D O C U M E N T - Ricerca sull'intelligenza artificiale specializzata al MIT

D O C U M E N T

A CONVERSATION WITH
HSIEH TEHCHING, FROM
THE BLACK COVER BOOK

Xu BiNG: There were a lot of reports in the papers about your activ-

ities at the time; it seems you garnered a lot of attention.

HsieH TeHCHiNG: That was the biggest event of that year.
Xu: Which year?
HsieH: ’83 to ’84.
Xu: These people forget easily. It’s only been nine years . . .
HsieH: I didn’t show any more work after that, so there’s no need
to get worked up about them forgetting. Much art is only remembered
because it is constantly repeated and re-presented.

Ai WeiWei: Art is no longer the sort of thing that grabs people’s
Attenzione. The Gulf War was forgotten within a year, just like a child
who went out to play a videogame. The fact that art no longer incites
widespread interest is often a problem only for the artists themselves.

HsieH: Infatti, this society doesn’t allow us to become participants.
We don’t need to acquire fame, we don’t need to depend on that kind of
experience to know what this is all about, and we don’t need to take
unnecessary paths. One doesn’t have to go down the route of experi-
ence. For many things, wisdom can help compress time and enable us
to jump right into the real problem, giving us a head start. The reason
I’m saying all this is because I’ve already had this kind of experience.
This experience helps me make some conceptual choices so that I don’t
have too much interference in that regard. That’s the advantage of

108

doi:10.1162/arTm_a_00115

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experience. But even better would be to not need such experience, A
resolve problems on the level of wisdom.

Ai: That’s a question of where you stand. When your perspective is

broad enough, you can eliminate many nonessential problems.
Otherwise, you will end up making a lot of unnecessary effort.

HsieH: As for the problem of whether or not we should intervene in
the Western system: my point of view is that we shouldn’t even bother to
intervene. One can get to the heart of the matter without having to enter
into all of that. Where art is concerned, it’s not necessary to enter into
any system [original in English—J.S.]. This isn’t to say that we’ve lost
awareness and vigilance, nor the ability to perceive and comprehend
what’s going on in the world today. Of course the more broadly that you
understand things in the world, the better everything is, but the best is
to be able to go just a little bit farther without participating in any sys-
tem. That little bit is really it.

Ai: “Systems” are usually man-made, the product of a specific envi-
ronment, and they don’t touch the essential problem. But the problems
that we’re looking for are essential. What kind of a process is this? Che cosa
kind of situation? A less-than-ideal “system” will weaken these essential
questions, transforming the people who get caught up inside into vic-
tims. That’s the reason why a system breaks down. Even a massive
dynastic empire could fall apart due to the irrationality of the “system.”

The value of an artist, of an individual, lies in independent ideas and
the independent actions produced by those ideas. The force and effect of
independent thought enable the individual to exit from the average “sys-
tem.” This isn’t something that is easy to do, and it’s built upon the foun-
dations of a critical knowledge about that system.

Xu: Infatti, everyone must belong to a system. The only difference
is between “choice” and “choicelessness.” Coming from Taiwan to the
United States means intervening in an international avant-garde cultural
“system.” That’s a type of choice.

HsieH: Hard to say. That might not be the case. We come to America

in order to absorb something essential from the West. People invariably
need a place in which they can survive, it’s just a question of where is
most convenient. It’s no big deal. You don’t necessarily have to be in New
York. Wisconsin or any other place would be okay. As long as you can
really do it, and it gives you some liberty and leeway to do things, you
don’t have to be in New York.

Ai: To set your status at “zero,” a situation in which you don’t have to

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109

do anything, in which the effort required for survival or to do other
things is minimal, and in which the limitations and influences coming
from the surrounding environment are less. Just like being in a vacuum
or maintaining a constant temperature in a laboratory . . . a standard
condition. Standard conditions are a problem common to all people
rather than a problem that applies to a specific time and a specific sur-
rounding, as in most political movements and cultural fashions.

