Sun Yuan and Peng Yu. If I Died. 2013. Installation. Courtesy of the Artist.
Sun Yuan and his co-conspirator Peng Yu share a taste for camo vests, snowboard pants and military boots. Their work has consistently pushed at the bounds of performance sculpture, posing aggressive thought experiments that often delve into cruel ironies: dogs at each others’ throats, ritualized firearm handling, or angels fallen from biennial grace. Their abdundant use of the simulacra of life—taxidermy, resin models, or portraits—recalls the work of canonical iconoclasts like Maurizio Cattelan, though their work does not so much represent life as practice it—questions of illusion are simply inappropriate to their work, which doggedly pursues the possibility of transcendence. Sun Yuan and I met in the studio he shares with Peng Yu and lives in, in a converted factory near 798 in Northeast Beijing.
David Borgonjon: I recently saw the exhibition you curated with Peng Yu and Cui Cancan, Unlived by What Is Seen. In the show, you included representative works from two or three generations of Beijing-based artists, focusing on the idea of art as a way of life. Mixed into the works were a series of taped interviews: the one that captivated me was of your conversation with Li Yongbin.* He sits at a restaurant table tapping his cigarette, talking at leisure about art as self-cultivation. At the time, I was impressed by his faith—and ambition. Maybe it’s because I’m dead inside, from living in New York, but can you talk a bit about the interior states that practicing art can induce?
Sun Yuan: Firstly, it’s not art that brings you to that internal state. It doesn’t matter how you choose to work or not work—meditating, or painting, say—because it can all induce a kind of redemption, fulfillment, or growth. It can call set the stage for the full release and emergence of the self. Like in [artist] Li Yongbin’s clip—I edited it, so I know each sentence by heart—none of that stuff’s surprising, but as a person he gives you this feeling of conviction. He’s got some content, there’s a person and his actions behind it all, and not just words. Li Xianting, the curator, once said, “it’s not art that matters,” you know? And the question evolves over history: sometimes artists say what matters is art, language, rhetoric and signs. But we’ve turned back around to this question, and we want to convey something that’s living, something with vigor. So in a lot of ways this kind of art is for people.
Sun Yuan and Peng Yu. Dogs Which Cannot Touch Each Other. 2003. treadmills and bulldogs. Courtesy of the Artist.
DB: People. I’ve found that in your work with Peng Yu you’ve often used taxidermy or life casts, whether of people, animals or angels. So, people and what’s immediately above or below them in the chain of being. Assuming that art really is a form of self-cultivation, can non-humans also achieve this kind of liberation?
For example, your piece, Dogs Which Cannot Touch Each Other. Two rows of bulldogs on treadmills were arranged half a meter apart so that they could never touch. They just bark and leap at each other. Abroad it was controversial, probably because you were thought to have objectified these dogs. You weren’t treating them like persons.
SY: Persons?
DB: You’d “dehumanized” them, if that makes sense.
SY: Oh. I think everything’s human, really. When you project yourself onto matter, no matter how concrete that object is, it’s always your self, the artist’s autobiography, the projected image of the subject. For example, in most movies the plots, names, characters and actors are reflections of the director.
DB: It’s said that “you write diaries for other people, and letters for yourself.” Narration and autobiography aren’t really separable. So, your definition of the human isn’t biological?
SY: I think the correct definition is external to science.
DB: Anything that allows empathy?
SY: You could say that. I was talking to a friend a few days ago about this question. People are different from other animals because of self-recognition. That’s not scientifically definable, it’s non-positivistic. And animals don’t need that, they just respond to conditions.
DB: Is taxidermy alive?
SY: There’s no way for me to say what it is.
Sun Yuan and Peng Yu. The World is a Fine Place For You to Fight For. 2011, single-channel video. Courtesy of the Artist.
DB: So you can’t say for sure whether a specimen’s alive or not. There’s always that inkling of doubt about a specimen. Maybe it’s sleeping. In your video work, The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for, a red velvet curtain draws apart periodically, sometimes revealing an important-looking man encircled by bodyguards and taxidermy lions, and other times revealing a stainless steel showroom kitchen. Is there a soul in the cabinets and closets? Better yet, can projecting produce knowledge?
