Xiao Yu

Notes from the artist

1.  Footloose and carefree

I used to be a coward, crawling here and there. I used to play dead, daring to stew in my own grease. Not holding myself back, I damn right messed around. I dreamed of Zhuang Zhou [Ch’uang Tzu] and was dreamed up by him. When I get elated, I’m a million miles away. Every moment, I’m falling in love. I run around everywhere, footloose and carefree. Don’t reproach my fizzle for dazzling your eyes. Don’t condemn me as shallow because I’m in fashion. Fashion trends change year by year, but a need for being fashionable isn’t the point. You don’t know who I am, and I don’t know who you are. I don’t even know who I am. What do you expect from me? Frankly, I don’t know what goddamn thing I’m doing.

2.  Viewers and artists

Regardless whether those who admire art are many or few, they are collaborators by their own choice. “Misinterpretation” is the chief delight of viewers. Artists are neither required nor able to give a simple answer. Viewers and artists lead each other on. The viewers and artists who cohabit a given era are akin to two lines in parallel. Each is subjective and follows its own reason. So their mutual “misinterpretation” gets interesting. “Art” is an appellation that joins the two. The “artwork” is a form of evidence insufficiently feared by both.

We tend to construct the world according to our principles, but it’s hard to stomach the accompanying loss. Desire, aggressiveness, and sympathy that human beings are born with, are legalized, moralized, or put through other standards. Even if you sometimes feel queasy, you don’t bother to pay them mind, as they have already been standardized. You become numb, while time flows by. The discomfort doesn’t vanish, but instead is stockpiled day after day. Art can’t solve any question but itself. Art is a thermometer, or more like a red rash on our skin. The outbreak of human emotions prompts us to think – which isn’t fatal.

3.  Prey and hunter

Freedom is the distance between prey and hunter. Under such a rule, the positions of hunter and prey could be switched easily.

Once a standard has been created, it will be followed by more standards. Different standards result in different lives and people.

Human beings whose parents give birth to them, could only be called human in a biological sense. It’s discipline that produces human beings.

People in differing eras are totally different, because they’re products of the particular era. Likewise, people who live by differing disciplines are totally different.

4.  Identity and the self

Searching for identity [认同 rentong], searching for the self [自我ziwo] – these are a search for an especially meaningful standard. Thus, the setting of numberless rules is accompanied by abandoning and destroying numberless rules.

All the animals tamed by man are totally different creatures from those who live under the rule of nature. A wild pig is different from a family-raised pig.

Under many circumstances, the hope of destroying existing rules is put on the shoulders of artists. Artists, too, see it as their responsibility to break existing norms and rules through their experimental activities. It would be better for us to think in a converse way. How about if the artist’s activities reveal themselves through certain rules? Let’s take a look at what happens then.

5.  Products and people

A society, a company, a factory, and an organization – all produce different products and people through certain disciplines. In modern disciplines, one who violates the standard is deemed an unqualified product. This person’s action should be compulsively modified and adjusted. Modern civilization eradicates prior rules (such as revenge and ruination), while simultaneously producing numberless rules to intervene in, modify, and regulate all the thoughts and acts of human beings.

Discipline is the most rational violence in the world.

6.  Fleeting yet transforming

Fleeting, yet transforming, fluttering, yet fragile. Tying oneself up, yet setting oneself free.