The artist Qiu Zhijie has been an Associate Professor of the Mixed Media Art Department, and Co-Director of the Visual Culture Center at the China Academy of Art (CAA) since 2003. By employing his constantly evolving concept of “total art”, Qiu has created an energetic force by combining traditional art education and contemporary art. The educational and art philosophy of the Total Art Studio focuses on self-criticism and an overall shaping of individuality. Adopting a cultural approach, students are introduced to a wide range of sociology, archeology, and media research. Social research, symbolic analysis and events, are incorporated into everyday experience. A complex cultural production which combines action, installation, and live arts, as well as events, writing and exhibitions, is thus formed. These elements link the needs of the individual for expressing personal creativity with that of social concern, and help artists break away from the impasse caused by the commercialization of contemporary art, which has rendered it symbolic and formulaic. Of these, the idea of “how to become an empty man” has become an important proposition in Qiu Zhijie’s creative works and teachings.
This proposition hypothesizes that our prejudices and fixed opinions may constitute a kind of obstacle that blocks us from a more creative relationship with events, history, or even ourselves. Thus we must constantly empty our mind, recapturing the initial state of an “empty” person. The realization of the negative influence brought forth by prejudice or fixed opinion is not simply a one-time awakening. It takes ceaseless effort, long-term observation, and an effective mechanism so that it will be constantly re-awakened. To become an “empty man” is both an unconventional mission and a constructive process. This is both goal and training course. During this process, the map of knowledge and faith; temperament and habits; cognition and expression, will be re-drawn. The exhibition, How to Become an Empty Man, at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, was one of the art and education programs in the Total Art project. During the one-month period, artists and participants gathered in the exhibition hall-cum-classroom-cum-workshop, or three-in-one space, for discussion and training.
During this process, explanations and documentation of work progress were all written or scribbled on the blackboards in mirror writing.
These mirror texts and images were then engraved on the blackboards, thereby converting these blackboards into wood-blocks from which wood-block prints could be made. The workshop printing machine then produced unlimited copies of these wood-block prints.
Participants and audience were free to take these prints. It was a means to spread this work to the world beyond the exhibition hall-cum-classroom-cum-workshop.
Qiu Zhijie and Total Art Studio: How to Become an Empty Man +
Performance: Diploma No. 6
Opening: 12 Mar (Sat) 2-4pm
Performance: 2.30pm (20 minutes)
