"EMBRACE REALITY, SURPASS REALITY"


Time: 8 August 2008

Venue: 798 Art District, Gao Brothers Contemporary Art Center

Interviewer: Fang Shenyi

Speakers: Gao Brothers

Translators: Stacey Duff & Zhang Qing


Fang Shengyi: In the international art world, it’s not unusual for brothers to collaborate on artistic projects. But in China you are the only two brothers who have made art together and gained wide recognition as an art group. Why did you choose to present yourselves to the public as the “Gao Brothers”?

Gao Brothers: At the very beginning, we called ourselves the Gao Brothers for practical purposes – the character ‘Zhen’* in my name “Gao Zhen” is often mispronounced by others and misspelled in magazines. Meanwhile, my brother’s given name, ‘Qiang’, is extremely common. In those days, many people were already calling us the “Gao Brothers”, so we thought that the name was direct and clear. We’d been collaborating for many years, so using one name together was not only appropriate but also a way to avoid confusion.

Fang Shengyi: The “Gao Brothers” has become a recognizable name in the field of experimental and avant-garde art, so naturally, you’ll continue to use this name. Have you considered promoting yourselves commercially?

Gao Brothers: We will continue to use this name. It’s easy to recognize, but ultimately a name is just a symbol. Actually, our projects have been completely separate from commercial ventures for many years now, even though we’ve cooperated with commercial galleries. We have not considered introducing commercial ventures into our artistic projects, and we hope that our art maintains a spiritual quality that is independent of the latest trends in the art world.

Fang Shengyi: A lot of people are drawn, throughout their entire lives, to a certain career. It might be the calling of a destiny, or simply a strong will that make them so committed. You have devoted the past few decades to a career in art, and to the making of experimental and avant-garde artworks. What is your motivation?

Gao Brothers: We choose our own careers and destiny, but unique circumstances in our lives also made the choice for us. So it’s a combination of choice and circumstance. I started out studying Chinese traditional painting, but I found the medium too formulaic to express the complexity of contemporary life. I was also writing a bit of poetry, and even got an official award for poetry writing. I don’t write anymore, but I still read quite a bit of literature. In college, Gao Qiang was studying painting before he switched to become a literature major. After graduating from college, he started creating art again. Back then, we were in the midst of the 80s New Wave movement, and a lot of young artists were looking for new ways of artistic expression. Back in the 80s, there was no art market, and we were making art simply because we loved it. For us, art is a lifestyle. The choice of art as our career may also be determined by our personalities, which are probably not suited for other types of jobs.

Fang Shengyi: The style of any artist, that is, the visual quality of the artist’s finished pieces, comes from a process of thinking and deliberation. Usually, an artist’s growth is also influenced by existing artistic concepts. Which existing artistic concepts do you most identify with? What ideas and types of deliberation went into the making of your art that we see today?

Gao Brothers: I think Joseph Beuys marks a turning point in the whole of contemporary art history. Before Beuys came along, art was a closed system evolving within the boundaries of tradition, or orthodoxy. Beuys directed art towards social reality. To a certain extent, he saved art. But our artistic career was not guided by Beuys’s ideas. In fact, back in the early 80s, we did not know who Beuys was. In a declaration for the “End-of-the-century Art Show”, we wrote that art was for the purpose of living and surviving. Art should relate to social reality and express the sensation of living. These ideas were shaped, in part, by the unique social circumstances at the time.

Fang Shengyi: Right. As a member of the audience, I can clearly sense that your art   engages with social reality, and exerts an influence on social reality. Someone once said that “the meaning of art does not lie within itself, but within its influence on society”. What’s your take on this view?

Gao Brothers: We believe it’s a matter of different perspectives. Some people focus on the innate structure of art; some emphasize the influence of art on society. As far as we are concerned, art is an open system. Depending on the form or method you use, your art takes on a different look. It’s like a language. There are a variety of expressions you can use, but you’ve got to know the grammar well.

Fang Shengyi: Some people think that your work, “World Hug Day”, has extended beyond the category of art. It also seems to be an ongoing project. Your recent work, “Forever Unfinished Building”, features huge and desolate construction sites. Does the work have any metaphorical implications?

Gao Brothers: “World Hug Day” is an experimental art different from our previous works, both in methods of creation and exhibition. The work truly combines everyday life with art. We like to see it as Internet-related behavioral art. On September 10, 2000, we gathered a hundred and fifty volunteers in Jinan to implement a performance art project called “A Utopia of 20-Minute Embrace”. Later we proposed on the Internet to name the 10th of September “World Hug Day”, which received enthusiastic responses from people all around the world. During the past few years, we have been invited to implement “World Hug Day” performance art projects in Britain, France, Germany and Japan. We will continue to do this project until “World Hug Day” becomes universally recognized and accepted.
In 2000, when we first did the “Hug” performance in Jinan, we came across a huge, unfinished and abandoned building. Later we created the “Forever Unfinished Buildingr” series, based on what we saw in Jinan. In our opinion, the series epitomizes contemporary China. Compared to Western countries, which have constructed relatively mature social and legal systems, China is like one unfinished building still undergoing construction, and no one can predict what this modern tower called China will look like when it’s finally completed. No one knows when it will be finished, or what price people will have to pay to get it finished. We don’t have a clue as to how the blueprint was designed, and whether there is any kind of rationale behind that design. Of course China is not isolated, but connected to the rest of the world; so in our recent “Forever Unfinished Building No. 4”, we included images of international figures and events in the work.

