Stereotypes and Soft Power

…
I’d also like to be wise.

In the old books is written what is wise:

Stay out of the world’s argy-bargy and spend

Your short span without fear,

Also make do without violence,

Repay evil with good,

Don’t fulfil your wishes but forget them,

All that is seen as wise.

All that I cannot.

Really, I live in dark times!

Bertolt Brecht, To the Descendants

Opening Meeting of CPPCC Plenary Session, 03.03.2012 (from: China.org.cn)

Recently Jörg Leeser and I received an email from one of the former participants of our Sino-German Community Workshop in Chongqing. I was happy to hear, that during the last weeks the former participants of our workshop „made some research and surveys for different groups in the Da Jing Xiang community, and worked out a more detailed plan. Finally, [they] decided to build an outdoor space with different levels like big stairways or […] stone tables where the children in this community can do their homework. During [their] survey [they] found out that most of the elementary students here are complaining about not having a outdoor playground. And [they] thought [to] composite those demanding together and come up with a multifunctional installation ([…]merely a architecture and much bigger than an installation).“
But unfortunately, since the whole plan seems now to be suspended because of „financial problems“, and since this year there have been also some personal changes in the Planning committee of the DuC-project, the next steps of the Sino-German collaboration are not clear at this time.
In the meantime I had also started to think with Prof. Li Yifan from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute about a collaborative site specific public art project in Chongqing. We are planning to deal with texts by Brecht as a starting point, and want to realize a performative installation beneath the Unfinished Elevated Highway next to the touristic area of Ciqikou. The funding for this project seems to be warranted, but we are still waiting for the „official starting signals“ for our collaboration in Chongqing. While there also have been some recent personal changes in the political administration of Chongqing ( http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/7dbe2368-6dbf-11e1-b98d-00144feab49a.html#axzz1qKDPvTHt), i really hope to be back in Chongqing soon.

During the last years, the notion of „soft power“ became a frequently discussed topic among the Chinese political elite, in the Chinese academic discourse and in the national press. Academics analysed „cultural strategies“ of different foreign countries such as France, the US or Germany (it is f.e. interesting to see, how the „function and worldwide impact“ of the German Goethe Institut is seen from a „Chinese perspective“), and since the political debate about a national cultural policy is nothing new at all, it is not a big surprise to see that the development of China’s cultural sector is now a central initiative for 2012 and the next years. In January an essay from President Hu Jintao was published in the Communist Party magazine „Seeking Truth“, based on a speech he gave in 2011, where he described that the cultures of the West and the East are engaged in an „escalating confrontation with each other“, and that „building a strong and international competitive national culture“ has to be one of the core aims for the next couple of years:

“We must clearly see that international hostile forces are intensifying the strategic plot of Westernisation and dividing China, and ideological and cultural fields are the focal areas of their long-term infiltration. […] The overall strength of Chinese culture and its international influence is not commensurate with China’s international status. […] In short, the whole party should implement the good spirit of the plenary session, struggling to create a new dimension in the construction of socialist culture in the process of building a moderately prosperous society in scientific development on the road.”

Against this background it might be interesting to have a look into a study by the German Heinrich Böll foundation that diagnoses, that in 2008 „a little bit more than 50% off all identified articles published in the German media landscape and explicitly dealing with China are only referring to China in an allegorical and stereotypical manner.“ This report, published in 2010, draws the following conclusion: „Altogether we can talk here about a continuous distribution of existing stereotypes via the media, which orientate themselves more on social fixed symbols and flowery phrases, than on their original task to reflect these images.“

I am convinced that respect, the curiosity to learn from each other and a transparent and open dialogue – the basic pre-conditions of each sucessful partnership – are (still) some of the greatest challenges for the 21. century, and that we have to continue with our collaborative efforts, to bring some „light“ to the „dark areas“ of “Black-and-white thinking”. Suspicion and fear are not our best advisers, as history has proven more than once. Of course, there is nothing bad about being a little bit „careful“ and „pro-active“ – we cannot allow ourselves to be naive in the „power play“ that we all are a small part of, this was one of the first lessons many former colonized countries had to learn the hard way -, but neither arrogance nor closeness will provide sustainable solutions. This is true for all nations.
Art can provide a very precious space to deal with some of our fears: It can help us to accept what is different and face „the other“, reminding us about the one common criterion, that always has to be appreciated everywhere: the human life. While the capitalist system certainly is intrinsically tied to notions such as „power“, „business“, „purpose“, „accumulation“, „advantage“ and „strategy“, the virtual aim of an „independent“ art can at least help us to take a small step aside.

