Talk to Artist | Yuge Zhou: Moon Drawings | Interview on Art Yourself Atelier

YUGE: As I mentioned before, and more than that, my artistic voice came into formation only after I came to the States. I received my art education here, and have my artistic personality matured here as well. I learned how to think about, talk about and discuss with people about my art here.

There is a constant anxiety that when I have to explain to people in Chinese what my work is about, I will have no choice but to bringing in some English vocabularies, or worse still, with some rough translation. This feels like bringing a part of my life that happens after the “Chinese” part back into the Chinese part, and it risks disorder, confusion, and crisis. I don’t like how languages are carelessly mixed together. And to be placed in a situation where you have to choose either one language or another is discomforting. It feels like a miniature, a metaphor of a larger cultural situation, and it complicates things.

YUGE: I still think about this question these days, but not as fiercely and not with as much struggle as several years ago. A friend of mine once commented that I am “too Chinese to be an American and also too American to be a Chinese”, and this comment still rings accurate to me today. I started my arts less than two decades ago, and have received all my art education in this country. Very naturally, there is a huge part of me and of my work that can be related to or interpreted as “Americanness”. Meanwhile, most of my artist friends, my mentors, we acquainted each other during my years at School of Art Institute in Chicago (SAIC), and this forms my connection with the States in a social sense. But after all, Chinese is my native language, and Beijing is my hometown. All my formative years as a person were all spent there.

Timewise, my life is almost evenly split between Beijing and Chicago. And it might just as my friend says, I belong to both sides and belong to none. If there was a greyscale, I would align neither with the black nor the white, but to stay in the greyish middle ground, wandering there, inhabiting there, in the between. It was this in-betweenness I struggled with a lot several years ago. I thought I should settle down, I thought this in betweenness was only meant to be temporary and sooner or later I should claim a side. But now I am happy with being in between. It is impossible for me to become completely American, nor relinquish everything and go back to my hometown. I explore both sides, and I belong to neither.

There’s also one incident that happens very recently which pushes me to acknowledge that my in-betweenness might be not only temporary. I very recently received the approval notice of my application of U.S. permanent resident. I submitted my application about two years ago, and as stated in the approval notice, the category of my application is “Alien with Extraordinary Ability”. I remember I was first surprised, shocked, and then I started to feel funny and ridiculous. I have even clicked on the auto-translation button on the website and the Chinese result immediately brought me back to the meaning of alien we most commonly associate the word with. As a category name, it is surprisingly ironically funny. And my friend also ridiculed that it made me sound like freshly out of spaceship, and that I should use “Alien with Extraordinary Ability” as the title for my next series.

To be considered as an individual with “extraordinary ability” is definitely very flattering, but the part on alien, and what it relates to not only legally but emotionally as an outsider, a stranger, makes me feel I have been denied of any sense of belongingness after sixteen years here. For most of the time, I can ballet around the identity issue by curving out my unique, accurate position in the cultural spectrum. But it is in one of the few moments when you have to deal with the legal, bureaucratic side of life, it keeps reminding me of me being an alien.

Similar to this, I had an exhibition and talk in Bulgaria this October. And when I tried to apply a visa at the Bulgaria embassy, the officer was clearly very confused about my U.S. visa status. I had to explain to him time after time how this paperwork guaranteed me legal re-entry into the United States, and at the end, it was only after rounds of google search and with significant doubt the officer issued my visa. That moment I realized regardless of how much real-life connection I have with this place, how much connection built over time with flesh and bones, bureaucratically those connections are still minimized into a thin paperwork, and that paperwork alone has the power of stating the legal status of my existence here.

