Gate of Heavenly Peace
"As I walked on to Kendall square,
and crossed the river basin there,
the Charles was black, the sky was blue,
the view was old, the bridge was new." Bridges, Squares.
... Ted Leo & the Pharmacists
It is twenty years since the spring vigil for voice and autonomy at the Gate of Heavenly Peace. Twenty years since it was crushed, literally, beneath the treads of armored vehicles and gunfire. A bridge between Beijing University Students and the cities workers, broken. A bridge between rising privileged intellectual and bureaucratic tribes and the nations laborers, factory workers of the new economy, never built. Broken as well the link between that generation and the next; the new generations in China. As this pinnacle moment of their youth was brushed away from official existence. The past occluded. The meaning of their lives taken away from those coming of age now. The square by the gate is not discussed either way, good or bad, necessary or unnecessary, overreaction by frightened old men. It is banned, scarcely referred to. Written out of history. And little official memory from this side.
My one constant window on the world is from a library cataloging technician's quarter-cubicle. And our acquisitions department's river of new books that flow by me, steady broad and deep. From this I take as a marker of the new China's cultural dynamism and wealth not only the amount and heft of books on the art world in China; the new galleries and exhibitions. Also the radicalness and challenging nature of this new art. It is not, one more exhibition of a dusty scroll with a delicately painted reed on it drawn by a sensitive Confucian captioned in bone script (personally I like Huang Binhong's stuff). It is not Mao-approved revolutionary social realism. No ballet of Kalishnikovs here - well un-ironically at least. These books
The revolution continues : new art from China [WorldCat.org] wear their hearts on their sleeves somewhat - or dust jackets at least. They have titles like China under construction : contemporary art from the People's Republic
= Zheng zai jian she zhong : Zhongguo dang dai yi shu [WorldCat.org] ,
Fancy : dream [WorldCat.org] , New world order : contemporary installation art and photography from China [WorldCat.org] ,
Beyond Beijing = Zi you xing [WorldCat.org] , Susi, key to Chinese art today. Future & fantasy [WorldCat.org] and, dslcollection a private Chinese contemporary art collection [WorldCat.org] This last is a dvd of a private collection, but the collection also has a strong (flash-based) web site, so you can see much of it online
DSL COLLECTION. This richness and dynamism often seems to lack reference to, masks, the failings of the new China. The essential exploitivness of its world factory culture. Perhaps all societies as they progress through structural transition encounter an exploitive phase. This does not mean they can't try to be self-aware. That some citizens should not attempt, or be allowed, to bring these matters forward to the conscience of all. To ask there be one measure of fairness and justice. Without this there is not balance or symmetry. It would require greater familiarity with this contemporary art world to see what attitudes on the contradictions and disparities of Chinese modernism actually exist in it. Art sometimes declines to drape its final meaning across its surface.
Manifestos for the time being have been left to the prosaic side. Charter '08 is only from only the end of last year :10 Dec '08
Charter 08 - Wikipedia. I had wanted to write more on this, but have yet to turn up much on it. The manifesto, published in an english translation earlier this year will have to speak for itself for now:
China's Charter 08 - The New York Review of Books. Primarily it is a reform movement. Seeking only to broaden and deepen the existing political system not over throw or replace it. It asks for freedom of assembly and association, an independent judiciary, introduction of legal allowance of other political parties. The principal drafter was detained even before manifesto was formally released. The governments trending reaction can be gauged from this. Many others have been interrogated, possibly all those who were original signers, signers of the subsequent petition supporting it, or in any other way formally connected to it. The Chinese press forbidden to discuss or even refer to its existence. Similarly regarding authoritarianism and its discontents This CSM article
China guts budding civil rights movement | csmonitor.com reveals that Chinese lawyers who have taken cases to defend cultural resisters are finding their legal licenses are being revoked. Apparently there is a law in China that its 120,000 or so lawyers must renew their registration to practice law every year. The greatest danger the current Chinese government poses is that it serves as a brutalist model for how a modern mass society ought to proceed. A partitioned society capable of delivering profound luxury to a privileged elite while keeping political power out of the hands of the rest. An example that has admirers across the world even in the west, even in the US. More than few US companies, particularly internet and telecom companies, have debased and libeled themselves in a scramble to sell or enable populace-controlling technologies to China (M, C, Y, G). Such a society is in a fundamentally unbalanced situation, not stable. No matter how channeled and regulated. No matter how on the threshold of a heavenly garden of peace it portrays itself as being.
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