HsieH: In the end we have to come back to ourselves and walk the
road that we haven’t yet taken. Virtually none of this can be answered by
the outside world; even talking like this here is virtually inaudible in a
milieu like New York. Unless you have sufficient judgment, there’s no
prefab thing here that you can just pick up and use. That’s not to say that
you can “get it” by just going a few more times to the galleries and exhi-
bitions. The living environment here has many things that can help us
train our sense of judgment. There are certain legendary aspects to this,
but in the end you can’t stray from explorations of the essence of the
universe. Western artists face the same problems; they’re not ours alone.
Ai: The cultural situation today has changed quite a bit. The mod-
ernist movement began and developed during the height of capitalism
after the Industrial Revolution; its main background was capitalism
and the rise of the bourgeoisie. Today we’re facing the “information
revolution” of late capitalism; the cultural structure follows the new
structure of the world economy and the “new order” has changed. IL
new economy and informational mode have broken through the previ-
ous cultural monopoly, enabling the liberation of a new, global, plural-
ist culture that arises from the local aristocracy. And today’s art hasn’t
yet given expression to this final revolution.

HsieH: The art that’s showing in New York these days doesn’t have

any impact on people. There’s nothing in it that makes you see the
future.

Xu: Which is to say that it’s superfluous.
Ai: But this isn’t necessarily true. New consciousness and forms

of expression will appear. Avant-garde art has already lost its avant-
garde quality and fallen behind the times. In the early stages of the
avant-garde, it was directly connected to the current situation and
humanity’s future. Today’s artists, by contrast, have already lost this
fundamental concern.

HsieH: That was at the height of it all, whereas now we’re in a state

of decline. Postmodernism is barely discernible and doesn’t have any

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real strength, despite the fact that some people won’t let it die. This is a
moment when it is possible to be someone “out of step with the times.”
Yet if people aren’t clear about this point, they might miscalculate.

Ai: The greatest difference in the situation for people today when
compared to those who came before is that we generally know the end is
coming. Humanity has never been as clearly aware of this point as today.
HsieH: What was the reason that made you do those things for pos-

terity? Those meaningless things? But still, if you’re prepared to do
them. . . . Art contains this kind of tragic element, especially for people
like us who clearly know that actions are useless, yet we still act anyway.
We all have rational and irrational sides, and everybody has his or her
own standards of value.

Ai: That values are changing is the greatest problem facing people

today. As long as you’re not dying, you still need a reason to live. You
need something to motivate you to get up out of bed every morning. For
esempio: I have a letter that needs to be mailed today. But when even this
kind of motivation doesn’t exist anymore, doomsday has arrived. You’ll
work hard to pull off the hand that is trying to grab your throat, Ma
what’s actually grabbing your neck now is nothing but yourself.

Xu: The entirety of humanity has caught itself on its own collective

neck, that’s exactly what’s happening now.

Ai: There’s no longer any need to subvert the world; it’s collapsed.
All that’s left is self-subversion to acquire spiritual harmony and finish
the last section of the path. That might be the ultimate spiritual goal, A
search for a point or position that will prove the certainty of your exis-
tence. It’s impossible for people to find anything, and equally impossible
not to go searching.

HsieH: We’re all preparing to do something. Weiwei will go back to
China. Xu Bing is in New York, and I will go to Taiwan. It’s only a small
change, but we’re all preparing for something.

Ai: But as far as we soldiers are concerned, conventional warfare is

already over.

Xu: Guns no longer have any effect. We’re facing newer weapons,

like lasers and guided missiles. The contemporary artist has to learn
how to use guided missiles.

HsieH: Contemporary artists should just stop everything they are
doing for the moment, as a lot of methods have already lost their mean-
ing. One must have a direction in which to head, and once they start
heading in this direction everything will be all right.

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111

Ai: Duchamp was like that.
HsieH: Infatti, from the perspective of the entire era, there hasn’t
been any progress in the fifty or sixty years after him. If Duchamp was
already able to do that, other artists might as well just give up. Nothing
left to do, but you have to do something; now that’s the problem that
should be explored, not those red herrings.

Xu: Let’s put it this way: Duchamp was just a guy with a gun.

He was the first to use a gun. Before him, there were only bows and
arrows. Those who come after him are just competing on marksman-
ship. Other domains outside of art are already using long-range guided
missiles. Guns aren’t a suitable weapon for this battlefield. Perhaps it’s
the nature of fighting that has changed, but all the people rushing
ahead with their guns simply don’t know it yet.

Ai: Duchamp predicted future developments. It was because he

predicted this that he was able to do what he did.

HsieH: He was a marginal figure, but we are even more marginal

than he. We shouldn’t play at the West’s game, but we have to under-
stand it, that’s the only way to destroy it. Our marginality is more
natural.