Gao Brothers: If we have to look at what we’ve done in terms of stages, our artistic career has in fact passed through four stages. The first stage was around 1985 when we “stepped out of the tradition”. We employed expressionist and surrealist styles to create visual imagery with an end-of-the-century feel. This was a transitional period for us. After 1988, we started creating experimental art. Our participating piece in the Chinese Modern Art Exhibition, “Mass at Midnight”, as well as other installation works from the “Inflatable” series, marked a new stage in our artistic career. We began to form an original artistic vocabulary, a taste for experimental materials, as well as an attitude of insubordination, both politically and culturally. “The Art of the Copy Machine” was created in the early 90s. The work utilized technology to strengthen the theme of political criticism. The third stage started in the mid 90s, when we tried to achieve in art a sense of spiritual transcendence and restructuring. We spent over two years working on the installation series entitled “The Great Crucifix”, which drew the attention of quite a few art critics and literary academics. During the same period, we also created artworks ranging from performance art to photography and on-site installations, such as “Mass on the Square” and “Installation on Tiananmen Square”. From the end of 90s till today – the fourth stage of our artistic career – we’ve been using performance and photography as the major media for creation. Most influential works created in this stage are “A Sense of Space” and the “Hug” series, which includes “A Utopia of 20-minute Embrace”, “World Hug Day” and “The Hugs of 20 Hired Staff” among others. The making of these works involved performance, photography, video and the Internet. Beginning from 2006, we introduced sculpture as another major element in our artistic vocabulary, and created sculpture pieces such as “Miss Mao”, “Catch the Miss”, and “The Wave of the Hand”. Though throughout these four stages, we experimented with different materials and different methods of artistic creativity, the focus of our art has always been to observe reality and transcend it.

Fang Shengyi: Today we see a lot of art practitioners who are earnestly hoping to obtain approval from the system or from certain interest groups. Why have you chosen to stay independent? The problem of survival is a problem everyone has to face. For the past twenty years China’s art market was only beginning to mature, without depending on the government, or the system, how did you manage to get by and fund your projects?
Gao Brothers: The system is ubiquitous. We were once also a part of the system, so we know how the system damages individuals. We are not willing to attach our lives – lives we only get to live once – to some system or organization, nor can we tolerate the oppression exercised by the system and the organization on individual freedom. Our family education taught us that “a man of honor does not join cliques”, and we still cling to that belief. As for the problem of survival, we have been rather lucky. We started cooperating with galleries since 2000, and we haven’t had any major difficulties with making a living and funding our own projects. Of course, financially, we are doing better today than before.
Fang Shengyi: What do you think is the most important quality about a work of art? Is it its Chinese characteristics, or its international appeal, or the individuality of the artist as reflected in the work? What do you think of the Orientalist tendency in art?

Gao Brothers: Individuality is naturally the most important. Chinese characteristics and international appeals are only byproducts of a work’s individuality. We believe that individuality comes from an artist’s lived experiences, and it is individuality that makes an artwork true, unique, unrepeatable and irreplaceable. Artists do not need to look for so-called “Chinese characteristics”. “Chinese characteristics”, as well as “the Chinese card”, “the Chinese way” and “the Chinese experience” – these are all phrases art theorists write in their summary reports on a Chinese art scene. Such phrasing is a strategy aimed at strengthening national competition in the international culture arena. Culture, like sport, is a competition that the collective Chinese have to win. Concern over art’s Chinese characteristics will eventually hurt the artist’s individuality and independence. When we create, we never stop to wonder if the work looks Chinese or not. It is the feelings and thoughts we get from real life that are most important and most deserve our respect. For Chinese artists to look for Chinese characteristics in art is as silly as looking for donkeys when you are already riding one.
Orientalism is a confused concept. Said’s orientalism is a discourse about the “Orient” invented by Europe according to European cultural logic. It is an idea of the Orient that satisfies the cultural needs of the West. Plainly put, the West indulges in a collective daydream about the East. Orientalism in the vocabulary of art criticism simply means that a work has a certain oriental, exotic flavor. For artists from both east and West, the pursuit of exoticism should not be taken as a serious endeavor in art. Such a pursuit is simply boring, tasteless and childish, and only works for equally boring and tasteless businesses like foreign trade and tourism. We prefer art that reflects the individuality of the artist, while also relating meaningfully to a universal audience. The essence of orientalism and exoticism in artworks is strategizing. These works lack basic artistic integrity, and do not relate to our cultural reality in any truthful manner.

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*Gao Zhen’s given name, Zhen (兟), is a rarely used character and even many educated Chinese will not recognize it at first glance [trans. note].