Publications

Long Long Live (Limited Edition)

Publisher: Tina Keng Gallery
Published Date: 2013-06-30

Out of Print

From Art to Culture: How Yao Jui-chung Opens up Long Live/ Landscape
Po-Wei Wang History has become the deep reference of a period that has been wrenched from its depths, a realistic novel in a period in which there are no real novels. Memory has been promoted to the center of history: such is the spectacular bereavement of literature. -- Pierre Nora Under what historical circumstances could the faux-landscape painting imitating the style of traditional Chinese ink paintings and a landscape/painting in video form (Long Live and Long Long Live) co-exist in the same landscape? Or, in other words, just as artist Yao Jui-chung has already realized, as a Taiwanese citizen, he must always field poignant questions from traditional Chinese culture (and the tradition of Chinese ink painting); at the same time, while he did not explicitly state the following, we can infer that because of where he is, he would also have to withstand the limits of the conventions of viewing and exhibition in the contemporary art tradition (or western culture?). And so we must ask: stuck between these two tectonic plates of tradition, what new spaces of possibility did Yao’s Long Live/ Landscape series pry open? According to Shou-chien Shih, the metaphorical crowding between the two tectonic plates mentioned above is a general modern dilemma for Chinese ink art. Due to the social climate change through late 19th century to early 20th century, the traditional ink-art ideal of inspiration from nature and its intimate, private form of work presentation (limited to the elite literary class, during private gatherings) have all collapsed, making way for a more nationalistic, more general-public-oriented mode of exhibition. This resulted in the drastic decrease in the effectiveness of communication, through ideologies which the art of brush-and-ink had previously developed on the planes of form, society and humanistic spirit. In this context, in order to carve out new spaces where the brush-and-ink tradition can thrive, artists such as Pu Xinyu chose to disregard the cultural pressure from without, and reaffirm the standpoint of brush-and-ink art as means of personal expression; Gao Jianfu and Xu Beihong reached out to the people by replacing the brush-and-ink artistry with the pursuit of realism; a departure from the above two approaches, Huang Binhong and Fu Baoshi delved deep into the history of brush-and-ink art, looking for different forms of the idea of “endeavor,” and seeking to use them as vehicles of a nationalistic spirit in order to encourage the passion of the viewer. Compared to these three directions created in the first half of the twentieth century, did Yao, at the end of 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, create a different path? Artistic Text and Cultural Text Before further considering the elements and principles of visual composition in Yao’s works, we may benefit from another look at the specificity of the historical context he faces. For this topic, there are two major elements worthy of further observation: the first being the geopolitical situation of Taiwan, embodied in what the artist coined the “little islanders of little Taiwan.” Situated at the edge between eastern and western cultures, the Taiwanese contemporary art scene developed in two stages, from the post-martial-law 1990s to the present: at first the artistic community focused its attention on the excavation and construction of a set of identity-defining Taiwanese characteristics (as opposed to traditional Chinese ones); secondly, the frontlines of discussion moved on to the binary opposition between globalization and localization, a heated contest on exactly which historical angle of entry Taiwan must commit itself for the sake of self-contextualization. It was precisely during these two waves of discussions that many Taiwanese artists gradually distanced themselves respectively from China and a more general idea of the west. Aside from the geopolitical aspect, we believe that the effect of the transition in media culture, propelled by the changing times, cannot be ignored in the discussion of context in Yao’s works. That is, Yao consciously and deliberately chooses the use of such media as gold leaf and needle-point pen in order to create distance from the idea and effects of the traditional calligraphic brush and ink; in this way he is able to escape “many arbitrary rules” and traditional demands such as Xie He’s Six Principles of Chinese Painting. What we find interesting at first glance is: how are this escape/ evasion from cultural tradition and limits in medium possible? According to George Steiner, there are three major reasons for the decline of contemporary literature (and art): the first is the transition of the general focus of education away from recitation and information collection towards problem solving, the latter view of education having delegated the job of recording and memorizing to memory machines instead of the human brain. The second reason is the transition of media culture from text-based media to electronic audio/visual media, causing a profound transformation in the public’s cognition and symbol usage. Thirdly, the main spearhead of culture has shifted from the elitist faction to popular/ media culture. Under the influence of all three transitioning forces, we come to a status quo, which adheres to what Pierre Nora described (as quoted in the opening) as history taking over the place of fiction (art). Aleida Assmann goes one step further in this direction, claiming that taking the profound impact of the element of media on modes of communication into consideration, we must clearly separate the difference between “literary text” and “cultural text.” To discuss the idea of literary text, we must first acknowledge the historical context of the invention of printing, which brought about a massive increase of articulate writers and literate readers; because of this, what philosophical anthropology refers to as the autonomy of the self and the autonomy of aesthetic self-expression brought about the autonomy of art. As a kind of “fictional reality,” the literary text stands opposite “real reality” (used to describe the outside world,) and through the confrontation obtains its legitimacy and potential. In contrast to literary/artistic texts, cultural texts such as the Bible, the Analects and the works of Shakespeare contain what certain groups consider to be truth transcending their age and therefore relevant to the construction of the collective identity. Even in different developmental stages in the history of media, cultural texts can reinvent themselves, evolve with the times, reflect the latest version of reality, and exert influence over specific groups through religion, nationality and individual means, in order to usher in the creation of identity. Therefore, the differences between artistic texts and cultural texts can be seen in the following three categories. In terms of identity development, the target audience of artistic texts is the individual and independent subject, who would reach inner peace through the enjoyment of some private decadence. As for cultural texts, their target audience is part of a whole, someone who finds a sense of belonging through the act of reading cultural texts. In terms of audience reception, what artistic texts require is an aesthetically unfettered kind of enjoyment, something deemed out of keeping with “the real world;” cultural texts, on the other hand, require a worshipful, repetitively studying, emotional kind of audience reception. In terms of temporality, artistic texts are under constant pressure for innovative expressions, and therefore situated in an open historical point of view; by contrast, cultural texts are seen as classical and timeless, which is a closed, traditional viewpoint. Returning to the identity of Yao’s works from the above brief discussion, we find that his landscape works neither target ancient paintings considered artistic texts, nor search for a point of breakthrough under the restrictions of the Chinese ink art tradition; instead, they examine the mechanisms (such as subject matter, symbolism, and tradition) under which texts were deemed classics and became cultural texts. The reason why we say so is that we can clearly see the various frameworks of Chinese art history acting simply as formal elements, blocking in the visual segments that the artist wishes to present. Memory and History However, why are all the events within these works presented in their entirety via visual (instead of psychological) means? Or more precisely, why is it that whatever is presented onscreen/ in front of the viewers is exactly what the artist wants the viewers to see? Why does he use such a visual platform that requires no psychological decoding? It is as though the visual mechanism proves the present-ness of the event depicted. Such logic of image usage—proving the existence and presence of events through visual means—is a consistent characteristic in Yao’s works. Whether it be the emphasis on the validity and live-ness of the visuals in Long Live and Long Long Live, or the representation and expression of the political climate in Long Live/ Landscape, the artist consistently makes use of the present-ness of the images as proof to achieve the effect of persuasion. If we examine Long Live and Long Long Live closely, as the viewers, we are able to take part in the acceleration of historical time through the acceleration of visual/ image time. Through such acceleration, the mechanism that distills, distorts and places individual memory into historical progression is replayed, and the audience not only attends and witnesses the project of history construction, but also discovers the distance between history and primal memory. According to Pierre Nora, it is only under the prerequisite of a clear division between memory and history that we are able to process the interconnections amongst individual memory, time, tradition, history, and even the future. For Nora, memory and history can be seen as binary opposites in today’s world: memory is life carried by flesh-and-blood individuals and communities, while history is a remembered reconstruction of fragments of phenomena that no longer exist. Memory is always present, while history is already in the past; memory is a chemical mixture of passion, while history is secularized intellectual construction; memory must always belong to a specific group and/or individual, both collective and individualized, while history at the same time belongs to everyone and no one; memory is attached to concrete events and objects (such as specific spaces, postures, pictures or objects), while history is simply a consecutive arrangement in time; memory is absolute, while history must be relative. Under such a modern historical view, the mission of history becomes the destruction and banishment of memory. And so, memory itself becomes the subject of history, and the creation and shaping of memory garner a history of their own.
