Art of Change: New Directions from China and
The Discourse of the Ridiculous and the Sublime.

Art of Change: New Directions from China,
Hayward Gallery, London, UK, 7th September 2011 to 9th December 2012.

While long regarded as two ends of the spectrum, the Sublime and the Ridiculous have never been seen as two aspects that are inherently irreconcilable. The Ridiculous, when utilized effectively, is able to assist in perpetuating the sublime despite their disparate natures. The Ridiculous in art has the ability to probe sublimities that deal with transcendence and venturing beyond liminal boundaries. However, the relationship between the Sublime and the Ridiculous must be one of careful consideration as when construed inappropriately, the ridiculous nature of an artwork can overblow and nullify the Sublime, rendering it as purely ridiculous in its entirety, displaying the precarious nature between the Sublime and the Ridiculous and how “one step above the sublime makes the ridiculous and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime”

The discourse on the relationship between the Ridiculous and the Sublime of this essay will start with the works of Chinese artist Duan Ying Mei that are located early in the exhibition, Art of Change: New Directions from China. Duan’s Sleeping, 2004/2012 (Fig.1), a performance installation of a live performer silently sleeping on a white shelf elevated high up on a gallery wall. Exhibiting in the same space is also Duan’s In between, 2004/2012 (Fig.2), another performance installation of a live performer silently laying on a white shelf also elevated high up on a gallery wall in the same room and on a wall adjacent to Sleeping, 2004/2012. Duan’s other work, Happy Yingmei, 2011/2012 (Fig.3&4), is a performance piece performed by the artist herself where viewers enter a room through a tiny door into a constructed environment, one of a dark and desolate scene where bare and withered branches pepper the room, and Duan herself sits in a dim spotlight, humming a tune repeatedly before approaching the viewers and interacting with them and giving them scraps of paper with wishes written onto them.

The initial impression of Duan’s artworks to the majority of viewers is fantastical and ridiculous. The room where the performers of Sleeping, 2004/2012 and In between, 2004/2012 lay in oblivion on a shelf that overlooks the viewers is a scene of literal and figurative exaltation that sets a somnambulant mood. Following this is the experience of Happy Yingmei, 2011/2012 where the viewers literally enter a space separated from the exhibition, and Duan’s performance is one of an unsettling fantasy as she alternate between humming an eerie tune and recounting to the viewers about her fantastical dreams where she is “flying about”.

Yet it is this fantastical and ridiculous nature that serves to help perpetuate the sublimities in Duan’s artworks. Duan’s theatrical works deals with the modes of the “transient, psychic and subliminal” and her creation of a world “in between, whereby external reality and dreams cannot quite be differentiated” alludes to a contemporary Sublime via a power that “thrusts (the viewers) into a condition which we are no longer ourselves but radically transformed, even to the point of entering a new kind of reality” in order to reach a state of transcendence and attain ‘ekstasis’ (stand outside oneself), an idea discussed by Longinus, who is long regarded as the first writer of the Sublime, in Peri Hypsous (About Elevation), translated by Nicolas Bolieau in 1674. Duan’s works are only helped further by their fantastical and ridiculous nature as they disorientate and implore their viewers to abandon any rational thought, making them a “sublime individual” as one who can reject the safe dream of “Apollonian” rationality, where all is light and sanity, in order to dive into the ocean and embrace “Dionysian” intoxication – the frenzy of the god of wine of madness.” However, a successful discussion of the relationship between the Ridiculous and the Sublime requires careful consideration and a pivotal point for this discourse is with the artworks of Liang Shaoji’s silkworm series; Windows, 2012 (Fig.5), an installation where old wooden Chinese windows were placed with real silkworm as they spin their silk over the course of the exhibition, eventually enveloping the structure with their silk that is reminiscent of historical Chinese paper windows. Whirl, 2012 (Fig.6), Bed/nature Series no. 10, 1993-99 (Fig.7), Chains: The unbearable lightness of being/Nature Series no.79, 2003-07 (Fig.8), are works of a similar nature, having the silkworm cocoons spin their silk webs over tiny copper beds, massive chain sculptures and rocks assembled into a spiral on the floor and Listening to the Silkworm/Nature Series no.98, 2006 & 2012 (Fig.9) is an interactive installation allowing the viewers to listen to the real-time and amplified noises of live silkworms (located in an adjacent space to the installation) consuming mulberry leaves through sets of headphones hanging over meditation cushions. Liang’s silkworms can be said to represent the dynamically sublime quality in nature by Immanuel Kant. It may seem contentious to link such a physically tiny element of nature to a theory so often been compared to disastrous and gargantuan examples of nature, but Liang’s silkworms series bears great potential in affecting the Sublime.