Precarious Room

There would seem, therefore, two ways to present our vision of things: detour, where one thing refers to another and communicates with it, since they form a pair and are interrelated; and split, where everything refers to itself but on another plane, which it imitates and which informs it and from which it derives its reality. Modern ideology (particularly that from Nietzsche) stresses above all, for a culture born of Greek idealism, the construction of a form-essence and the invention of a model. This super-world of theory has devalued the Western world; this transcendent outside has cut us off from phenomena. In short, our metaphysical bias seems to have impoverished our experience. But perhaps we have lost sight of the advantage of such intelligibility; perhaps we have not even realized all that depends on it. This super-world has enabled Westerners to conceive of the ideal; the Western invention of the soul and God has made it possible to experience the sublime (indeed, this notion of the ideal has no equivalent in Chinese: lixiang which serves as its translation, literally means the thought of li, that is, of the regulating principle of things). Moreover, this transcendent exterior has enabled Westerners to conceive of freedom — including freedom in the city (the Chinese conceive of natural spontaneity, in the sense of sponte sua — that which comes through immanence).
This difference in the conception of the world appears in politics as well. The figure of the intellectual could not have developed in the West if there had not been this plane of the model and the ideal, which transcends power relationships and which the Western intellectual has made his domain. The Chinese man of letters feels uncomfortable making himself into an intellectual because he does not have this ideal world to lean on when confronting the political sphere (since nature, to which Taoist thought gives him access, only offers him a chance for escape or withdrawal). Caught in this purely mundane vision of reality, he resorts to evasions in the face of power and finds room to maneuver only in subtlety.

Francois Jullien, Detour and Access: Strategies of Meaning in China and Greece

The Great Method

Mi-en-leh [Lenin] told a story: I did know two men. They lived in the same house, but in different rooms. The older slept in a comfortable bed, the younger on a leather mattress. Early in the morning the older man would shake the younger one out of a sound sleep, before he was ready to wake up. At table the older man often took away from the younger one the food he liked best. If the younger man wanted a drink, the older man only gave him water or milk, and if he secretly obtained some intoxicating rice-wine the older man scolded him harshly in front of everyone. If he became angry he had to apologize publicly. One morning, I saw the older man riding a horse and driving the younger one before him. One day, I spoke to the older man and asked about his slave. He is not my slave, was the shocked reply. He is the champion and I am training him for the biggest fight. He has hired me to make sure he is fit. It is I who am the slave.
Mi-en-leh spoke: If you want to know, who is master and who is slave, you shall ask who takes better advantage of the situation.
When the plowsmiths with the support of Mi-en-leh had chased out the blacksmiths masters, they were in need of teachers for their workshops. The teachers, with trust in their own indispensability, demanded high concessions. Mi-en-leh, whose food was few and meager – even while he was sick and overworked, used to give this advice to the plowsmiths: Send the best chicken and the freshest milk to this rabble. And he added, silently and looking around foxy: and your most eager despite.

Bertolt Brecht, About the club 2 (Meti – Buch der Wendungen)

Representation, Enlightenment and DIY

They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented.
Their representative must at the same time appear as their master, as an authority over them, an unlimited governmental power which protects them from the other classes and sends them rain and sunshine from above.

Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. 1852
 The singular guard of honour formed for Bonaparte by the peasantry near Bayonne. (1894) from: http://digitalgallery.nypl.org

It has been a 160 years since Karl Marx analysed the contemporary events that led to Louis Bonaparte’s coup d’état of 2 December 1851. Subject / object of his statement [they] was the „most numerous class of French society“ at that time, the small-holding peasants:

[They] form an enormous mass whose members live in similar conditions but without entering into manifold relations with each other. Their mode of production isolates them from one another instead of bringing them into mutual intercourse. The isolation is furthered by France’s poor means of communication and the poverty of the peasants. Their field of production, the small holding, permits no division of labor in its cultivation, no application of science, and therefore no multifariousness of development, no diversity of talent, no wealth of social relationships. Each individual peasant family is almost self-sufficient, directly produces most of its consumer needs, and thus acquires its means of life more through an exchange with nature than in intercourse with society.

There is nothing to misunderstand in this quote. Marx makes his position clear about the peasants belief „in the miracle that a man named Napoleon would bring all glory back to them“:

It [the Bonaparte dynasty] represents not the enlightenment but the superstition of the peasant; not his judgment but his prejudice; not his future but his past;

Marx’ statement has to be read in its specific historical context. As we can see above, he identifies a combination of lack of mutual intercourse, poor communication infrastructure, no diversity of talent, no application of science, poverty etc. as the matrix, that finally made Bonaparte’s coup d’état possible. It might be interesting as well to have a deeper look on Brecht’s idea of the learning play, that problematizes the mechanisms of “representation”:

Whereas Brecht presents a complex critique of representation and political tools in Der Dreigroschenprozeß (The Threepenny Trial), in Die Straßenszene (The Street Scene) he develops his concept of demonstration as an alternative political action that (as it turs out) also becomes one of the major elements of his theatre. […] In response to the social and economic structures of the bourgeois culture in which he finds himself, Brecht locates theatre as social action occuring not within the cultural superstructure, but in society’s base – meaning the street, the place where public life is at its most direct and physical. […] For Brecht, the stage as a site or terrain depends less on the theatre as an institution than on the presence of the public […] Brecht’s imperative for social experiments – that every participant should take a position according to his own interest in a terrain of opposing interests – is, therefore, essential for the stage as the very foundation of his theatre.