Ai: It’s always when a terminal disease appears and general medi-
cine doesn’t work anymore that people start looking for alternatives.
At that moment a shift of approach naturally appears.

Xu: That’s the reason for cultural hybridity: it’s because the West
itself has developed a problem. Otherwise the problem of marginality
would never arise. The West emphasizes the immigration problem
because its system has a problem.

Ai: Many contemporary problems cannot be solved by the use of
traditional clues and methods. Your position and your choices deter-
mine the angle from which you see the world, and what you see from
that angle becomes, in effect, the world. Modern artists use a single
point provided by the West to look at landscape: what does the world
look like? That which we see first is the philosophy, science, and cul-
ture of the West; inevitably there’s something one-sided about that.

Now that we’ve been playing at this for some time, and now that

we’re starting to look for the motivation behind the game, it’s become
a big problem. This game is neither natural nor perfect. We often have
no choice but to modify it. We occasionally even have to add rules in
order to keep on playing.

Xu: Which basically amounts to saying that everybody is playing

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this game. Humanity has set out the rules concerning the scope of this
game, and a certain group of people has to play it. It’s only because
humanity deems the game very important that there are so many muse-
ums and galleries, so many professional artists and so-called cultural
figures. Everybody is playing with great interest, yet finally discovers that
in spite of the fact that nobody’s ever really understood the game, there is
still a need to have some people appear to keep on playing. But nobody
is willing anymore to pay attention to a group of people who play without
“making any dough.”

Ai: The only way is to solve your own problems. Nobody else is get-

ting out of bed, but you still have to get out of bed. The decisive issue
here isn’t related to what other people are up to. Self-satisfaction is the
original motivation for this game.

Xu: That’s still a pretty negative motivation, some old literati thing.

This era is the era of too many things. It has already been infected by
AIDS. Time is running out and one shouldn’t bother to play useless
games. We need instead to think of new approaches, make new experi-
menti, not close ourselves off.

HsieH: We are hermits with space technology. We don’t have to get
involved with so much of what happens in the outside world. You only
need apply yourself to your own task with focus. That’s the only way to
go any farther.

Ai: Whenever we emphasize social participation, the positive effect
that art has on society, and what art has done for humanity, we have to
take into account exactly what we’re participating in and how. Modern
art has already lost the effect that it should have upon the spiritual devel-
opment of humanity and become instead a reactionary force.

Xu: It’s already gotten pretty discombobulated. The terminal disease

is incurable, and has been covered by smoke and mirrors, completely
unrelated to society and its sticking point.

HsieH: Sometimes saying things like that only frames art in a com-
pletely inappropriate way. You’re talking about the social in art, but with-
out the artistic the social wouldn’t have any force. That kind of social
quality is unreliable. Beuys placed great value on the social side of art;
he planted trees and was concerned about environmental problems. Ma
when it came to talking about environmental protection, he couldn’t hold
a candle to those people really focused on that issue. The environmental
and humanist spirit inside his grasp of the artistic merely enriched his
art. That’s really what the social means. But if it’s a matter of saying that

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113

the social and the artistic should find a balance between the two, IO
could do without that. Art itself is so contrived. Humanity would sur-
vive without art. Art only appears after humanity has satisfied material
life. Humanity thirsts for spirit, something that is creative and spiri-
tual. For instance, in terms of an era, does the Soviet Union currently
need art? Many places don’t need art.

Xu: Art is needed at all times and in all places; the problem is that

what we think of as art isn’t needed anymore. Infatti, that kind of art
has already migrated to other things, to rock music, television, or adver-
tising, while we’re still doing things from the past.

Ai: The soul has left the body. . . .
Xu: Art should reconsider the question of the artist’s

responsibility.

HsieH: What I’m saying is that given that you’ve decided to be an
artist, you ought to be clear about things when it comes to the artistic.
If you don’t think even that can be claimed, you’re little more than a
social worker. You’re unclear about what your proper job is. The right
way is to resolve these problems within the realm of art. But if you
separate the two, that doesn’t work, you [still] have to resolve all these
questions in terms of artistic creation.

