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Collaboration as Struggle and Non-Cooperation

 A CONVERSATION WITH SUN YUAN AND PENG YU

Paul Gladston
Eyeline 74
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The Chinese artists Sun Yuan and Peng Yu first came to international prominence at the end of the 1990s through the exhibiting of a number of artworks, made by them as individuals and in collaboration with one another, involving spectacular acts of violence against living animals as well as the bodies of dead animals and babies. These works, including Curtain (1999) and Link of the Body (2000) (photographic images of which were disseminated in the catalogue to the now notorious ‘Fuck Off – Uncooperative Stance’ exhibition held at the Eastlink Gallery in Shanghai in 2000), can be interpreted as neo avant-garde attempts both to transgress and to question the legitimacy of established moral boundaries. While more recent works produced by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu no longer involve actual acts of violence against animal and human bodies, they nevertheless continue to challenge viewers by engendering highly unsettling sensations of conflict, tension and precarity. In this conversation, which is an edited version of one recorded at the artists’ studio in Beijing’s 798 art district, Sun Yuan and Peng Yu address the question of the relationship between their work and conventional morality. They also make use of traditional Chinese cultural thinking as an intellectual framework for the interpretation of their work. Sun Yuan and Peng Yu’s assertion during the conversation that conflict and non-cooperation are forms of collaboration and that discord and harmony are both integral parts of life can be seen as an implicit critique of the Chinese Government’s recent, ideologically driven attempt to gloss over the highly unsettling effects of China’s precipitous modernisation of the last three decades by promoting a return to a traditional Chinese Confucian belief in... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline

Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, Old Persons Home, 2007. Installation, life-size sculptures, electric wheelchairs, fiberglass, silica gel. Courtesy the artists. 

Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, Old Persons Home, 2007. Installation, life-size sculptures, electric wheelchairs, fiberglass, silica gel. Courtesy the artists.

Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, The world is a fine place for you to fight for, 2011. Performance, 15 taxidermy animals, stainless steel objects, curtains, 20 bodyguards, 1 major actor, 1 video maker, 2 railways, 1 projection and mixed media. Courtesy the artists. 

Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, The world is a fine place for you to fight for, 2011. Performance, 15 taxidermy animals, stainless steel objects, curtains, 20 bodyguards, 1 major actor, 1 video maker, 2 railways, 1 projection and mixed media. Courtesy the artists.