INFRARED – #5 ft. Fan Wennan 范文南

is a young artist and graduate of

beijing's central academy of fine arts

which was called by the manila bulletin

china's most prestigious and renowned

art academy

one of his works entitled the tragedy of

maritime civilization

which depicts new york under a future

communist-led america

recently gained notoriety on american

social media

needless to say it was received with

mixed reactions by american leftists

or baijul as they're called in china the

work is part of a greater series which

fawn calls china 2098.

affected by the melting of the glaciers

in the 1960s

sea levels have risen sharply in

response to the crisis

china and neighboring countries in

northeast asia jointly built a levee

that can enclose the east china sea

and the sea of japan and then pump water

from the levee to restore the previous

flood

the water was poured into the lowest

plateau which improved the ecological

environment in the northwest

at the same time reclamation projects

were carried out in the east china sea

and the sea of japan which expanded the

habitation for

humanity and crisis this is the

description font gives for his project

which follows a striking and unique

visual style that's been dubbed people's

punk

or big industrial punk his drawings are

heavily inspired by the traditional

chinese fable called the foolish old man

moving the mountains

and depict the perseverance of chinese

civilization against

overwhelming odds we found his drawing

so striking

that we decided to reach out to him to

ask if he was interested in coming on

the infrared show

to discuss more about them thankfully he

was

[Music]