In Liang’s silkworm series, the idea being presented to the audience is how over the course of the exhibition, the tiny silkworms successfully engulfed all these huge objects with their silk web regardless of their size, for examples in Chains: The unbearable lightness of being/Nature Series no.79”, 2003-07, to the numerous sculptures of Windows, 2012, Whirl, 2012 and “Bed/nature Series no. 10”, 1993-99. Along with the sound installation of Listening to the Silkworm/Nature Series no.98, 2006 & 2012 that subjects the viewers to amplified noises of live silkworms that ironically resembles a stampede or an earthquake, the grouping of all these artworks together that silkworms as a “source of fear” in nature. The fear is not an overt one and arguably a subtle display of nature’s limitless capability in its creation through the tiny silkworms’ ability to overwhelm the assortment of large sculptures with their silk web. However, it is not enough to purely present nature, or rather, the silkworms, as “a source of fear” as Kant has explained that we must be in a state or situation that allows us to not be afraid of the source of fear in question in order to fully experience the Sublime in nature that “elevates the imagination to a presentation of those cases in which the mind can come to feel the sublimity of its own vocation even over nature.” What is clear is that Liang’s artworks, though established earlier as potential “sources of fear” in nature, are displayed in a non-menacing way but rather, provides the viewers with the “opportunity to observe the mystery and magnificence of nature”. The silkworms’ gossamer silk webs may appear to some as an inconsequential substance but it acts as “an emblem of passing time” and holds with it a poignant allusion to the “infinite expense of time and experience in which wisdom may grow”, eventually imploring the audience to experience the dynamically sublime in nature that Kant establishes is “not in any of the things nature but only in our own mind” but through “making conscious of our superiority over nature within, and thus also over nature without us (as exerting influence upon us).

However, what follows Liang’s work at the exhibition is one of an exaggeration of sublimities to a ridiculously excessive degree. Liang’s silkworm series are located as the final series of artworks on the ground floor and would register as a midpoint of the exhibition as the audience ascends to the first floor of Hayward gallery to carry on with the exhibition. The first series of artworks that greets the audience after the experience of the Sublime in nature brought about by Liang’s silkworms is one that shocks and disorientates. Sun and Peng’s installation, I didn’t notice what I was doing, 2012 (Fig.10) is an installation with numerous elements; two sculptures of a rhinoceros and a triceratops, fake skulls, dead insects framed and hung up, a gigantic tortoise shell, and a video of a heaving pool of carps. Punctuating their work is another artwork of Sun and Peng entitled, Civilization pillar, 2001 (Fig.11) which is a four-meter high column resembling a Roman monument constructed entirely out of human fat extracted from cosmetic liposuction.

Describing their work as “fake-Darwinism”, Sun and Peng’s are well known for their spectacular work that explore the “boundaries in and of themselves- specifically limits of the law and of certain ethical or belief systems”. Sun and Peng’s artwork can be argued to be one of a “manufactured sublime” operating on the “rhetoric sublime” as established by Luke White, in his discourse on the commercialized and manufactured sublime of artist Damien Hirst and actor Colley Cibber i.e, that the rhetoric sublime is one that “breaks the ‘rules’, produces a discursive ‘excess’, and relies on this effect”. Both I don’t know what I am doing, 2012 and Civilization pillar, 2001, are excessive in nature, with I don’t know what I am doing, 2012 displaying a cornucopia of different animal artefacts seemingly procured from nature itself, not to mention Civilization pillar, 2001 where it acts as a literal testament of the excess that is human fat.