Astrid Oesmann, Staging History: Brecht's social concepts of ideology

On our second day of the Sino-German workshop in Chongqing we went to visit the three neighbourhoods selected for the project and a modell school. I had visited the first two neighbourhoods already during my last trip to Chongqing (more about my impressions here and here), and we didn’t stay long in the third, which has some historical significance: The first cell of the Chinese Communist party in Chongqing was founded here. We spent most of our time there in its spacious community centre, where we had the possibility to discuss with some selected residents. We saw photographs of important politicans, that had visited this site, as well.

On our final third day all Chinese-German „experts“ were then divided into three groups and joined by students of the department. Each group was dealing with one of the three neighbourhoods, and the task was to think about possible strategies to „improve“ the local living quality there. I found myself in a group with Prof. Jörg Leeser and three professors of the Department of Architecture & Urban Planning of Chongqing University. Two of them had more an artistic background and were teachers for painting and architectural art. Our discussion about „Da Jing Xiang“ became quite productive, thanks to the open atmosphere and highly motivated and well-prepared students. I have to admit, that from all three neighbourhoods that we visited in Chongqing, „Da Jing Xiang“ was definitely my personal favourite. It is a very vivid area with many residents sitting around, chatting and playing. The huge pedestrian area with its narrow lanes, open places, small shops, ping pong tables, badminton field and other relax & leisure equipment seemed to be very comfortable for both the elders and the young.
Right at the beginning of the workshop, Prof. Leeser and I made clear, that we didn’t had come just to promote our own ideas, but instead to observe, learn and develop some possible strategies in a collaborative manner. I recalled, that we had seen many „happy“ residents and that I was already told last time, that one of the slogans of Da Jing Xiang is „Happy Flower: All people water the flower to achieve a happy and beautiful result“. In our discussion we soon put our main focus on residents, that for different reasons might not be so „happy“ than others. We started to think about a way to integrate them more into the community, without forcing them to do something they do not want to or without trying to represent them. We all agreed, that there are some differences between different people, and that not all people can share the same interests.
We were discussing this against the background of the political notion of a „harmonious society“, that claims not to promote „one main idea that subordinates everything to itself“, but a „peaceful co-existence of many equal ideas“. In a sometimes chaotic but always very energetic, funny and productive process we collected ideas, how to create an open and safe platform, where everybody can play a part in, no matter what his / her own preferences, expectations and ideas are. “Empowerment“ and “DIY” became some keywords, since we were thinking about strategies, where individuals become encouraged to integrate themselves with their own ideas according to their skills and interests. We were talking about public art and architectural design as cultural measures, that can boost hidden potential that is already existent and that can make passive community members to more active ones, that want to take responsibility in their neighbourhood.

Chongqing – The vulnerable city

The rain
Never falls upwards.
When the wound
Stops hurting
What hurts is
The scar

Bertolt Brecht, from Poems Belonging to a Reader for Those who Live in Cities

During my second stay in Chongqing I took part in a Sino-German workshop about „The future of neighbourhoods and urban public space“. It started on its first day with a series of lectures, that was moderated by Prof. Chu Dongzhu (Chongqing University) and Wilfried Eckstein (Goethe Institut Shanghai).

from: http://news.zhulong.com/read146770.htm

Jens Kump from German architects HPP presented the company’s masterplan for the new high-speed-rail station in Chongqing, that won the first prize in the official competition. HPP has previous experience with rail stations, since they also did the re-design of the historical main station in Leipzig city centre, which was partly transformed into a retail space. For Chongqing they proposed a traffic hub within a multipurpose area, integrating retail and office spaces as well as residential living and leisure.

from: http://www.hpp.com/en/projekte/typologies/master-planning/chongqing.html

German architect Falk Kagelmacher, who worked seven years for the Ministry of Housing and Rural-Urban Development PRC, spoke about his experiences with community involvement in China and a recent self-experiment as resident in one of Beijing’s traditional neighbourhoods. Prof. Jörg Leeser from the Peter Behrens School of Architecture in Düsseldorf gave some examples of participatory projects at the crossroads of architecture, sustainability and public space, that engage and adress creative and cost-conscious citizens with a DIY-attitude.

The home as construction kit: "Grundbau und Siedler" by BeL, from: http://frieze-magazin.de/archiv/kolumnen/aus-alt-mach-neu/?lang=en

Christiane Mennicke-Schwarz, the artistic director of the Kunsthaus Dresden, presented various public art projects in Germany that she was involved with as a curator, covering architectural art, participatory art, sculpture as well as performance art. She didn’t forget to mention the problems and resistances that often occur during the realization and implementation of projects in public space, ranging from harsh media criticsm to rigid systems of rules and magisterial resistance. I spoke shortly about the Greek tragedy as a very old European public art form dealing with the question of the social, before I presented some of my installative artworks that either happened in public space or that dealt with public space.

