Power, capital, and artistic freedom: contemporary Chinese art communities and the city

ABSTRACT

This paper offers a critical review of the proliferation of the contemporary art colony in China since the beginning of the twenty-first century in the context of China's promotion of cultural creative industries as one of the strategies for urban development and economic growth. Through analyzing cases in Beijing, Xi’an, and Sanya, cities ranging from ‘first-tier’ to ‘third-tier’ in their size and status, the paper explores the challenges and opportunities many contemporary Chinese art professionals find themselves face amid the competitive city image building campaign, a top-down movement led by local state and private investors in cities across China. It is evident that contemporary art and alternative art spaces associated with it have been drawn into the process of commodification, inadvertently recruited to play an ancillary role in the reproduction of the hegemonic collusion between political power and capitalism in a rapidly urbanizing China. Nonetheless, I argue that the inclusion of contemporary art communities as a player in the production and reproduction of the urban space has provided critical-minded artists, critics, and curators opportunities to participate in the reconfiguration of the physical and cultural landscape of Chinese cities, albeit not always with positive outcomes. As such, some art professionals are able to appropriate the process of capitalist urbanization to create their own ‘infrastructures of resonance’ [Thompson 2015. Seeing Power: Art and Activism in the Twenty-first Century. Brooklyn: Melville House], which support artistic freedom and facilitate the growth of diverse forms of cultural creation and exchange despite the coming dominance of ‘power plus capital’ [X. Wang 2003. A Manifesto for Cultural Studies. In: C. Wang, ed. One China, many paths. London: Verso, 274–291].

KEYWORDS:

• Contemporary art communities
• cultural creative industries
• urbanization
• city image
• appropriation
• infrastructures of resonance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Meiqin Wang researches contemporary art from China in the context of commercialization, globalization, and urbanization of the Chinese world and has written on topics such as artist villages and cultural industries, art and urbanization, and socially engaged art. Her recent publication includes a research monograph Urbanization and contemporary Chinese art (Routledge, 2016).

ORCID

Meiqin Wang http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2443-196X

Notes

1 It is worthwhile to note that there is a certain tension between the two terms cultural and creative as used by national and city governments in China due to the lingering Socialist mentality that is not ready to give up its control over culture and accordingly does not necessarily appreciate cultural production oriented to be creative, innovative, and individual-based and thus different from national cultural goals it deems important. For convenience, I took up one expression that groups the two together as cultural and creative industries, or CCI.

2 Widely used in China's administrative context, the tier system combines political power, economic prosperity, and population size to classify Chinese cities. In recent years, the property market has become an increasingly dominant factor in the ranking system. In general, first-tier cities include Beijing and Shanghai, while Guangzhou and Shenzhen are considered by some as first-tier cities and by others as semi first-tier cities; second-tier cities include Chengdu, Chongqing, Nanjing, Wuhan, Shenyang, Tianjin, Xi’an and other large provincial capital cities and some prosperous sub-provincial capital cities; third-tier cities refer to prefecture capital cities, such as Sanya, that are mainly located in developed southern and central regions; and the rest are considered fourth-tier cities.

3 Later, artists began renting defunct factories in cities as their studios, which would be known as art zone or art district. Besides these, art camp and art cluster are also used by some art communities.

4 In October 2000, a state proposal passed by the Fifth Plenum of the 15th Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, for the first time, emphasized the importance of ‘culture industry’ in the state's policy for reforming cultural production and administration in China. The official promotion of cultural industries, however, would begin with the official report of the Chinese Communist Party's 16^th National Congress in 2002, in which it clearly writes: ‘In the current market economy, developing the culture industry is a very important way to achieve socialist cultural prosperity and to meet the spiritual and cultural needs of the people.’ See ‘The Party's 16^th National Congress Report,’ http://www.ce.cn/ztpd/xwzt/guonei/2003/sljsanzh/szqhbj/t20031009_1763196.shtml (accessed 24 March 2014.)

5 At the Fourth Meeting of the Ninth National People's Congress, held on March 15, 2001, it was declared that China was ready to launch nationwide urbanization.

6 For a recent example, see Ministry of Finance of P.R.C., ‘Notice on Applying 2016 Special Funds for Cultural Industries Development,’ http://wzb.mof.gov.cn/pdlb/zcfb/201605/t20160503_1973640.html (accessed July 21, 2016).

7 Although Florida's formulation of creative class and its function in the city have met with criticism from the academic world (e.g., Peck 2005), the concept of creative class has widely circulated among the policy-makers in China.

8 Based on my continuous observation of the 798 every summer since 2008 and my conversations with gallery owners and artists who used to be or are still based in 798.

9 Regardless of their financial situations, most artists and other professionals in Songzhuang complained about the rapidly rising living expenses when asked about this issue in our conversations.

10 My conversations with many local artists in 2012 and email communication with Wang Fenghua on March 6, 2014

11 My conversations with many Xi’an artists including Wang Fenghua in August 2016.

12 Ibid.

13 Headquartered in Beijing, the Chinese Artist Association has a branch in every province—a mechanism established by the central government in 1949 to organize and control art professionals across the country.

14 Huang Du's remark for the opening of 2013 Art · Sanya, 6 December 2013.

15 This came from my observation while I was based in Sanya between November 2013 and May 2014.

16 According to official statistics, China's urban population reached 690.79 million by the end of 2011, finally surpassing its rural counterpart of 656.56 million. Mainstream urban planners proclaimed this as the indication of China's successful transformation from a rural country into an urban nation.

17 Li Xianting also expresses this point of view in his recent writings.