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The story of how the dioecious poplar tree, rapid-growing and short-lived, was planted in China is one that is rarely thought about while one strolls through the abundantly green streets of Beijing. Native to sylvan North America, broad-leafed, column-structured poplars can grow up to ten feet per year, which makes it a valuable commodity for industries that require increasing amounts of timber to spit out paper, cardboard, plywood, pallets and other ubiquitous materials. In the 1960s, a forestry bureau in China’s Yi County—once part of Beijing, now an area in Hebei Province—developed a species of poplar tree that would at once bring color to Beijing’s urban grayness and provide wood for manufacturing in the northern parts of the country. Not long after, however, it was discovered that every spring, the female poplars would burst, releasing allergen storms of cotton-like—and dangerously flammable—pollen.
In 2015, Beijing-based artist Liu Chuang created a fake promotional video, BBR1 (No. 1 of Blossom Bud Restrainer) (2015), marketing a real plant hormone that scientists at the Beijing Institute of Landscape Architecture had released in 2014. The product can be injected into trees to suppress the growth of blossoms, thus bypassing the yearly blizzard of pollen. However, there is a frustrating side effect: if a poplar tree is restrained one year, then its pollen distribution will accumulate and become even greater the following spring.
The tension and narratives of modernity and urban development is a topic that runs through all of Liu’s work, from an installation of dozens of pulp romance novels, to a spartan display of possessions that simultaneously criticize socialist and capitalist ideals. Yet it is difficult to grasp the core of his practice, perhaps because his artworks are simply products of ongoing research on the conditions of our time, which by definition is ever shifting, especially in China. Most recently, BBR1 was shown this year at the exhibition of chapter two of the Shanghai Project, “Seeds of Time.” In this interview, he speaks about the sequel to that work, as well as newly discovered, unchartered territories in his explorations of contemporary life.
A lot of your work deals with ideas of postmodernism and the consequences of urban development. Were these ideas essentially seeded by your experience of living in Shenzhen in the early 2000s?
It was my move to Shenzhen that really kickstarted my artistic career. The developments that were happening in Shenzhen intrigued me. I read a lot there, including books from my readings back in my university courses, French books by philosophers like Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze. These French books really fitted Shenzhen at the time. Shenzhen is a bit different from the rest of China. It’s a new city; it is unlike Beijing, Wuhan and Shanghai, where I had lived before. It does not have history. Shenzhen is a truly modern place, a template for China.
I wanted to ask about Love Story (2013), which actually stirred a sense of nostalgia in me. I grew up watching my mother read dozens of soft-cover pulp romances. The work has a familial sensibility, especially when viewing it in Asia; but aside from this personal connection, what was the purpose of using this literature in your work?
In Shenzhen, I saw many young, male factory workers reading these books. In high school, my female classmates were also reading them. I was fascinated by this and wondered where these texts came from.
By investigating their origins, I found that these books have a long history and developed alongside the Han language. This genre of literature is really important for China’s history. It was already popular during the Tang dynasty, especially among female readers, and became one of the key readings in China. It was well read in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and in 1920s Shanghai. But in the 1930s and ’40s, during World War II, these books were not circulated. You couldn’t even find them in Hong Kong. It wasn’t until the 1980s, when Taiwan and Hong Kong became economic powerhouses, and with the emerging of the white-collar class, that these books start reappearing.
The wealth in these cities brought back the genre. Love stories were once again popular and developed further during this time. Then, during China’s economic reform and opening up, these books came back into the mainland in the ’80s—illegally from Taiwan, of course.
LIU CHUANG, Love Story No.11, 2015, print mounted on aluminum board, text, 54.5 x 64.5 cm. Courtesy the artist and Magician Space, Beijing.
When installed, the books are displayed open on certain pages, alongside handwritten texts on a wall. One can also see that there are little notes in the margins of these novels, some quite personal, which immediately creates a sense of intimacy despite the anonymity of those who originally scribbled those words. Where did these books—and notes—actually come from?
In 2008, I met an owner of a bookshop in Dongguan [north of Shenzhen], who wanted to close his business. He had 1,000 books to get rid of, and I bought all of them at a very cheap price. Within the genre, there were many different types of stories. Some were about gay and lesbian love.
I wanted to work with these books and had initially wanted to stack them and turn them into an installation piece. However, when I began reading them, I found out that many people had written notes in these books. I should add here that these books could be rented for 10 cents a day from the store, so they had passed through many hands. The annotations in the books were modern poetry, song lyrics in different dialects and funny comments. The writers would make these annotations knowing that they themselves would probably never come across these notes again, but others would see them.
With Love Story, you seem to be amplifying the narratives of sub-societies and the hidden interactions between people. This theme of visibility and invisibility also runs through the self-explanatory series “Buying Everything on You” (2006– ), in which you purchased all the belongings off a person and assembled these items in a museum-like display. What was the impetus for this series?
The idea for the project had come from a visit I made to Shenzhen Museum in 2005, where I saw an installation. The installation was a facsimile living area of a female factory worker in the ’80s. And you could see her bed, tables, clothes and toothbrush—everything she possessed. The items were very basic—the possessions of a village person—and showed a poor living condition. These were presented in a very neat manner.
Next to this exhibit was a similar facsimile room of one that belonged to the first mayor of Shenzhen. However, his room did not look very different from the female worker’s. These exhibits show a core societal value at the time, in which the nation shared a common goal in working hard for the development of the country and maintaining a simple, sparse lifestyle.
During the ’80s and ’90s and after that, there were many debates on whether society should be socialist or capitalist. Actually, the Shenzhen exhibition revealed love for one’s country on one hand, and poor treatment of workers on the other. This was a result of both socialism and capitalism. The exhibit moved me and triggered my idea for this project.
Lately, your concerns have been more rooted in environmental studies and comparative research in natural species, as seen in the video BBR1, in which you compiled clips of people enjoying annual “snow” in Beijing.
Yes—to some extent. I am actually working on the second video of BBR1, and am aiming to discuss gender in the plant. Initially, the Chinese government didn’t have the technology to determine a plant’s gender, but new research shows that only the female trees blossom and produce pollen. A researcher from Tsinghua University is helping me with this project and we’re also looking into how trees are like factories, because they’re essentially planted by human beings, then grow up really fast with injected chemicals so that the wood can be made into chairs and tables in three to five years.
It seems to me that you’re grappling with what’s natural and what’s unnatural in our modern society.
Kind of. I’m actually talking more about what is human and non-human, actually, and about ecosystems. The forest is half-machine, half-nature.
What kind of new directions are you taking with this concept of humanity meddling in natural processes?
I have a new project that really jumps out from my past framework. Before, I thought of modernity as an urban construct, but I recently visited the inner areas of China, and discovered modernity in the most rural of places. I had never considered this possibility in the past.
The new work will tie together research on Bitcoin and the music of Chinese minority groups. This came out of the discovery that 70 percent of the world’s bitcoins are mined in China. And the areas where bitcoins are mined actually overlap with a lot with areas in China and Asia where minority groups cluster [because these regions are where electricity is the cheapest].
The American anthropologist James Scott talked about this idea in his writings, of not being able to control the landscapes of China simply because we [urban communities] were so far away and no one was governing these areas. But now, in the modern age, we have electricity and all this modern stuff flooding into these areas. It’s almost like a virtual flattening of those mountains that were so hard to go over before.
A sort of discovery or rediscovery of land thanks to technology.
Yes, and a discovery of local legends, tales and religions that were inaccessible to us before too. There is an overload of resources in these areas, and I’m still figuring out the connections between everything.
Ysabelle Cheung is the managing editor of ArtAsiaPacific.
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