From the Chongqing-based team, Prof. Huang Tianqi gave some insights into the historical and contemporary structure and administration of the Chinese neighbourhoods, to which Prof. Long Hao added further observations and thoughts. Prof. Xia Hui talked about the status of renovation for the three selected neighbourhoods, and explained the aims and methods of the whole project in more detail. Prof. Zhao Qiang showed a slideshow of photographs that he had taken in the old neighbourhood of Ciqikou in combination with some melodramatic music, and emphasized in his lecture the importance of the happiness of the residents. A quite entertaining lecture with the title „The vulnerable city“ was given by Prof. Wei Haoyan: Almost without further comments he listed some of the „architectural highlights“ of the city, such as new stone buildings whose facades had been painted in the style of historical half-timbered houses, empty apartment blocks, a immense highway bridge that just stops near the old town of Ciqikou or residential villas and a leisure complex done in fake European architectural styles. He finished his presentation with the question, how the identity of a city is constructed and what could be the identity of a city such as Chongqing.

Unfinished Elevated Highway, Ciqikou, Shapingba District, Chongqing, © 2011 Sze Tsung Leong, from: moma.org

In the final discussion, there was a general agreement, that the identity of a city is / should be always produced by its inhabitants. What would be a city without the people living in it? Summing up so far, all the presented research and concepts regarding the three neighbourhoods in Chongqing had a very specific focus on the inhabitants, and the German presentations dealt quite extensively with community involvement and participatory practices. Quite a few people in the audience seemed to be surprised, that „experts from a country“, that still seems to be mainly associated with perfection and technological advancement, were obviously in favour of kind of provisional, non-perfect strategies, that put a strong focus on participation, peoples own initiative and creativity. A city is in a permanent flux and development process, and with the city are also the people and their spaces in a constant transformation. Space has to be flexible, so that it can adapt to its inhabitants and be accepted and lived by them.

The German urbanist Jürgen Hasse describes in his book „Die Wunden der Stadt – Für eine neue Ästhetik der Städte“ / “The wounds of the city – Towards a new aesthetics for cities” the wounds of a city, f.e. ruins or fallow land, as „symbols with a contemplative language“: He writes that these “wounds in the city” would often be perceived as a kind of „Leerstelle“ (empty gap), that would not easily fit within the social order. But in the between of a „no longer“ and a „not yet“ they would generate a temporary perplexity, that stimulates phantasy and reflection: In such a way new spaces, where humans and nature win the possibility to develop, are enfolded. Therefore a city could only be inhabitated consciously, if its specific atmosphere is perceived in its wounds:

What’s old collapses, times change, And new life blossoms in the ruins.

Friedrich Schiller

Retail & Consumerism

Every day to earn my daily bread
I go to the nearest market where lies are bought
Hopefully
I take up my place among the sellers.

Bertolt Brecht (In Hollywood)

5th anniversary Daning Life Hub

Some months have passed since I published my latest post on this blog. After my trip to Chongqing I spent 3 weeks in the Ukraine, first in a small village in the countryside, then in Kiev, and finally I visited Germany for another week. After I came back to Shanghai, i was busy doing an interactive lighting installation for the 5th anniversary in one of the city’s countless shopping malls, showed a video-work in the context of a series of video exhibitions in public space, before i then went to Istanbul to participate in an art & technology festival. Right now I just came back to Shanghai from a second trip to Chongqing, where I was invited with a small delegation from Germany to collaborate with teachers & students from the Department of Architecture & Urban Planning of Chongqing University in a very interesting and fruitful exchange about the role of neighbourhoods and public space.

Street View in Muzychi

The two weeks in Muzychi, a small village in the Ukrainean countryside, 40 minutes away from the centre of Kiev, have been very refreshing and provided an interesting distance to my experiences in Chongqing. I was hosted by artist Alevtina Kakhidze and her husband Vovo, and we had a wonderful relaxed time together with their two Turkmen Alabai. We often went for walks into the green and had some extensive discussions about art, society and daily life. I met many interesting people from the Ukrainean art scene, and while the nation was celebrating the 20th anniversary of its independency I learned a lot of the country’s recent history. Alevtina herself did a couple of really great art projects, and I like especially her drawing series „The most commercial project“, which she started while she studied abroad in the Netherlands: Fascinated with a (then) new world of consumer goods and luxury brands, but without the possibility actually to afford them, she started to draw different goods such as bags or jewellery. Each drawing is done in a relative simple drawing style, and the real price tag of the depicted object is not only part of the drawing, but is the actual price for the artwork as well.

from http://alevtinakakhidze.com/

In Kiev I visited one evening a public symposium about the „Anticlimax of the Orange Revolution“: One fellow visitor, obviously a foreign business man / investor, explained to me, what in his opinion should be the solution in a country that is ruled by oligarchs: Hand over all power to the one kind of oligarchs, that does earn its money in retail. Since these guys have an economic interest in financially strong consumers, the direct result would be democratization and social balance in the long term. While this suggestion sounded very pragmatic – the US model from the first half of last century as he told me – i couldn’t help to also find it a little bit cynical in some way.