I don’t know what I am doing, 2012 should be seen as a classic “source of fear” by Kant; via the presentation of menacing and dangerous animals and insects which should easily induce an affect of the dynamically sublime of nature. “Civilization Pillar”, 2001, is undoubtedly grotesque in its choice of medium and its presentation easily brings to mind Edmund Burke’s definition of the sublime - one that “excites the idea of pain, and danger” and “operates in a manner analogous to terror” through subjecting the viewers to a towering monument of human fat. However, the decision to place both I don’t know what I am doing, 2012 and Civilization Pillar, 2001 in such close proximity, and the decision to place Sun and Peng’s work as the first series of work that greets the viewers on the first floor right after Liang’s silkworm series threatens the subliminal qualities of the two artworks.
The curatorial decision to place both Sun and Peng’s artworks in such close proximity right after Liang’s serves to accentuate the exaggerated excessiveness of their artworks. While the artworks work by “maufactur(ing) sublime” through “discursive excess” as established by White, through tackling ethical and belief issues through their controversial and unsettling nature, it seems that both curatorial decisions have the adverse effect of diminishing any fearful qualities as they create a ridiculously excessive exaggeration that undermines any subliminal qualities present. The exaggeration de-sensitizes the viewers, and the “manufactured sublimities” of Sun and Yuan’s work risk falling from the Sublime to the Ridiculous. The exaggeration in Sun and Yuan’s work is further accentuated by the subtle sense of the dynamically sublime in nature of Liang’s silkworm series that precedes this and that heightened exaggeration via ridiculous excessiveness only ends up nullifying the manufactured sublimities of Sun and Yuan’s work. “If this manufactured culture permanently relies on conjuring discursive excesses, this is also precisely what makes it prone to lapse into the ridiculous.”

Despite that, ridiculous excessiveness does have its merits with affecting the Sublime if utilized considerately and this is evident from the artworks of the final room of this exhibition. In the final room, viewers are presented with Gu Dexin’s 1997-6-16-1998-6-13, 1997-98 (Fig 12&13), and Chen Zhen’s Purification Room, 2012 (Fig.14). Gu’s artwork is an installation and display of the documentation and remnants of his performance, where since 1995, Gu would buy a cut of meat every month and slice it into 36 smaller pieces, whereupon he would bring the meat to his studio and shoot one roll of film, a single exposure per piece. He would then knead the pieces of meat each day until they have dried and kept the dried-out meat. At the end of the cycle, he was left with 36 plastic containers of 36 dried-out meat each displayed in this exhibition, along with an installation where a group of photographs documenting the kneading of five of the constituent boxes adorn the walls of a single room completely with a full length mirror in the middle of the room. Chen’s Purification room, 2012 is an installation of a room containing several contemporary objects such as clothes, ladder, sofa, a shopping trolley, a chair, electrical chords strewn across the floor. The entire room, including its objects, has been covered and coated with mud, right up to the walls and floors of the room.

But what is interesting about these two pieces in the last room is the ridiculous excessiveness that can be construed to be the key element in a potential to affecting the Sublime, that is the “sublime presentation (as) the feeling of this striving at the instant of rupture” as explained by Jean-Luc Nancy. What can be said is that the ridiculous excessiveness of both Gu and Chen is one that is focused on a single aspect of their artwork, that is their obsession in their respective processes. Gu and Chen’s obsession are evident, and the obsession in both artworks are presented to a ridiculous degree of excessiveness that would allude to the artists’ endeavours to question and stretch towards a certain limit. Gu’s methodical process of squeezing every single ounce of liquid from a small piece of meat and the subsequent excessive documentation and archiving of the process is an obsession that concerns the “distortional effects of time upon materials” and Chen’s coating of every single surface in the room with mud, from the objects to the walls and floor is an “archaeology of the future”, an attempt at the preservation of “the passage of time”. Both appear to be lingering towards a limit in their excessiveness and coupled with the intention of their processes, hint at a potential for a sublime sensation when their “limits” are “stretched to the breaking point, as one says, and it in fact does break, dividing itself in the instant between two borders, the border of the figure and its unlimited unbordering”. Both artists’ processes will reach an eventual rupture, envisioned by the viewers as they question the limit and extend of Gu and Chen’s excessive processes, predicting an eventual sublime, a “sublime as a feeling, and yet more than a feeling in the banal sense, it is the emotion of the subject at the limit.”