Xu: The key reason why modern artists don’t have any strength
when it comes to art is because art has already become hollow. Art is
disconnected from society, disconnected from humanity’s problems.
This disconnect saps energy from the exploration of art itself. The mill-
stone turns continuously in order to grind out flour, but if the flour
doesn’t need to be ground, there’s no point in turning the millstone.
HsieH: When the whole age is messed up, that’s what happens.

Why is the commercial aspect of modern art so strong? Because
America is experiencing a commercialized age, an age without ideals
where commercialism is its most pronounced characteristic. Art has
become a slave to commerce. This age needs people with ideals, non
just artists; people with ideals are needed in every field, at every level.

Xu: The reason why people think art is meaningless and boring is

because they are not yet used to a lifestyle without ideals.

HsieH: We inevitably need a standard.
Xu: You’d be hard-pressed to say that this age doesn’t have any

ideals.

Ai: You can’t say that there aren’t any, but there has been an enor-

mous change. Because of universal material pursuits and human alien-

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ation from modern technology and science in this age, the individual
has become increasingly inconsequential to society. Spiritual pursuits
have thus sustained the greatest threat. The emergence of new things
in every field every hour and every minute, as well as the restlessness
and tension that comes from this, have combined to give people fewer
and fewer opportunities to think and to find a reasonable spiritual
position. But people cannot do without the pursuit of spiritual values.
Whether it’s in terms of a simple form or an entire religion, new spiri-
tual values that represent a new era will certainly emerge. We have
never been worried that the earth will lose its gravity and everything
will float in midair. The previous values clearly are not suited to the
new age, and they obstruct the emergence of new values. If you want to
do something interesting, you necessarily have to negate the outworn
modes from yesteryear.

Xu: I think that “degeneracy” is just a manmade standard. IL
world might well continue to “degenerate,” to lose more and more of its
ideals, becoming more materialistic and more pragmatic. Infatti, Quello
might be a true result of humanity, and you can’t control it, you can
only adapt to it. If you don’t adapt, you will be abandoned, your stuff
would be old.

HsieH: That’s not how it is. Even the worst artist reflects their

times. There’s no such thing as “only great artists reflect the times.”
And we’re talking about a particular rule of the game, a question of
a representative nature. No artist from any era can separate himself
in his work from the so-called spirit of the times or certain aspects of
the age.

Xu: There’s a question here about the level of good or bad.
HsieH: Good or bad goes back to what I was saying about the prob-

lem of the essential.

Xu: Is it generally thought that a good artist, such as Andy Warhol,
goes against his age? Or is [the good] artist someone who adapts to the
age? Actually, Warhol was going up against what was understood to be
art, but with regard to the age he was adaptive.

HsieH: He was critical, that was his most remarkable point. Lui

was a great master who was true to his society and his age, but he
caused a number of aftereffects. Many acolytes who followed him
wanted to go down the same route. The people influenced by him were
terrible. He wasn’t a good model at all. Artists are inseparably linked to
moral questions, and to judgments on moral values. Neither Andy nor

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115

anybody else can escape from this problem. If people don’t have to bawl
their eyes out when another person dies, that’s because death conforms
to nature. Crying and feeling sad won’t change anything. An amoral
action might be the most moral if it gives morality a new definition.
Artists are always putting forth new meaning.

Xu: Humanity will always face the problem of putting forth new
morals. You feel that Nietzsche’s greatness lies in the fact that he criti-
cized the old while proposing the new.1 And after him, the mission of
criticizing Nietzsche-as-the-old-concept-of-morality and raising even
newer concepts of morality has to be taken up by somebody else in
turn. That’s the mission of new artists—not to use Nietzsche’s concept
of morality in order to finish up the things that we have to do now.
Ai: Every age harbors a belief in the logic of the simple and

unrefined.

Xu: Artists of any age must participate in and be concerned about
this kind of fundamental morality. But you have to ask in what way do
the issues of responsibility that exist for today’s artists differ from those
a century ago? Otherwise there is no need to be a modern artist.

HsieH: The previous age had its own reality. When we weigh up
how they handled things, we can’t stray from that reality. Only if you
understand that era can you understand its artists’ situation and the
reasons why they did what they did. Of course we now say that we are
more advanced than previous eras, but looking at various facts, human-
ity has not progressed. Humanity is still very primitive, very temporary.
Throughout history, the views of many wise ones were more accurate
than ours. We fall within their calculations, and we are not their
equals.

Xu: Once again a problem of responsibility. Some people are con-

cerned with the question of humanity’s fundamental morality. I prefer
to face current problems.

