7.5% recording, what's doing art

Ⅰ A fact

According to a report released exclusively by the China Securities Journal on May 18, 2012, China's economic growth will continue to decelerate in the second quarter, with GDP growing by about 7.5 percent.The report suggests that we intensify anticipatory adjustment and fine-tuning of macroeconomic policies, truly implement structural tax cuts and substantially reduce corporate financing costs, and maintain steady and rapid economic growth.

According to the report, against the backdrop of slowing domestic aggregate demand, the pressure on prices to rise eased slightly in the second quarter. It is preliminarily expected that CPI(Consumer price index) will rise by around 3.3% year on year and PPI(producer price index) will fall by around 0.6%.

According to the report, since the beginning of this year, China's economic growth has been lower than expected. In particular, the main macroeconomic indicators in April showed a trend of overall weakening, but the employment situation performed well, so there is no need to worry too much about a moderate slowdown in economic growth.At the same time, China has made some progress in the structural adjustment of regional economic structure and income distribution structure.On the whole, the current economic slowdown is mainly caused by factors such as real estate regulation and weakening external demand. It is a pain that must be faced in the period of industrial transformation and upgrading.Current real economy transformation and upgrading of pressure, especially the small micro enterprise facing the rapidly rising cost of labor, resources, the high cost of financing problems, therefore, should strengthen macroscopic policy fine-tuning preset moderately, to further speed up the pace of structural adjustment, actively carry out structural tax cuts, to increase support technological upgrading, greatly reduce the enterprise financing costs and so on, to maintain steady and rapid economic growth.(May 18, 2012 06:57 Source: China Securities Journal lu Zheng)

 China's "growth" slowed from an expected 8% to 7.5% in the second quarter of this year, a pace that seems to signal the start of a period of slower growth.The European debt crisis persists, domestic inflation remains high, local government debt is in doubt, the housing market still needs to adjust...These changes raise concerns about the possibility of a decade of Japanese stagnation in The Chinese economy.Once, Japan's economy slowed sharply from 1991 to early 2000 due to the bursting of the capital market and real estate bubble, and then stagnated for a long time, which was called "the decade of stagnation" and "the lost decade" by economists.

Economists had gleefully predicted that Japan would overtake America as the world's biggest economy in 2010.Clyde Prestowitz, a former U.S. trade negotiator in the Reagan administration, alarmed Washington in the 1980s by alerting the U.S. to the threat posed by Japan.Now he studies China. "I don't pay much attention to Japan anymore," he says.If Japan's economic weakness makes the world lose sight of it, how much pressure and worry will China's "slow growth" cause us? 

At the beginning of 2012, the state officially announced that "China's economy is about to enter the stage of slow growth". This announcement naturally became the focus of attention in the next 1-2 years. No matter any industry and production field, including the production field of art, this reality cannot be avoided.As a result, it is inevitable to ask where the hot money is going when the real estate and manufacturing sectors, the two pillars of China's economy, are in decline.How will the cultural industry be affected?We have seen the economic crisis of 2008, during which small gallery owners closed their doors. When the economic outlook darkened, artists may be seeking and groping for a way to break through the "symbolic capital" and become their own operators and planners...This barrage of assumptions and questions is just what the exhibition title 7.5% is buying.The expected living space brought by the "slow growth" of economy is much larger than that of art ecology. Under such a theme, the exhibition aims to focus on the existence, nature, confidence, probability and survival strategy of art in the name of art.

Ⅱ The reason of  "art"

In the ecology of contemporary art, I am afraid that the interpretation of artworks as the capital of exhibition planning is enough to make the audience feel boring.What can an exhibition with "percentage" as the title motivate people to pay attention to "contemporary art"?     

As the carrier of thoughts and ideas in the social culture of "post-modern -- contemporary", art is inherently opposed to constraints, just as Foucault's philosophy expresses: everything he analyzes is to "negate the universally applicable concept of necessity on the way of human existence".As an expression of culture in the post-industrial society, art inevitably has irreconcilable contradictions with economy and technology, which reflects the conflict between human rationality and irrationality.Post-industrial society culture (self-expression, self-gratification, self-realization) principle is the center of a specification against system, the principle of individual subjectivity as whether meet the scale, mood, emotion, judgment, the unconscious self body experience does not admit any limit and define, everyone wants to achieve his full potential, and thus main body spirit making widely known and the role of the economic and technical dissimilation deepening contradictions.If art is not a waste, its purpose is to provide a "place for free thinking" and a symbol of "abundant life" for contemporary society