The exhibition, “Art of Change: New Directions from China” attempts to send across the message that the two extremes of the ridiculous and the sublime, while at variance, are not diametrically opposed. When construed in a considered manner, the ridiculous aspect of an artwork can help probe its liminal aspects, as illustrated by the fantastical artworks of Duan or the excessively obsessive artworks of Gu and Chen, which help propel effects in affecting the sublime. Slavoj Žižek, in his discourse of David Lynch’s lost highway, illustrates the merits of such a combination, how “the most ridiculously pathetic scenes” and the “ridiculous violent figures (in Lynch’s film) should be taken seriously in Lynch’s “Universe of the ridiculous sublime” as this ‘enigmatic juxtaposition or coincidence of opposites (of the sublime and the ridiculous) in Lynch’s film’ is one that makes them “paradigmatically postmodern.” But again, the precarious nature of the ridiculous and the sublime has to be carefully deliberated as it can also threaten to render useless the sublimities of an artwork, as evidenced by the example of Sun and Yuan. It would seem that from the early Longinian sublime to the postmodern sublime, and its subsequent failure of its rhetoric, the sublime is said to be a constant point of contention and contemplation and perhaps what is constructed from the ridiculous sublime of the art in “Art of Change: New Directions from China” is not a conclusion, but an initiation of discourse of the many possibilities and permutations of the multifaceted sublime.
(3035 Words)

Appendix

Fig.1

Duan Ying Mei, “Sleeping”, 2004/2012

Fig.2

Duan Ying Mei, “In Between”, 2004/2012
Fig.3

Duan Ying Mei, “Happy Yingmei”, 2011/2012

Fig.4

Duan Ying Mei, “Happy Yingmei”, 2011/2012

Fig.5

Liang Shaoji, Windows, 2012

Fig.6

Liang Shaoji, Whirl, 2012

Fig.7

Liang Shaoji, Bed/nature Series no. 10, 1993-99 Fig.8

Chains: The unbearable lightness of being/Nature Series no.79, 2003-07

Fig.9

Liang Shaoji, Listening to the Silkworm/Nature Series no.98, 2006 & 2012 Fig.10

Sun Yuan & Peng Yu, I didn’t notice what I was doing, 2012

Fig.11

Sun Yuan & Peng Yu, Civilization pillar, 2001

Fig.12

Gu Dexin,1997-6-16-1998-6-13, 1997-98

Fig.13

Gu Dexin,1997-6-16-1998-6-13, 1997-98

Fig.14

Chen Zhen, Purification room, 2012

Bibliography

Battersby, Christine. The Sublime, Terror and Human Difference, Routledge, 2001

Burke, Edmund, On the Sublime’ A Philosophical Enquiry, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 1757

Kant, Immanuel, “Nature as Might” in Critique of Judgment, Trans Werner Pluhar, (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), 1970

Nancy, Jean-Luc. ‘The Sublime Offering’ (1988), in Jean-Francoise Courtine ed. Of the Sublime Presence in Question, trans. Jeffrey S. Librett, Albany: Staute University of New York Press, 1993,

Nancy, Jean-Luc. ‘The Sublime Offering’ (1988), in ‘The Sublime: Documents of Contemporary Art’ ed. Morely, Simon., Whitechapel Gallery; Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, London, UK, 2010

Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music (1872); trans Shaun Whiteside, Penguin publishing, Harmondsworth, 1994

Paine, Thomas, The Age of reason: being an investigation of true and fabulous theology, J.P. Mendum, Harvard University, 1852 p.103

Rosenthal, Stephanie, “Chen Zhen - Transexperiences” in “Art of Change”, in Art of Change, New Directions from China, Hayward Publishing, London, UK 2012

Rosenthal, Stephanie, “Sun Yuan & Peng Yu- Putting Things in Relation” in “Art of Change” in Art of Change, New Directions from China, Hayward Publishing, London, UK, 2012

Rosenthal, Stephanie, “Ying Mei Duan – Performance as Communication” in “Art of Change” in Art of Change, New Directions from China, Hayward Publishing, London, UK 2012

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Wieczorek, Marek, “The Ridiculous, Sublime art of Slavoj Žižek” in The Art of the ridiculous sublime. On David Lynch’s Lost Highway by Slavoj Žižek, The Walter Chapin Simpson Centre for the Humanities, University of Washington, Seattle, USA, 2000

