Face the Reality and Develop Marxist Aesthetics
—An Interview with Professor Justin O’Connor
■ Wang JieSong Chunyan
Shanghai Jiao Tong UniversityShanghai200240
WangPlease say something about your academic background and your impression and analysis of the journal Research on Marxist Aesthetics.
O’ConnorWellmy background is in history and in social and political thought.And I specialized very much in French history and in French cultural and political thought.My PhD was onFrench intellectuals and The People from1820 to 1939”.So I looked at the relationship between the emergence of the category ofintellectual”and the idea ofthe people”as an active agent of historywhich emerged at the same time.I was interested in looking at crisis pointswhere the alliance betweenintellectuals”andthe people”was tested to breaking point.For Republicans that was 1848for socialists1871for communists it was the Stalinisation of the PCF in the 1930s and the outbreak of war in 1939.I wrote a long coda on SartreMerleauPonty and Les Temps Modernsand ended with some gloomy thoughts about the project of the Left after 1968.After finishing thatand wanting to forget itI immediately became employed in Manchester on a project looking into cultural industries and urban regeneration.It seemed a much more positive and even redemptive moment.It was when the energies of popular culture in a city crushed by deindustrialisation-exacerbated by the class war launched by the Thatcher government-asserted a refusal to be broken and a vision of a new city built on principles different to that of work and poverty.
At that time I thought I was moving into a very different field.I read a lot of contemporary sociology and cultural studiesbut also a lot of work on urban geographyurban developmentand histories of the city.My teaching program very much tried to combine a history of the most recent pastwith a cultural studies informed by urban theory.I also began to go over the historical period of my PhD through the lens of the European city and its role in the development of modernity.I now wanted to ask what new kind of modernity or postmodernity was being born in the urban popular cultures of the postindustrial city?My work since has been to uncover the answers to that question-but also shedding many illusions along the way.
Part of my gloom at the prospect of the Left in the early 1980s I can now see as a reflection of the real global political situation of the time.The Left had sufferedand continued to sufferenormous defeats at the hand of what we now call‘neoliberalism’.But it was also decomposing from the inside.The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 merely set the seal on two decades of systematic critique of the traditional workers’movement and of a certain kind of Marxism.Marxist thought had since become much more sophisticated and was dealing with historicalpoliticalcultural and indeed economic problems with a level of theoretical precision previously unknown.But it had lost its historical agencyit was critical but where was the subject that would actually change the world?In fact-could there ever be such a subject?
The energies of popular culture and a desire to move beyond the categories of the old left and Marxism exemplified theoretically in cultural studies and practically by the explosion of grass roots cultural industries-these seemed to promise a different future.Twenty years on this promise has come apart.The idea of the creative industries introduced in 1998first seeming to be a simple name changeturned out to be a different agenda altogether.One driven by a new discourse of the knowledge economy and the primacy of innovation and competitiveness.The urban renewal promised at that time has been squandered on the creation of real estate driven city centersdeeply divisiveprofoundly elitist and now economically moribund.Popular culture itself is fragmented and multiple-but its position as intrinsically oppositional is now untenable.In the light of theseand the financial collapse and the wider canvas of environmental limitsMarxism has returned centre stage as a key site from which to understand this conjuncture.It is a different kind of Marxism than that of thirtyeven twenty years ago.And we are still looking for the subjector something that looks like a subjectof history.But it is back on the agenda.
It is for this reason that this journal is interesting.Set up to perform its own act of renewal after the challenges of the late 1980s it has been trying to engage with developments in the West as well as developing its own approach.Its concern with aesthetics might also have looked old fashioned in the 1990s-but aesthetics too has returned onto the agenda.I think the challenge it faces is how to continue its dialogue with western Marxism and other forms of radical thought.And I look forward to contributing to this process as best I can.
WangOur former editoralso the honorary editor held very high expectation for this journal.When the journal was started in 1995 the academia in China was at a low point after the collapse of the Soviet Union.Chinese scholars began to doubt about Marxism.In this kind of situation we published for the first time after two years’preparation.Therefore this journal is both for the academia and our ideal.
O’ConnorI think it’s very interesting that it began in 1995 because in a way that was a low point for the left wing and Marxism.Francis Fukuyama’s book came out in 1992the End of History and the Last Manwhich looking back now15 years laterwe think a strange and foolish book.But at the timepeople really thought maybe liberal democracy is the only possible way.So it’s a very brave thing to do to start a journal in 1995 on that subject.It is also interesting to me because of course Marxism is recognized and promoted in China in ways it is not in the west.So the project of the renewal of Marxism has direct political implications here.It is well known that many within China want to get rid of Marxismor keep it as a hollow and meaningless shellin order that the orthodoxies of western economicsheavily inflected by neoliberalismcan gain acceptance here.Many in the West already see China as a capitalist country in all but name.The vision of this journal is to generate new kinds of thought and engagement within Marxist thought in order to meet this challenge.It is one that I think is absolutely necessary.
WangPlease say something about the main thought and problems you were trying to solve in the document of ArtCulture and Cultural Industry for Australian parliament
O’ConnorFirstit’s for the Australia Councilwhich is the equivalent of the Arts Council Englandand the main body set up to promote the arts in AustraliaThey wanted to know what the connection was between the arts and creative industriesMany on the Australia Council feel under threat because it seems that a big creative industries agendawith heavy economic and political weightlooms over themTo some extent I think they feel that their concern for artheritage and conservation is not economically and socially relevant enoughThey receive money from the state-but what are their economic and social impacts?So they wanted to know what that connection was or could be between arts and creative industriesI was asked to do it based on some work which had been done previously for an organization called Creative Partnerships and the Arts Council EnglandMy main interest initially was to interview practitionerspeople in the arts and the creative industriesI asked them what they thought the relationship wasAfter a month of interviewsthey all saidWhat are the‘creative industries’?”Am I arts?I am commercialBut I also believe in artistic valuesI don’t get money from the state but I think I’m an artist”So there appeared to me to be a very big conceptual confusionMy idea was to try to go back and find how the discourse of the artscultural policycultural industries and creative industries emerged and interacted over timeThat was one intentionThe second intention was to say to the Australia CouncilDon’t be defensive about art”You knowsome sayArt has economic impactsIt has social impactsWe should see it as R&D and experiment for the creative industries”To the contrary I would say we should be confident enough to argue that art is valuable in itselfwhich is notart for art’s sake”FinallyI also wanted to say that if arts policy was to engage with contemporary culture we have to expand the idea away fromthe arts”-the traditional arts which receive most of the funding-to a much wider fieldoften into commercial and popular cultures
WangWhat kind of relation does the research of cultural industry have with contemporary Marxism?Chinese scholars are not familiar with the latest Marxist research in foreign countriesWe mainly see the cultural industries from the perspective of the Frankfurt schoolSo to some extent we think negatively of the cultural industriesYour opinion is very thought provoking for Chinese academiaAs far as I knowcontemporary Marxism is not just like Frankfurt schoolFor exampleBritish Marxists are positive about cultural industries and see cultureart and economy in a more dialectic way.
O’ConnorYes.I think it is a very important question.Nowadaysas the cultural and creative industries become more prominent in nationalregional and local strategiesits critics are frequently dismissed as disgruntled Marxists who can only talk about neoliberalism and the commodification of culture or whatever.It’s been forgotten that some of the most groundbreaking work of the last half century on the economics of culture came from within the Marxist tradition.So the political economy schools in both England and France asked some very basic but important questions.They asked how does culture become commodity in contemporary capitalismwith what consequences and how is it managedetc.Adorno and indeed most Marxists upto the 1960s saw culture as ideologicalas part of the ideological superstructure.The political economy schoolwhile not denying thatsuggested it should also be seen as a commodity.They began a very systematic program to understand what the implications of this were and developed a whole area of media and cultural economy studies to follow the idea that culture is a commodity and is subject to the law of commodities.So whilst the media perform ideological functions they are also driven by profit and can often cut across the wishes of the state and other capitalists.The sphere of culture-unlike Adorno’s monolithic scenario-is fragmented across many kinds of capitalists and many different interests.
It’s a very fruitful area of research.And that area of research led on to another very positive ideaif culture is a commodityhow then how should it be managed in a democratic mannerwhat was the role of the market in cultural production and distribution within a democratic society?This political economy orproduction of culture”approach tried to move beyond the opposition ofart and economy”orideology and production”to look at how the two intermeshed.But there has been a division between cultural studies and“production of culture”-though both were rooted in the Marxist traditions.Cultural Studies emphasised more the textinterested in questions about meaningand questions about how meaning was produced within the text.That also drew on a Marxist tradition going back to the Russian formalist schoolconcerned with the materiality of languagethe way in which language and production are socially rooted.There were very different Marxist traditions at play and they were often in conflict-emphasizing the text or the political economic context of production.I think at the momentas the cultural industries have become subject to the creative industries agendamany working in the Marxist tradition have moved into a more critical position.They are critical of the emancipatory promise of creative labour and see it as a new form of exploitationor they see the conglomeration of ownership and control in the global culture industries as at direct odds with the rhetoric of creative freedom that the creative industries agenda promises.Such critique is validbut it needs to be accompanied by a sense of the concrete possibilities for culture now.What kind of positive cultural programme should we be putting forward and what is the role of the market within this.Can we have a progressive cultural marketwhat would that look like?
WangYou put much stress on the role of art as well as its significance in your research on cultural industries.In your understanding of artwhy can art and cultural industry combine with each other seamlessly in contemporary society?As you knowMarx once put forward a proposition thatart is contradictory with the capitalist mode of production”.How do you think of such proposition?
O’ConnorFirst of allI’ll say art and cultural industry do combine in contemporary society because the emergence of filmtelevision dramarecorded popular musiccomic books etc.has not been in a space different fromart”but has intertwined with it at many different levels.It seems foolish today to make a distinction of high and low cultureor art and entertainmentor good and bad based simply on the presence of commercial activities or mass reproduction.This is no longer tenable.Not only have the cultural industries produced some of the greatest art of the 20th century-HitchcockBob DylanThe Sopranos-but much of traditional art is now big business.
But the combination is notseamless”.There are real contradictions between cultural value and the commodity form within which this is placed.How is cultural value be realized when its very function is to satisfy a need or desire than does not yet know itself.It is production for a market of which we know nothingor at least lack certainty.This is not just a Marxist position but one recognized by the heads of Hollywood studies and the biggest music corporations.To assemble creativesto produce new contentto send that out to an unknown market and to find ways of recouping the outlay-this is a profoundly difficult business model.It’s what a Simon Frithfamous culture studies person in Englandcalledrationalizing the irrational”.There’s something irrational about art and culture that makes it difficult to predict and controlin terms of production and reception.Cultural production is not seamlessand it is in these gaps and fissuresthe ambivalences and metamorphoses that many in cultural studies and cultural industries have sought progressive potential.
But I will make two points on that.First is that there has been a change in the last 20 years.Cultural capitalism used to be about production of the Same.This is Adorno’s ideathat The Culture Industry was reducing culture to homogeneouspredictablemechanical products that would satisfy the workers’need for leisure time and make it easy for them to go back to work for the next day.Fordist capitalism looked to the production of homogeneity.In the last 20yearscapitalism has become more about the production of difference.It seeks out differenceit seeks out individuality as a way of generating value.This undermines one of the classic claims for the value of artthat it was against the homogenizing force of capital and commodification.Art was about the specificthe individualthe noninterchangeablethe noncomparable while capitalism is about everything being reduced to commodityto the same value.But now capitalism has learned to make money out of aesthetic value.So looking at Marx’s statement thatart is contradictory with the capitalist mode of production”-part of that I still believe true but part of that is now much more difficult to sustain.Capitalism now uses art and cultureand indeed the values that have traditionally been associated with art and cultureas central to its means of profit and reproduction.It presents profound challenges for any view of art and culture.
WangThere is a theory predicting that art will play a more and more important role in future social developmentbut in realityart often becomes an accomplice of business and power.Then in what form does the illuminative function art used to have exist in today’s world?Can art still play an illuminative role?
O’ConnorFirst of all you must ask who says that art will play a more important role.People say that but recent times they tend to mean that its economic importance will grow.So it’s really important to focus on what actually they are saying and where its importance lies for them.There are an awful lot of people saying that because art is now more important in the economyorthat creativity is central to the workforce of the futuretherefore we are now living in a more creative society.I think it’s now time to say that art is different from creativityor certainly creativity as it is being presentedas an idea of human inventiveness linked to a contemporary market economy.That’s what creative society meansan innovationdriven market economy.But we have also gone on a long way from simply saying that art is not about economicsor workor profitand that it transcends these.It’s difficult to say that any more because it is obvious that in many ways art is part of the economy.Sofor exampleJulian Stallabrassa very good Marxist criticargues that contemporary visual art is the ideology of neoliberalismnot because it talks about the economy but because it talks about freedomabsolute freedom from all social constraintsabsolute imperative to innovateabsolute freedom to roam anywhere in the world and override local values.I said previously that capitalism was about difference and its economy is driven now by finding differences.The ways in which capitalism seeks out these differences in their most aestheticand even antiaestheticrecesses makes it very difficult to separate the old illuminative idea of art from these new economic functions.And in some ways the connections between business and power is not a new thing.You know the Medici promoted the arts as part of their power in Florence in the Renaissance.Cosimo promoted Leonardo and Michelangelo and so on.As Walter Benjamin saidworks of art are the trophies carried by the victors over the heads of their victims.This is now done in very different ways.It used to be done by buying Titians or Leonardo da Vincis.Now it’s done by holding up pop stars or Damian Hirst.So the contemporary relationship between art and power echoes the ways in which this has always beennow configured in a different way.
But I think the illuminative power of art is still there and for me it still links to what lies at the heart of Marxist thought-which is that humans are about selfrealization.And selfrealization is not just expressing oneself or creating a lifestyle or being able to choose.Selfrealization is about realizing your human purpose in some way.To my mindart certainly in the last 250 yearshas been a part of that process.So when people reduce it to creativityI saycreate what and for what purpose?How does it further your own development in this full sense?”This position does link art back to a critical stance towards the society we are in because one asksWhat does Damian Hirst do?Why is there a skull of diamonds?How does that advance human understandings?”So the illuminative power of art is still there.It’s just not in places where we used to see it.But in a way we always have to look around for art in different places.
WangJohn Baldwin’s paintings are examples of the commercialization of art.During the UK Culture Week he showed one of his paintings which was used on the Adidas shoes.He gave us a lecture on art being an attackera new aesthetic point of view.Could you talk about your opinion about his viewpoint?
O’ConnorI didn’t see that painting because I came late.I see this painting now.I’ll comment on one aspect of it because he relates very much to abstract expressionism and also to British and American pop art.And of course John Baldwin comes out of the 1960s pop music scene.He was a designer of LP covers when they were very important before CDs.So he certainly knows that world.What interests me about it is that he saidI’m not an artist.I’m a painter.”He justified that in that he sees part of what a painter does as having a certain level of skill and certain level of understanding of the material with which he works and the tradition within which he works.One of his critiques of what happened in the last 20 years in the art world is that it’s about abstract ideasabout positions and stances and interventions in the media-rather than being concerned with the specific materiality of the medium.What we have now are a range of artists who are well concerned with famewith money.And to do thatthey do not have to become an expert in painting or music.They can intervene in the media world through installationthrough ideas driven conceptual art.I tend to agree with him to an extent.A real sense of art no longer has to be about the material bases out of which it’s being constructed.What the abandonment of that led to in part is the power of the concept artistthe power of the curatorand the power of international art brands.Think again about the idea that contemporary art as the ideology of neoliberalism.So that’s really not so much a comment on the quality of John’s paintings but really about why he saysI’m a painter”why he sticks to a certain level of understanding the material with which he workswhich takes a long time.
