Relections on 798, in 2004

By Thomas J. Berghuis

That night in May my taxi cut through the traffic on Beijing?s fourth
ring road. I was on my way back from Tongxian driving towards the
direction of Dashanzi. All around me it was pitch dark, which allowed
me to contemplate the art scene without having to look at the way in
which, almost overnight, the rest of the city is reconstructing itself
into becoming an international commercial platform. I asked myself:
?What is it that makes Dashanzi so important as an art district?? My
thoughts wondered off in the night.

I was amongst one of the first to visit the 798 Factory grounds at
Dashanzi. It was in late 2001 together with Li Xianting that I visited
the first art related location. Situated in an old basketball court
off the road moving into the 797 compounds. At the time the court
hosted the office for the ?New Wave? art magazine. The magazine was
supported by a group of artists and art critics including Wu Wenguang,
Qiu Zhijie, and Li Xianting. Unfortunately time had already caught up
with these pioneers, and soon after moving to Dashanzi the magazine
got into financial trouble. China seems to have changed much since the
1990s. Many residents, including members of the local art scene are no
longer willing to embrace a publication that does not seek to provide
basic entertainment, or for that cost aims at least to provide us with
the ?shock of the new?. An art magazine will perhaps best be operating
like a soap opera.

Only three years ago I spoke with a number of people about the large
number of contemporary art exhibitions that where held in China. In
2001 we counted around 400 exhibitions had been staged in the spring
and autumn in Beijing alone. Everyone seemed to be working hard in
keeping up with the spirit that originated in the early 1990s ? a
spirit of constant experimentation that demands a strong attitude on
the part of the artists and their curatorial cohorts. All where
producing a constant flow of challenging works that would create a new
discourse that would forever change the way we conceive art practices
in China.

Back to Dashanzi, the place that I came to visit again in the autumn
of 2002. Already so many things had changed in the year since I had
first arrived here. Several artists and their close friends had
started to rent a space amidst the old factory halls at 798 and
suddenly there was talk of a new art district. During my visits I
further saw the 798 Space for the first time, which was under
construction and I was told that it would become a full-grown art
space. I also visited the Beijing Tokyo Art Projects, which hosted an
exhibition by Feng Boyi, and featuring a group of ten artists, some of
who had built up important relations with the area itself.

Amidst the excitement of new developments there was nevertheless talk
about a possible demolition of the district in a couple of years time.
However, nobody at the time seems to have thought that this would
already become a reality in 2005. This became more evident a year
later, when I again visited the district during the time of the
Beijing Biennale, when it hosted an unprecedented number of satellite
exhibitions. Having seen these events ? several of which were held at
temporary exhibition spaces in old factory halls such as at Dayaolu ?
I suddenly became aware of the effectiveness that this district could
offer in becoming a place that would showcase the true might of
?Chinese art to come.? Less did I know at the time that such
development would further mark a situation that invited more
commercialism inside the district, which already became evident when
seeing the numerous cafes and restaurants emerge.

Some will argue that the current Dashanzi Art District has no relation
at all with the Soho district in New York, but in fact it has already
managed to encompass all aspects that allow the recent district for
experimental art production to become a site for fashionable marketing
of contemporary popular culture, which beckons China?s ?new rich?.
This even becomes evident in analysing the terms that are commonly
used in describing this district, which like Soho, is said to be
offering ?lofty? spaces that accommodate artistic creativity, and
offers the visitors a touch of the trendy lifestyle that has become
common ground in New York, and other metropolises around the world.

With this thought in mind the entire area now becomes a site for
gazing at what is thought to be the Chinese contemporary culture at
its best. Somewhat like the ?fresh cream? covering the coffee that can
be ordered in the numerous cafes that cover the area. In between these
places for relaxation lie the numerous art spaces, including
commercial galleries and factory halls that offer the visitor a vast
array of photographs, paintings, and sculptures, which together form
the basic attraction of the district, aside from the bars and cafes.
Most of all, the spaces itself offer the most exciting sites for
attraction, even despite the fact that many of the most exhilarating
factory halls usually remain empty throughout the year.

This became the setting amidst plans to host the First Dashanzi
International Art Festival. Starting in April 2004 the festival aimed
to present a wide range of activities covering visual art, film,
music, and performance events that would mark further promotion of
contemporary art to the local community, most of who had only read
about such contemporary experiments taking place in Beijing through
several popular publications in life-style magazines and newspapers.
From the start it became clear that the festival would focus on
attracting a popular crowd. This would further help in making 798 part
of Beijing, in a way that the municipal government could also be
interested in preserving the location, and creating more attention to
contemporary art culture, which would fit well with promoting Beijing
as an important cultural capital in Asia.

For a few years now experimental art production in China is working
into moving itself away from the underground scene. With the
assistance of major national institutes for the promotion and
education of visual culture, including museums and academies, there is
a drive for the promotion of experimental art, which became so popular
amongst members of the international art scene during the entire
course of the 1990s. With the help of such organizations as the
Central Academy of Fine Arts and the Ministry of Culture, and working
together with local and international art institutes, there is now a
drive to show contemporary art from China in a way that can balance
out the former distinctions between official art production and
unofficial experimental practices in visual art that became so popular
overseas, and thereby came to formulate a discourse on its own.

Prior to the First Dashanzi International Art Festival there were
already many events that help in describing the process of transfer
between the official unofficial biases and creating an environment
based on the mutual understanding that visual art can create popular
attention. Perhaps one has to look further at ways in which certain
cult productions suddenly become merchandised to a popular crowd, a
process that has been better recognized in analysing the movie and
popular music industries. However, contemporary visual art continues
to be surrounded with a particular aura in which all sorts of
productions are supposed to transcend popular culture market values,
even despite the fact that it is used often in attracting considerable
economic attention.