YUGE: No. When I first came to the States I was a Computer Science major at Syracuse University. I had a vague idea that I would like to pursue a career as an artist, but I was also aware that I needed a more reliable, more acceptable transition to get myself out there. At Syracuse, apart from taking all the courses at school, I also photographed a lot with the black and white film camera I had then, meanwhile also learning some photography fundamentals from courses offered at community college. Over the process, I gradually formulated a vague idea of the direction I’d like to go as an artist and for the first time accumulated my own photography portfolio. This portfolio got me into SAIC as a Studio Art MFA student. SAIC is a unique school, and for its reputation it can be very bipolarized. On the one hand, it has one of the strictest trainings on art theory and art writing, and on the other hand, there aren’t that much pressure and demarcation between genres. This allows us to explore different genres, disciplines, and this is also why I ended up more towards motion pictures.

In retrospect, I will trace the formation of my style, my voice, my form to the years at SAIC, and more importantly I have met many friends, teachers who continue to influence and inspire me till these days. SAIC can be seen as the birthplace of my artist identity. And of course, as the reputation goes, it is also hard for a SAIC student to land safely on a job. But what works for me is that I did realize from an early stage that I enjoy doing my own project rather than taking over a small creative component for someone else’ grander work. And for this reason, what seems to be the hardest way also turned out to be the most natural way for me. This might be my personality, but also conceptually I’d like there to be as little compromise in my work as possible. I would like to see a work, when it finally come into being, to be a very high-extent realization of the idea in my mind. Therefore, from this perspective as well, I also think being an independent artist is what works for me best.

At SAIC, I remember there were about twenty students in my class, and up to now, probably less than five among these twenty schoolmates are still working as an artist. Though I have expressed how much I think it is the path that works for me, I still think it is very hard, and probably the hardest among all. Working as an independent artist you have to initiate all your projects. There’s no outside pressure to push you to do anything, and subsequently no outside supervision, no outside support, no outside guidance or even suggestions to tell you to try this or to avoid that. It is a complete vacuum, and in this vacuum it is only you and your creative, destructive core. This might seem to be a very ideal stage for an outsider, or even for myself when I am not within that vacuum, a total freedom. But it is this seemingly productive freedom that stops a lot of artists in their mid-career. At certain point, you may want a more stable career, an income that you can depend on. And, on the other hand, being an independent artist means for decades living a life split between grand application, fund proposal, all the practical miscellaneous, meanwhile also steadily, purely, pushing your work forward, steering clear of the swirls of self-repetition. You have to be a bit tough to do this all, and this all for a long time.

YUGE: My recent works from the Love Letter series, one is currently being exhibited at Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago; the other is a large-scale, publicly commissioned film. And the venue the work was once showcased – it used the façade of a building by the Chicago River as the screen, and the screening lasted for a long time – it all emphasized the communal nature of the work. For a work that is exhibited in public locale, for a work that combines dance, film, architecture, music, and many other forms of art, its creation also must be somehow communal.

My role in the creative team of Love Letter is the director. When I was conceptualizing the film, I know I want dance to compose the main visual of the film, and the film may need some technological support to realize certain effect. When the team finally came into being, there’s one choreographer: Hannah Santistevan, two dancers: Rebecca Huang, Xavier Núñez, and two visual artists: Patrick Steppan, Mary Franck and a technical advisor: James George. The building that was used as the screen has many windows on its façade. When the video was being showcased there, the windows became part of the vague background. I like how the panels of the window formulate the background landscape of my film, imitating the streets and structures of a city, and the panels’ lines imitate a labyrinth. The two dancers are seen dancing in the urban labyrinth, their movement echoes with each other remotely, till very slowly they move closer, and the movement accumulate to a climax. This is a film about shutdown, and love, and city. From Urban Grids to Love Letters, for many years city, urban space is always a theme with huge attraction to me.

YUGE: If to name a specific time spot, I would say it’s probably 2008. In 2008, China held its first Olympic Game in Beijing, and in 2008, I left Beijing for Syracuse. The change brought by the Olympic is very significant. My previous memories of Beijing are probably more composed of certain streets, certain areas where my life trajectory covers frequently. But after 2008, especially when the city was preparing itself for the event, Beijing, in a very short period of time, has become a more public metropolitan. The feeling of a mega, non-personal metropolitan overwrites my very personal, familiar understanding of Beijing as a hometown, and that’s why in that year the theme of city stood out to me. Also after 2008, my life has taken me first to Syracuse and then to Chicago. These are also two distinctively different expressions of urban space. Underlying the different expression, I can feel the same breath, the same tempo, and the very transient encounter it brings to people is very similar.

