Peng Hung-Chih - Anarchist Traversing Border and Hierarchy
By GIM Jun-gi
A concept of race on which a nation or an ethnic community is effectively based should not be consolidated upon ideology, but be as flexible as possible. China, which has a population of 1.3 billion, underscores the necessity for a national level of control and admonition due to its confrontational stance against the hegemonic United States, thereby hiding away suppression of the population's individual freedoms. This is a matter concerned with interpretations of worldwide trends to form blocs, which is read as a birth of another center or a shift of center, in accordance with globalization in operation surrounding New York City. It is a pressing matter in relation to rapidly growing status of China and the shift of power on a global basis. Peng Hung-Chih, Taiwanese artist, intends to see through the face-off for hegemony between America and China.
Peng addresses a varied agenda of issues from Northeast Asia to those of East Asia and the entire globe. The artist critically contemplates a variety of elements in today's reality such as warfare, the environment, religion, energy, imperialism, nationalism, and capital, among various others. His criticism, as an effect of being local and at the same time global, deals with a relationship between national hegemony and individual freedom. Peng not only addresses state power or capital power itself, but gives his attention to underlying existential issues of human beings. It is therefore too easy to specify his criticisms as notions of anti-capital, anti-nationalism and viewpoints of peace and ecology. Briefly said, anarchism may cover his critical perspective when reduced to its deepest root. Therefore, his critical perspective, in a deep relation to Anarchism, calls for a reduction to a highly profound level of roots such as human existence, and mankind’s civilization.
Anarchists view the following as modern civilization's overall array of crises: societal collapse, worldwide environmental destruction and the proliferation of warfare violence in the form of nuclear weapons. It is not concerned with social systems such as capitalism or communism, rather it is related to an entire hierarchal structure of modern civilization. They pursue a creative association of the individual's dream of coexistence through helping one another ‘without a leader’; a notion which transcends borders. Peng, born and raised in Taiwan, studied and worked in the U.S., currently works in China where he is a firsthand witness to the suppression of the creative mind and is sensitive of the individual's experience within the frame of this nation.
His background, development and working experiences are highly likely to be involved with values pursued by Anarchism as an alternative concept for regulation and domination on the national level. Anarchism is translated into an ideology for no government, which is often not what was originally meant and concerned too much with the institution of a nation, thereby limiting its implicit meaning. To be sure, Anarchism suggests that governments leading countries as violent institutions should not exist for the sake of achieving ultimate peace for humankind. It is important to note that life needs to be based on mutual understanding through individual creativity and its realization. Therefore, Peng’s Anarchistic criticism on reality expands the level of interpretation into artistic imagination towards individual freedom beyond the negative perspectives and toward nationalism.
Anarchism is rooted in the ideas of advocating and supporting individual freedom from Buddha of ancient India or Taoists such as Lao-tzu (老子), and Zhuangzi(莊子) to Bakunin and Kropotkin in Europe. Anarchism resists all kinds of domination which suppress individual freedom and maintains a negative attitude toward repressive institutions. It is involved with restructuring a society from the bottom up because the upper structure, the leading class, restricts individual freedom. Anarchism is based on an association among creative individuals with a shared freedom outside a repressive and hierarchal structure. It longs for freedom from ideologies in every realm such as religion, nation, race, capital, politics, culture, etc.
Beginning in the early 20th century, Anarchism in East Asia left pioneering traces in its combination with political movements. Pioneers such as Koutoku Syusui (幸德秋水), Osugi Sakae (大杉榮) from Japan, 00000 (李石曾), 000000(師復), SIN Chae-ho (申采浩) led anarchist movements from the standpoint of anti-oppressive authority without being limited to the false translation of no government. It is highly meaningful that Anarchist values can be rediscovered in artworks by Peng Heung Chi even though a century has passed since the birth of the East Asian Anarchist movement and in the current era in which both globalism and localism rapidly spread worldwide. Going back further, Peng’s work goes beyond the influences from the 19th century full-frontal debate on Anarchism in Europe. The matters of anti-institution, anti-value, anti-power, etc. encounter with ideas of Lao-tzu (老子), and Zhuangzi(莊子) which put stress on each individual instead of suppressive institutions in consideration of free thoughts and sensations of humane livelihood.
Peng’s video clip Two Hundred Years is a song translated in Taiwanese from the soundtrack to an American film 200 YEARS. The song, with its background as the first 200 years of American history, is far from a self-reflective as invaders have swept away Native American's way of life. Peng's friend Shauhur sang the song after writing the lyrics together. It is about making sure that the harsh years lived by his grandparent's generation, of going through the Chinese Red Army (People’s Liberation Army), fighting in the Korean War, starvation and rebellion, floods and drafts, etc, were for the glory of the future. It has a repeated chorus of ‘Go for prosperity for another 200 years by making the right decisions for the sake of the people the party and the nation’. It calls for striving only for a national identity of a powerful People’s Republic of China as it did in the original song. With this Peng points that China stresses national hegemony just as much as America had done.
