel that’s not a good form of institutionalisation, but in China, because Chinese organisations don’t have too much resources or support, this can put their staff or collaborating artists into insecure positions. I believe a better form of institutionalisation would possibly involve privatisation, with fair and open funding and support. 

 

SJ: I think when we’ve talked about the funding system, what we’ve meant was the funding system for Chinese contemporary art, which is very different from the perception of the overall system, there are already some gaps. And I’m thinking that these gaps, these cracks, give rise to the possibility of new funding systems. The things we’ve been discussing today have been an issue as long as there’s been an art market. But I think Guangzhou seems to occupy its own space outside of this game, and it has hidden potential at critical moments in Chinese contemporary art history, but it still hasn’t developed into a market, maybe another face of it is the new possibility. One unique feature of HB Station is its support resources, and Guangzhou’s non-profit ecosystem is actually pretty good. 

 

Zhu: There is a consciousness, HB Station has support from Times Museum, but it’s still limited. One advantage then was that we all had a non-profit consciousness. Our mindset was: figure out whether we can still do something without this bit of support. Think of the extreme situations. Also our incomes were used up on the various spaces. I don’t know if today’s young generation have the motivation to do this kind of unrewarding, but resource-intensive work. I feel a bit harsh for saying that. 

I don’t know how to describe this feeling, from my point of view, it seems like we’re saying these channels, you have to find them yourself, through reading or going out and looking, there’s no way to copy another familiar model and put it in this place. 

You have to find a network, whether it’s a local network or one from outside, you have to put in some effort to find it, that’s what I know is important for the foundation of cooperative work, that your work has to stand on the network that you are linked or connected to, or develop that network. Otherwise, it’s very easy to fall into that fighting on your own that you just talked about. Although everyone is talking about publicness, you might think that no-one cares about it. Sometimes I feel that publicness isn’t about the fact that you’re open for business, or that you feel altruistic, but rather you’re looking for a context and a question, or a network that guides all of you. Without it, it’s very hard to get everyone’s empathy. Actually that’s where the threshold of participation is often opened up, you may make a big effort and still not open it up, but if you rather diligently unblock some local networks, maybe you’ll find the breakthrough point. This includes my friends and I, consciously giving tours of Hong Kong and other places, until we started to do SoengJoengTo, the Reading Room, a lot of work had to stand on a network. If you don’t worry about the things the older generation worried about, it may actually leave your work without any foundation. 

 

Zhu: We have received a lot of criticism and comments in Guangzhou, I think it’s a kind of negotiation process. Precisely because of that, everyone will discuss or care about this issue. There have been times we’ve brought together all the criticisms we’ve received, but it’s actually all reflective of the question of a common context. It’s just that we’ve proposed a different case or way of thinking, but the publicness lies in the fact that everyone cares about it, so everyone will have comments or criticism. Actually we sometimes even have confrontations with the older generation, but I feel these confrontations are also a kind of dialogue, we need the courage to accept this kind of friction, otherwise there will be no foundation to grow from. But of course there’s a price, the more collaborative/open your work is, the pressure on you will actually be very big, so for years I’ve been getting a lot of institutional pressure. 

 

C: Can I describe your creative behaviour as how everyone treats the question of ecosystem, or how fundamentally, artists work together?

What makes you want to start so many collaborative projects? Like Flash Fax?

 

Zhu: Flash Fax came at a time of crisis. The way I see it, there are several kinds of crises, one is the overall context, the mainland ecosystem crisis. After the movement, everyone pulls back, how should we respond? The second is our internal crisis, from the outside, Guangzhou seems like an aboriginal community. 

 

C: You mean because it’s been marginalised?