In an urban space like this, you will meet thousands of people even within one day. Most of them are just passing by, and a small amount of them, there may be a short interaction, and when the interaction lives out, you depart separately on your own way. Even when we are preparing a film, it’s also very similar. You spend a surreal time with a bunch of amazing people, and when the project ends, you may stay connected, but anyways still separated. Barely anyone will stay in your life for a long time, and the short encounters are in life, in stories. I think this is the rhythm an urban place brings, and I want my work to be able to grasp and express this rhythm, to observe the formation and deformation of the transient encounters, and to observe how a macro encounter transforms.

In recent years, every time I go back to Beijing, Beijing looks like a dramatically different city from what I remembered last time. My feeling is not exactly like nostalgia, but more like a neutral acceptance of the changes. And this neutral acceptance as an artist probably explains why I no longer desire a belongingness to any specific city.

YUGE: You’re right, these two films are the most private narrative I’ve created. If my perspective in other films is more like an observing bystander, or an omniscient third-person perspective, then in these two films I am back to my first-person, limited perspective, closer to myself. For instance, in Moon Drawings it’s me walking in the moon-lit snow and the trace I have left behind me. It is tender, for sure, and also contemplative.

The more private turn might have an external cause from what the wider world is like in these past three years – the world experienced an unprecedented shut down, everyone was kept in isolation. What had been possible previously: the communal experience, the public discourse, all of a sudden disappeared. We were all kept with and only with our own. And these two films were born against a background like this. At the time I was preparing Moon Drawings, the original plan was to flying back home, but by then Mainland just announced its complete shut down, and this plan of going back home soon became unfeasible. Actually for many it has remained unfeasible for more than a year after this. It was a winter in Chicago, and no matter how abnormal the world seemed to have become, the snow still fell normally, heavily. From the window of my apartment I could see the moonlight reflected on the slowly accumulated snow, day by day, and the moon moved day by day. It was a time when the world felt like being frozen in total stillness, and it was only in times like this that you can sense the infinitesimal changes like the angle, the brightness of the moonlight. My thought, my contemplation went along with it, and that’s what I tried to express with my work.

I finished the shooting of When the East of the Day Meet the West of the Night before Covid. Back then I had the chance to capture some scenes from China, and some from the States, and after that it came the Covid. The water in the film is what separate me from my past, the Pacific Ocean, but it is also the Pacific that connects the two continents I have lived. Probably just as you said, these two films are imbued with a more tender, elongated vision. They tell a longer story, and I can tell it only slowly; there the light changes gradually, and I count the time patiently.

Time. Time is the primarily important thing to me. It is because of the desire of showing time, I have changed my format from photography to film. At SAIC, I have taken a course on Structuralist Film, and it was from this course I realized beyond a still frame there’s another dimension that can be unraveled, expanded, and written on. I realized a lot of themes I wanted to explore were suddenly with new possibilities. For instance, the formation and deformation of encounters in an urban space, this is a dynamic process, and it’s impossible to be rendered with a still frame. And on the basis of this, I also very frequently use collage to mold time over time, to complicate the temporal rhythm as if to create a four-dimensional world.

I know for many artists their trajectories may take on a completely opposite direction than mine. Usually an artist starts from very personal expression and from there the artist steps into the public domain. I started with the communal topics in the early years. On the one hand it was the theme I felt most at home with, and with a most urgent expression, and on the other hand, I was also very used to be an observing bystander, to be someone who can disappear behind the camera. Before starting the official filming, I will spend a very long time as an observer. Like my film on the Central Park in New York, for a whole summer I was observing the field from my resident apartment. My method is kind of like an anthropologist in field research. It requires a lot of observation to make sense of the scene, to feel its order, its rhythm, and on the basis of this, there comes further creation.

