Art Porn
Inaugural Issue, Winter 2015
Edited and Designed by Yue Wang
Translated Chn/Eng
Guo Xi ( with @Zhang Jianling)
The Grand Voyage.
The Grand Voyage reminds me of a video game I played when I was a child called “Age of Discovery”. It’s a RPG game where players start as the captain who sail at sea, berth at harbors to trade, even become pirates. One will run into hurricanes and all sorts of ghost ships in the game, makes it fun to play. However, in Guo Xi and Jianlin’s project, “the Grand Voyage”, they did to take on the role as captains, but as witnesses; they did not encounter pirates but clashed into various stories and took the job of scrutinizing and record keeping.
In the 86 days of cruising at “the Grand Voyage”, you played the roles of witnesses, recorders, inspectors, or participants. The project archived multiple stories which leads to artifacts and miracles. What do you want the audience to see or get from it eventually?
AP:
In the creational structure, the key player was the witness. I would like the audience to be in the state of endless reading.
AP:
I’m curious of your daily life on the sea.
GX:
A copy of the newspaper “Today” was delivered to each cabin everyday, on which was a schedule telling the passengers what was is going on in the various spaces of the ship. But our jobs was to search for miracles.
AP:
Did you encounter hurricane? Have you communicated with a lot of people, listened to their stories? Or did you inspect them in a silent way?
GX:
Closer to our last stop Yokohama, hurricane “dolphin” was near us but the captain adjusted the route so we avoided the turmoil. Stories came mostly in the form of “hearsay”. There was once we were enjoying the scenic sea on the deck while we heard someone playing the saxophone, then another passenger came along and started singing — they did not know each other — we found ourselves in an unrehearsed musical. Later we talked at length and this voice on the sea became an episode in the “Captain’s Log”: “An Ameteur Soprano”.
AP:
Why a blue giraffe? Why does it appear again in the stamp collector’s story? Are they the same giraffe?
GX:
Quoting from giraffe’s monologue in “A Stamp Collector” which was edited out: “in ancient times, giant ungulate was my rival, then they became extinct and me left with only the elongated neck. For that story climbed from heart to the mouth, through donkey’s years, when head fell from the canopy, I can not always tell from which dream I was awaken. In 15 century B.C., Hatshepsut brought me back to Egypt on the Southern campaign, kept me in the first zoo ever in human history. I was drawn on her tomb, outlined with Egyptian blue, protecting the eternal life of me and my lord. 46 years B. C., I was the war trophy of Julius Ceaser, 5,000 animals was killed on the day Colosseum completed. In the year of 1415, I took a boat from East Africa to Nanjing, was called Qilin the horse for gods; Court painters painted my portrait. 1486, I was given to Lorenzo de’ Medici and made my appearance in paintings and murals of the Renaissance.
I was attacked by a pride of lions under Mount Kilimanjaro and blinded one eye. The olive leaves along the Nile nevertheless kept on shining, and the flamingos kept flying by, a surprising 350 years went by before the next time I was back in Europe
In the beginning of 1827, I traveled arduously to Alexandria, from there I took a boat to Marseille of France. I trekked to Paris to present myself before Charles X in a special raincoat. Zarafa color and polka dots became the latest craze among fashionable ladies, image of me was also on gentlemen’s neckties. I met Flaubert and Balzac at the botanical garden, one stated that ‘I am the brother of all animals alive, the brother to human beings, similarly, brother to giraffe and crocodiles too.’; the other described the people sizing up a fashionable gentleman in his novel as ‘their curious looks as if they were looking at a giraffe’, well, I guess this gentleman must be wearing a tie.” Thank you for the careful observation, we think they are the same giraffe. The stamp collector heard the giraffe went on telling its story in low frequency. It was the object of novelty, behind its global transportation lies the haul of authoritarian powers, simultaneously, in the prophecy the giraffe jumped into the sea, its skin faded and it became a blue Leviathan. The transformation here has to do with the imagination of sea monsters, also is an allusion of state power.
AP:
Was it real that the blue Oreo came from the Oreo that Guo Xi ate?