Videolink to light installation in Shanghai (Youku)

Back in Shanghai I did an interactive light installation for Daning Life Hub shopping mall. The project was commissioned by Lam, the young director of am art space Shanghai, which is an experimental art space in the centre of the city that also offers residencies for international artists. Some months ago a friend from Frankfurt had forwarded his open call for an international lighting artist to me, and i had somehow got the commission. When I arrived, i had 4 weeks for the implementation. First of all, it was a great learning experience. In the first two weeks, i visited almost daily specific shopping areas for construction material and electronics, to order all the elements of the installation. I became quite familiar where to get what for which price in China. From the money side it was also not bad at all: I received a material fee and a separate artist fee, and part of the „material fee“ were already also all the costs for transport and production. Additionally, after the end of the installation, which we finally dismantled yesterday night, I do now also own all the materials, including two cheap Chinese moving lights, 120 metres of RGB led-strips, computer, some dmx-pwm decoders etc., so I can reuse them for other works.

The collaboration process was also quite interesting. Before I went to Ukraine, I already met a few times with Lam (who became a friend soon) and once with some employees from the Shopping Mall. During this process my original proposal went through many transformations until i didn’t recognized much from it. I had also proposed a video work for the big outdoor Led-screen as an important element of the installation, which should provide an additional reflection layer to the work, but this was later unfortunately not considered at all (instead, commercials were screened). During all the time, Lam was my main contact. There was almost no direct support from the Shopping Mall, and I only communicated with them via Lam. I soon percepted myself more as a company than as an artist and realized soon, that it is quite common in China to provide everything including cables, basic tools and sometimes even the ladder by yourself. On the other hand there are many small companies and time flexible workers that offer their help, and they are part of the „material fee“ as well. Labor costs are still cheap here, and this is definitely one of the main reasons for China’s economical growth and the huge profit margins that attract foreign investors.

After some time I got really used to Lam’s telephone calls, that usually started with this sentence: „Tobias – there is a small problem…“ and often continued with „Daning big boss doesn’t like…“ or „Daning big boss thinks…“. I never met this „Daning big boss“ (Lam told me he saw him only once as well), but I got the impression that it is either a really important guy or not existing at all. A little bit Kafkaesk. From what I heard, he met once a day with all the directors from the different departments and gave his instructions to them. And a shopping mall such as Daning has many different departments, and other way around it is a great challenge to find the right contact partner if you have a specific request. I got the feeling, that especially “normal employees” are very afraid to take direct responsibility, since they can run into bad situations if some problems (aka the big boss doesn’t like it) are occurring, and therefore always prefer the easiest (and fastest) solution, that preferably has nothing to do with them. At the end, I was a little bit exhausted but also quite fine with the final result, even if it became much more commercial than I intended. Still, it was kind of my first „public art“ project in China, and art in public space is still definitely not very common in this country. In this case it happened within a strange mixture of retail and public, since the events for the 5th anniversary of the Shopping Mall were jointly organized by both the Shopping Mall and the government of the district, and also included a series of pop music performances on the main plaza for a broad audience.

While there is still almost no public funding for art in China, artists very often tend to become commercial here. Many artists don’t have a problem if the potential art-buyer doesn’t like the colour of a painting, but they (or their – often unpaid – assistants) do just repaint them. Many artworks exhibited in the local galleries are illustrative and decorative, depicting clichés of the „somehow independent artist“, smiling faces, or „western styles combined with chinese elements“. But they are well done, beautiful framed and definitely fitting well the walls of private and commercial spaces. And there are many walls and retail spaces in Shanghai…

About Art & Harmony

“His theater of alienation intended to motivate the viewer to think. Brecht’s postulate of a thinking comportment converges, strangely enough, with the objective discernment that autonomous artworks presupposes in the viewer, listener, or reader as being adequate to them. His didactic style, however, is intolerant of the ambiguity in which thought originates: It is authoritarian. This may have been Brecht’s response to the ineffectuality of his didactic plays: As a virtuoso of manipulative technique, he wanted to coerce the desired effect just as he once planned to organize his rise to fame.”

Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory

Brecht is often critcized, that his didactic style is reproducing the power relations, that he was claiming to get rid of with his epic theatre. It is not very consequent, to critize one doctrine and to open a space of free thought in a first step, but then to occupy this free space with another doctrine in a second step. Therefore, Brecht’s aesthetic legacy for today and his emancipative potential certainly exists within the artistic vocabulary that he provides in a first step with his “theater of alienation”:

„True V effects (distancing effects) are of a combative nature. Every art contributes to the greatest art of all, the art of living. The bourgeois theatre’s performances always aim at smoothing over contradictions, at creating false harmony, at idealization. Conditions are reported as if they could not be otherwise…“

Brecht, Appendices to the Short Organum (1960)

“The term of Verfremdungseffekt [V effects] is rooted in the Russian Formalist notion of the device of making strange or “priem ostranenie”, which literary critic Viktor Shklovsky claims is the essence of all art” (Wikipedia). As we can read, Brecht relates the “greatest art of all” to the “art of living”, a term that is also used by his contemporary Marcel Duchamp, when Duchamp is describing his artistic practice:

„I like living, breathing, better than working… My Art [is] that of living: each second, each breath is work which is inscribed nowhere, which is neither visual nor cerebral, it’s a sort of constant euphoria“.