SY: I don’t know what it can produce. But fundamentally, projection is a realization of the will. Take qigen (decorative and collectible roots that grow into unusual, often anthropomorphic, shapes), for example. It’s somewhere between a human and a thing. So it manifests something more inside of the thing, and isn’t just the thing by itself. Or for example, patina. When you get down to it, what is it? Can you explain it from science or pure materiality? (Laughs.) Chinese have countless categories for patinas, and each type requires a period of aging and often of physical contact. Patina can’t be forged.
I asked a friend once if it would be possible to take collectible walnuts [which are rolled around in the hands as a therapeutic hobby in Northern China] and just buff and oil them to produce the effect of a patina. He said it doesn’t work like that, because you can see that it’s just not the same, because it’s not made naturally. But I can make it really natural. I graduated from the Central Academy of Arts, so I’ve got great craft. But he said anyways, “I can see it, because the fake can never imitate the real.”
Sometimes it’s just not the same. One other thing. If we’re going to project, then we have to ask why we’re doing it this way. That’s important. For example, a worker in a factory when he’s on the job might be thinking, “Damn, I was great with my girlfriend in bed last night.” And the thought has no influence on what he makes. A corporate employee can throw themselves into their work, but when the day ends they shut their computer and walk off, with no remorse. So when we do things, the difference is just that little bit, but it differentiates two whole worlds. If you’re inside of the thing, then it’s just not the same.
Sun Yuan and Peng Yu. Old Person’s Home. 2007. silicon, fiber, automated wheelchairs. Courtesy of the Artist.
DB: Can you tell fake art from real art, like your friend with the patina?
SY: I can’t be 100% sure. Every now and then an artist comes out and says that there’s no difference between the fake and the real. Pop Art and product art all asks, can you really say that your work is more human than something from a factory? But there will also be artists who resist that, and say, why are we making so much crap? I think if you work like this, it just isn’t the same. For example, if we both make a pair of shoes, mine just aren’t the same. They’ll have a kind of divinity. People are sometimes more thing-like, sometimes more god-like, and when they anxiously vibrate in between, that’s when they’re people.
DB: MoMA (The Museum of Modern Art) just showed a retrospective of that old soldier Elaine Sturtevant. She spent her life copying other artists. She even borrowed Warhol’s original silkscreens. That’s a problem for the curator, because it’s hard to make a case for the originality, and hence importance, of the artist. You can say she’s got a special eye, but that’s sophist.
SY: I don’t really like imitation. And I think the curator’s got it all wrong. Say an artist imitates a really horrible artist, and they do it perfectly so you can’t tell left from right. That doesn’t really amount to anything. But if you do it your whole life you can construct something from the commitment of time. From this perspective, it doesn’t really matter what you imitate. It’s actually horrible to copy Warhol, because she should have gone for someone really lame. Like someone in a remote village who makes things that aren’t even art. Copy that all your life.
DB: I think she realized that, too. In the end she washed her hands of it and quit to play tennis. Alright, let’s talk medium. You come out of oil painting. How did you quit it?
SY: I went to the Central Academy of Fine Art’s Affiliated High School, so when I came out I’d already studied everything. At the time we all said that the good students went to “Papa Painting.” That was me. But printmaking and sculpture have more materials, more principles, and would have been more interesting. After I graduated I felt like I was becoming too professional, like an archaeologist or antiquarian, so I couldn’t pursue my other interests.
DB: Like natural history? Pointing at the animal skeletons upstairs.
SY: I’ve even done product photography. And I was into guns for a period. I found a coach at the rifle club to learn from. I’m not an expert at art, and art’s not one thing for me.
DB: In the end, does everything go back into the art? Or is there something that’s always outside?
SY: Yes. But at the same time it does all end going in, because I can’t say what art is. Art’s like an infectious disease. If you’ve got a cold, when you’re watching TV, when you’re kissing, when you’re eating, you’re an artist the whole time. We can’t define what art is, we can only say what it wants to do: it’s everything to do with refusing to stay in one’s place.
DB: Functions, not definitions.