 

Zhu: We can accept being marginalised, what we lack is a kind of external vision that we can reflect on. We had a predicament in those years, how should we see our larger ecosystem and understand ourselves, so I kept doing a lot of exchanges and making a lot of contacts. When people came to Guangzhou I would welcome them enthusiastically, whether the exchange was deep or shallow. But I don’t think you can stop at the level of introductions, so I really want to take this kind of discussion and put it in a long-term space and observe it. My most ideal situation would be hoping that outsiders coming to Guangzhou can stay here for a long time. I hope an outsider in Guangzhou could become like a host, and invite us ‘aboriginals’ into an exchange. Actually at Flash Fax I thought if an outsider came and stayed there for a month or for two weeks, maybe he would actively remake the space to his own liking, then in his space, the situation would change, and when I returned to the space to meet him, actually the role of guest and host would be reversed, and that switch would let me record the conversation. I think it would be a different feeling from that of taking everyone to eat something and being the tour guide. And speaking as an artist, that moment would be a very creative moment, while it isn’t an exhibition or part of a work, I would very much like to see or wait for that kind of situation to happen, and I think it would be very rewarding. It would not be a local identity that I could simply describe, but a local identity with special qualities. 

 

C: This is also the importance of actual space. During the pandemic, everybody was talking about whether or not ‘art space’ really needs ‘space’. Could the internet solve the problem? I’m actually opposed to that idea, I think Shen Jun is too, and Zhu. Things produced in physical space have a meaning that cannot be substituted. But like Zhu just said, the Flash Fax space was recreated by someone else. But actually you really need to have a feeling of selflessness to think this way, or it’s a kind of vision. Suppose I want to manage a space, if I don’t have a picture in my head when I start, I’m going to have some setbacks … 

(Zhu: it is adventurous too)

Yes, or maybe Flash Fax was the work of three people. If the three people don’t have this kind of simultaneous vision, or the spirit of adventure, then it won’t happen. 

 

Zhu: That’s certainly true, finding collaborators is really a subject in itself, maybe the time I spend looking for collaborators is more than I spend researching my own things, as far as I’m concerned, Zhang Hanlu and Shih Yunyou are the subjects of my study, everyone’s collaborators, this is a very important foundation. Second is the moment in which we create a space, actually we probably know that this space has a mission, while it may not be very clear what kind of thing it is supposed to produce, we can still feel the urgency of that mission, otherwise it will be hard to push things forward, especially the moment when we made Flash Fax I felt it was at a time when everyone was feeling down, especially when Yinyou said he was gradually losing his motivation to come to the mainland just for exhibitions. This familiar place is giving me a feeling of strangeness that’s growing stronger. 

 

Zhu: So, we toured Guangzhou and put together some older historical networks, we researched some historical events, and found the spiritual resources and support to reimagine them. Actually for me there was a sense of urgency, if in such a dark time, nobody has the motivation to make connections, we’ll lose an opportunity for negotiation. I don’t think the iron curtain will come back down and everyone will lose their space and energy, but we must prepare for that.    

 

C: I feel very strongly, because I think in the current situation in Hong Kong, the iron curtain has already come down, and there is a kind of unavoidable despair in the art world. 

 

Zhu: Right, despair is coming, so we must grasp the last bits of warmth and mutual support. 

 

C: At the same time, I think everyone is creating a kind of ‘together’ concept, the kind of thing everybody here already knows, they want to use some methods that circumvent the existing system, and do something for which we don’t need to make sense of a clear objective, not just that I do it because I like doing it, but I have some approximate visions, ideals. Once it starts, everyone will understand. 

If there’s time, I’d like to talk about audiences.

I think audiences in Guangzhou need something more than high quality. It isn’t the need to tick the ‘I’ve seen a work of art’ box, they need to get new things, whether it’s knowledge, emotions, or interaction with other people. 

For my sharing sessions and walking project at HB Station, the visitors were very supportive, very enthusiastic, and there was a lot of follow-up, we couldn’t finish all the discussions.

 

Zhu: How is that different from Beijing?