This situation brings with it a system of privileges, whereby only a
certain group of experimental art practices are gradually used in
promoting a new classification of styles. There is further an
increased expectation on the receiving end of art practices. In
particular amongst the ?inside? crowd of people, most of who have been
working considerable time in the contemporary art field, and are now
able to make important decisions on its future directions. Within this
process there have been created different levels of mediation that
determine the process of attracting attention for contemporary art
practices and mediates its introduction to the general audiences.
Often this is based on knowledge, but not the kind that demands
understanding of art. Instead, knowledge becomes based upon personal
relations and these eventually come to determine the success of a
particular group of artists, where others are left behind.

During the satellite events for the Beijing Biennale in September 2003
this process became already evident, when the number of temporal
exhibitions exceeded those held during any other previous Biennale
event in China, and several artists where represented in multiple
exhibitions that each proposed a new wave of contemporary art, but
remained rather similar in its contents and working with the selected
artists. Ironically the curators of these shows where later described
as the ?ringleaders of Chinese contemporary art?, a term that must
have been carefully chosen in attracting attention to the fact that
the current process of selection does indeed feel much like a boxing
event. Indeed the art world has some resemblances to international
boxing matches in which not only strength counts, but a fight can
still be fixed by those who are willing to bet a lot of money on a
prospective winning candidate. Luckily there also remained some more
localized prize fighting events, such as in the form of the First Live
Art Performance Art Festival, which still showed some works that were
based on pure strength.

When I was invited to join the First Dashanzi International Art
Festival activities I was immediately largely convinced about the
value such an event would have on the way in which contemporary art
can become represented in China. Unlike a Biennale event and all its
satellite exhibitions, a festival often aims to include more general
audiences, some of whom have never before witnessed contemporary art
production, but for whom the open setting of a festival includes a way
of experiencing a wide range of different art forms including film,
visual art, music, and performances. Throughout the course of
preparing for the festival I therefore took as an example my personal
experiences in visiting art festivals outside China, all of which
attracted a huge local crowd. These festivals where further marked by
introducing contemporary arts practices in all its diversities by
introducing a wide range of media, rather than merely visual art.

Ideally a festival therefore needs the support from a wide range of
artists, who are willing to participate in events that will not
necessarily attract attention amongst a small crowd of members who are
already working in the art scene. However in Dashanzi it soon became
clear that not many understood the potential value of such attention.
In recent times many artists and curators were used to rely on events
that would basically position itself outside the official structures,
which demands a dialogue with popular media and even involved seeking
ways to extent the festival in creating an international art platform.
In Dashanzi it became further evident that this would eventually
include getting the support of the district and municipal government,
who were asked to identify the value of having a grass root location
for the further promotion of contemporary culture in Beijing. This
becomes absolutely necessary when considering the fact that the entire
area continues to be on the list for demolition and might be replaced
by commercial building complex prior to the 2008 Olympics. Unless
further support is searched for, there will only be room for
short-term projects by those who are out to make a fast buck out of
the people that come through.

Walking through Dashanzi these days it already becomes evident to
those who have visited other art districts around Beijing that this
place is no longer aimed at art production, but it has become more
important to introduce a market for contemporary culture and a hip and
trendy modern lifestyle that comes with drinking red wine and eating
with knife and fork. Travelling back from Tongxian, where there is
still the possibility in experiencing art in the making I feel less
and less inclined to consider Dashanzi as being somehow representative
for experimental art in China. Instead, unless something is done
quickly that will aim at bringing art production to the surface again
it becomes in danger of being demolished by commercialism that demands
artists to negotiate a position that will create attention from a few
people with economic power. The real danger for Dashanzi has always
been its commercial attraction, and this has become clearer now that
new spaces all involve business incentives rather than making use of
the underlying potential in representing experimental art production.

Unless there are still ways to be found that will introduce art
practices in Dashanzi, it will end up in become the first cultural
business district in Beijing. Surely this has nothing to do with the
spirit that was still evident in the 1990s, when artists where still
working hard in dealing with a set of representational problems that
will give new communicative form in dealing with a rapidly changing
physical and social environment that encompasses life in Beijing.
Instead, there is no longer the need to perform, unless it includes
possibilities of producing for the sake of drawing attention for
oneself. The whole situation turns into an artistic soap opera, in
which people can become immediate public stars by performing according
to the demands of the producers. Real constructions in Chinese
contemporary art are needed to secure its continuing role inside the
international contemporary art scene.

There is still hope for several further construction of art to exist,
even though there may be a prize to be paid. This would involve
finding support for further experimentations to draw attention from a
large group of people that continue to value art as being able to
communicate beyond the demands of the market. This will include
assessing its important role in assessing social, political and
economic changes over a consistent period of time, and at the same
time demanding a historical discourse that is capable in identifying a
set of stylistic developments that can become important in describing
a continuum of art practices throughout a certain period of time. This
demands artists to realize the importance in seeking ongoing dialogues
within their internalised views on their direct surroundings and
building up a dialogue that can inspire production over a considerable
period of time. These are the lessons that can be learned at Dashanzi,
where it will become important to strive for experimental art to be
constructed, similar to those areas that have received less attention
during the past few months, including Songzhuang, Tongxian, and the
art district that has expanded most recently near Feijiacun.