SY: Right. None of that. When I was curating Unlived by What is Seen, I gave this example. Aladdin picked up a little magical lamp, and when you rub it, a genie comes out that gives you three wishes before going back in. That’s unthinkable! But everybody’s lost it for that thing, and is looking to steal the object. But it’s the magic not the lamp that matters!
DB: Money’s like that too. It’s nothing on its own.
SY: Money. Wilde said, “When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.” (Laughs.) When we hear that, are we really just hearing his appreciation for money? Obviously we’re listening to Wilde himself, his personality and his spirit. He’s hinting at and mocking at more obnoxious purists, saying, “I’m independent, this is Wilde speaking, not nobody else!”
DB: More than just content.
SY: Yes. Obviously you need a formal language to communicate, but in the end we’re still looking at people.
DB: If you stress self-cultivation then… For example, once upon a time the proletariat as a large group was able to drive history. If we just say that art is the care of the self, then don’t we give up the broader possibility of historical progress?
SY: That’s complicated. I think it’s divided into phases. It’s like a pendulum swinging without a pattern, and not just going left and right, but in every direction, even though it never departs from the central axis in the end. After May 4th in China, there was a period of development of the individual accompanied by the beginning of Western studies. But Liberation in 1949 and Marx-Leninism changed that. Maybe this group consciousness in the West had a positive, progressive effect, but here we hadn’t yet constructed, perfected, and processed modernity. If each individual hasn’t reached a degree of saturation, is passive rather than active, isn’t self-reflective, even though a collectivized group can easily concentrate into a force very quickly, the problems here are also really obvious. As for the individualized Western world, this kind of unity is desirable. It’s like when you’re rowing, you need to think rhythm, strength, and proper training. In a dragon boat you have a drummer that marks time and keeps the boat going. But when you’re the same as everyone else, your selfhood just isn’t utopian enough. That’s a big loss.
Sun Yuan and Peng Yu. The World is a Fine Place For You to Fight For. 2011, single-channel video. Courtesy of the Artist.
DB: In If Seeing is not an Option, a performance involving the synchronized disassembly and assembly of AK-47s by a group of young men, I was struck by the charm of their discipline. At the same time, you can’t help but think of world conflict. That contradiction, can you talk about it? Because you chose to use guns, and not dinner plates for example.
SY: There’s a longer scheme behind this. It’s illegal to own a gun here, but I want one. What’s more, I want a legal one. I don’t want a black market gun, because that’s useless. I can’t carry it. Maybe I don’t want guns, I just want the right to have them. You have to let me, even if I don’t do it. From 2002 I started this plan with the help of a Taiwanese collector. He helped me buy a few guns, and because I couldn’t bring them back I’m temporarily putting them in his house with my name engraved into it. We signed a contract stating that as soon as Chinese law changes, the guns have to be returned to me.
DB: Are the guns the work? Or is the contract the work?
SY: To tell you the truth I don’t really care. The guns just have to be mine. I have a lot of guns abroad.
DB: What do guns represent?
SY: It doesn’t matter!
DB: Just an object of desire?
Contract from ongoing project to purchase firearms. Courtesy of the Artist.
SY: Right now, this project’s at two poles. [Oscar] Wilde once said—he’s such a smartass—”There is only one thing in the world worse than not getting what you want, and that’s getting what you want.” I can have the gun, but I can’t have it. Uli Sigg also gave me some guns. As long as a country lets me buy guns, I want some there. And as long as China’s laws change one day, all these guns will come back. I don’t know how many I’ll have then, but I’m going to continue to do this. There’s also no problem about acquiring this work after it’s shown, since I can’t take it away anyway, so I have to check it there. 300 or more, the number’s quite colossal. I have RPG’s (Rocket-Propelled Grenades), and machine guns…
DB: RPG’s?
SY: And hand grenades, too. I could actually organize a small army. It will expand more, because I haven’t been to the US yet. It depends on what state you go to, but it’s overall easy to buy guns there. In some places ownership is really supported, and in other places it’s really opposed. That’s what’s great about the US. Nobody compromises.
DB: Which is why politics sometimes shut down. There’s no give and take. Are there other non-artistic projects where you’ve used art like this?
