Perfection of the Imperfection: Principles of Adaptation

A leaner, meaner, angrier art world that has to fight harder for our attention is exactly what we need.” From Time for a cull in the art world. The art world is plunging, along with the rest of the economy. Hooray, by Waldemar Januszczak, New York Times, 11 January 2009

Generosity is a hard concept to grasp. It doesn’t usually manifest itself when you expect it and it often happens without desiring it. Yet, generosity should occur with a revolutionary attitude or maybe as a revolutionary act. This act is a reflection of daring to change and go beyond a dictated life and social formalism. Daring to change is the basis of bringing hope into whatever is created, and in this revolutionary sense it is the only possible way to make a society grow beyond a certain status quo. And it is this rupture of the umbilical cord and separation which makes you an adult, a new whole. It implies a distinct, yet variable process of mourning thus making it possible for the human being dealing with the idea of loss or defeat to start a new cycle: the fatal “bringing out the dead.”

In Thailand it is becoming a trend to go to Wat Prammanee monastery in Nakhon Nayok to get a fresh start in life. People lay in pink coffins (9 to be precise) and they are reborn after few minutes. The monks read sutras, preach and purify the bodies in a community ritual, guiding their passage to a new life as they transcend (as a totally uncritical metaphor) the phase of ineptitude in making a decision (due to the ignorance of knowing what psychological tools are necessary) to that of dealing with the trauma of change and on to rebirth, as the only solution for removing the stress of change: is this collective ritual that transforms the individual process into a shared process of communal intimacy.

1. Changes

In this moment, this ineptitude of being able to deal with a stagnating situation necessitates my best concentration and requires that I be removed from the present-past to recollect all data and be able to decipher what my present-future can be. The privilege of having the right to move and decide when and where to move makes this process as simple as fixing a date, buying a ticket and moving the family.

This is not only a spiritual/psychological desire-of course it is-but it is also a physical necessity: to re-define the physical limits of my body as I reach out towards my identity. In almost any text “introducing” China you can find the word weiji (危急) meaning crisis, the risk and the occasion: the significance of the change as an inevitable choice.

People have difficulty in understanding drastic choices: the action of consciously leaving creates rumors and makes people puzzled about the real intentions of this change–the plot and the plan, the real intentions and the scheme of actions. Initially, this change would seem to be hiding other intentions and so the bona fide is instantly doubted.

Recently I was reading a paper on the concept of bona fide, the history of this term and how it is now used in the legal system in China. I find this concept really pertinent to what I said above: the occasion, defined as an uncertain situation always attracts doubts and is rarely accepted as bona fide (诚实信用).

Why do I bring this to the table now and what is the real connection with my desire for “rebirth” and my moving out of a certain static situation?

After living in China for almost half of my life, my decision to move out of the country has been read in various ways and has created certain rumors in the art community in China. Why does Davide aka Le Dadou 乐大豆 gone away after spending so much time in China? Why would he move away from an achieved professional status?

I decided to write this text as an open letter to raise some problematic issues that I still have difficulty digesting. The last years of my professional life in China had made me progressively compressed and stuck. On one hand I had to deal with a certain boredom/lack of true innovation in spirit and open-ness that I find in China at the moment and that I described in few of my recent texts, and on the other hand the need to not be exploited or corrupted by a certain cynicism that seems to be the trend in China. I find that I am finally tired of fighting and being on the edge of a system. And tiredness is a legitimate enough reason for change.

Difference (as a chosen life condition in an alien cultural and social context) is not always easy to endure and when the balance between being satisfied and unsatisfied weighs dangerously towards the latter, well then change becomes necessary.

If you add that living in Shanghai during the past decade meant being part of the most incredible transformation of a city in modern times, then it will be clear that a certain energetic enthusiasm has pushed me for so many years to create new boundaries and support innovation in the arts needed to be recharged.

Moreover, despite all the big fuss about China’s open-ness and achievements, still , it is a very energy-consuming place, it is the far west of the far east as I defined it in a recent interview. On the other hand China is a place where fear is felt constantly, a fear that the institutions in China cannot hide anymore and this uneasiness of dealing with the uncertain future is balanced by the continuing call for social and political stability, harmony and cohesion.

The call from intellectuals and high profile people in China for a long needed critical debate about the status quo was finally presented in an unprecedented and, to some extent, problematic text called Charter 08. In this text we can read:

The political reality, which is plain for anyone to see, is that China has many laws but no rule of law; it has a constitution but no constitutional government. The ruling elite continues to cling to its authoritarian power and fights off any move toward political change.

The stultifying results are endemic official corruption, an undermining of the rule of law, weak human rights, decay in public ethics, crony capitalism, growing inequality between the wealthy and the poor, pillage of the natural environment as well as of the human and historical environments, and the exacerbation of a long list of social conflicts, especially, in recent times, a sharpening animosity between officials and ordinary people.