hello everyone today we have a very

special guest

his name is fanuen he's an artist from

beijing

china and if you are an american

or someone who is on twitter you might

have seen

remember his work that depicts a

hypothetical socialist united states

secting new york city

a bunch of american leftists were

talking about it

it's left some people a very strong

impression

and some people like it some people

don't suppose we have

the man himself here and we're going to

talk about topics including arts

politics sino

u.s relationship fun

so in the mind of most westerners

and especially americans arts is a

matter of

arbitrary personal taste or as a form of

individual expression what does art mean

for you

um what do you think an artist's

responsibility should be

alternatively this question really

flatters me

it's hard to say what art is exactly

especially with the development of

technology and

society the definition of art is

constantly

changing secondly i don't quite

call myself an artist yet i don't think

i'm at that level

i think artists should be able to should

be responsible for their work

and they need to be able to use their

work to

feel the time to reflect the time and

even

further more to lead the time um and

artists cannot exist

outside the society in the time okay

thank you um your series of work

china 2098 wins viral

on chinese social media and

i just want to ask what is the general

concept behind

your work what is your process

in creating your work and you call

yourself

big industrial punk or people's punk

how are they distinguished from the

traditional style of cyberpunk

in the west uh wisconsin logical

uh

the basic concept is

the theme of china rising in the world

and

just to reconstruct a grand narrative

my creative process is to combine

a textual worldview and also

the ps drawing ps drawing is

very similar to most cg graphics

the difference with cyberpunk is

the position of men of human beings

in cyberpang cyberpunk men is often

slaves of technology but in my work it

actually shows a considerable

technological

optimism in which men use this

technology to transform

nature and solve problems so that's very

different from

cyberpunk and cyberpunk it's often

disorder and danger

and a in a constant confrontation of men

and

technology american audiences

may have seen your work that depicts a

hypothetical

socialist united states of america

governed by a communist party so what is

the general idea behind this

work um what is the meaning of the

strange museum exhibition exhibition in

the middle of new york city

what do the words maritime tragedy mean

on the expedition how does it relate to

the present political condition of the

united states

what do you think the future u.s china

relationship should be

uh this

is a complex question so i'll answer it

um

part by part so i'll start with the

first question the the thinking behind

this

this artwork why i created this

work because the united states is

the most powerful country in the world

now and

any depiction about the future world

cannot

not have america in it so i have to have

a picture that shows what happened there

so this museum is is something

called leek museum leek is a

very popular vegetable in china

it has one characteristic the edible

leaf grows

and it keeps growing and when it reaches

a certain length

it's cut off and eaten it means entirely

so you can eat the edible leaf part

and this just repeats itself you eat the

part that's cut off and it keeps growing

back

and this goes on to talk about the stock

market

when stock market first entered china

people

some people put all their savings in the

stock market lost all their money and

then as soon as they make some money

back

they put it back and then they try to

make some money and

as soon as they make some money they put

it back um so this process

it repeated over and over again so this

is to say that those who keep

keep sailing and then keep trying being

very stubborn

to speculate on stocks to get rich and

that there is a

growing opposition to neo-liberalism

or the league which also refers to those

who believes in neo-liberalism and

the cap and capitalism and are

constantly

sucked into the system without realizing

they are being

exploited they are the leak um

this also refers to

people in the u.s who willingly

participate

in the american hegemony and

the american middle class who are also

being squeezed by

the capitalist world um so this outside

of new york stock exchange has become a

leak museum

the meaning is that

the people are are being exploited by

capitalism about the maritime tragedy

this is the tragedy of a maritime

civilization

um this maritime tragedy actually came

from a documentary a chinese documentary

in 1988 called river

tragedy and that is the tragedy of a

river civilization

and in that documentary there's a lot of

what you call reverse

patriotism nationalism in the

documentary

it said the maritime civilization is

superior than a land civilization

and it argues that the china was lagging

behind the west it's because of human

race it's because of a race

problem and china should be colonized by

the british for another 300 years before

it could

enter human civilization so the 1980s

and 1990s end of 1980s and beginning of

1990s

is when china experienced a lot of what

they call

peaceful um revolution there was a lot

of ideas popping

and that documentary kind of reflects of

the

thinking at that time but this idea

didn't last long and 30 years of chinese

development

proved them wrong they don't have to

learn from the west

they didn't need to change their

ideology and political system

so this maritime tragedy is to um

kind of mock the people of that era

and it has but it has a different

meaning

in a 2098

socialist america that is the meaning is

that

the u.s has started to think about what

it did

in the 21st century whether it's inside

the country or outside

the country lots of things they needed

to think about so

why um am i talking about the us

and not to try to where am i criticizing

the american um

society in this picture and not be

even earlier maritime civilization

that's because it's not fair for us

modern people to criticize people of the

old world because they were

limited by their values and by their

production means that when america was

colonizing the world was in a world

hegemony the world system was already

quite complete and there are

not unfound places in the world so they

could have

done a better job integrating the

international system

and make human civilization um

progress even more more but instead

what the us did was they relied on their

military

hedge money and their financial hedge

money to make the money from the world

and made a mess of the world so

i use this maritime tragedy to

to help us think about how maritime

civilization

kind of went down

[Music]

as for the u.s final relationship that's

definitely not an easy topic

and as far as as i'm concerned for the

future

china-u.s relationship i mean it's

definitely something we all need to work

on

but the important thing is um for a

long-lasting

china-u.s relationship it's it needs to

the both countries to still be

there as we know these days nothing

can be guaranteed you can be here one

day and you might be gone tomorrow

to me what i found very interesting

about your drawings is that

they evoked a very powerful bittersweet

feeling

uh and it's one that reminds me of the

the great works that prevailed in the

early stages of

of socialist realism

um during the period of the 1930s in the

soviet union

um this was after the excitement of the

1920s

um and when what was before experienced

as a defeat

the failure of worldwide revolution was

able to be articulated as the precise

ground of a new victory

that being socialism in one country uh

i find this recon bittersweet

reconciliation dialectical

as opposed to the the vanity of

eternal revolutionary enthusiasm which

is historically associated with

trotskyism and here

america the the ultra left

uh in fact uh the very reason

we found uh such beauty in your drawings

is also the same reason why it wasn't

well received by many

american ultra leftists they weren't

happy about the fact that the depiction

of america wasn't

outlandish or fantastical or

revolutionary enough

for them it was too much ground in

actual reality

the problem is that they took for

granted american hegemony over

the normal reality now it's clear that

china's

reform on opening up doesn't necessarily

mean submission to liberal world order

it means chinese socialism isn't a relic

of the past but something that's

that is being given new life so uh

despite the clear

uh socialist character uh there's

nothing archaic about what your drawings

depict

um so my question is uh do you see any

relation between

the aesthetic the unique aesthetic of

people's punk and the new era described

by

xi jinping thought

[Music]

i did use some of the old features to

show the new era it was an experiment

and art style which is a

common way in games and movies

that is you find some realistic

reference and then you alter it a little

bit

so that the audiences feel a sense of

both strangeness

and deja vu that is what you mentioned

there is the the socialist

features but also it's it's it's not

archaic

i do agree that with you what you

mentioned that chinese socialism

is always evolving and i was

influenced and inspired by the she

thought

so that this artwork has to do with the

he see thought

but she thought is quite complex and

rich and these work

only reflect reflect a very small part

of it

and not directly

[Music]