Marcel Duchamp

Brecht’s influence in the contemporary art world is quite low compared to Duchamp. One of the main reasons – besides the fact that Brecht is a theatre guy – is certainly Brecht’s “authoritarian style”. With his concept of the readymade Duchamp is opening a very anti-hierarchical space of thought. In his time and context he was shuttering certainities, that provided space for most individual and singular reactions by the viewers.

marcel_duchamp_fountain_at_tate_modern_by_david_shankbone, from: wikipedia.de

It is interesting to think about Duchamp’s conceptual notion of the “readymade” with regard to its relation to reality and against the background of Brecht’s notion of the “distancing effect”. Both have in common, that in some way they aim to “make the familiar strange”:

“An ordinary object elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist.” (MD, “readymade” in “Dictionnaire abrégé du Surréalisme”)

But while Duchamp is questionizing the status of “traditional Western Art”, Brecht’s writings deal with the “traditional Western Theatre” and its connection to the social and political reality. Brechts indictment of a “false harmony” and “idealization” – that is “smoothing over contradictions” – can give  impulses to reflect about the relation of art and the public, which becomes even more evident, when we do a small detour:

In Chinese philosophy there is long tradition of the notion of „harmony“. At the same time is the classical school of Chinese poems, paintings and writings deeply connected to the notion of an “art of living”.

The sky’s water has fallen, and autumn clouds are thin,
The western wind has blown ten thousand li.
This morning’s scene is good and fine,
Long rain has not harmed the land.
The row of willows begins to show green,
The pear tree on the hill has little red flowers.
A hujia pipe begins to play upstairs,
One goose flies high into the sky.

Du Fu, "Clearing Rain", ca. 758 (Translation: David Hinton)
 First Half of "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains" by Huang Gongwang (1348-1350, literally: "Living in Happiness Spring Mountains Painting"),
from Wikipedia.org

The French philosopher and sinologist Francois Jullien describes in his writings, how in „traditional Chinese thinking“ the entity and complementarity of contradictions is not considered as a problem, but as the principle of life, that primary renders the process possible, that we are all part of. During the centuries Western scholars have been attracted by this concept of a “practical philosophy” (compare f.e. the notes of German philosopher Leibniz in the previous “Public Tranquility”-Post). While Jullien has drawn criticism by Western (and Eastern) scholars, that blame him to distinguish in his texts too acute and spectacular between a “so-called Western and Eastern way of thinking”, i think that many of his observations are quite obvious and relevant. I suppose, that we have to be careful in comparing a specific cultural notion of “harmony”, that does not aim to idealization (since it does not care about transcendence), immediately with the notion of a “false harmony” that Brecht is writing about. So while there might be different cultural notions of “harmony”, each contemporary approach to “harmony” that claims to integrate a multitude of positions and poles has to keep care, that the borders of these two different notions of “harmony” are not starting to get blurry and intransparent. A couple of years ago we had a politically controversial debate in Germany about the notion of “Deutsche Leitkultur”, which can be translated as “German leading culture” or “German core culture”: While many participants and observers of the German debate agreed, that foundational values and convictions are very important for each national (and multi-national) identity,  there was also a lot of legitimate criticsm, since the notion of “culture” or “identity” is never something fix or given, but it is always constructed as well, and can therefore become easily a tool of manipulation, social exclusion and repression. German (post-) dramatist Heiner Müller once said:

„I believe in conflict. I don’t believe in anything else. That is what i try to do with my practice: Making aware of conflicts, of confrontations and contradictions. There is no other way“.

I guess, this is still a big challenge of our times: that we have to live with and that we have to stand the contradictions, that are part of our life. One possible attitude might be to keep the flux in play –

"Herakles 2" (Heiner Müller), the last theater performance that i directed (2008), Performer: Ana Berkenhoff, Photo: Ellen Coenders

“[…] the Nietzschean affirmation, that is the joyous affirmation of the play of the world and of the innocence of becoming, the affirmation of a world of signs without fault, without truth, and without origin which is offered to an active interpretation”

Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Humanities”

– there are different approaches to deal with these contradictions, none of them seems to be perfect, but in each case we have to be very aware, that we can not override them. A „false harmony“ can never be a solution to the contradictions of our times and the urgency of an independent art has exactly here its legitimation. And there has to be a minimum criteria for each open society that cares about and belongs to its people: It don’t has to take itself too seriously. It has to be able to laugh about itself. And it has to stand freedom of thought.

