Zheng Guogu’s recent catalogue « Jumping out of Three Dimensions, Staying Outside five Elements”, shows as cover image “Me and My Teacher” a photo of the artist squatting on the road next to a foolishly laughing youth. The meeting with this exceptional teacher, actually Yangjiang city’s village lunatic, is like many random encounters and coincidences a trigger for Zheng’s projects and art works. Friends, his family, objects, activities, work experience, museums, everything that is related to the artist’s life can be implicated in and leave traces in his creation. It is as if the peripheral southern-Chinese provincial town of Yangjiang was a large laboratory for this outstanding artist. But “my teacher” is not only subject and trigger, but also a kind of conceptual guiding figure: the lunatic’s abnormal, disrupted state of mind puts him at the margins of society. Connecting to this state of mind allows Zheng to obtain a marginal position in regards to reality and restricting facts, too. As he mentions in an interview with Hu Fang “In art you can make an assumption that is not true and yet you can make it take place in reality.”1 A lunatic state of mind engendering disruption with reality therefore seems desirable for a person dealing with artistic creation. The same is true for a marginal geographic position. For Zheng Guogu, Yangjiang, which he describes as a natural cleansing system allowing him to contemplate all day long, is the most appropriate location for an artist.2 Distance through marginality implies leisure, arbitrariness, and game, which are all important elements in Zheng’s artistic practice. Yet, even though he seeks distance and dissociation on a practical level, he nevertheless requests proximity and association in what concerns content: mass media, pop culture, and the reflections of China’s fast changing reality on all levels and in all facets of everyday life are subject to his interest. In this respect, Zheng Guogu acts like a contemporary literati: creating with leisure, but being concerned with the crucial topics of his time. As he states: “We are occupied with nothing, and yet we dare to do anything (…).”3
For Tang Contemporary Zheng Guogu realises “Processing Factory” (加工厂), the replica of a factory for optical instruments, a replica that is nevertheless functional. Employees occupy the space and produce optical instruments. The only hints that this is an art work and not a real factory are its location within an art gallery, the visitors, which are evidently an art public, as well as models of workers and spray-painted reproductions of photos taken of former exhibitions of the work. These clues diminish the ambivalence of the given situation: does the location transform the activity or the activity the location? Yet, the actual dislocation created here reduces “Processing Factory” to a mere assumption. If we consider with Zheng art as the place where assumptions and hypothesis, can become reality, then a reality placed within such a hypothetical field, changes into nothing but an assumption. Having in mind China’s economic policy and development, including the recent agenda of cultural policy – the enhancement of creative industries – Zheng’s work obtains a particularly critical stance.
I went to Yangjiang several months ago to speak to Zheng Guogu’s teacher. I include below a transcription of the short conversation we had.
Martina: You are a Yangjiang youth, and you are Zheng Guogu’s teacher. How did you meet Zheng Guogu?
Yangjiang youth: Which Zheng Guogu? In Yangjiang there are many Zheng Guogus.
Martina: Well, the one who is now moving earth and trees, planting flowers and plants, the one who is making art.
Yangjiang youth: Oh, you mean that one. He wants to be different from me. My home means squatting on the street. Living on the street is very nice and cool. Now he is building a house, an estate, a garden of empire. But his emperor is not as big as mine. I live everywhere, sleep everywhere, have a house everywhere, have a garden everywhere and don’t need to pay.
Martina: What do you think did Zheng Guogu learn from you?
Yangjiang youth: He learned that he should not aim to resemble me. All the Zheng Guogu’s in Yangjiang know that they should not be like me. There has just been a big earth quake in Yangjiang. Now they build a big nuclear power station, the biggest nuclear power station. Nuclear power stations are strong, they can suppress earth quakes. Like this, it is fine, the heart does not shake.
Martina: You know, a long time ago, Zheng Guogu also planted geese. It is a famous art work.
Yangjiang youth: I told him, in the eyes of a goose, everything appears very small, even a nuclear power station; a goose is not afraid of a nuclear power station. The eyes of Yangjiang people are goose eyes. They are not afraid, of nothing, not of heaven and earth, not of man.
Martina: All the Yangjiang people I know really love Yangjiang, as if it was the centre of the world.
Yangjiang youth: In the Ming dynasty China was the richest country in the world. One night in Yangjiang, there was a big earth quake; an entire island disappeared in the sea. Now the city is in the ocean. Now China is also the richest country in the world. One night Yangjiang will again fly into the sea. Then everybody in the world will know Yangjiang. Then it will be the centre of the world. Yangjiang youths know tomorrow, they know that it is enough if they eat and drink well, if it is good looking and pleasant.
Martina: Apparently, everything in Yangjiang is of use, nothing is spoilt; like a big circuit, very economical and ecological …
Yangjiang youth: It is very hot in Yangjiang. Everything grows, everything can have life. Look at me; I even don’t need to wear clothes! Everywhere I can find something to eat and to drink, I don’t need to work; can be here and there …. I know everybody and everybody knows me. There are many robbers in Yangjiang, but nobody is robbing me. In Yangjiang there are many unemployed people, but nobody will make me unemployed. In Yangjiang many people are gambling, but nobody dares to gamble with me. I see everything: yesterday, today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.
Martina: Well, this is like a mirage. Yangjiang is very marginal and special. I feel it can generate a kind of surrealist mental state …
Yangjiang youth: Yes, this is my case. Many Zheng Guogus are like this, and many Zhou Xingcis are also like this, too.
Martina: Like this, there are many possibilities for artists.
Yangjiang youth: I have to pee …
MARTINA: Just like this …
Yangjiang youth: “Everything in Yangjiang is of use, nothing is spoilt; like a big circuit, very economical and ecological …” If everybody was like me, there would be many possibilities, and not only for artists. Here everybody has many possibilities. Maybe, later everybody here will be like me, because I am their teacher.
Martina Köppel-Yang, Paris, December 2007