Yao, Pauline J. “Sun Yuan & Peng Yu: The material of provocation” in Art of Change, New Directions from China, Hayward Publishing, London, UK, 2012

Zhu, Zhu, “Liang Shaoji: I, The Silkworm” in Art of Change, New Directions from China, Hayward Publishing, London, UK, 2012

Žižek, Slavoj, “The Three Scenes” in The Art of the ridiculous sublime. On David Lynch’s Lost Highway, The Walter Chapin Simpson Centre for the Humanities, University of Washington, Seattle, USA, 2000

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[ 1 ]. Paine, Thomas, The Age of reason: being an investigation of true and fabulous theology, 1852 p.103.
[ 2 ]. Hill, Katie, “Duan Yingmei: A subliminal presence” in Hayward Gallery, Art of Change, New Directions from China, 2012 p.119
[ 3 ]. Ibid p.122
[ 4 ]. Morely, Simon, “Introduction” in ‘The Sublime: Documents of Contemporary Art’ ed. Morely, Simon, 2010 p.20
[ 5 ]. Battersby, Christine. ‘The Sublime, Terror and Human Difference’, Routledge. 2001 p. 4
[ 6 ]. Nietzsche, Friedrich, “The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music”(1872); trans Shaun Whiteside, 1994
[ 7 ]. Kant, Immanuel, “Nature as Might” in Critique of Judgment, 1970 p.90
[ 8 ]. Ibid, “One who is in a state of fear can no play the judge of the sublime of nature than one captivated by inclination and appetite can of the beautiful”, p.91
[ 9 ]. Ibid, p.92
[ 10 ]. Zhu, Zhu, “Liang Shaoji: I, The Silkworm” in Hayward Gallery, Art of Change, New Directions from China, 2012, p.56
[ 11 ]. Ibid, p.57
[ 12 ]. Kant, Immanuel, Op. Cit, p.94
[ 13 ]. Rosenthal, Stephanie, “Sun Yuan & Peng Yu- Putting Things in Relation” of “Art of Change” in Hayward Gallery, Art of Change, New Directions from China, 2012, p. 16.
[ 14 ]. Yao, Pauline J. “Sun Yuan & Peng Yu: The material of provocation” in Hayward Gallery, Art of Change, New Directions from China, 2012 p. 68.
[ 15 ]. White, Luke, “Cibber and the history of the commercialized sublime: Coming back to Hirst” in Damien Hirst, Colley Cibber and the Bathos of the commercialized sublime,” a paper given at a conference “Taste, Vision, Transcendence: Sublimity 1700-1900,” held at the University of Sussex, 5th January 2007. p.17
[ 16 ]. Burke, Edmund, ‘On the Sublime’ A Philosophical Enquiry, 1757, p.36
[ 17 ]. White, Luke, Op Cit, p.17
[ 18 ]. Ibid, p.17
[ 19 ]. Nancy, Jean-Luc. ‘The Sublime Offering’ (1988), in ‘The Sublime: Documents of Contemporary Art’, 2010, p.48
[ 20 ]. Tinari, Phil, “Gu Dexin” in Hayward Gallery, Art of Change, New Directions from China, 2012, p.42
[ 21 ]. Rosenthal, Stephanie, “Chen Zhen - Transexperiences” in “Art of Change” in Hayward Gallery, Art of Change, New Directions from China, 2012, p. 13
[ 22 ]. Nancy, Jean-Luc Op Cit, p.48
[ 23 ]. Nancy, Jean-Luc. ‘”The Sublime Offering’ (1988), in Jean-Francoise Courtine ed. Of the Sublime Presence in Question, trans. Jeffrey S. Librett, 1993, p.44
[ 24 ]. Žižek, Slavoj, “The Three Scenes” in The Art of the ridiculous sublime. On David Lynch’s Lost Highway, 2000, p.22
[ 25 ]. Wieczorek, Marek, “The Ridiculous, Sublime art of Slavoj Žižek” in The Art of the ridiculous sublime. On David Lynch’s Lost Highway by Slavoj Žižek, 2000, p.x