"Now that people can talk about 'dumpster civilization' and even plan to study 'dumpster sociology'" (Baudrillard), "waste" is justifably the raison d 'etre of art, and "abundance" can only be defined as "waste.""Tell me have you throw the club, I will tell you who you are, but because of who I am", if there is no place for leisure and free thinking, people will lose the value of its "customers", there is no consumption is a motive force of the production, so it seems, art as an object of "consumption" of economic growth, social vigorous impetus is dismissed.Therefore, the great abundance of society and the growth of GDP depend on waste at all levels.Want to eliminate waste is a kind of illusion, because from a certain extent, it has established the direction of the whole social system, the basic survival food and clothing live line, any production and consumption can be called waste: "not only refers to the fashion and food bins, and refers to the military super gadgets, refers to the bomb, excessive agricultural equipment refers to some American farmers, every two years, and referring to update complete machine without payment by installment of entrepreneurs:Boast not only refers to the consumer, but also refers to obey in the process of production - let alone policy ", rewarding investment and investment of luxury is intricate entwine together, in fact in our life, we can not to separate the "useful", remove the "excess", so art is must be of course it is not necessary, he must is a modern society, is a splendid must society.

Artists, as idlers in cities, observe and question the operation of social machines with their scattered and non-purposeful eyes in this waste of time and in the process of leisure travel. They abstract out the images and states of "things" that are invisible to ordinary people, as if it is their duty.Rogue has incomparable time is the average person, their questions and observations are also given to them by their professional qualities of their irrational question and challenge into art, these are made the artistic conception of ultimate goal or "consumed" (whether to absorb mode or in the manner the waste) or art will die do not conform to the society.

Since artists first need to "live", in the post-industrial society, "life" is definitely not organized according to their survival needs, or according to the meaning of life of individuals or groups. On the contrary, only "consumption" can make "life" and "survival" possible."A box of biscuits is the whole month of idleness and life;A pot of meat and a basket of corn and walnuts is a treasure of peace;A calm winter may be bathed in fragrance...Robinson tastes into the future in the smell of the pantry and the box.In order to become an excellent art, art must consume the time that ordinary people cannot have and the basic necessities of life that ordinary people do not have. Even if his art is not formed in this way at the beginning, when his art becomes an excellent art, he must follow such rules, or his art will soon be eliminated.According to Nietzsche and Bataille, the economic principle that human life must be "labored", survival is a struggle to have "redundant", "better", "faster", "more often" ambitions.Art, then, is the best reason for waste: it is an illusion of the supreme dignity of survival.

As a commodity image at a higher level in the social system, art, on the one hand, is consumed with its value; on the other hand, it is gradually realized as symbolic capital for artists, which ensures the reproduction of production order.Wasteful consumption has become a daily obligation, an invisible mandatory order like taxation. Our basic food and shelter have been solved long ago. The pursuit of consumption and waste is the obligation of our life, and the degree of consumption and waste is the indicator of the degree of social prosperity.

What does 7.5% GDP growth mean?It explains the degree to which surplus material is abundant, the extent and capacity of society to accept waste, and the percentage of production creativity and desire to consume that society satisfies people's desires.To arouse the creativity of producers, stir up their consumption desire, strengthen their purchasing psychology, shape is like the stars, star artist, the prince and princess live arouses people's desire to become a "someone", these are consume "hero", is the idol of now society is also the consumption led soldiers, they are like a king, hero, priests, or nobles in the past to the society as a whole this agency functions.Growth of GDP index to escape is not the effect of the consumption of false enthusiasm, escape from the cultural and art brought about by the consumer space, art - waste as a kind of luxury, such a noble waste using mass media will be more people to accept and become a habit, and from the culture is further promoted the process of a directly into the economy more fundamental, more waste of the system.

Artists in the system ACTS as both luxury producers also ACTS as a typical typical luxury consumer, the typical production - consumption systems manufacturing and maintenance by star artist, who has a knack of waste who are eligible to make a big effect of the king's throne, they provide greater broader symbolic consumption space and survival experience space.