What Long Live and Long Long Live attempt to open up, then, is the history of how Chiang Kai-shek recreated memory by setting up a symbolic space under the guise of wartime action, when he was forced to leave China, the place of memories, and came to Taiwan. Whether it be the psychological frontlines or the spiritual fortresses (using imprisonment as enforcement,) when we attempt to unravel the entangled connections among nation, history and memory, we must observe the different mediums used to carry the different anchors, so as to simultaneously remain within the overall effects of the interaction among all three, and clearly demarcate the different functions and affects carried out by each individual anchor. In the case of Long Live and Long Long Live, the artist distributes the image (the overall presentation of the visuals) to nation, the movement of the narration (or camera) to history, and the individual to memory. From our current vintage point, we can see that thus, the interaction of the three creates an archival memory, a kind of trace different from both individual memory and collective memory, but a historicized memory. The reason why the artist is able to pull off this act of “opening up” is that the idea of the nation (which the video images attempt to construct) is no longer something inescapable or in the process of growth in our current times. Instead, on some level, nation as a concept has already completed its mission; therefore, we can see its entire outline. History in this case becomes a branch of science, in which, on different planes of time, we study how events happen in their respective horizons.
Just as mentioned above (when we were dealing with the concept of cultural text), the timelessness of cultural texts contains the formula of “memory = history.” There is no possible division between individual memory and history in cultural texts, the history within cultural texts being the proof individual identity relies upon to anchor itself. It is only when memory and history are broken apart that Yao is able to become present with the historicized memory, by conceptualizing and repeating the construction mechanism used to create the relevant segment of history. It is also then that he can equate the historicizing of memory to the event at hand, achieving a historio-scientific persuasion.
The Historian With the understanding of the aforementioned historio-scientific persuasion, perhaps we must then keep asking: why do we need this kind of persuasion?
In order to describe the ways in which the idea of the subject changed during the transition between the pre-modern and the modern era, Reinhart Koselleck makes the distinction between space of experience (Erfahrungsraum) and horizon of expectation (Erwartungshorizon.) He believes that the space of experience (which takes to the past) and the horizon of expectation (which projects to the future) were tightly connected during the pre-modern era, but during the transition into the modern era, the two broke apart and were detached, and the space of experience of the past could no longer dictate how the subject should face challenges of the future. At the present time, in order to seek out possible playgrounds for the future-yet-to-come, we are compelled to re-untangle the event-tangles knotted together by different decision-makers throughout the process of history. This act of untangling requires a whole new breed of historian. In a world where memory equals history, the historian is but the transmitter for history, looking for suitable interpretations of words to explain the rhythmic workings of the outside world. However, in this day and age, when the past and the future are apart, memory and history never intersect, and the space of experience and the horizon of expectation are disconnected, we can only rely upon the sensitive explorations and acute dissections of the historian to reclaim (as in Territory Takeover and Liberating Taiwan,) overturn (Long March and Chinatown- Dizzy) and open up (Long Live and Long Long Live) the landscape that we thought could live on for so long, so very very long, until the end of time.
It is exactly during such a transition from art to culture that we can see that what Yao hopes to do is to open up cultural texts, an approach deviating from the way art history usually determines and opens up art. For us, Yao Jui-chung is an image historian in the sense of cultural studies first, an artist second.