Rikrit Tiravanija, Art Info Interveiw By David Spalding

Courtesy Tang Contemporary, Beijing
Rirkrit Tiravanija's new installation at Tang Contemporary in Beijing features live birds, a modest brick factory, and warm tofu soup to hearten weary visitors.

By David Spalding
Published: January 13, 2010
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Rirkrit Tiravanija
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BEIJING—“Ne Travaillez Jamais” ("Don't Ever Work) is the title of Rirkrit Tiravanija’s first solo exhibition in China, on view Jan. 9 to March 28 at Tang Contemporary in Beijing. The title is a graffiti slogan borrowed from the Situationist International, those modish French radicals who hoped, during the 1960s, to pull their comrades from Capital’s clutches and Spectacle’s spell. Like the title, the works in the show are meant as a provocation, a monkey wrench in the unstoppable machine driving China’s breakneck economic growth. But Tiravanija is not calling for a general strike. Instead, he’s asking us to reconsider the persistent state of hyper-productivity that has come to characterize China’s present — and to reflect on both the opportunities and casualties that have resulted. Though Tiravanija is flirting with the pause button, the exhibition at Tang Contemporary is comprised of five new works — interactive pieces and large-scale sculptural installations that are simultaneously sobering and comforting. A full-scale model of a Mercedes sedan (a replica of the car belonging to the gallery’s owner) is covered in powdered milk — a ghostly, if fragrant reference to China’s 2008 tainted milk scandal. Nearby, brave visitors with enduring appetites can warm themselves with a bowl of tofu soup. In the main exhibition hall, factory equipment has been installed for the production of enough bricks (14,068, to be exact) to create a single-family home. These can be purchased for a modest price — your own little piece of the China miracle. Across the way, two towering bamboo models of high rises in Beijing and Shanghai house hundreds of chattering birds. ARTINFO caught up with the hard-working Tiravanija at the gallery a few hours before the opening to discuss the show.

Let’s start with the title of the show, “Ne Travaillez Jamais” ("Don't Ever Work"), which comes from Guy Debord and the Situationist International. This phrase has been winding its way through your practice since 2001, starting with the bricked-up doorway Untitled 2001 (No Fire No Ashes). Can you talk about your attraction to the Situationists and this particular turn of phrase?

I guess I’ve always been quite interested in the Situationists’ ideas about urbanism and spectacle and how we move through life. “Ne Travaillez Jamais” is a piece of graffiti that they claimed. When I started to use it, I was rethinking the whole idea of my work and who I am. You know, one gets wrapped up in reacting to one’s own reputation, which can be a kind of trap.

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You mean the expectations that come with being known for a making a certain type of work?

Yes. You can get trapped into being that person. I am always rethinking how art is perceived and received, questioning our relationship to art. That’s always been a constant. At a certain point, you’ve been doing all this work and you have to ask: What is it? I’m ephemeral as much as I can be, so I started to think about the idea of not working. It’s really about a change of attitude. It’s not so much about stopping, but about re-thinking the meaning of one’s production.

What relevance do you think this phrase — “Ne Travaillez Jamais” — has in China today?

I think that this way of questioning starts to flow into a lot of things within art itself, but also within culture and society. I was thinking: If Mao were here, China would never be like this. But who knows? You sit down and talk to people and realize that it was just 10 or 15 years ago that everyone was still riding bikes. And now people are driving Mercedes and Audis. Then I began to think that it’s because China got to host the Olympics in 2008, and they sort of snapped into…

Full-throttle capitalism?

Yeah. I mean the Chinese I know from all my other experiences are capitalists. In the end, it’s not even about making money.

The other thing that I was thinking is that now pretty much everything is made here in China. There’s a kind of hyper-production happening. And that rolls into art and culture, too. I knew a lot of the older generation of Chinese artists who were in Europe, and they always made big things. Of course, it’s the scale of the culture, and they use their sense of history and all their myths. That was one thing. But presently, it’s a whole other kind of big. And then I realized that they are making things at this scale because they can. So one of the questions I wanted to raise with the show was to invite visitors to think about what China has become.


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Rirkrit Tiravanija
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Had you been to China before this trip?

I’ve been to the south more, to Guangzhou and Shanghai. When I came to Beijing last August, I was a little surprised.

By the development?

Yes. Beijing is not what I thought it would be. Beijing was different, and all those things made an impression on how I thought about what could be done for the exhibition. The bricks are really the core of the exhibition. And I like the irony of continuously stamping out bricks when the show is called “Ne Travaillez Jamais.”

“Stop Working” — and yet the machine keeps running!