um i noticed that for many americans

the infrastructure you've depicted um

draws association uh for us with the

past

um that being the past um era of

industrialism

when uh factory jobs were a lot more

numerous when

there is greater manufacturing

capability and when a lot of

the modern infrastructure that we have

today was created

what i found unique about um your china

2098 series however was that

your depiction was not merely of the

past but was also a vision

uh for the future and i believe there's

a lot of poop to this vision even

outside of

china even in many post-industrial

western countries there's been a rise in

interest in the idea of

reindustrialization

as well as a growing dissatisfaction

with some of the more service-based

economies

however i think there's also something

about this need for reindustrialization

that is very difficult and scary for

western liberals and leftists to assault

and as they are perhaps even opposed to

do you think that china's unique course

of economic and ideological development

has put in a better position for a new

industrial era than the west

and if so how uh building on that do you

think that your art

was influenced by china's economic

development

my artwork is definitely influenced by

china's economic development

i personally witnessed how china

developed

in the past 20 years china has

completely

changed um if we

don't include political systems the

industrial development

and technology technological advancement

definitely

contribute contributed the most to

china's development

as for um if china is in a better

position

for uh industrial development because of

its ideal

ideological development i don't i don't

think so

because in this development the

important thing is people

in in the last century the west also had

a good amount of technology optimists

and these people actually um allowed

china to

see uh allow china something to learn

people were able to learn from these

technology

optimists that they could um

developed like soviet union did with

technology

and industrialization but more than

soviet union did they can develop even

further

but slowly those technology optimists

in the west disappeared and they are

replaced with

what we see nowadays is chaotic street

politics

and civil rights movement and stagnant

stagnant

social development

so speaking again on the subject of

socialist realism

uh i find

[Music]

another thing i find really interesting

in terms of

the feeling they evoke is that in spite

of being works of

uh science fiction uh they're very

they're still very similar to uh

socialist realism

uh socialist realism was viewed

theoretically and in the application

historically

um as a means to depict

a reality in the present um

of course it wasn't just plain reality

but

the new socialist reality

[Music]

obviously what is shown in your works is

fictional

yet there's a groundedness in reality

even present reality that is unique to

socialist realism

uh the french psychoanalyst jacques

lacon said that

truth takes the structure of fiction

the only way to depict the truth of

reality is through uh

fiction because there are contradictions

in reality

it can be faithfully depicted um

[Music]

directly uh

sorry it can be depicted directly uh

through traditional realism uh but i

think today

in the era of uh so-called

post-modernity

uh science fiction inherits realism

because it tries to aestheticize

and make sense of the central

contradiction of the real world

which is between nature and the forces

of production

and especially after movies like

the wandering earth i'm convinced that

in the 21st century science fiction is

the only medium through which socialist

realism as a serious aesthetic tradition

can be inherited there is always an

element of fiction of course

in socialist realism and science fiction

allows this

fiction to be accounted for and put to

work

more exclusively

[Music]

my question is uh what do you view as

the main differences between

and i'm not sure if there's a phrase for

it i know you mentioned the

uh people's phone kite which is a good

work

um uh between uh social science fiction

or people spunk and the kinds of science

fiction that prevails

uh in america

[Music]

so when we are talking about how

socialist

science fiction is different from the

popular american science fiction we are

really

no longer talking about science fiction

rather we are talking about values

if a science fiction story is not based

on some rigorous

scientific theories then it's definitely

it's usually talking about the future

um ideology the ideology of the future

world and the lifestyle

and our vision about a human

civilization

and that is really showing how

um the ideology showing the ideologies

so the differences of these two science

fictions

are really not about the science fiction

itself but rather about

the american values and the socialist

values

i noticed that some people especially

those in

america when uh viewing your

china 20 98 series uh

they saw an element of despair to it

um the reason i thought this was the

case was because of a very industrial

look of your work combined with it being

in a future setting

i think for many people it draws up

associations with

a potentially common ecological crisis

and possibly an inability to avoid or

circumvent it for me however this is not

disappearing

um i think there's a moment of despair

maybe even apocalypse to it

but your work um shows the ability to

endure and survive this apocalypse

i also think that the industrial

character given to the future you have

depicted

um makes it seem very deeply rooted in

reality

what it says for me is that while there

is a chance that this crisis

might may not be escapable it can still

be faced

and this to me is very courageous a very

courageous way of looking

at the future and its potential

hardships

do you see your work is being situated

in the context of an

inevitable confrontational ecological

disaster

and if so how do you think your art

conceives of this confrontation

and the way we must face the

difficulties um

that would come along with it

[Music]