HsieH: If morality is worth talking about, then what we have here
is “participation” versus “nonparticipation.” I would take into account
my abilities. Each of us has many limitations. If something affects your
creative process, you will feel threatened. This is the problem that I’ve
been talking about the whole time. My morality is very simple: my
morality consists in not burying myself when I say that I want to live.
If I say that I want to do something, the only way to produce anything

Nietzsche’s books were notably important among Hsieh’s reading.

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is for me to be true to whatever that is. I want to be a creative person.
If something goes against my nature, my system will be influenced.
My system will get stuck. So I’d have to eliminate the breakdown in
my machine. This is a personal standard, and I don’t need to explain
anything, as it’s my decision. There was a side to Andy Warhol that
was true to himself. It’s a question of being rigorous.

Xu: On that point, our generation is highly principled.
Ai: That might become a burden and an obstacle.
HsieH: We are the last generation of people in this kind of creative

mode.

Ai: The winds are changing. This isn’t just a question of simple
negation. A sober knowledge of the past and the future is necessary in
order to effectively revise and subvert them.

Xu: This possibility exists. Critique in the true sense is always a

critique aimed at the self.

Ai: Human consciousness makes progress through critique and
negation of the past. If you just go with the flow, art and artists needn’t
exist.

Xu: What makes us stand out is our ability to express ourselves so
well through any means; whatever the times demand of us, we can live
up to the requirements.

Ai: Adjusting and adaptation are among the most important abili-

ties humans possess. It’s always been this way. But today everything
moves at such a fast pace that only those who possess these skills can
subsist. This is a distinctive trait of modern man.

Xu: Our vitality is obtained through this fine-tuning.
HsieH: In my work, I’m not very rational. Many holes may appear;

I might have only a vague concept.

Xu: Your works were produced on the basis of a critique of what

you had done before. During that period, you were only able to get
“ideas” because your thinking was dialed in to a level that surpassed
the average person’s thoughts and surpassed even the level of your
previous performance [art]. Although your ideas appeared contingent,
they were in fact inevitable.

HsieH: That was a contingency within the realm of what I could

rationally control.

Ai: Sometimes the best choices that you can make are those made

after you’ve abandoned your old approach and are on the road of no
return, without any cards left to draw. Inner nature is hard to change!

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117

The feeling of crisis and of being forced into something is especially
strong in Tehching’s work. Most people have a choice. They can do
either this or that. That’s when necessity is lost.

HsieH: You mean that this wasn’t my choice.
Ai: You had no choice but to choose that way.
HsieH: You mean it wasn’t a free choice.
Ai: Something you had to choose.
Xu: If you hadn’t chosen, you wouldn’t have been able to go on
living. Infatti, that is a way to solve the problem, [because] it’s worth
doing. So much art today is impotent because it doesn’t matter whether
it’s done or not. It’s because art doesn’t reach the level of the “must be
done” that there are so many uninteresting things being produced.

HsieH: The main reason for my work is because I’m personally fed

up with living. I can’t just do nothing. I hope that I can discover some-
thing new that might make me feel glad. As an artist, doing what you
“want” to do, there are things that will move you. The power of being
moved will compel you to achieve what you had in mind, and long for
the ability to communicate that to others. There are so many things
that I have no interest in doing, yet I’m not satisfied with the status
quo. I’m still looking for a new turning point. I don’t place much stock
in success and failure. Even though I might lose, I can still control my
destiny. In the infinite exploration of creative work, there are still
things that exhilarate me.

Within the sphere over which I have control, I’ve opted for a
healthy way of living that allows me to undertake limitless challenges.
As a free man, no matter how bad the circumstances, critique lends us
power. The way ahead is definitely one that is open.

Even without all this, you’re not faced with certain death. Are you
finished just because you’ve been locked up in prison? What you have
to respond to is yourself, your own way. Regardless of whatever form,
whatever “ism” you adopt, this is the question that you essentially have
to answer. Otherwise, we could only talk about things that are limited,
such as whether or not you’ve been accepted by the West and other
unimportant questions.

Ai: Emphasizing morality, looking at life’s primal value from an

aesthetic perspective, repeatedly emphasizing these values. . . .

HsieH: Answering your own questions gets you closer to the

fundamental question.

Tr anslaTed by jon solomon

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