Qiu Zhijie as historian: media critique as a mode of critical historical research

Abstract

Qiu Zhijie, a contemporary artist living and working in China and at the same time a participant of the global art world and its discourses, conducts historical research on multiple layers. His works, this paper argues, heighten the awareness of one's situatedness in certain constructions of historical narratives when practising and critiquing contemporary art. Moreover, they raise the consciousness of how one's relationship to the past is constituted through specific dispositives of artistic media as well as by certain epistemological structures.

Keywords:

• calligraphy
• intermediality
• media critique
• photography
• contemporary art
• transcultural

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Birgit Hopfener is a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Art History at the Free University of Berlin and an associate member of the Cluster of Excellence Asia and Europe in the global context at Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg. Currently she is working on her post-doctoral project, ‘Topologies of Art in Relationship to Life as a Transculturally Negotiated Theme in Contemporary Chinese Art’. She is the author of the book Transkulturelle Reflexionsräume einer Genealogie des Performativen: Bedingungen und Artikulationen kultureller Differenz in der chinesischen Installationkunst (2013) and the co-editor of the publication Negotiating Difference: Chinese Contemporary Art in the Global Context (2012). She is a member of the editorial team of the Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art and the ASAP Journal, the scholarly journal of The Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present.

Notes

1. According to Hal Foster, archival practice means making ‘historical information, often lost or displaced, physically present’ (Foster 2004, 4). Referring to Hal Foster, Mark Godfrey describes archival research: ‘These varied research processes lead to works that invite the viewers to think about the past; to make connections between events, character, and objects; to join together in memory; and to reconsider the ways in which the past is represented in the wider culture’ (Godfrey 2007, 143).

2. In the context of this artwork series, he has been examining the histories of the bridge as a monument of Socialist modernity on the one hand, and as a site that has recently become known for its large numbers of suicides on the other, in order to disclose lesser known or even suppressed aspects of history and to suggest perspectives on how the present day and the past are connected.

3. The maps referred to are, for example, Map of 21st Century, Map of Utopia, Map of Total Art, Map of Chinese History and Map of Reactivation. All of them were first shown during his solo exhibition at the Witte de With Museum in Rotterdam in 2012. Since then, Qiu Zhijie has drawn many more maps. To view them, please visit his website: www.qiuzhijie.com.

4. Jacques Rancière's article on the historicity of film was an inspiration for this article. He argues that film not only records history but that it is the dispositive of the medium of film that constitutes human beings’ historicity, i.e., how people relate to history in specific ways (Rancière 2003, 230–246).

5. The task of understanding the present as interconnected with the past and the future (since our present way of thinking is shaped by the past and will shape the thinking of the future) is central to Qiu Zhijie's thinking, as he has articulated it when explaining his concept of ‘total art’ (Bei and Le 2013).

6. This is especially evident when he combines historical research with a socially engaged approach to art, as for example in the project A Suicidology of the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge (since 2008), where he aims to heighten people's awareness of how today relates to the past. As will be explained later in this article, this emphasis on the importance of historical consciousness, i.e., of how human beings are shaped by history and vice versa, can be seen in the historical Chinese concept of historicity.

7. Wang Xizhi was especially famous for his semi-cursive script. His calligraphy has been greatly admired and he is regarded as a sage of calligraphy.

8. ‘The second emperor of the dynasty, whose role in the consolidation of T’ang power actually surpassed that of his father, the founding emperor Kao-tsu (r. 618–628), Tai-t’ung was eager to exert his influence in cultural as well as political affairs. His policy of vigorously promoting the art of Wang Hsi-chih, closely associated with the aristocratic culture of south China, also allowed the emperor, whose power base was in the north, to use calligraphy as a symbol of unification’ (Harrist, Jr. 1999, 249).

9. The Wang style refers to the handwritten works by Wang Xizhi and his son Wang Xianzhi (344–386) (Mc Nair 1998, 23).

10. Being versed in the Wang tradition was a precondition to becoming a member of the administrative elite, i.e., the political body in pre-modern China, since this canon of calligraphy formed part of the Imperial Examinations.

11. Axel Schneider (1996, 56) writes about the historiographical tendencies towards the secularization of kaozheng xue: ‘Whether these traits of Chinese historiography changed with the development of the kaozheng research of the Qianjia period (1736–1821) and so led to the emancipation of historiography from the classics is one of the most contested questions in the intellectual history of late imperial China. Whereas Benjamin Elman characterizes the evidential scholarship of the kaozheng type as divorced from political or ethical aims and therefore as a revolution in discourse and a first step towards secular, scientific research in the modern sense, Michael Quirin has argued, as I see it convincingly, for the opposite interpretation, by emphasizing that the seemingly apolitical kaozheng scholarship still pursued highly political and ethical aims’.

