Martina Koeppel-Yang, 'Remolding a Hero; Remolding Icons',
In: Chinese Art at the Crossroads: between past and future, between East and West / edited by Wu Hung. Published by New Media Arts, Wanchai, Hong Kong in collaboration with the Institute of International Visual Arts, London, 2001,
pp. 44-47.
A hero is a hero is a hero is a hero. Gertrude Stein knew this. He comes in series and is eternal. He, who died, will be reborn again and again - when there is need for.
In 1996 Dong Cunrui had his come back as a national icon of the patriotic pantheon of the People's Republic of China. His story was republished and distributed on a large scale. Was it just nostalgia or did he have to recount the saga of the New China?
Eighteen year old Dong Cunrui, a captain of a demolition squad in the Eighth Route Army, died in 1948 for the communist cause in the battle against Kuomintang at Longhua near Beijing. He sacrificed himself, using his body as a support for a satchel charge, and blew up the Kuomintang's pillbox bridge. On his lips, "Forward for a New China!," the slogan of guidance, emblematic for the construction of the People's Republic of China. He thus became one of the most popular national icons and his figure, holding a satchel charge in the hand of his stretched out left arm, as well as his fierce facial expression were carved in the collective memory and became an archetype in the collective unconscious of three generations of Chinese.
In 1999 Dong Cunrui reappears in Taiwan. Yang Jiechang remolds the hero of the combat of communist and national China. He presents him in an installation, in which the constant repetition of the hero's image recalls its function within the organisation of the collective consciousness. Yang uses different media - sculpture, photography, film and a picture story - to recreate the icon. The serial order underlines the aspect of repetition as well as the claim for eternal value. In the picture story that is displayed in a replica of Rodtchenko' s constructivist Workers' Club (1925) the same picture reappears on each page: the photo of Dong Cunrui' s figure. He is a hero is a hero is a hero is a hero. He still holds his satchel charge, but his features are blurred. By copying and re- copying copies of the reprinted story book Yang wiped out all distinct features, and the hero reappears in his most essential form as the archetype created by national propaganda. The ideological molding of individual and collective consciousness is further evident in Rodtchenko' s Workers' Club, in which the reader is inevitably subjected to ideological reading. The result of that is shown in Yang's film: a sequence of violent explosions, selected from the film Dong Cunrui.
Yang Jiechang brings Dong Cunrui to Taiwan. Molded and cast in the People's Republic this archetype of a hero is now a reminder of the both countries' history; a reminder that thoroughly questions ideology and power struggle as a basic principle of society. Furthermore, exhibited in the Cherng Piin Gallery in Taipei, the serial image of Dong Cunrui rather represents artistic and commercial than patriotic values. This is also evident in the digital code added to the photographs and the sculpture.
The world is made of stereotype repetition, as Gilles Deleuze points out. (Deleuze, Gilles, Difference et repetition, Paris 1968.) Within this, we are constantly welcoming differences, variations and modifications. This understanding of the world, of history and culture as a serial structure of events and illusions, implies an aesthetics of the serial which is evident in our daily life, in industrial products, in contemporary design, in TV- Series, etc. The repetition of a modified constant is also evident in ideological propaganda, or narratives that tend to build up a national identity and the repetition of archetype images takes part in molding our cultural identity.
Yang Jiechang uses this principle of repetition throughout his artistic oeuvre. His monochrome black ink paintings are the repetition of the epitome of traditional Chinese culture, and the painting process itself is a countless repetition of applying ink to the paper. Repetition and modification, or copying and variation do have a special significance within the tradition of Chinese painting: they are not only a means to conserve the tradition and a method of transmitting it from master to disciple, but in the skilful and subtle variation of ancient models and idioms lies the real proficiency of a master as well as his personality. Yang, through emphasising the repetitive process, drives these principles to extremes and thus deconstructs them. In his installation "Testament" (1991), realised in Japan, Yang uses a pottery jar and a Zen-like sentence, thus re-setting two emblematic features of Japanese culture to search for the essentials of Japanese culture in its hyper-modernised environment. Similarly, "Watchtower, Life-Chair And Living-Tower" (1997), a project for the Victoria swimming-pool in Hong Kong, similarly regroups ready-made objects like a chair used in swimming-pools, a watch-tower and the typical Hong Kong living-towers. And by regrouping these objects, that are visually and structurally related, he points out the ambivalence of the values they connote: charity, freedom, wealth. For "Transforming the Project for Jiujiu National Artists' Village" (1999), realised in Taiwan at the construction site for Jiujiu Artists' village, Yang Jiechang re- advanced an official project for the construction of an artists' village. He re-produced the signs of announcement of the project but modified their content. He proposed an itinerant artists' village on a clapped-out warship, thus pointing out the importance of a open and multi-oriented situation for artistic creation and culture. Finally, in "Project of Rebuilding the Hohensteiner Bridge of Lodge" (1994) Yang planned to reconstruct the bridge that connected the biggest Jewish ghetto in Europe with the town; thus rediscovering for the population of Lodge this wiped out symbol of Holocaust and racist discrimination. However, this rediscovered symbol' s connotations changed: it now would not be the crosswalk between the ghetto and the town any more and thus a passage of separation, but a passage that through recalling the dreadful memories leads to purification and thus is a passage of re- integration.
Hence Yang Jiechang’s repetition and remolding of symbols and cultural icons involves the modification of their meaning, which is also true for Dong Cunrui, who in the artist's installation now stands for the abolishment of ideology and for integration.
Repetition then is not only the acknowledgement of our pattern of thought. It rather questions acknowledged pattern and symbols.
A hero is a hero is a hero, thus, is the epitome of change through infinite repetition.