 

SJ: It’s a little hard to find spectators outside the art world or academia through open call, 798 seems to be cut off from society, whether actively or passively. For instance, a lot of local people around me ask me where I work, I say 798, they don’t necessarily know that this is an arts district, maybe they’ve never gone there, doing art there’s often a kind of barrier. I think it has to do with Beijing’s system, awareness, and intellectual structure. 

 

C: Shen Jun and I thought of this project [StepBackForward] a long time ago. Back then, without any funding, we wanted to create a platform for making connections with people. Of course we also very much want to understand everybody’s work methods, which are not very formalised, for example how to write a plan, because technical operations cannot correspond to every artist’s circumstances, or the subject and context of every project, it’s not necessarily good for the artist’s development. We want to create more real-life connections outside the pandemic. 

 

SJ: Yes. In fact, Zhu recently used one of his long-term keywords, infrastructure, which I think is very important. This refers to the ecosystem, and also to the changes in the psychological atmosphere, with a great number of collaborative projects slowly building up to form a vision, whether it’s spectators or artists, people can imagine what they can achieve by being together, building a sense of intimacy and a desire for collaborative work. 

 

C: That seems more like inner construction. Just like if you want to build a bridge, and the bridge is built very elegantly, but the bridge’s foundation is actually built from grass. But everyone sees it from afar, and they only see the many beautiful constructions on the top part of the bridge. It’s precisely because of the complete system and the wider environment that people need to get things very quickly, and it costs too much for society to exist, so everyone needs to get a certain level of reward. And the whole system, in the ecosystem, there are plenty of places to obtain resources, also in the art market, but because everybody lacks preconceptions about establishing a sense of togetherness, so some exhibitions discuss togetherness, but abstractly, while how we view locality is more urgent. 

 

SJ: And this is as important as constructing a physical thing. A facility can be a place, and at the same time it’s an opportunity for everyone to appear at the same time. Without a physical space, actually people will have very few face-to-face opportunities for establishing that feeling of togetherness. And at the same time people are more and more picky, because as the boundaries of conjoined lifestyles gradually become clearer, the differences between me and the next person become more obvious to everyone

 

Zhu: But it is all related to the rule the organisation sets itself, that it has set by itself. You can’t have absolutely no structure at all. 

 

SJ: Of course, besides the contemporaries, there’s another barrier that has shades of social class identity, maybe it’s also related to different local customs, whether the older generations are helping and caring for the younger ones, and the level of tolerance. It doesn’t necessarily depend on the quantity of resources. 

 

C: But I think Beijing has a certain uniqueness, because it is a centre for politics, resources, the art market, it’s all there, of course there’s a kind of centre-looking-out attitude – things out there aren’t as important as in the centre. 

 

Zhu: Yes, that’s right. Perhaps because the older generation of Guangdong artists haven’t been ‘successful’, they are not without accomplishment, it’s just that they haven’t been as successful with resources.

One advantage Guangdong has is that every time China opens up, actually Guangdong will have an opportunity, because it doesn’t need to send things up north to export, it’s an export point itself. ‘Guangdong Express’ doesn’t need the approval of Beijing, doesn’t need clearance from the centre, we can take the fast train to the centre of the world, so it’s an exception. It’s a lot of fun. 

 

C: That’s a very good description. 

 

Zhu: But this exception in the way we think, I think it’s an ideological legacy that we can pass down to the new generation, or the generation after them, let them know, actually we could always be exceptional, without following the capital, getting an official seal to face the world. And I feel Guangdong is a fertile place for this way of thinking, not just because of the older generations, but many levels reinforcing each other. And this gives you a lot of support in your thinking. Because the real world will give you a lot of knocks, and hold you down, but if we can search for our own space, I think that ideology is an important layer, what you’ve always wanted to be able to do, the physical and mental strength, the concepts and ideology, including the research projects we do, it’s all good, but it’s also tied up with this, we certainly have to get, in some dialogue in space-time, an ideological resource. And I believe that that treasure exists in Guangdong, it’s very easy to find, sometimes when I’m looking in the archive, I feel that ‘all our current problems are problems we’ve had before’. It doesn’t force us to deny ourselves, but encourages us to continue our exploration and challenge the authorities. With a fearless attitude, taking to the field with a barest of armour, you’ll find this place a paradise. 