Yes, compared with the “observer’s field research”, a film with personal narrative and private perspective is less secure for me. I can no longer hide in an anonymity, nor to do my preliminary observation with myself in the scene. I haven’t thought about this venture into the private domain too much. This refrain from thinking too much about might be my personality, or, it also might be a neutral ground where I can stand during the transition from public to private. Just like a polar bear needs a floating ice to stand on the sea.

YUGE: 我想大致是因为有关艺术的语言、讨论艺术的方法我都是在成年后在英文语境中习得的，在用中文描述的时候我会不自觉或者不得已地参杂一些英文词汇，或者生硬地套用一个翻译。但我不喜欢这样，这种把语言混杂起来。这种要在两个语言中抉择的感觉很像某一种处境的隐喻，会让人往复杂了想。

YUGE: 我有时也会想这个问题，早年对于这个问题的挣扎更多一点儿。我有一位朋友说我“作为中国人太美国，作为美国人又太中国”，这个描述我觉得很对。我是从十几年前开始学习艺术的，我在美国接受了我全部的艺术教育，而我身份中的很大一部分又是与自己的作品相关，所以理所当然在我身上有很多的“美国性”。再加之很多领域内的朋友、导师也都是在芝加哥艺术学院期间结识的，这形成了我和美国社会的联结。同时，中文是我的母语，北京是我的家乡，我的整个性格形成期是在北京度过的。

时间上而言，北京和芝加哥两地平均地划分了我生命中的年份，所以可能确实如我朋友所说，我两边都是，又两边都不是。如果有一个灰度色阶的话，我既不属于黑的一边也不属于白的一边，我在中间属于灰色的那一部分游走，是一个之间的状态。之前我很想摆脱这种中间状态，觉得自己应该定下来，成为更这边或者那边的存在。但现在我会觉得在中间也挺有意思的，我不可能完全融入美国，也不可能全然回到中国，两边都探索，哪边也不归属。

前一段时间我收到了我绿卡申请的approval notice。我是两年前递交的这个申请，而在approval notice上写的我的绿卡类别是：Alien of Extraordinary Ability – 在美国移民局网站的中文版上，这个翻译是“具有超能力的外星人”。我觉得这个类别的名称很幽默，朋友也打趣我说听着好像是刚刚从宇宙飞船上下来的一样，认为我应该把这个作为我作品的名字。

被归类为有“extraordinary ability”我还是很开心的，但是alien，异乡人这个词，让我在美国待了十六年之后依旧有一种被打回原形的感觉，依旧被否定了任何一种归属，我也依旧是一个外来者。其实大部分时候我都可以用自己独特的、有精确性的方式对身份问题予以解答，但是非常难免的在面临一些海关与行政问题的时候，我也还是会被提醒我alien的身份。

还有一件事儿是十月份的时候我在保加利亚有一个展出以及讲座，在我去保加利亚大使馆办理签证的时候，当时的办事员对我的身份状态感到非常疑惑。我需要反复多次地向他证明我所持有的这一张文件是可以让我合法回到美国的，最后这位办事员也是带着重重的疑虑，在网上搜寻了很多信息后才勉强对我的签证申请作出了答复。就是这些有关国际官僚的瞬间让我意识到尽管我和我生活的地方有了很多切实的具体的联系，但它们在程序上也还是会被缩略成一张薄薄的纸，而这张纸就是我合法性的全部证明。

YUGE: 其实最开始我来美国是在雪城学的计算机工程，当时明白自己想往艺术方向发展，但也明白需要一个更稳妥更被广泛接受的理由，觉得走一步算一步。所以一边在雪城上课，一边拿着自己的黑白胶片相机出去拍了很多的影像，同时也在社区大学学了一些摄影相关的课程，也就慢慢明白了这是自己想要做的方向。从雪城毕业之后，我也有了自己初步的portfolio，就申请了芝加哥艺术学院，学习Studio Art。芝加哥艺术学院有着自己很独特的名声，一方面它对所有学生在理论上和写作上的训练特别的严格，另一方面它在体裁上的限制不是那么多，让学生有机会接受不同领域的训练。这也是为什么我提交的是摄影的作品集，最后却可以自由地往动态影像方向发展。