GX:
He did not eat the whole Oreo, instead he only took a bite and found the filling became blue.
AP:
How do you define “blue”? (is it the sea, the blue in the Oreo, the palette of Yves Klein, some Pantone color? Or is it something else?
GX:
To us it is a metaphor of tangible infinity, and it comes to the specific images and stories in various forms.
AP:
What opportunity made you to really go on this voyage?
GX:
We hope all the stories to happen in an actual voyage, and they did happen. The development of this project owe to the opportunity Mr. Geng Jianyi provided. In the November 2014 “eclipse” event organized by ImagoKinetics, Guo Xi was the artist being invited to cook. He told Mr. Geng the early ideas of this project. Later Mr. Geng became interested which brought about the support from the team at ImagoKinetics throughout the project.
AP:
Is 1000 farewells a way of saying goodbye to the voyage as passengers? perhaps you represented 20 kinds of people in the 1000 passengers, or they acted as you?
GX:
For us “1000 farewells” is first and foremost a sad moment — people bid goodbye to the known mainland and head towards their uncharted destiny. Secondly, the 1000 characters were our fellow travelers, who witnessed the 12 prophecies take place together with us. Every character is unique and uncategorized. We did not take the role of each other but rather our destinies crossed their paths.
AP:
Since there is a great amount of literature and art historical references in your work, through the launching of The Grand Voyage, do you think the way of exhibition where audience reads the relationships between images and different objects is a resolve to the boredom of reading a lot of texts? What expectations do you have for the exhibit site and communication with audience?
GX:
In a series of exhibitions, we wish to construct a labyrinth of narrative, a cluster of objet. Audience who strolls through or gaze upon it would experience the kind of pleasure that is similar to reading, and “reading” does not limit to reading texts. We would open up the characters and parcels in each exhibition’s space and time with different art forms and display structure.
AP:
Through sailing at sea (and insulating oneself with the Mainland), also the frictional encounters with Arthur Cravan and Bas Jan Ader that you mentioned several times, have you become more comprehending to their actions? or more comprehending to fate? How do you think of their disappearance?
GX:
We deny these encounters are frictional.
To disappear is an action not to be, and no need to be understood. It might be better to say that each disappearance is to leave behind a riddle. This action is extremely private and indescribable. The way of disappearance, the time and space of disappearance etc. are all in-cognizable. This action is frosted and the frost remains between the truth and the eyes, one cannot see through it, sufficient for making it the origin of mystery and romanticality.
AP:
The first time I saw your project I thought of “The Museum of Innocence” and its way of displaying the artworks. Are you into The Museum of Innocence? Which part of it do you like? Do you want to build The Grand Voyage into a museum in the shape of a ship?
GX:
The Museum of Innocence reminds one of another fanatic collector Joseph Cornell. Numerous anonymous people left their marks on these objects, the collector himself also made his deepest mark in the world through his years of “obsession” and “fetish”. Every object, every gloomy box reflect a complete life story; every glance at the moment reflects a lapse of time. Additionally, we are interested in “The Museum of Innocence” as a text and its relations to the museum which bear the same name. on the 83rd chapter of the novel there was a ticket, which leads to the actual museum in Beyoğlu. Pamuk once mentioned that the book and the museum were developed at the same time, the novel as the catalogue of the museum.
In every exhibition (opening of characters and parcels), we reconfigure the past and adjust the directions to comes into piers, characters enter the stage in various spaces and depart, leaving the trace of their stories.
AP:
The Grand Voyage is the first volume of a trilogy, have you started working on the second volume? Will take on another way of travel this time? like climbing the snow mountain? or trekking in the desert?
GX:
As the keynote to The Grand Voyage is great romanticism, it appears in the creation in different tones and resonate itself. The second and third part will have such a keynote accordingly, they will become clearer in the development of The Grand Voyage in recent years. In the first volume, travel is similar to a method and container of practice, real experience entrusted us the roles of “witness”, evidences appear as the artworks. As the theme changes in later volumes, we will experiment with different ways of practice as well.
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