12. ‘To engage with the Chinese people and their culture is to engage with their history. Their history constitutes their ambiance – the very existence of China. The people, politics and culture in China reside in its history. China is the place where we clearly see that the human being is thoroughly homo historiens. By this I mean that the Chinese people are both shaping and being shaped by history …’ (Huang 2010, 125). The role of history and historiography in China and in comparative perspective has been a central topic in Chinese studies. See, e.g., Huang and Henderson, 2006; Schneider and Weigelin-Schwiedrzik, 1996; Ng and Wang 2005; Vogelsang 2007.

13. On the logic and modus operandi of historical thinking, see Huang 2010, 136–139.

14. In the context of art and art history in China, this back and forth movement has been called fugu (复古). Wu Hung (2010, 17) writes about the genesis of fugu: ‘The conceptual/perceptual scaffolding of fugu consists of three basic elements, all implied in the term's English translations introduced above. The first element is a retrospective gaze projected from the present. The second is a historicization of the past to specify a point to return to. The third is a “gap” separating the present and this particular past. In any fugu effort, one must traverse a chronological and psychological divide in an effort to re-embrace the ancients – to embody their values and tastes, and to take one's place among them.’

15. ‘History is something that we must, inescapably, create. History is at the core of our constraining sense of world-creation. History requires our participation – or it is nothing. History is essentially “homogeneous”, generated and constituted by human living and doing. It is indeed the human that can (and must) promote and enhance (hong) the historical Dao, not the Dao that promotes the human, as Confucius declared’ (Huang 2010, 141).

16. These are the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties. The Xia dynasty is still considered legendary but is traditionally dated to 2205 BC; the Shang dynasty was established in 1766 BC and the Zhou dynasty lasted from 1122/1066 BC to 256/221 BC. See Schneider 1996, 55: Huang (2010, 139) describes ‘the Golden Past – the Three Dynasties of the illustrious Xia, Shang, and Zhou – when everything was perfectly in order, when rulers where benevolent and thoughtful, the people loyal and obedient, and everything flourished according to the seasons. It was the Garden of Eden of Chinese history.’

17. According to Axel Schneider (2014, 83–112) the centrality of the ethical function of traditional Chinese historiography was the main difference between the Chinese tradition and Western Enlightenment historiography, which was conceptualized as an objective and descriptive science. How Chinese intellectuals re-thought Chinese historiographical traditions after being confronted with Western modernism has been a central issue in Chinese history studies. See, for example, Wang 2001. Huang Chun-chieh (2010, 94) has summarized how, according to Qian Mu (1895–1990), Chinese history differed from Western history.

18. ‘Historians in traditional China intently observed historical processes in order to obtain universal principles – both descriptive and prescriptive – so as to apply them as prescriptions and judgements to history itself, both in the past and the present’ (Huang 2010, 123).

19. ‘In the Chinese mind, history described the degree to which we are aware of being in time that flows as we engage in various worldly activities. Since the “flow” of time includes its directionality, to be aware of being in time means to have a sense of direction. This directionality of time flows from what has passed through what is not to what is coming: our activities clearly go from the past through the present to the future in its unmistakable directionality. This action of proceeding with a definite directionality gives us the prospect and purpose of living. The Chinese were particularly conscious of this sense of time. To have this sense of time was to have purpose in life. Confucius stood at the bank of the “river of time” and sighed “Oh, how it flows day and night, without ceasing!” In contrast, to lose this sense of time-directionality is to be exiled from life itself, “to feel out of place”, unspeakably lost and alone in the world’ (Huang 2010, 11).

20. Concepts of self-cultivation play an important role in Daoism, Buddhism and most prominently in Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism. On the topic of self-cultivation, see, for example, Schmücker and Heubel 2013. With respect to Chinese art, Tu Wei-ming (1983, 57) has referred to Xu Fuguan, who states that ‘Confucians and Taoists share the belief that self-cultivation is basic to artistic creativity’. Jean François Billeter (1990) has written about calligraphy as a mode of self-cultivation.

21. I thank the anonymous peer reviewer of this article for suggesting that I think about the issue of the politics of calligraphic style in relation to Qiu Zhijie, as well as for her or his recommendation to consult Amy McNair's (1998) book The Upright Brush.

22. Much has been written about the motivations and intentions of references to tradition in China. Schneider (2014, 88) summarizes topics that have been recurrently raised, such as ‘China's national identity and its position in world history, issues of historical continuity, developments in historical methodology, the institutionalization of modern history, and the political functions of historiography’.