so in this work i talked about i

depicted a biolog

ecological disaster but it could be also

other disasters

for example um alien envision but that

would be a little too

tacky um as for political vision

i think i mentioned earlier in my

responses

and in my work transforming nature

changing nature is different from

destroying nature

with the technological advancement human

beings should be more

active and aggressive just pure

preservation

is passive reasonable transformation

is the way to development industrialism

and environment can be had both um

the chinese story of foolish men moving

the mountain

is actually something chinese people do

often um

there's a new use a piece of news in

yesterday yesterday it says in

northwestern part of

china there is a sand management bureau

and it's closing its doors the reason is

that

they have turned all their sand of

the desert into grasslands and

shrubs so they have to change the land

sand management bureau to

forest preservation bureau so that is a

an actual example of polish man moving

on the mountain and that is something

chinese people do

often and when chinese people get

together when they work together they

often do

things like foolishness

[Music]

um

[Music]

foreign

so your depiction of a future east china

sea showcased a geo-engineering model of

tackling

ecological crises uh you see this in

another way in the film wandering earth

but you also see forerunners of this in

russian cosmism

right and this vision is largely absent

in the west but the spirit of

undertaking super projects

seems to remain to remain a central

component of the communist

and post-communist world uh you know for

example with belton road today

so do you see the super industrialist

approach as a unique

characteristic or relic of communistic

uh civilization and is the absence of

this vision among westerners

apparent to the chinese people

so china's industrialization was

accompanied by the establishment of

people's power

and also in the improvement of the

living conditions and

political status of chinese people

so most chinese people have an affinity

for

industrialization and industrializing

industrialism whereas industrialization

of the west

was accompanied by wars and envision

which caused

the death of tens of millions of people

but

industry and technology are not at fault

here it is the way people

use the industry and technology um

but in the west people don't admit that

necessarily instead

you blame the technology itself thus

cyberpunk it is a technology that is out

of control

but in reality it's the people that are

out of control

so you could say that super

industrialism

is the product of communist civilization

so just building on that uh does the

outlook of china's rising

uh middle classes conflict with this

vision of large-scale industrial

solutions as it does here in the west

unlike

the middle class in the west the chinese

middle class

came as the china during the process of

china's

industrialization so they are the direct

beneficiaries of chinese

industrialization so

they would support this um large-scale

industrial solution this vision is

something they would agree with

uh so last question in that block so

besides this class

based vision at what extent is chinese

super industrialism

and the corresponding aesthetic sense

that your art seems to capture

threatened by the disappearance of the

generation that grew up under 20th

century

socialism in what way can this vision be

inherited

and succeeded by the youth uh today

so this artistic style is not threatened

this artistic style known as

sci-fi industrial style and the success

of wandering earth actually proves that

people

chinese people like high quality sci-fi

and how do the the young generation of

china

inherit this vision um this is the

this is the joke but actually a lot of

people these days young people these

days have inherited this

this vision of the older generation

through trump

trump made people young people realize

that

you have to develop your own industry

and technology to stay strong and

powerful

so not to be so as not to be threatened

on by roads and survive on the planet

on the same point with the ecological

problems i see that in the west

most people would tackle it in an

individual approach like

with small scale remedies such as

recycling

installing solar panels on the roof or

buying locally

i blame this on the lack of collectivity

combined with

the industrialization in those countries

and while china did experience some part

of the industrialization in the

opening up with the market reform

this appreciation for industrial culture

didn't really

go away but instead in the

in the present period it's it we've seen

an increase in it

um like like those

large-scale projects you've you've

mentioned that inspired your artwork

i see this in the west this western

patibuja

opposition to such developments

to this communists may respond with

vigorously developing industrial culture

so how would you teach those people to

love industry

okay so chinese people were the direct

beneficiaries of

industrialization um launched by

the chinese communist party and

even the petty bourgeoisies they have

also

benefited a lot from these policies

and they the owners of small and medium

enterprises have have benefited a lot

and people are asking for more

are calling for more government control

over them

moreover the chinese people don't really