我认为我作品的风格、声音、主题以及我的社会支持体系都是在芝加哥艺术学院形成的，在这里我也遇见了对我有着深远影响的老师和朋友，所以这里可以算得上是我艺术家身份的诞生地。当然，这所学校的毕业生也是出了名的难找工作，但因为我真的很喜欢做自己的项目，很难适应给别人工作，所以也是很自然又巧合地选了这条可能算是最难的路。这可能与个人性格有关，但我希望我作品的表达中不要有太多的妥协，我期待的作品是对自己构思高程度的完成，所以从这个角度来说，我觉得做独立艺术家也是适合我的选择。

当时我同届的班上应该有20个人，而最后真正还在做艺术的可能5个都不到了。我觉得这真的是一条很难的路，你需要自己开始并且主导一切项目，没有外部压力会逼迫或者督促你，几乎不会有人和你说要这么做，或者不要这么做。这种在外界看来或许是很理想的完全的自由，会成为中生代很多艺术家放弃职业道路的原因。到了一定的阶段，较为稳定的道路、更优渥的收入，这些可能会成为很多人首要考虑的因素；而长时间过着一方面需要去申请各种基金、奖项，一方面要处理很多琐碎的事情，并且同时间要切实地纯粹地能将自己的作品往前推，避免自我重复的漩涡，如果没有一点狠劲儿是真的很难坚持下来的。

YUGE: 在我最近Love Letters系列中，有一部作品今年在芝加哥当代摄影博物馆（MoCP）展出，另一部则是一个规模很大的公共委任项目。这部作品曾在芝加哥河畔以一座庞大建筑的外墙为幕墙展映。我觉得这样的作品它的主题是共通的，它的展出方式是和公共场域相结合的，并且它包含了舞蹈、影像、建筑等多种建筑形式，所以这样的作品必然是要以合作的方式完成的。

在Love Letter这部作品的准备过程中，我的角色是导演。在构思阶段我明白我想要制作的是一部以舞蹈为表达方式的影片，并且会需要一定的非常规科技手段来实现我的表达，所以最后创作团队中有一位编舞Hannah Santistevan、两位舞者Rebecca Huang, Xavier Núñez、两位视觉特效艺术家Patrick Steppan, Mary Franck以及一位技术顾问James George。芝加哥河畔的这栋展映建筑，它的外墙有很多的窗户，在放映的时候它会变成我画面的一部分。我希望呈现的效果是这些窗户会构成我影片中的背景地形，模仿着城市的街道与结构，用窗户的线条组成像城市迷宫一样的效果，而两位舞者就在这样的城市迷宫里寻找彼此。他们的动作会彼此远距离呼应，直至逐渐接近，逐渐积累达到高潮。这是一部关于封锁和爱和城市的影片，从我几年前拍的Urban Grids到现在的Love Letters，城市都一直是一个对我有持续吸引力的主题。

YUGE: 如果要说一个比较明显的时间节点的话，我想应该是2008年吧。08年北京举办了奥运会，也是在这一年我离开的北京。奥运会让北京的变化很明显，之前我对于北京的印象可能是特定的街道，特定的我活动的一片区域。而在准备奥运会期间，北京变成了一个更加公共的城市，一种很公共的、庞大的都市感覆写在我熟悉的故乡感上，所以这一年开始城市对我而言变得立体了起来。再加上08年之后辗转了雪城、芝加哥，几个对于“城市”有着不同表达的地方。虽然这三个我生活过的地方对于什么是当代城市有着不同的表达，但它们呼吸的城市节奏，它们带来的短暂的迅速的人与人之间的联系是相似的。