The Perfect Enjoyment

And have you not heard this?—Formerly a sea-bird alighted in the suburban country of Lu. The marquis went out to meet it, (brought it) to the ancestral temple, and prepared to banquet it there. The Kiu-shâo was performed to afford it music; an ox, a sheep, and a pig were killed to supply the food. The bird, however, looked at everything with dim eyes, and was very sad. It did not venture to eat a single bit of flesh, nor to drink a single cupful; and in three days it died.

Zhuangzi, The Perfect Enjoyment

It is easy to suppose that the marquis of this story only meant very well, when he welcomed the sea-bird with an exquisite banquet and his favourite music. Most obviously he was very happy and honoured with the presence of the beautiful animal. But as Zhungzi explains further, „’The marquis was trying to nourish the bird with what he used for himself, and not with the nourishment proper for a bird.“

The american composer and artist John Cage once was asked in an interview, if he wouldn’t sometimes smile a little bit about his adolescent enthusiasm for ancient Eastern Philosophy, since he had dealt in the recent years so extensive with the contemporary writings of Buckminster Fuller and Marshal McLuhan. His answer was: „Not at all“, and he added, that the ethics of the „global village“ and the „Huang Po-Doctrine“ would be pretty much identical: „Today I am closer to Zhuangzi than ever before“.

I like this small anectode with the bird and the marquis from Lu very much. There are many points that we still can get out of it today, especially when we are thinking about intercultural exchange, collaboration and art that deals with the public. The production and perception of art is a collaborative research process, and as artists we don’t have to propose immediately our answers and solutions to the problems of the world (can we claim to have them?). Instead, we can take our time to observe and then provide an open platform, where everybody is invited to join this observation process and to reflect and discover in a singular way. In such a way, art does not aim to teach a message (doctrine) to its audience, but it aims to its empowerment, or – how Brecht would say – to understanding:

“The production (takes) the subject-matter and the incidents shown and (puts) them through a process of alienation: the alienation that is necessary to all understanding. When something seems ‘the most obvious thing in the world’ it means that any attempt to understand the world has been given up”

Bertolt Brecht

Brecht & The Public / Art as Platform

“The one tribute we can pay the audience is to treat it as thoroughly intelligent. It is utterly wrong to treat people as simpletons when they are grown up at seventeen. I appeal to the reason.”

Bertolt Brecht

Fountain-Lasershow in Public Space, near Empark Grand Hotel, Chongqing

For sure, the political, historical and social context in that Brecht was producing his adaption of Antigone, is very different from today. Therefore, it is clearly not possible to transfer the political metaphors / meaning directly into our times, where the situation is totally different. Brecht was writing the text in 1947, shortly after the peak of fascism in Germany, one of the darkest chapters in the history of human mankind, and his adaption of Antigone has explicitly to be understood before this background. What I am more interested in, is to look for the ethical and aesthetic concepts that lie behind his text / concept, and to discuss and examine in how far they can have a (global) validity today. Walter Benjamin writes about Brecht’s concept of the epic theatre:

„The relaxed interest of the audience for which the productions of epic theatre are intended is due, precisely, to the fact that practically no appeal is made to the spectator’s capacity for empathy. The art of epic theatre consists in arousing astonishment rather than empathy. To put it as a formula, instead of identifying itself with the hero, the audience is called upon to learn to be astonished at the circumstances within he has his being […] By alienating that which is considered familiar, one can show this unnatural system of assumed ideology at work and purpose an alternative. The alienation within the theater setting of those who have been or are alienated within society can help to bring the two concepts together and establish a break in conformity. This is a pivotal moment, “the moment when the mass begins to differentiate itself in discussion””.

Walter Benjamin, Understanding Brecht

What I find most interesting about Benjamin’s description of the epic theatre, is, that it underlines that the idea of the epic theatre is at its core not so much about the invention of a new kind of drama: Instead, its main concern is the creation of an open platform / podium, that replaces the stage of representation. With this fundamental switch it addresses itself to the emancipation of the public, whose “well-being” and “principal position in the country’s political life” (compare previous “Public Tranquility”-post) is treated in a most literal and serious way.

Chongqing Liberation Monument, built in 1945 to celebrate the end of the war with Japan

Just recently i had a discussion with a Chinese friend, who told me that one of the reasons for the censorship in China certainly would be, that the Chinese in general are really over-credulous people, and sometimes they would need to be protected from bad influence. I insisted, that if this would be indeed the case, it is still not an specific characteristic of the Chinese people, but that history clearly shows that people in all countries (and my own country is a very sad example for this in the first half of the 20th century) are very susceptible for seduction. And i want also insist, that a sustainable way to deal with this can never be exclusion and control, but only access to educational resources and “democratic” – i mean democratic in the literal sense as “reign of the people” – emancipation, which is not directed / controlled from any (cultural, political or economical) “rulers”.