 

C: This has a powerful effect on me. I know an artist, he graduated from the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. He says “I really don’t want to stay in Hangzhou, because I’ll be absorbed into the Hangzhou art system”, yet in the end he went to Beijing. So then I thought, Zhu, what you’ve been talking about is subjectivity, how you see yourself, your lifestyle, creativity and events that matter to you. That’s the soil that determines how the artist will develop. 

Also, I think language is another important element, Cantonese is its own linguistic system, a way of re-seeing your local culture, history, and network. 

 

Zhu: Yes, that’s also key. But of course sometimes our discipline or the art world makes these questions specialised, academic, or aesthetic, I’m wary of that myself, for example if something can improve your practice, or help you discover questions that motivate you, I think it’s great. But if it is only specialised, academicised, or aestheticised, then it depends on the things that are done, the actions and the implementation, because sometimes institutionalisation can separate one’s public face from his practice, but when it becomes an exhibit, it’s removed from many real situations. Today the foundation and infrastructure of our institutionalisation are very likely to have come from so-called private enterprise, or like Qiu Zhijie and others of his generation want to find within the national system the possibility of a contemporary art infrastructure, but we return to ourselves, we can’t forget that we have our own duty to make infrastructure, because of their investment of resources. Many artists of the young generation are eager to experience a better platform, they suggest more professionalism, better resources, but what you can’t forget is that everyone must do their own construction, the possibility of a kind of self-sustaining infrastructure

 

C: You have to initiate it yourself.

So, Zhu, do you think a lot of the Guangzhou artists actually see it this way?

 

Zhu: The older generation’s always seen it that way, and it continues down to the present, Libreria Borges and Big Tail Elephant, they’ve done it. 

 

Zhu: One advantage Guangdong has is that it has always been in a ‘half-baked’ [immature and transitional] state, you can hardly put Chen Tong in the contemporary artist or Beijing artist categories, and this applies to many other people. You even wonder “What does Hu Fang really do? Is he an artist or a writer? Or a gallery owner?” Actually there are many unfathomable identities, I feel that’s a perfectly normal thing. Guangzhou has this kind of soil, that makes people feel that the infrastructure doesn’t have to be large-scale, it could also be the kind of scale that you can manage yourself. But the way that people connect with each other, I’m wondering why people can have that desire. Is it really because of the Cantonese environment?

 

C: I’m very curious, this kind of ideal, very rich publicness like Zhu’s, from individual creativity extending to artistic assemblage, is it very common in Guangdong?

 

Zhu: Sometimes I worry about whether this generation will lose a kind of scene that we’ve already seen, but I feel it’s difficult to answer this question for others. I don’t know why, but a lot of work situations keep repeatedly reminding me that I need to know something: actually the information and understanding that you gain doesn’t represent everybody taking the situation for granted, so I said there were many options, this kind of publicness actually requires everybody to be open to each other, if not then it would be very easy for you to think everybody’s like this, but they’re not, this can become a kind of tension, which is really a kind of consumption. 

 

C: That’s right, in fact the older generation always look at the younger generation from their own perspectives. In Hong Kong, we call it ‘generational struggle’. It’s the feeling that they have experienced some hardships, but you haven’t, just like you (younger generation) are nothing. Actually every generation has its difficulties, but it’s like Zhu talked about, are we open enough to listen to, and understand, the younger generation?

 

Zhu: But I think there needs to be an independent awareness, for example you really need to be open-minded, so you yourself sort out, include this kind of content, you need to openly and honestly let more people see it. Of course you can’t say that your own experiences are very unique or important. So at the beginning of today’s interview I said I had the chance to interview Big Tail Elephant, and write an article about them. My image of them was different from the feeling I got when I interviewed them because I wanted to write an article. If you’re not open, the younger generation won’t know. 