Ⅲ Art language and the production

After modern philosophy is one of the most focus on one problem: "code under the control of the death of reality", images are to be seen as a signifier "real" referred to in "fantasy", the image is also being the product of the spirit "domesticated", photography and multimedia art is the domestication process with "technology" kidnap unknowingly make art in its rules, only change the space structure of "production" might break through the scope of artistic expression.The "production mode" of the image determines the consumption place and purpose of the image, breaking through the graphical artistic language to play its function of telling and referring within the prescribed limits. When the indicative meaning becomes the focus of the language, the text will play the function of art (such as the works in the exhibition of Chen Shaoxiong);When materials are used for expression, the sense of texture and mass becomes the psychological hint that people are close to art (such as the works of Yang Xinguang and Li Hongbo).With the help of new ways of communication, multimedia art is most easily approached and consumed in the chain of production and consumption, such as movies, TV, Internet and video games. Zhang Zhaogong's multimedia interactive works occupy the advantage in this production-consumption chain.And painting and photography must constantly updated technology, media and keep its uniqueness and irreplaceability in language production chain (e.g., li chao, Dong Wensheng and Sue on the boat), which is continuously emerging problems in the economy and society, and how to respond to the problem of art production can express vision, show an artist's Yang Maoyuan with imaginary internal impulse as he production culture symbol of power, whether in the painting, sculpture, or a device, finished product now, he's perception of art production is positive, but he does not take into account the so-called rules, but in a positive way to art by irrational energy together,Broke out in a new way of reading to penetrate the rational society, as the exhibition of "face", his subjective to assume an external energy makes the "Buddha" in the face of the changing of the power comes from the rules, the individual life, in the contradiction collision with symbolic facial expressions refer to the object.Sequence of works is sensitive to "place" and "environment", he gets from the classical context of "eternal", through the power of the "immortality" is always in his painting space, as a discipline under the mechanism of social individuals, he attached to break by the limitation of production relation and relationship to the environment, to seek survival in the slow rhythm of painting free dimension.

Impenetrable in the so-called "discipline" (foucault), the mechanism of social just as popular Oriental philosophy and way of life as the leading consciousness of art provide some leeway space, in the contemporary artistic language is "natural" image, appear to be gentle with the established production relations and the enforcement mechanisms of boredom, and eventually in art reflects the vigor of life itself.In Dong Wensheng, regression and overstep intend performance obviously, he unconsciously chose "grass tree stone relations with people" to express from production will crush appeal, by rebuilding the relationship between human and the context of the classical "natural" to release repressed life will, he emphasized the vegetation vitality, the vitality as mechanical society cannot devour the raw energy, and to undertake the redemption of matrix function and the moral of self-healing, and his works in essence is a kind of alienation of economization axis of lifestyle.

Li Chao's work is a cautionary tale about the "freighter myth" of economic society, in which goods -- consumer materials -- act as a deception, in which the so-called Third World seems to have been opened by freighters, and in which the nightmare of capital and industry inevitably invades every corner of the world.People in the developing world see Western aid as something expected, taken for granted and already theirs. Cargo ships and goods are legally entering every city in the world. Consumer goods are changing the way people live.This is the picture constructed by Li Chao's triptych. He presents the trading mode of capital from different historical fragments and perspectives. With a typical "navy" as a symbol of the "miracle" of political power and capital, he reduces the crisis that may be triggered in the economic society from a multi-dimensional perspective.

Sue works on the boat with round shape and gorgeous butterfly wings symbolize a hearty and false consumer society, this is how a typical amplification kaleidoscope, gorgeous and fleeting glitz and beautiful butterfly after death as memories and mourning symbols, as for worship and desire of life, life itself is the myth of the vanity of material production and consumption country effect.Chen Shaoxiong the words carved on the wall show the deed seem to 4 quipping is a consumer society under the nature of economic production, on the one hand, he carved in the behavior of the preset on the production of "labor consumption", on the other hand he put off the QiangHui back together on the floor of text (the words on the exhibition will be blurred) is a symbol of the substance and meaning.Therefore, today's consumption is not the real consumption of people, but the consumption of the meaning system.The consumption subject is not a person. In modern consumption, the real individual is precisely deleted.As Lacan said, the $crossed out by the slash.It is also in this sense that Baudrillard declared: "the subject of consumption is the order of symbols".At 7.5%, under the theme of art also subduction of producers and consumers, like NiHaiFeng works directly with digital to prompt the economy, the purpose of economic growth is the percentage of protruding circulation mechanism of production and consumption itself, and this mechanism is provided by the rich and waste, which includes the general rich illusion of art and wasted passion, where is our real life?Where is the ultimate point of art?The cycle of art ecology does not answer these questions. It is only responsible for the cycle itself, for the rate of growth, for the number of percentages, for the representation of images and symbols, as to whether you consume them or not.

Li Shuqiao

June 13, 2012 at the Central Academy of Fine Arts