SY: Lots. But it’s not really using art, even though I borrow the conditions of art. I don’t really care if it is or isn’t art. For example, I made a cop car before: paint job, fake plates, turned on the siren and a real cop car followed alongside me without being able to recognize us. That’s the black SUV out front.
DB: So you get something out of your art.
SY: No. Art can’t change anything, really. We can’t just say art, since then it sounds like we only mean contemporary. Let’s say the arts in general, everything to do with creativity. The arts, like religion and crime, are the three basic categories for the transcendence of the flesh, because they’re all divine. One criminologist puts it: “the root of crime is the human thirst for freedom.” The law, which is moral, maintains our safety, but crime, which is immoral, expresses our love of risk. If you hunger for freedom, but can’t withdraw from the practical world as in religion, and also can’t just run counter to the practical world as with crime, then you have to take the road less traveled. And that path might have nothing to do with the world. It might not construct anything.
DB: St. Paul once told new Christians that they weren’t bound by Jewish law, since they had received grace from God and couldn’t sin. That interpretation became a heresy later.
SY: You can’t call that a heresy.
DB: Not me, the pope!
Sun Yuan. Freedom, 2009, hose, water and metal walls. Courtesy of the Artist.
SY: What’s God? It’s freedom, it’s to be what you will, to do as you wish. God said, let there be light, and there was light. So if you want to put this into practice, how can you not be what you will?
DB: You have a piece called Freedom, a giant water hose inside a metal walls which, animated by high pressure stream, writhes and twists around the room. Do you think of this work as a free person?
SY: Yea, that’s right. There’s a direct connection to people projecting onto animals. At the time when I came up with this title I was very satisfied. if you look up “freedom” in the dictionary, it redirects you to other words. The reasoning is circular, which shows that it’s already a fundamental concept. When we debate it, it’s as if we all know what it means. But when a believer talks about God, have they actually seen God? Doubtful.
DB: People can be free without being reckless. The hose’s life force comes from outside itself, from the plumbing network. It’s a detail, but that doesn’t seem like real freedom.
SY: What’s the outside? We can’t tell what comes from outside. Only through projection onto the external can you find yourself. Without an outside you can’t get to this thing.
DB: So, say with the metal room of that installation. The hose is inside, the audince is outside. So where do you stand, outside or inside the wall?
SY: It doesn’t matter at this point. If people want to break through to achieve a bird’s eye view, and be neither inside nor outside, that’s divinity.
DB: I guess so.
SY: We’ve talked about a lot of things unrelated to art itself.
DB: Because you said that art has to project outside itself, so we’re talking about things outside.
SY: Sometimes it’s very closely connected.
Sun Yuan and Peng Yu. Angel, 2007, silicon and fiber. Courtesy of the Artist.
DB: You held reservations about collectivizing earlier, but the vast majority of your artwork is made with Peng Yu, including this curated exhibition. Is this a good kind of collective?
SY: There’s no good or bad. This collaboration is political in a way, because it has an internal divison of labor. The individual member wears down and settles for part of the work. You have to be clear where you’re not as good as her, everyone works on their strong suites. Only through debate and prioritizing can you convince your partner to do a project, and that trashes a lot of works. So an individual artist will make a lot of garbage, but with exernal filtering, checking and denial, your works will end up being fewer. Three pieces is a busy year for us. You’re more than one person even if you’re one person, anyways—you’ll divide yourself into different parts that duel.
DB: Or you’ll imagine the comments of others.
SY: Yes. And other people are really just the excuses of your different personalities and stances to have concrete objects. It’s all internal contradictions really.
DB: Your works are very consistent with Peng Yu. It’s not just that one person can seem many, but that many can seem one. It’s like, only with the affirmation of a partner can a fuller individuality emerge.
SY: That’s the big problem with art today: why are individuals all such carbon copies? From the perspective of art history, what kind of individualism is actually worthwhile? We have to elaborate an idea of what process of individualization actually is worthy of the name. And to do that we have to sit down and have a meeting, a collective process, where we say, “Look how individual everyone’s been, and look how you’re all the same.” And then we’ll gasp and say, “you’re right!”