 

C: There really needs to be a channel.

 

Zhu: Sometimes people must self-reflect and adjust their individual working methods, but in the public environment how many channels are there for people to really calm down and ponder these questions? Otherwise, it depends on your curiosity. So you might have to conduct a relatively public initiative (through your work), make everyone feel benevolent, a kind of openness-to-getting-together benevolence, I think that’s possible right now. Because confrontation without reason and without limitations is actually a form of consumption. 

 

C: And I feel that the project Shen Jun and I are doing, from the start we’ve advocated one thing, which is the redistribution of public resources, actually it’s an attempt, but the redistribution isn’t purely money. And publicness means that everyone has a way of being visible. So I don’t think this is just a demonstration of work methods. The source materials we received were all very provocative. 

 

C: Because I am always in an ‘on the road’ situation, it seems like I’m a guest. I don’t want to create a gap between me (I’m post-80s) and post-90s and post-00s artists.

In fact, apart from our glory, material lifestyle and opportunity, can we in the end create some shared lifestyles that everyone would want? The way I describe it sounds a bit phony or abstract, idealised or romanticised. But it’s actually very realistic, very straightforward, if nobody provides that kind of ambience, there won’t be an audience. The ecosystem can look like a big topic, but it can be created in an honest way. 

 

Zhu: In fact the final question is how to make each person become a node of publicness, apart from you yourself building a social network, can your work actually inspire, connect with other people to become part of the network? Fong Fo is actually also a kind of accompaniment, you’re constantly publishing, people are constantly reading, many things are realised through trust and accompaniment. That’s not to say it’s very simple to do this kind of thing, everyone can do it, the question is can you keep doing it, keep doing it without the surety of unimaginable glory and success. You keep doing an ‘everybody can do it’ thing, which can be meaningful, or worth doing, and it doesn’t alienate people. Very often artists’ careers develop in an unhealthy direction, which is that as you become more successful you are more and more detached from your original community, it’s actually a bit embarrassing. It’s really an inevitable side-effect of the halo that comes with public funding. 

 

C: This is the awards system, a situation I frequently encounter in Hong Kong. 

 

Zhu: This can be very embarrassing, everyone starts out mutualistic, but then becomes competitive. So really Fong Fo rejects a lot of opportunities over this point, because of our primary goal and what we now need, we’re not going to die because we don’t have that thing [glory, opportunity and so on], but if you want to treat it as fatal, this overeagerness can be very dangerous. So what we need is a kind of vision and judgement, this to me is not hard to find, because I have my teacher Huang Xiaopeng as an example, actually he is always struggling with funding and profit. I think it seems like it won’t kill you to be that kind of person, it’s all great. This has to do with examples, if your teacher is like this, you’ll naturally want to become like them. But I also think that everyone has their own context, for instance your situation, your whole environment, in Hong Kong it’s difficult to slow down, every minute counts. 

 

C: If I rent a studio, HKD8000/month, that costs a few hundred a day, I must be productive all the time. 

 

Zhu: So really we have a moveable standard for this, but there’s one constant, which is that everyone can, through creativity or a certain kind of judgement, live the life that they want to. I feel that’s the foundation for a collaborative lifestyle, I’m not saying look at my life, this is what a collaborative lifestyle looks like, there are really a lot of things that can be shared, that are open, this is also a kind of collaborative lifestyle, and it’s not identical. I feel in China when we say ‘collaborative’, it’s easy to think of Chinese collectivism. The problem is that that erased individuality.

 

C: It rubs out our uniqueness.