I have always had some problems with Brecht texts as being too didactic, but as he addresses and reflects this common criticism in his later writings as well, Brecht ideas still can maybe point us to a contemporary artistic practice, that reflects the complexity of our global political and economical situation while treating its audience as partner of the artistic process:

“The epic theatre was often objected to as moralizing too much.  Yet in the epic theatre moral arguments only took second place.  Its aim was less to moralize than to observe.”

Bertolt Brecht, "Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for Instruction" (1957)

"Under the umbrella": Detail of Open Air Police Station in Chongqing

Self-Representation Vigilante Group Ostritz (Kreis Görlitz), from bild.de

In Western societies there exists quite often the image, that in China there is no space for discussion. I think, this is a truncated and totally wrong perception, the Chinese are very social people, that permanently exchange their opinions, but some of the public discussions are still highly moderated (just one example: Link to a China-Daily Article from August 11 ). Different arguments / opinions are integrated in the decision-making process, but the process of decision-making and its mediation is not always transparent. Who finally makes the decisions?

To come back to the main point of this post: Once again, I want to underline that there is in all societies that appreciate its people an urgent need for the space that art provides, and that the place of this space has to belong to the public. Art has to be independent, and it has to treat its audience as a serious partner. This may sound quite grave and a little bit pathetic, but in fact an artwork that gives account to these points can manifest itself in quite informal and joyful ways, as already Brecht was noticing:

All this in a kind pragmatic, cheerful and productive criticism is a mental experience of todays human beings and therefore a field of the arts. This new curious, active, innovative attitude is – as i believe – in no way inferior to the old, aristotelean Catharsis, neither in regard to meaning, nor to extent nor to joyfulness. / „All diese Kritik praktischer, fröhlicher und produktiver Art ist ein psychisches Erlebnis des Menschen von heute und also ein Feld der Künste. Diese neue neugierige, aktive, erfinderische Haltung ist, wie ich glaube, an Bedeutung, Umfang und Lustgehalt der alten aristotelischen Katharsis keineswegs unterlegen“

Bertolt Brecht, Über eine nichtaristotelische Dramatik

The Place of Art / The Space of Art

“For this theatrical adventure the Drama of Antigone was chosen, since it both gained a substantial relevance and proposed formal interesting tasks. / Für das vorliegende theatralische Unternehmen wurde das Antigonedrama gewählt, weil es stofflich eine gewisse Aktualität erlangen konnte und formal interessante Aufgaben stellte.”

Bertolt Brecht, Explanatory notes to his adaption of Antigone

German + Chinese Participants of a experimental staging of Sophocles' "Antigone", that I directed in 2003

For me, after my first trip to Chongqing a general field of tension between politics and art became a little bit more obvious, that definitely is not only existing within the borders of one specific country, but that has certainly a global relevance as well. On the one hand i found a focus on the spatial communication of a common identity and cohesion – a shared history -, and public space is used as a medium to communicate – and construct – this identity. On the other hand art does not want to deal so much with the idea of teaching something or does not try to convince its audience about a message / idea, but it aims to provide a free and singular space, where the viewer can discover something on his own. Art multiplies our perception and differentiates out our relation to reality. From a western perspective one could say, that there are obvious parallels to the main conflict that is negotiated in Sophocles play Antigone.

"Kreon", Photo: Astrid Korntheuer

If we follow the Greek text, this conflict has to end deadly and there is no salvation possible.  In Greek Tragedy, which has played an unique and important role in the self-definition of Western civilization, the different positions are clashing, and only in exeptional cases there could be a possible salvation in the transcendent sphere of the „deus ex machina“, in which we can’t believe / trust anymore.

"Antigone", Photo: Klaus Wäldele

Brecht didn’t stage the Greek tragedy as it was written by Sophocles, but he did his own adaption of Hölderlin’s translation. Since the Greek tragedy was deeply rooted in the public and was negotiating the space of its people, a space that was constantly in flux during the centuries, Brechts motivation to breakup and modify the plot can provide some first hints for a todays collaborative exploration of public space:

“The state of things are represented in such a way, as if they could not be in any other way [in the Greek Tragedy]; the characters are represented as individualities, that means as indivisibilities from nature, <all of a piece>, as proofing themselves in most different stations, as well as in effect existing without all situations. Where there is development, it is only constant, never erratic, and they are always developments in a very specific frame, which can never be blown up. This does not correspond with reality, and has to be given up by a realistic theatre. / Die Zustände werden [in der griechischen Tragödie] dargestellt als so, wie sie gar nicht anders sein können; die Charaktere als Individualitäten, nach dem Wortsinn Unteilbarkeiten von Natur aus, aus «einem Guss», als sich beweisend in den verschiedensten Stationen, eigentlich auch ohne alle Situationen bestehend. Wo es Entwicklung gibt, ist sie nur stetig, niemals sprunghaft, und immer sind es Entwicklungen in einem ganz bestimmten Rahmen, der niemals gesprengt werden kann. Das entspricht nicht der Wirklichkeit und muss also von einem realistischen Theater aufgegeben werden.”

Bertolt Brecht

"Haimon", Photo: Astrid Korntheuer