Abstract
Meiling Cheng argues that there is a conceptual turn in Xu Bing’s work associated with his use of animals since the 1990s. After Book from the Sky, Xu’s intercultural sensitivity shifted from using pseudo-scripts to incorporating animals in his discussions of the language system, counterfeit culture, and issues in the humanities. Animals are used to problematize the boundary between the cultural other and the self.
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Notes
- 1.
Qiu Zhijie, “Xu Bing Interview: Art Should be a Kind of Vibrant Living Thing 徐冰訪談:藝術應該是一種鮮活的東西,” XuBing.com, last modified 2012, accessed December 12, 2016. http://www.xubing.com/index.php/chinese/texts/artshouldbefresh/. All English translations from this interview and other Chinese documents cited from Xubing.com are by the author. All following citations from this interview are derived from the same source.
- 2.
See Meiling Cheng, “Animalworks,” in Beijing Xingwei: Contemporary Chinese Time-Based Art (London; New York; Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2013), 234–301.
- 3.
See Smithsonian Museum, “Word Play: Contemporary Art by Xu Bing - Freer and Sackler Galleries,” accessed December 15, 2016. http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/online/xubing/default.html. See also the artist’s website Xubing.com, accessed December 12, 2016. http://www.xubing.com/index.php/site/projects/year/2001/monkeys_grasp_for_the_moon.
- 4.
April Liu, “The Living Word: Xu Bing and the Art of Chan Wordplay,” in Xu Bing and Contemporary Chinese Art, eds. Hsingyuan Tsao and Roger T. Ames (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011), 119.
- 5.
Liu, 122.
- 6.
Animation. “The Living Word,” Smithsonian Museum, accessed December 18, 2016. https://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/online/xubing/default.html.
- 7.
Qiu.
- 8.
Ibid.
- 9.
Xu Bing, “The Living Word,” in The Art of Xu Bing: Words Without Meaning, Meaning without Words, trans. Ann L. Huss, ed. Britta Erickson (Washington, D.C.: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001), 13.
- 10.
Linda Weintraub, “Allegorical Persona,” in Animal.Anima.Animus. (Helsinki: Pori Art Museum, 1998), 43–9.
- 11.
Xu Bing, interview with the author in Los Angeles and New York, August 3, 2005.
- 12.
Xu Bing, “Ignorance as a Kind of Nourishment,” trans. Jesse Robert Coffino and Vivian Xu, Modern China Studies 18, no. 2 (2011): 25–53.
- 13.
In the author’s August 3, 2005 phone interview, Xu recalled that his choice of “transference” for the Chinese zhuanhuan came from a suggestion by Lydia Yee, a curator at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York.
- 14.
Xu Bing, “Raising Pigs: Questions and Answers 養豬問答,” in Black Cover Book, eds. Ai Weiwei, Zeng Xiaojun, and Xu Bing (Beijing: privately published, 1994), 87.
- 15.
Qiu.
- 16.
It is interesting to note the “reason” given for the censorship of Xu’s Parrot had to do with the authorities’ interdiction of human speech rather than the protection of animal well-being. The co-editor of this volume, Yu-Chieh Li, indicated that Huang Yong Ping mentioned that his animalwork with live bugs was only censored in Europe and the Americas because of concerns over animal rights in those countries. In contrast, the Chinese government had little concern about animal rights in the 1990s and early 2000s. This lack of restrictions in using live animals in performance art in China had likely contributed to the popularity of animalworks in those years. For an overall view of animalworks in China, see Cheng, 234–301.
- 17.
Xu Bing’s email was dated October 20, 2016 in response to the author’s email interview query dated September 7, 2016.
- 18.
Liu, 127.
- 19.
Xu Bing, “American Silkworm Series, Part II,” Xubing.com, accessed April 16, 2010. http://www.xubing.com/index.php/site/projects/year/1995/american_silkworm_series_part_ii.
- 20.
Liang Shaoji, “About the ‘Nature Series’ – Notes on Creative Work 關於 ‘自然系列’ 創作雜記,” in 中國當代藝術訪談錄 Chinese Artists, Texts and Interviews: Chinese Contemporary Art Awards (CCAA) 1998–2002, ed. Ai Weiwei, trans. Robert Bernell, Krista Van Fleit and Chin Chin Yap (Hong Kong: Timezone 8 Ltd., 2002), 40. The author has retranslated the cited passage.
- 21.
Mao Zedong, “The Foolish Man Moves the Mountain 愚公移山,” Baidu Zhidao, accessed January 6, 2011. http://zhidao.baidu.com/question/5963200.html?si=4.
- 22.
“Panda Zoo,” Xubing.com, accessed December 12, 2016. http://www.xubing.com/index.php/site/projects/year/1998/panda_zoo.
- 23.
Ibid.
- 24.
GDMoA.org, “Archive,” The Second Guangzhou Triennial, 2004–2006, accessed December 20, 2016. http://www.gdmoa.org/gztriennial/second/history-en/archive-en.htm. The actual date of the triennial was November 18, 2002–January 19, 2003.
- 25.
“Wild Zebra,” Xubing.com, accessed December 12, 2016. http://www.xubing.com/index.php/chinese/projects/year/2002/wild_zebra_chinese.
- 26.
As Xu mentioned in his email response to my query, he never encountered any protest or criticism from animal rights activists “probably because we did not treat our animals with abuse or torture. Instead, we tried our best to let the animals feel physically comfortable” (October 20, 2016). The two New Hampshire pigs, for instance, became very fat after the exhibition period, when the curator returned the two pigs to their original farm. Compared to the farm that raised these pigs, the museum provided a much more upscale environment, with plenty of air, room, food, and attention for these performing animals. Later on, in 2017, Xu’s video work A Case Study of Transference (1993–1994) was removed before the opening of Art and China After 1989: Theatre of the World at the Guggenheim Museum in New York due to protests from animal rights activists.
- 27.
Ibid.
- 28.
Xubing.com, accessed December 18, 2016. http://www.xubing.com/index.php/site/projects/year/1997/the_net.
- 29.
Ibid.
- 30.
See Frederic Jameson, The Prison-House of Language: A Critical Account of Structuralism and Russian Formalism (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1975).
- 31.
John Berger, “Why Look at Animals,” About Looking (New York: Vintage, 1992), 3–28.
- 32.
MoMA PS1, “Animal.Anima.Animus.,” accessed December 21, 2016. http://momaps1.org/exhibitions/view/243.
- 33.
Berger, 26.
- 34.
Steve Baker, The Postmodern Animal (London: Reaktion Books, 2000), 81–2.
- 35.
John Berger, Collected Poems (North Yorkshire: Smokestack Books, 2015), 107.
- 36.
Xu’s email response to my query, October 20, 2016.
- 37.
Ibid. I am citing Berger’s poem based on the document that Xu Bing sent me, which added a word–“in”–to Berger’s original line, changing “and their glance” to “and in their glance.”
- 38.
See Xu Bing, Xu Bing Phoenix (Hong Kong and Beijing: Thircuir Limited, 2015).
- 39.
Ibid, 38.
- 40.
Ouyang Jianghe, Phoenix: A Poem by Ouyang Jianghe, inspired by Xu Bing, trans. Austin Woerner (Tucson, Arizona: Zephyr Press, 2014), 25.
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Cheng, M. (2020). Borrowed Bodies, Native Tongues: Xu Bing’s Animalworks. In: Fraser, S., Li, YC. (eds) Xu Bing. Chinese Contemporary Art Series. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3064-7_5
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