Art in China II

Again, I spent a few hours at 798, with art, coffee, and a long nap. This time, I crossed ways with the guy on the (arguably crappy) photo. He works for an institution called the European Union. He is a big shot there. They call him President of the European Commission.

The picture shows him in the art gallery of artists whose works were, in fact, not long ago subject to government censorship. Since then, Chinese art has come a long way. One important factor in the change of attitude of the government toward art was that censorship actually became an effective vehicle for people to earn money and to become popular. Even the most mediocre works (be it art or literature) could score high prices abroad if they achieved the prominent status of having been censured. Just insert some little politically incorrect phrases, or paint Tiananmen instead of some landscape, and you got yourself not only censored, but also a nice price in an auction in London, Paris or New York. And plenty of publicity. In this context, some of the creations of authors and artists in China could be viewed more as deliberate efforts to make money rather than social criticism and political protest. This, then, is an example of how, speaking in general terms, the political becomes commodified (another one being corruption). In other words, it shows how how political action and exchange assumed to be sacred–a sphere isolated from the monetary realm– come to surrender to the logics of market value, and how only these logics ultimately propel political change.

The fact that Manuel Barroso takes some time during the Europe-China Summit in Beijing to visit 798 says a lot about the prominence and importance of Chinese art today. The artist Yue Mingjun I mentioned earlier, for instance, appears on the cover of a recent Asia-issue of Time magazine (see the related article, here). And, to top it off, Nike (I assume as part of a long-term marketing strategy) has just opened a Nike-Gallery with Nike ‘art’ at 798 called “The Force of Love”. (The engraving below, inspired by the image of the traditional Chinese stamp, is laid in the ground just in front of the gallery.)

Russland

Dongzhimen is aseptisch. So sauber ist es wohl nirgendswo in China. Reinigungskräfte bevölkern die Wege, kratzen Aufkleber vom Boden. Auf der Straße könnte man Babies wickeln, so sauber ist es. Kein Wunder, bei all den Botschaften. Langsam wird es hier etwas langweilig. Deshalb ging es heute nach Süden. 2 Blocks (je 15 Minuten). Dort ist grundsätzlich alles gleich: Wolkenkratzer, große Straßen. Aber immerhin, einen schönen Park gibt es, ‘Ritan Gongyuan’. Und einen weiteren Unterschied. Die russische Gemeinde. Hier, im Ritan Viertel, liegt die Russische Botschaft und rundherum, wie mittelalterliche Märkte und Siedlungen, die sich um Festungen bildeten, sammeln sich russische Geschäfte und Menschen. Hier gibt es viele Russen und viele, viele Pelzmäntelgeschäfte… Die Chinesen haben sich auch wieder einmal bestens angepasst. Ihre Speisekarten, Werbeschilder, und die Namen ihrer Läden (von der Disko zum Supermarkt) sind in Russisch. Es ist ein sonderbarer Ort, die Fremde in der Fremde.

My new shoes

When the wind carried away the heavy, stale air of this city and the sun lifted my spirits, I decided to buy some shoes. Soccer shoes, to be sure. I needed them for today, for our formidable loss against a South-African team (0:6). Yaxiu market was the perfect place to buy them. Hundreds of little stalls packed with bags, clothing, shoes, and pretty much everything else that can be copied and worn. My shoes started at 600 yuan, I managed to haggle them down to 200. Still 100 too much, I was told later. Well, it was my first time at Yaxiu. So here we are, perfect Nike fake shoes. They do feel strange, but then, I merely spent 20 Euros.

Does a market like Yashuo hurt Nike? I think not. First, it is difficult to find original Nike shoes in ordinary stores. And then, if there are originals being sold, relatively few people could afford them. So, in the first place, fake Nike shoes target a market, that the company itself would not cater to anyways. But most importantly, fake Nike shoes actually secure Nike’s success in China in the future. For, the copy-culture in Beijing and elsewhere prepares the ’selling-ground’ for Nike by educating people its brand, its style, its design. At the moment the company does not yet benefit from this education. But in the long-term, it will. As mentioned earlier, a newly emerging middle-class can increasingly afford to spend more on ‘quality’-shoes. And quality is guaranteed by the original. Nike will in the future find a market ripe with people craving not just for shoes, not just for shoes with Nike on them, but shoes with Nike in them, original Nike products.

To understand why people turn to original products, despite their high prices, Thorstein Veblen’s work on conspicious consumption (Geltungskonsum) is informative. Veblen describes consumer society. The society in which everything can be bought, everything is a commodity, among other things, because it can be translated in a universal unit of measure and exchange–money. In this society the traditional lines among classes blur (Bourgeosie vs. Proletariat) and new lines of class- differentiation are being sought. Ultimately, these lines become defined by way of coupling consumption with representation.

“The basis on which good repute in any highly organised industrial community ultimately rests is pecuniary strength; and the means of showing pecuniary strength, and so of gaining or retaining a good name, are leisure and a conspicuous consumption of goods.” (Veblen 1902)

The consumption that is not directed toward a useful purpose other than that of that satisfying one’s (representative) status is conspicious. Conspicious consumption takes place, when people in China buy expensive French wine, eventhough their taste buds are not conditioned to actually distinguish good wine from bad wine (as we taste and judge wine, at least). Good wine is French and super-expensive–that’s the criteria. Air-conditioning is another example. Although it is obviously detrimental to the human-body to be freezing all the time, a really really cold appartment (with lots of air-cons and a high electricity bill) bespeaks of wealthiness, of the capacity to constantly ‘be cool’, as it were. There are many more cases of conspicious consumption in everyday-life in any modern society. But here in China, their contradictions become most apparent. In order to understand the changes in Chinese society today, consumption theory is important, probably more than any political theory.

I am indebted to Michael Ulfstjerne for bringing these themes to my attention.