I do not want to get into a more controversial debate on this text for it will take time and a lengthy analysis which are not pertinent to what this text is about. Nevertheless, I think that this brief introduction is important to give attentive readers a hint of how complex the situation in China really is, despite easy exoticisms, post-imperialistic attitudes and post-Olympic optimism. It will finally reposition and make clear what the importance of an organization like BizArt is and what the efforts were that I had to face to survive, develop and stand the changes of the last tumultuous decade.

2. Unexpected Developments

After being at the forefront of the “other side” (foreign/non-institutional/controversial/activist) for a decade, what if I am put in the position of working inside “enemy lines”? How do I position this new chapter? What kind of negotiations are pertinent in this context? How to I deal with a new position vis a vis of the power system? What kinds of compromises are acceptable?

Over the last 10 years while building BizArt and then Arthub, making connections with governmental institutions (local and international) was part of the process of negotiating a position, using the idea of soft-power in order to change the boundaries of existence and (in the case of international institutions) receive funding or achieve a protected status as representative of an international organization or cultural/political institution.

What happened most recently in Shanghai and with my direct affiliation with the Chinese institutions and their operational modes (eArt festival which I critically judged in my recent article for the exhibition China!China!China!!!) became problematic and the implications that this could have on my professional position in China to some extent were not immediately readable. Naturally, questions arise.

What is the meaning of connecting with the government now, when BizArt has been energizing Shanghai for ten years as an independent and subversive entity and when Arthub and the Asian contextualization of BizArt are emerging as valuable tools of artistic dissemination and analysis? What is changing in Shanghai that makes a foreigner based in Shanghai called to curate potential unstable (不稳定的) content for public spaces in the city?

When working in an official context, the meaning of artistic production changes when becoming affiliated to the mainstream. Is this an inadequate reading of the term institutionalized? Let’s put it in other terms: being put in the position of responsibility concerning what you present as art means being responsible for the consequences for both the artists and the public. In a certain sense it means shifting from a position of being censored to being a censor. How do we deal with the position of judging the illicit and the legal?

Here again two concepts that come to my mind: bona fide and innovation/renovation/pushing the boundaries.

I am not a curator, actually I hate this word (I still do not really understand what it means), I am half artist but most of all I am an activist and a catalytic force. I love this adrenalin, I love the generosity of the change, I love the risk of being in between systems (social, political and economic). This is my nature and I can not go against it. This is what inspires me and these are my intentions.

So the questions remain and I think they are really important. Dealing with this kind of continuous schizophrenia tires my mind but it also keeps me in the mode of self-control. It forces me to analyze the “constructed realities” that I am working on and within, and that I am (more or less consciously) shaping or supporting. Once again it is about the individuals building a net of nodes as a protective system.

It is a biological image all condensed in a simple, yet fundamental question about meaning. In the end, this is the undeniable question; this is the hedonistic necessity of self-satisfying actions and the concrete experimentation/innovation I was talking about in the first paragraph of this text.

What is the meaning of making progressive productions for public intrusions? Is the educational value of any importance in artistic creations? Is the creation based on team work useful for putting a possible artistic system in a place like Shanghai where only commercial galleries are operating independently?

Consider what is happening worldwide with this recent financial crisis, is there any possibility of a different economy in the art world? What is the next possible step after years of simply miming the stock market and the economic transactions hidden in so-called sponsorships?

While I am writing all this, the market is in the first recession in decades, governments are trying to keep this failed system afloat and the arrogance and the positive shortsighted boom of the art market in China has exploded in just a matter of few months. Galleries are closing, artists are worried, and investments are declining.

Nevertheless, it is a good time. It is a time for new opportunities and finally having the time to re-think, re-evaluate and re-position all efforts. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that all my feelings of independence, betrayal, anger and trans-cultural miscommunication can finally be analyzed and resolved in this very moment.

Now that I live in Bangkok and the fact that I am outside this too well-known place, I finally have the distance I need to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

3. Construction/Deconstruction

In a way, Shanghai and China were the best places for me to be during this past decade for the freedom of experimentation and as places undergoing construction without a given “formalized” system. While progressing, regulations are put in place (naturally) and the systems become more constructed. The more I think of it the more I believe that what the Shanghai cultural policy makers are longing for at the moment is for Shanghai to be the modernist experiment that it once was: the platform for more or maybe the illusion of the platform that it could have been.

The disquieting feeling I have working together with institutions like eArt is only because now it is finally possible to open up this platform from the inside, to cross the line of ethnicity into something more paradoxically local and international at the same time: this is what can finally disrupt this closed (circular) system.

