Production images of wolfes, components of
the exhibition "Cai Guo-Qiang -Deutsche Bank Collection "
at
the Deutsche Guggenheim, 2006
©Courtesy
Cai Studio
At the same time, there are
many associations that arise in connection to the German past,
particularly in the capital of Berlin – images from the Second World War,
for instance. In your installation Head On, a pack of wolves is
attacking the wall like in a trench war. At the same time, in fairy tales
and fables, the wolf is a dangerous liar, trickster, and seducer that
devours its victims.
The whole thing isn’t as well planned and
as concise as you might imagine. Each new work is for me an opportunity to
reflect upon human history, the conditions of contemporary society and the
conditions that helped shape it. But just as I try to find something out
about the specific properties of a city, I’m also concerned with things
that affect human existence in a general way. It’s entirely possible that
the references you mention to the wolves or the burning house apply. But
the work is based on completely different considerations.
Why
did you choose the wolf as the motif for your exhibition?
I
tried to find an animal that represents a collective heroism, an animal
that likes company, that lives in a pack. I wanted to portray the
universal human tragedy resulting from this blind urge to press forward,
the way we try to attain our goals without compromise. This is something
that keeps repeating itself all throughout human history. In Zen
philosophy, there is this idea of tragic beauty based on the notion that
most of what happens has no meaning whatsoever.
If these aspects
of your work are of such a universal nature, and if the walls exist in our
heads, so to speak, they why, in of all places the Deutsche Guggenheim,
are the wolves attacking a replica of the Berlin Wall?
Because
I wanted to enter into a general dialogue with local Berlin residents. For
my current exhibition at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, I installed a big sheet of glass in the museum’s roof
garden. There was a dialogue with the city’s skyscrapers, which you can
see as though through a huge window, like a transparent wall. There are
all different kinds of walls. If I’d made a replica of the Great
Wall of China in the Deutsche Guggenheim, it wouldn’t have held as
much meaning for the local people visiting the show. I was interested in
removing something from the urban context, something that people can
directly relate to. That’s why my works for New York, Berlin, and China
are all so different.
Production
images of wolfes, components of the exhibition "Cai Guo-Qiang - Deutsche
Bank Collection"
at the
Deutsche Guggenheim, 2006
©Courtesy
Cai Studio
But isn’t that a little
corrupt, to react in this way to local sensibilities? The Berlin Wall is
extremely loaded with symbolism as well as with personal and collective
memory. It represents the separation between political systems, between
the East and the West. So you can be sure to grab people’s attention
immediately. But perhaps you need to hear this – that you’re simplifying
the complexity of German history into one simple metaphor just to get
people’s attention.
I debated for a long time whether I
should use the Wall or not. Of course I could have used the bare wall of
the exhibition space for the installation. But I wanted to use something
to accelerate the force of the forward-pressing pack. This energy
increases when you install an additional wall in front of the real wall of
the building. Yesterday, while I was visiting the museum, we even decided
to tilt the wall a little to further intensify the power of the crash.
It’s about aesthetic and physical decisions here. I want the installation
to be charged. I want the public to really concentrate on this wall. The
fact that the symbolism of the Wall might deflect attention from the
movement of the pack, the energy and beauty of the wolves, is also a
danger, of course.
Tornado,
Festival of China,
Kennedy
Center for Performing Arts, 2005
photo
by Hiro Ihara, all rights reserved
©Deutsche
Guggenheim, © Cai Guo-Qiang
|
Why do your actions so often take place at monuments
like the Great Wall of China or in places that are historically loaded?
How do you choose these locations?
As a Chinese, you always
have a lot to do with history – it’s a duty that I have from my father,
who is an art historian. To that extent, I can’t get around history being
a part of my work. But it’s about a light, playful, and humorous way of
addressing history – and not an academic, pedagogical version. I’m not
interested in giving lessons. A part of my art is that despite its forward
movement, it can also retreat. For instance the piece Venice's Rent
Collection Courtyard that was on show at the Venice Biennale in 1999:
the installation represented a group of propaganda figures from the Mao
era in an examination of nineteen-sixties China – formulated at the
dawn of the new millennium.
Communism was never supposed to be
based on the past, but always on the future. In your work, art seems to
pull the past out of the darkness for one brief moment, like in a flash,
only to let it slip back into obscurity again.
The explosion of
the gunpowder is actually the moment where art connects the history of the
location to the viewer’s presence. At the same time, the moment becomes
visually frozen, and time disappears in the occurrence, becomes eliminated.
Illusion
II: Explosion Project, 9:30pm, July 11, 2006
Stresemannstrasse/
Möckernstrasse, Berlin, Germany
Foto:
Hiro Ihara, © Courtesy of Cai Studio
While
in most cultures fireworks take place at celebrations, you use them in
effect to celebrate the work of art itself.
Fire is something
holy; it’s an element that people have learned to control. In traditional
Chinese medicine, gunpowder was a remedy, something alchemistic that was
invented in the search for immortality. There’s a dialogue with the
element of fire, and thus with fire’s hidden power. This connection
fascinated me. It’s a work of art, but the exhibition brings a large
number of people together that take part in my work – from the museum
director to the staff, the public, etc. To that extent, the fireworks are
also a celebration for the people involved.
Illusion
II: Explosion Project, 9:30pm, July 11, 2006
Stresemannstrasse/
Möckernstrasse, Berlin, Germany
Foto:
Hiro Ihara, Courtesy of Cai Studio
Your work often oscillates between ceremony, spectacle, and art.
It’s
precisely this grey zone that interests me, these very subtle borders that
are respected or transgressed. The potential danger of explosive materials
requires a high degree of security, which produces another kind of danger:
that the work becomes too spectacular, too slick and satisfying for the
viewer – that it’s no longer art. If you work in this event area, you’re
moving in a dangerous zone. But I love danger and difficulty. That’s why I
don’t make my things as "big" as possible, and I don’t try to produce
something akin to catharsis. I make it a little "smaller." I accept that
people are perhaps a little perplexed when they don’t see the Fourth of
July fireworks they’re expecting. Yet I couldn’t make a pure museum
installation. Hence, my work is situated somewhere between all these
different areas.
As a strategist, you have to constantly fight
for permission – for the fireworks, for permission to film and so on. Are
you an organizational talent like Jeanne-Claude
and Christo?
With Jeanne-Claude and Christo, it’s about
them owning the work of art completely, that they finance it entirely
through the sales of smaller works and for this reason retain the right to
ownership. For me, the notion of ownership is not as important. The large
scale of my work is always indebted to the many people who might
ultimately see the work.
Illusion
II: Explosion Project, 9:30pm, July 11, 2006
Stresemannstrasse/
Möckernstrasse, Berlin, Germany
Foto:
Hiro Ihara, Courtesy of Cai Studio
Your
art is often a mixture of past cultures and includes references to archaic
motifs. Is the emphasis on such traditions a reaction to the short life
span of artistic trends?
One feature of the contemporary art
concept is that every feeling and every idea can become art. In this
sense, there are an infinite number of possibilities. For this reason, as
an artist I can constantly think about the locations and my relationship
to them. In China, this freedom rapidly gives rise to the idea that it
doesn’t matter what you do, that you can call everything art. This also
has a quality of "messing up," and I like this image for my activities – I
like to provoke a little. Things don’t always have to be analyzed in depth.
[1]
[2]
|