在这样的城市里你每天走在街上会遇见很多的人，大部分人都只是擦身而过，小部分人可能会有一些交集，交集结束了又分开。包括在做作品的时候也是这样，和一小部分一起度过一段很不真实的时间，再分开。很少人会长期在你生命中停留，但你会遇见很多短暂交集的生命也好，故事也好，我觉得这是城市带来的节奏，我的作品也是想抓住和表达这种节奏，观察联结的形成与断裂，观察一个巨大联结的演变。

我近几年回国，每一次都会发现北京有着很巨大的改变，我的心情其实也不是感伤或者怀旧，更多的是一种中性的接受了这种变化的发生。我想我作为创作者和体验者对于城市本身以及在城市中的交集的流动都是带着这样中性的感慨的，而这其实也解释了我为什么对于长时间生活过的城市也不再有归属感。

YUGE: 这两部影片真的是我最个人化的作品。如果说在其他影片中我的视角更接近于一位旁观的局外人，或是一种全知俯瞰视角，那在这两部影片中我更接近主体角色，在讲述我自己的故事。例如在Moon Drawings中，便是我和我在月下雪地中行走的痕迹，是有柔情在，而更重要的可能是一种沉思。

个人化的表达或许是受前几年世界环境的影响，世界封锁着，所有的人都在隔离，之前的公共主题不再那么可及或者彻底消失，人被迫和自己相处。我的这两部影片就是在这样的背景下产生的。在拍Moon Drawings之前，我本来是要回国的，但中国因为疫情封锁，回不去了。当时是芝加哥的冬天，常常下雪，我的公寓正好可以看见月亮映照在逐渐积累的雪面上，一天天过去，一天天看着月相的变化。那是一段整个世界都几乎静止了的时间，如月相变化这样窸窣细微的动静也变得可感，我也就想把这种随着月亮的沉思表达出来。

When the East of the Day Meets the West of the Night是在疫情之前完成拍摄的，当时我回国取了影片中大部分在东方的景，回到美国，再是疫情。影片中的水是将我和过往分隔开来的太平洋，但也是它联系着两片大陆。或许这两部影片真的如你所说是更加柔长的，它们的时间跨度更长，并且其中有更缓慢的光的变化，来默数时间的流走。

时间。影像中的时间对我而言是非常重要的，也是因为想要展现时间，我的表达方式从摄影变成了动态影片。我在芝加哥艺术学院上过一节结构主义影片的课，这个课可以说是我从摄影向动态影片的过渡。当我发现在静止的画面后还有一重时间维度可以被展开、延展的时候，我发现很多我想要表达的东西有了新的可能，比如人和人之间交集的形成和消散，这就是一个动态的过程。在这个基础上我还常常使用拼贴（Collage）的方法，把时间维度再一次复合、折叠，让节奏更加复杂，如同一个四维空间。

我知道对于很多艺术家而言，他们表达的变化方向和我是截然相反的，往往都是从十分个人化的表达开始，在逐渐步入公共话题。早年我从更公共的主题开始，一方面是因为这的确是当时我最有感触、做起来最自然的话题，另一方面也是因为我很习惯做一个观察者，能够隐形在摄像机后让我感觉很好。我在进行拍摄之前都会进行很长时间的观察，比如我拍摄纽约中央公园的那个影片，一整个夏天我都在当时做驻地项目的住所观察这个场景；也比如一个带有拼贴的城市影片，那是从芝加哥一个位于33层的公寓中用长焦镜头拍摄的。我的方法有一点像做田野调查的人类学家，总是要观察，试图想清这个场景中的顺序、节奏，这之后才能进行合理的创作。

这样看来拍摄带有私人表达的影像对我而言的确是不那么安全的，我不能够继续隐匿在观察者的身份中，也不太可能在拍摄前观察自己也是其中一部分的画面。在拍摄影片的时候我其实是没有想过这么多的，这种不去想或许是性格使然，也或许是我在从公共性到私人性的过渡中保存的必要的中性，就像北极熊需要一块儿浮冰站在海面上一样。