The project I accepted with eArt, and on which I have been working with Defne Ayas for more or less a year, was betting on this paradox: standing on the principle of open-ness and curatorial respect in an organization like eArt where political agendas are at the center of preoccupations and not the quality of the artistic content. It has been a step by step approach, a psychological game and an attentive charade of communication which was always open and continuous. It was based on negotiations, binary strategies, progressive thinking and adaptation but this time the curatorial team was able to play the game to a full 100% using linguistic skills to their potential but most of all utilizing the language of the heart, the language of somebody who had strangely lived within this system for almost two decades and who knows what it means to do so.

This process testifies to the possibility of building a dialogue based on similarities, not differences and working where we can accept misinterpretation as a basis for creating possible new meaning. It has been the empowerment of translations (language, concept, emotions): the curatorial approach was based on local and international intrusions.

As we wrote with Defne Ayas in the introduction to Final Cut:

In this generously collaborative and networked artistic framework, reflections and questions arise on the possible effects of technology, culture and the accessibility of art to mass public. We have to ask ourselves whether art can tap into a new kind of arena, seeking new forms and formats to relate to their audience? Is it possible to engage the technologies of representation which have continuously advanced over the past century, and if so, how can we generate an on-going contemporary dialogue?

As a matter of fact, technologies have engaged the public en-masse, be it from still to moving images, from abstract animations to big-scale film productions and now in the past ten years through online and mobile content. In big cities here in China, small and giant urban LCD screens featuring advertisements have become popular and ubiquitous. Blasting from virtually every commercial corner of the city, ads are seeking to reflect our dreams, aspirations, insecurities or fantasies, and having perhaps an intriguing sociological impact on us. The same goes for the “very affordable” DVDs here that open up a world of new values for the mass public through films, TV series and documentaries from all around the globe. And, no doubt, that the increasing number of display technologies will only engage more and more people. So wouldn’t we expect this mass exposed consumer culture to have an effect on our personal development, the way we define our own identities? Advertisers certainly believe they can influence our behavior; otherwise they wouldn’t allocate so many resources towards this.

Then, what happens when artists get access and make use of these mass communication technologies? Would they use them as means to institute some form of distance, resistance or reaction to mass consumerism, or would they take advantage of the same mass influencing strategies to expose the public to their very own message?

It is clear now that translation is adaptation and it is also clear for me that many of the problems in cultural co-operations are in a greater area than that of the purely semantic: misinterpretation changes the value of perception and creates zones of tensions and silence.

So we go back to the idea of the meaning and how curating a public official art project needs to create the abcs of a conceptual architecture that will finally be offered to a local audience (with the risk of creating misinterpretations and zones of silence as well). And in the end, eArt created a sort of short circuit in my practice and helped me to solve the problem of my belonging to a project like BizArt that is now ready to fly or die without my presence. It was the moment I needed to feel able to move on and change directions again.
It was the perfection of the imperfection.

The eArt’s project Final Cut is far from perfect but after many years of practice in Shanghai and in China, it was the occasion I wanted. One that would open the doors of communication with a place of “social” value, with respect and attention to the proposed artistic content, quality of realization of the individual projects and the support of the artists (both local and international).

So now I am on the verge of a new life and I still feel that the only way to create sense is to push the sensitivity of adaptation: only in this way can the artistic content activate possibilities of team-working, sharing ideas and developing new projects. In this sense, if I have to define my curatorial approach, I think that it could be described as the creation of catalytic moments for artists and ideas to open up to the future. Qiu Zhijie , in a recent conversation, describes future as simple life or better, where the idea of a future is based on trying to control the anxiety of it (which most of the time is merely economical).

It corrupts and deviates the depth of what alternative models and aspirations can be: it is not about methodology but about construction/processes/attempts which move new thoughts and new paradigms. I believe that all of the above is related to the concept of freedom, where free artistic works are disengaged from a model (post-modern? post-colonialist?) and play in a free place, a cluster where positive and liberating energies can be put into place.

To summarize, when I talk about the future I mean it as something that opposes the futuristic approach and the nostalgia of the retro-future or the future as destruction of the present. What I want to stress is the deconstruction of the present that is based on the power of nuances, negotiations and the soft-power I have been so keen to explore for many years in Shanghai.

I think that in this unexpected and new condition in China, the artistic community needs to think of whatever power art has got in the context as being part of a bigger picture; it needs to give up the ethnicity/nationalism to get into the roots of open-ness that was such a strong ally to the greatness that the Empire possessed in certain moments of its past: there is a real possibility of optimizing the privileges of trans-national knowledge.

This is what I hope for BizArt and other individuals and organizations in China. To dare to move away from a simplistic “sufficient” achievement and destroy the defenses built in making it. Because I strongly believe that knowing more than one religion, more than one language, more than one social and political system is what artistic organizations and individuals (artists, curators and professionals) are naturally exposed to and should be attracted to. I hope that the community of artists in Shanghai and China will be able to do something as extraordinary as giving the gift of generosity to make this territory the land of leading possibilities once again.

Davide Quadrio, Bangkok, January 20, 2009