Yeah. Because it’s a kind of habit, but at the same moment you have to rethink it. You’re making a choice at some point. I hope people can relate to this scenario. Of course, having walked around here in August with masses of people going through 798 [Art District], from people who are really looking at art to people who are just standing next to it getting photographed, I think it’s such an interesting relationship between the viewer and the artwork. It’s a kind of consumption, right? It’s all about taking it in, in one way or another. And I've always dealt with that in my work, in many different ways. So I think the fact that people will come in and will look at this brick and take it home also plays on these ideas of consumption.

One of my early impressions of Beijing was driving around this neighborhood and seeing piles and piles of bricks along the side of the road, which were going to be used to restore or renovate places. And I remember thinking, “Wow, there are the bricks, and then there is the CCTV building.” As if the past and the future are occurring simultaneously.

Yes. I think that’s the cycle here. The newspaper today was saying we have to watch out for the gap between the rich and the poor in China. These gaps are in every society, but in Beijing it’s kind of amplified. I also think that art is dragged into this problem. You know, it’s great to have a lot of art, but on the other hand, what does that mean? What are we (the artists) doing in relation to these concerns? Are we just selling another factory painting, or are we actually asking some questions in the process?

I recall the first time I saw the big black Mercedes parked outside Tang Gallery — perhaps before the space had opened — it left an impression. It’s such a potent symbol of wealth and authority. What did Zheng Lin say when you told him you would reproduce his car for the show? Did he see any irony in it?

When I told [Tang Gallery curator] Josef [Ng] about the project, he knew immediately what I meant. And of course we asked the boss, and he was fine with it. Either he understands it, or maybe he will find out later.

The car is made of plaster covered in powdered milk. Again, I was thinking that with all the hyper-production, there are disasters occurring, inserted into the production process. A gas tank blows up somewhere. And then there were tainted milk products, and all those toys [with lead in them]. And so within all this hyper-production there are many safety issues — maybe as a result of cost-cutting. And that’s why we can build a brick factory in the middle of a public space [the gallery] and nobody blinks. So I was thinking about how people are getting extremely wealthy, but their success is built on the tragedies of others. I had this image of the car in my mind. Those people who are making important decisions are all driving this kind of car. That’s happening everywhere, including Thailand. For me, the work is more sculptural, because I felt that this is something that people can relate to. They will see the car, smell the powdered milk, and something will happen. Of course we will be serving the tofu in the same room [as the car]. The works are all playing off each other.

Why did you choose this particular dish [tofu nao, a warm tofu soup served for breakfast]?

You know, we have that every morning in Chang Mei, so it’s something that we’re used to. I thought of soup, because I knew it would be winter and it would be cold. I was thinking about what could warm you up. In a way, I just looked around and used things that were available here. I didn’t bring something in. Normally, I would have spiced up the tofu, but in this case, it’s enough to just be local. I feel that it’s very specific — I would not do this work somewhere else, not even in Thailand. For me it’s a very context-specific work.
Let’s talk about the two large bamboo towers filled with birds. Beyond the obvious “office worker as caged bird” association, what else is going on there?

This work operates in relation to these ideas about construction, deconstruction and building — but also this notion of hyper-production. One of these towers is going to be the tallest building in Shanghai or China [when it is completed]. When I visit new places, I like to see the markets. They took me to the antique market in Beijing, where I saw some cages, and it just sort of clicked. Then we went to the animal market. I was thinking about the relationship that people have to birds here. People have their little songbirds and they go and meet up with each other in the park. As you say, it’s a sort of compression of time.

The sound of the birds singing is beautiful, actually.

It starts to become like the noise you get when you’re in an office setting.

I could also read it as being very optimistic. As if the song still goes on, despite circumstances.

Yeah. I don’t think it’s all about oppression. I think it’s about choices. Certainly, you’re right about the optimism — and I think that’s what the energy of this place is. People are very resilient. And that’s very much what the towers represent. It’s about being able to exist in a very small space with a lot of people.

Though you’ve lived in many places, do you think that coming from Thailand has shaped how you perceive and respond to China?

I think so. I’m thinking about the relationship of China to Thailand — what we [in Thailand] are emulating, where we want to go [as a nation]. Or even what’s happening politically right now in Thailand, which is shifting; we could become a republic with a politburo. I am a socialist, so I am not worried about socialism. I am worried about dictators who are putting everyone into a socialist state for their own benefit. We [in Thailand] look to China, Japan, and Korea [as models]; we look less and less to the West. If we were selflessly thinking about the greatest good of everyone, we would look at the mistakes in China and try to avoid them. We would look at China and say, “It’s great to produce all these things, but at what cost?”