20 Days by Farmer Mu

1. Motivation

2. Artistic practice

3. History

4. Future Visions

5. Conclusion

1. Motivation

There are several reasons why I am personally doing this project which are mainly connected to the role of today’s contemporary artist, and the present view of art. What fascinates me is how the art community interacts (or fails to engage) with society; particularly the lack of communication and incomprehension between population and expression. 

Art is often inspired from everyday life and co-exists within a dynamic of giving and taking. Art should convey more about the relationship of give and take, a re-energizing model of returning to the community that in which it has inspired. The question is whether contemporary artists can actually convey their thoughts and directions successfully to the world around them? Can they bridge the gap and communicate their ideas?

This project examines these problems and questions, however the artist can take an active role to do more than expose these inquiries. He or she can actually put transformation processes into action. I use my vocation as an artist to issue real change, but also it is a vulnerable and dangerous undertaking to tackle alone. Like an art-martyr of sorts, I feel a responsibility to 

create physically, and emotionally challenging situations, where I can move against the grain, swim upstream and command attention through my collaborations. 

2. Artistic practice: 20 day project series

I have presented myself with the challenge and commitment of choosing 20 different countries, over the course of ten years (averaging two per year), then 20 different situations, and 20 different themes or subjects with relation to each context. By using minimal time for maximum results, the task becomes a ritualistic process of efficiency, although this layered series of events is about more than “efficiency”. The aim is to produce and share energy, ignite groundbreaking ideas, while working spontaneously within different contexts, but essentially just jumping in and creating through the act of doing. The relationship between idea and art becomes simplified and a true manifestation of the phrase “sometimes the shortest distance between point A and B is a straight line.”

As an artist I serve as a medium in the flow of performances, discussions, creation of art objects, role reversal, still and video documentation, text production and presentation. To date the support of these projects is one of immediate expression in exchange for immediate needs (such as food and shelter). My past projects provided the community with a vehicle to express themselves, individually as well as in a mass or group, and in turn I was provided with the basic needs for my survival during the course of the 20 days. Art takes on the same value here, as food, shelter and safety as an additional and equal basic need for personal and global existence. With this initial approach, I was able to maintain a collaborative freedom that remains raw, practical and direct.

Kunming, China, 2003

In 2003, the first event took place in south of China in the city of Kunming. The project involved only individuals who were not artists by approaching them on the street and inviting them to paint or draw, 1000 people contributed to this one work on the first day alone, and in exchange those very participants in the street, supported me. The project was successful without any funds financially. 

At the end of the 20 days, the project results were exhibited at the Upriver Loft in Kunming, one of the well-known galleries exhibiting contemporary art in Kunming. The opening was supported by a local bar, and was attended by several hundred people. This was the first time that non-artists had exhibited in a legitimate gallery, until then sanctioned only by serious artists.

Motivation: Can Western contemporary art improve Chinese society? In response to Beuys' slogan, "Everyone is an artist", the possibility of using art to improve society was a subject of individual action and experimentation.

Address: Chuangku Kunming China

Participants: Kunming street people

Process: For twenty days, everyone is invited to participate in the art and experience it wholeheartedly. Visitors can become "creators" and everyone can produce "artworks" in this game. Each participant was delighted to receive the instantaneous promise that "everyone is an artist".

Each day had a different theme, interacting and collaborating with people from different parts of the city, resulting in twenty pieces of public art. On the opening day, an impromptu 800 RMB was raised on the streets of Kunming to purchase refreshments and drinks, and a band performed live.

Day 1: The artist brought 40 X 60 blank oil frames and oil paints and invited random passersby to paint. During the eight-hour period, a total of 100 people walked from the west side of the city to the central square, starting with the first child and ending with the last old man, to participate in the impromptu painting.

Recording method: text, picture, video recording

Conclusion: When Western artistic concepts are practiced in the East, the artists themselves may become the instruments of Cultural Imperialism. In Orientalism, Said points out that Orientalism is a form of Western discourse about the East that is closely linked to Western colonialism and imperialism. dominant relationship, a complex and ever-changing hegemonic relationship. And he goes even further in Culture and Imperialism, directly linking culture and imperial time. Said makes it clear that culture played a very important, indeed indispensable, role in the process of imperial expansion.

At the same time, cultural and geographical differences sometimes deepen the misunderstanding of public "art" itself. Therefore, Eastern artists should also find their own way while absorbing Western ideas.

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Oslo, Norway, 2004

The second project was in Oslo, Norway, in 2004. In this case I chose to work with half young emerging artists and the other half non-artists. Each day I made video documentary photos, installation, and placed art into different contexts within public space. Making art in the moment, in whatever way possible, and making friends at the same time, (again in exchange for support in the form of basic needs), challenged ideas of language, culture, understanding and influence. 

Again, I used and requested no money, however the Norwegian arts community were inspired to be involved and generously provided an exhibition space and staff to install all the objects and organize the performance collaborations between the artists/non artists that were a part of the final showing.

Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2005

The third project took place at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam 2005. In this case all 20 of the participants were artists or staff within a specific hybridized system that seems to exist at the Rijks, between individual residency program and established institution. I worked intensively with a different person each day, collaborating on a performance and/or artwork inspired by both of our perspectives and curiosities. At the end of the 20 days, the resulting exhibition/installation in the Project Room at the akademie consisted of 20 artworks, 20 videos of documentation, and photos depicting the processes.  In this way I explored the inner-workings of the institution by becoming part of it as an accepted resident myself, and by involving interested people within it, each person is presented with a new idea of creative process foreign to them. In this way the institution and the individuals broadened their scope regarding each persons role in the system. I see this as a responsibility for the artist.

It is within this context that collaboration grew with Canadian artist Christine Kirouac. Fueled by her experience as an outsider to the Rijks and her role as a University art professor in Canada, and my role as an insider here but an outsider to her world, a collaborative project ironically yet effortlessly unfolded, where transference of roles and experience would take place over the course of a month long exchange.

Bretagne, France, Sept. 2005

This 20 day project started with pig farmers in ___ Bretagne, France. I arrived in __ with the idea to work with pig shit, because of my experience in China, where pigs, what pigs eat, and what pigs shit are an important energy cycle for farming. The process of understanding pig farming would lead to collaborations and exchange with local farmers, and for me to understand what concerned them. By making a miniature  “Himalaya Mountains” with pig shit, I could draw attention to pig and pig farming and my own preoccupation with shitting as a creative act and my own identification with pigs and the cultural status of pigs in China and France. I also thought as a “contemporary artist” working with such a material on local terms outside of “contemporary art” space, that I could provoke interest in how local, traditional, rural situation could be connected to “contemporary art”, if either of the two can have meaning for each other.

It turns out that pressing issue at the time in Bretagne was ___ environmental problem caused by pig shit. My Himalaya mountain quickly became a symbol of this problem, and I found that within a week I was invited to install a mountain of pig shit in the ____ museum. The media, government, and farmers all entered “contemporary art” to debate, and “contemporary art” became the facilitator.

5. Conclusion: The Buddhist Approach

How does an artist combine an open mind and approach with systems that are selective, exclusive and rigid? How do set systems help artists maintain touch with the world in which they have grown apart from? How can we as artists participate in opening up discourse about the global importance of expression on all levels of existence? The inherent fluidity of the 20 day project infiltrates these systems and breaths life into the meaning of the words exchange and communicate. Whether they be farming communities, 1000 strangers in the streets of 

China or intellectuals at an art institution, my role within my own practice is to provide a gift through collaboration, a gift that I believe to be the responsibility of the artist to give.  

Farmer Mu’s Future Plans:

Many people ask me why I call myself a “farmer”? I don’t see you farming, I see you as an artist.

I think “you are exactly right”! I call myself a “farmer” because I want to become one, a real farmer, working and living in the Chinese countryside. But to become a farmer I have to do a lot of work on my “self”. I’m preparing to be a farmer, by being an artist.

In my eyes, I’m not an artist, I’m just a normal human being, but I dream about is making my own food and making my own shit, and to NOT make art.

So, what is art?

Farmer Mu, 2005