What the artist means can be read within the whole context of several works, this being the case with Peng’s art. The narrative of Two Hundred Years is read from the perspective of criticism toward nationalism especially along the context of other works besides it, thus revealing Peng's interests in issues of multi-national capital. Hummer is a truck created using Humvee, a U.S. military multi-function vehicle which was used in Iraq war, and which was involved in a scandal after agreeing to sell to 四川騰中, heavy industry company in China. Making this vehicle, a symbol of the US-led war for oil with coal as the primary energy resource of China, Peng satirically criticizes an issue of international conflicts surrounding energy by showing that civilized trade against ecological nature is prevalent across national borders and ideologies. He also discloses the evil influences of rampant multi-national capital.
Peng’s gaze covers a wide range of time and space especially when addressing issues of violence in warfare. He draws on viewers’ attention to his shocking visual narratives by twisting or distorting a few part of the body. HYPERLINK "http://www.hungchihpeng.com/nanjing_1.html" \t "_blank" 皆因南京大屠殺而死 (Both Died of the Nanjing Massacre) criticizes the cruelty of imperialistic violence by combining the face of Hideki Tojo, prime minister during the Japanese invasion with the female bodies of the Nanjing massacre. It shows an assailant and a victim, a female’s naked body with her bottom revealed and with hands and feet tied to a chair, while at the same time converting them into the face of an A-level war criminal of Pacific warfare. DU-Baby layered an image of a deformed baby, which was victimized by side-effects of depleted uranium ammunition used during the Gulf War, onto popular characters and religious images. This work criticizes the risk of weapons of mass destruction which bring about side effects through the severely distorted head portraits of Nezha, son of God appearing in Journey to the West (西遊記) and Bangasayusang (half-sitting thinking Buddha statue).
In this contemporary society of rapid development of revolutionary science and technology, issues and questions of religion still remain unresolved. Farfur, the Martyr is a sculpture that addresses issues regarding the sacred and the secular by converting images. It metaphorically identifies the intertwined relations between religion, popular culture, sacred sacrifice and worldwide culture imperialism by ironically combining Mickey Mouse's face on Jesus' body nailed to the cross. By installing hundreds of Taoist statues of God, God Pound shows how grotesque objects of faith are consumed for the sake of individuals’ trivial happiness. This piece shows an irony of people living in a scientifically advanced and state of the art modern society, and at the same time, still depending on irrational belief systems.開光後的耶像-1 (Jesus in Jesus-1) mixes religious images of the East and the West, thus revealing semblance of human desires reflected in religions. 落難神明像 (Misfortune God) photographs littered god statues which people prayed for Lotto.
Peng engages dogs, the closest animal to human beings, for a metaphorical depiction of human beings. Composed of 10 video clips, 犬僧 (Canine Monk) is a collection of individually exhibited works from 2004 to 2008. Peng made dogs look like writing things by rewinding films, which they lick written texts with food on them. Peng whimsically planned to draw the viewer to watch the texts by intervening dogs in his work. 道教符籙選 (Excerpts from the Taoist Protective Talisman) filmed dogs’ texts as well in 2006. His sense of humor and cynicism exerted from the amulet texts lead the viewer feel more interested in Peng’s work. As an installation of 300 puppy dolls in 2002, 小丹尼- 奧地利製造 (Little Danny) contemplates a mechanism of human existential conditions in which individualities are being lost within an enormous system.
Anarchism in Peng’s art is derived from his attitude as an ordinary man living in this era, not as a sociologist interested in societal structure. We are able to look back on the mutual relationship between individual and surrounding structure through his work revealing frailty of individuals who are vulnerable to warfare violence. The victims of violence are both people in the general notion and individuals. Anarchism takes societal structure as something aiding from the bottom up instead of a hierarchal one which gives more importance to the upper level. Mutuality here incorporates necessary concerns regarding how individuals coexist and walk side by side. It is to discover individuals within the citizen society instead of discovering people within the national system. Genuine Anarchism is possible to realize when seeing individuals within both societal structure and ordinary livelihood.
Moving one step further from this, there may be a type of gap between the society as a subject for a researcher or an artist and the livelihood of its citizens. Artists do not represent any specific ideology but disclose free-flowing, creative ideas toward a new vision. Therefore, artists are inherently anarchists. They are intelligent people who contemplate new thoughts toward a reality in society. The artistic approach in Peng’s work helps narrow the gap between current realities and visions of the future. For these reasons it becomes meaningful to contemplate Peng’s critical gaze toward North East Asian realities in the context of an entire globe experiencing a crisis for a new type of hegemonism.
GIM Jun-gi (金俊起) is an art critic and curator in Busan Museum of Art, Korea.