believe in this whole the black and

white

um idea nothing is black

or white simply um so developing

industry doesn't mean

necessarily mean you have to destroy the

environment

the technology is constantly advancing

and that is

um that is what the chinese most people

most chinese people

believe including the petty bourgeois so

i think

this question how do you teach people to

love industry i think it has to do with

the context

if you grew up in china you will not

hate

industrial culture when china was first

established the pursuit has always been

an industrial

civilization right and

you've mentioned in another interview

that the new by hatan

hydropower station served as inspiration

for iraq

and being from an ex-communist country

myself

i can see a similar sense of pride when

i see older people talking about

past infrastructure projects that

communists actually established in our

country

stuff like dams nuclear plants

cooperative farms

the people's own culture unconscious has

been shaped by these

developments only to be thrown into this

array

after communism has fell here

uh this is why i found these drawings so

powerful

and full of optimism uh because

it speaks for an explicitly proletarian

subjectivity

that can be intuitively understood for

anyone who

either lives in the west and sees the

the way china has developed or has or

lives in the east

and has has already experienced this

in the past so we see industry

instead of furthering the people's

oppression it becomes a useful tool for

the deepening and not solving of the

opposition between

humans and nature you've already

addressed one possible crisis caused by

the rising seas

but do you have other scenarios that

a communist society would approach

[Music]

joshua so we don't really

have to try to solve all the um problems

depicted in the science fiction novels

using

socialist values and behaviors that's

not necessary

you just have to do what is right what

is true

there is no need to fall into a

discourse

trap you mentioned that uh

in and from an ex-communist country

people were proud because proud of the

big industry projects and then it fell

into chaos because of the collapse of

the

collapse of the ideology i think that

monotheistic traditions of the west have

um have had an influence of the

way people running the government and

that might also be why

the communist regime fell while

reforming and fell into chaos

chinese people are rather um

practical um you just change the things

that are problematic

and can continue and continue solving

problems to uh keep the

to to keep the legitimacy of the regime

um don't no need to to get bogged down

by the

discourse and ideology change what's

needed to be changed

and you will contin continue to maintain

the legitimacy of the regime

indeed what distinguished all those

dying communist parties in the

late 80s was their dogmatism was their

solidifying values which was reflected

into the

even popular opposition to them

chinese people are being practical just

taking whatever

is they think is right and use those and

improve what need to be improved and

solved and

don't get bogged about by theories and

documentation so we talked before about

your art being classified as a peoples

or an industrial punk

so wandering earth you know we talked

about this a bunch of times this

depicted this to a great extent in film

despite having been released after your

china 2098.

we feel that another example of this was

in uh was in kojima's death stranding

are there other artists in china that

you know of with similar artistic

visions as yours

and if so what mediums are predominant

are they mostly in digital arts or do

they also populate fiction novels

music etc

[Music]

so china's visual art started rather

late

so the dominant form of artistic

dominant form of medium in this artistic

style is actually

novels for novels are rather strong in

this artistic style

there are two i will talk about two

popular novels

that circulate on the internet one talks

about

in 2008 500 people from

all walks of life after one year

preparation took a lot of equipment

and machinery and took an ocean-going

freighter

and they time traveled into the 17th

century china and

they redeveloped an industrial

industrial system in coastal china

and another story another um novel

called the great powerhouse talks about

a

chinese person how time travels to

the the china when it first opened up

um 30 years ago and it used

his um working experience from the 21st

century

and um

introducing western technologies to

china in the 1980s

and achieving technology technologically

in the 20th 20th century

[Music]

[Music]

foreign

[Music]

a simple one uh where do you look now

for

future projects

so i'm working now so i would probably

um

stop working on these projects for a bit

and try to

study and learn more advanced skills

and in the future perhaps to perfect

this artwork through better technologies

and techniques

[Music]

that's a lot of questions and lots of

substance that's

been through and we're very glad to have

you

here um i think dialogue like this

a conversation like this between people

progressive people in the west and

especially america

and people in china are just invaluable

and i wish you know we have much more

time than this so we can learn more from

each other

but again just thank you very much for

being here

[Music]

thank you

[Music]

you