 

Zhu: Right. So right here and now if we’re talking about some kind of cooperation, or collaborative mutual aid, we actually have to beware of a certain kind of ‘homogenous collective’. We’re better off going back to specific situations to solve a lot of problems, so we don’t have that kind of strange constraint between us, but we need to spend time trusting each other, supporting each other before we can have that feeling. Everyone has different backgrounds, incomes, individual experiences, so how can we help relatively disadvantaged people feel equal? This really takes a lot of help, a lot of effort, before other people feel it. Otherwise, it’s easy to fall into a sort of, as you mentioned, “why should I serve you? I’m doing alright, why should I invest in this?”

The kind of situation we’re facing now, is that many many active participants can’t find a channel through which to participate. We’re the opposite: it’s not that people aren’t willing to participate, they want to, but “You’re doing another activity? Why didn’t you tell me?”, it’s that kind of problem. 

 

C: That would be our wildest dream. I’ve done a lot of programs, and then not known how to promote them, and other people didn’t know what I was doing. The walking tour that time made a deep impression on me, like suddenly there were 30-some people? I was amazed. My public projects in Hong Kong sometimes feel like complete failures, but in Guangzhou it seems like I’ve suddenly arrived in heaven.

 

Zhu: And we feel very calm [about attracting audience]. 

 

SJ: I think today’s discussion was very productive, I originally wanted to trace back through the evolution of Zhu’s thinking and practice as a creator, but now we’ve brought in a lot of ideas about the ecosystem and public promotion. 

 

You’ve talked about some individuals who are artists, but it really impacts on many people, making me feel hopeful that everyone can get together to develop some plans and blueprints for a common future. We can’t ask every person to have the same goal of publicness, but I’m very moved to see artists like Zhu or organisations like HB Station voluntarily stepping in to replace some of the groups that were supposed to be the seedbeds for this. Like Huang Xiaopeng, being an example for Zhu, the continuity between generations is core. 

 

C: I once attended a lecture, where a teacher in a mountain school in Taiwan said this: he can use his example to get many people to follow him or imitate him, which he would call ‘followers’. But he doesn’t really need followers, but I again quote Zhu – ‘accompanists’, he said he needed people to accompany him, and those people would work with him at the same level. Because if they were just following him and could only try to imitate him, then it would be like the so-called ‘open source artist methodology’, everybody trying to imitate one way of working is a bit empty. On the other hand, everyone having a similar vision and ideology, but within their own scope, trying to create more possibilities or creativity appear in that group or that space. Those are accompanists, not followers.  

 


 

1 Fong Fo (Raging Fire) Monthly magazine, founded by Zhu Jianlin and classmate Feng Weijing in 2013.
2 Flash Fax, an independent space and community project started by artists Zhu Jianlin and
Shih Yunyu and curator Zhang Hanlu in 2019.
3 SoengJoengToi (Top Tier) was a cooperatively managed art space in Guangzhou.
4 The full name is ‘Big Tail Elephants Working Group’. The members included Chen Shaoxiong, Liang Juhui, Lin Yilin and Xu Tan.
5 ‘Canton Express’ is an exhibition curated by Hou Hanru in 2003. Participating artists included Big Tail Elephant Working Group, Libreria Borges, U-Theque and Yangjiang Youth.
6 Huang Xiaopeng (1960-2020), a famous artist, a pioneer and innovator of Chinese contemporary art education. From 2003 to 2012, he served as Director of the Fifth Studio of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. One of the founders of HB Station.
7 An art group established in Guangzhou in 1986. Its members include Wang Du, Chen Shaoxiong, Huang Xiaopeng, Lin Yilin, Liang Juhui and other artists.
8 Artbaba Chinese contemporary art community, a forum initiated by many artists in 2006. http://www.art-ba-ba.com/
9 Baotuan’ is a term that comes from gaming, meaning a small group of fighters who, when working together, are undefeatable. It came to mean something more like ‘small circle mentality’.
10 Lee Kit, Scratching the Table Surface, 2006 – 2011, acrylic on plywood, photo documentation on 300 postcards.
©2021 LEE KAI CHUNG & SHEN JUN. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED