HA: It was nerve-racking at the time, but it’s ok to talk about it now, I can’t be arrested now. I’ll just say I’m making it all up. But when we were doing it, searching out each piece, gathering them, it was a tense time. It’s impossible to imagine doing this abroad. In Europe or in England, it couldn’t happen. All buildings are private property. You can’t touch them. You could only do this work in China where nothing belongs to anyone. The content [of the text] also came from the Internet. This kind of text pushes social buttons, so this kind of topic can only appear on the Internet because the mainstream media cannot touch them. That’s why China’s internet is, today, for me an indispensable tool for connecting with society.
So from Missing You through to Stolen Words it was like I had gone full circle and returned to the original point of inspiration, text/language and the internet. But with Stolen Words I had managed to go transcend Missing You. After all that time, I felt like I’d grown up.
When I was doing Stolen Words, [the Shanghai-based artist] Shi Yong said “I like your work. But what will you do next?’ You can’t keep stealing. So what will you do?” I realized that was an issue. It was a good thing: it made me think about trying other approaches. In 2011, for the solo show at Tang Gallery, for one piece, I threw the words/characters off the roof of a building as an experiment. The whole exhibition marked a shift in form and atmosphere. It was more confident and introspective. [Like Stolen Words,] the materials came from society and reflected the aura of the social environment.
It felt like a new beginning. You could see this in the 2012 solo exhibition in Shanghai, Who is Alone Now Will Stay Alone Forever. It pushed the ideas and forms of the Tang solo show a stage further. Who is Alone Now Will Stay Alone Forever was in a huge space—660 square meters. Every element and component was dictated by the original attributes and existing marks of the building. I was really satisfied with the atmosphere created in the space. Every aspect had a particular feel and presence. There were two especial elements. One portion of the space was closed off to public access. In the center, there was a vertical crack, created using an advertising hording. People could not enter that area, they could only look through the crack. [What they could see was the echo of] a triangular form, but not one I made. The shape was defined by an existing mark on the floor. I used the reflection of the shape to create a mirror image using concrete on the floor. Using the same form of the triangle shape, I also made a neon light. That light reflected the same shape into the space behind the hording. In this way, the elements present in the building were used to reanimate and reconnect the space. People had to look through the crack to see that part.
There was a big patch of oil too; a huge amount of oil, which made the floor reflect any light. I wasn’t doing this for a nice visual effect. I was working with what was there. I am still not entirely clear about why I did it this way but it really felt poetic. Like a great big poem I think.
The installation began with blackness and ended in blackness. Some elements had previously featured in the Tang Contemporary show, like the broken glass and the neon light. I want to stress that it’s not about the material but about the reflective qualities of the flooring. It was all about the use of light, in a more complex way than before. Using oil, something the audience might not expect, many thought it must have been there as part of the building. It was really a thin layer but via it I controlled people’s motion—they couldn’t go into the areas where there was oil or there might have been an accident. It was a great atmosphere. Now it has me thinking about where to go next. I want to set a goal for myself every year.
KS: So, you have a general direction that is related to language/text and to the internet, and to feelings and emotional state. You have used a lot of things that are related to or derived from youth culture: boys, girls, gaming, films, etc. These things converged in one of your earliest works, Fifteen Reasons for Fashion in 2001.
Even in these early works, there was a sense of Fate, that you were interested in the individual’s lot in life. After all, the sports ads used images of disabled people…. At the time, I asked if you were contrasting the meaning of the text “Just Do It,” with images of people who weren’t in a position to “do it” in order to show the callous nature of such statements. But you said it was simply about being cool with no thought of empathy at all. Yet after that, as I observed your work, there was a sense of fate at work. Take the performative video work that we commission for Tate Liverpool [a two-channel video work titled Thirty Minutes] which centred on Fate through the prisms of fortune telling as feng shui. You were examining things which happen beyond individual control. Your own meeting with a Daoist led you to change your life. How did this arise?
HA: That’s a good question. I am indeed Daoist now, completely vegetarian. Because of my family and background, for reasons of personal experience, I was increasing encouraged to explore destiny in my work. I think that was clear in the works in the solo show at Tang Gallery. The sense of Fate was strong: about a person’s past, their future, their present, how they connect, and how we perceive them. This is becoming emphatic in my work. You could see that in Shanghai [Who Ever is Alone Now Will be Alone Forever]. There was a strong aura of fate in the space. Something religious, like faith, but not specific because I don’t have a religion. It’s about the way I see fate, life; I am fearful of it. Take my own home life. I am fully occupied with one exhibition after another. I have no energy to take care of home. Things happen and then you can’t help but feel that this is fate taking a hand in your life. I like to accentuate this.
But now most important aspect of my work is the poetry the work creates in a space. That sense of fate has to be managed to the work does not become crushingly futile and simple. It’s a bit like the Punk movement in the West. That idea helped me a lot. I listen to rock music every day. It’s a necessity all day long. It’s about the feeling it gives you, about what your heart feels. In my works, aside from exploring concepts of destiny, it’s the essence of life, a kind of awe beyond fear. That is the core element of this work. My works need that kind of spirit to become great works.
In Shanxi I can really experience that kind of a feeling. As I travel around, I hardly need any money. I hitch a ride where I can. If there is no ride then I walk. That’s different from Europe. Europe is more fun. But in Shanxi it’s more spiritual. There you can discover so many things you never saw before. In the beginning I thought Shanxi was not a good place because of all the coal mines, so many coal mine bosses. But when you travel around the temples, and meet the people who live there, and have lived there their whole lives, I found that Shanxi was better than what I had seen of Europe. There I can eat and live with the masters, together with them and be totally accepted, which I found really astonishing. It’s impossible to say what impact of influence this has had or will have upon my work. But it has been profoundly helpful in helping me uncover a space in which to contemplate. In truth, from Missing You onwards, with the exception of the text/words and thinking about words/text to make work, all have been done within the same kind of space. For example, a place in the heart of the urban environment, or outdoors. Or it had to be a rundown disused factory packed full of memories like that in Taopu [an art district in Shanghai]. Or like Tang Contemporary [in Beijing's 798 district]. Almost all my work is about interacting with a space. The words become like a motif that draws attention to a space like life grows towards the sun. But if I wasn’t thinking about the space itself primarily, then the works would have taken very different forms.