WangI know that John’s paintings are very abstract and appears unrelated to the real world.But when he came here for his exhibitionhe told me that when he was a young student in the sixties he read some of Marx’s books.He was particularly impressed by Marx’s explanation of the relationship between art and society.He said when he looks back he sees himself influenced by Marx.So he said his works were related with reality.What do you think about that?
O’ConnorThis goes back to modernist theory.In western artreality”is a reference to which the painting looks.So there are some flowers and here is my painting of some flowers.This is the idea of direct correspondenceor representation and correspondence.It began to disappear with the impressionistsmaybe before.And the classic story of modern art is that gradually the autonomy of the artistic material asserts itself against the real or the picture of the real in that sense.So it becomes more about its own materiality.It constructs its own rulesits own meaning systemrather than taking them from reality.Of course music has never been about reality.I mean Mozart’s symphonies are not the picture of everything.This is one of the reasons music became central to the system of aesthetic art in the 19th century.But this idea that art becomes more and more about itself is a central aspect of the narrative of modernist theory.At the end of this story lie books such as James Joyce’s Ulyssesand Finnigan’s WakePicasso and onto the purely abstraction of the Russian constructivists and American abstract expressionistsand so on.It was classically theorized by Clement Greenberg.He saw modernism as moving into its complete own language without any reference to the real.Critics like Walter Benjamin and of course Adornowho very much supported modernist artsaw this move into abstraction not as an apolitical aesthetic move but about a crisis of modernityabout the inability of representation to take a critical stance on capitalism.Adorno’s writings on Schoenberg emphasized the avantgarde composer’s sense of the spiritual vacuum of artof modernityand the need to break with conventional tonality.Others write about Jackson Pollock and the crisis of the modern subject.For all theoristswhether Marxists or otherwiseabstract art or contemporary art didn’t have tolook”like the real or refer to the real to be saying something about society.So it’s important to realize that Marxist art theory moved away from the Sovietstyle socialist realism.That a painting doesn’t look like anything in the real does not mean it’s not about the real.The key debate in this is that in the 1940s between George Lukács and Adorno.They represented two sidesMarxist socialist realism versus avantgarde theory.It’s a debate that still has echoes today-writers such a Frederick Jameson still return to this as a touchstone.
WangIn your opinionuniversity plays a very important role in future development of a global city.Among different disciplineswhat kind of significance do the Humanities have?In Chinathe Humanities seem to encounter many problemssome of which are caused by the policy of Neoliberalism while others by humanities themselves.What pattern should today’s humanities form and how can it develop itself?
O’ConnorYesthe problem with humanities is not just in Chinaalso in Australiathe UK and America.In England-because it’s different in Scotlandthe Humanities were cut by 40%in the last year by the new government—“because we can’t afford them”.Australia is not in recession like England but it also has systematically cut humanities departments over the last fifteen years.Why is that happening?Wesocietyare now richer than any other time in the history of the world and yet at the same time we cut humanities departments.I think this is a really important question.I would say there are three forces behind it.In your question you ask about Neoliberalism.I think there are two kinds of NeoliberalismNeoliberalism 1 and Neoliberalism 2.The first kind was a sort of conservative version.Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the seventies and eighties were against the welfare stategenerally pushing back the statefreeing all the marketsetc.But they were culturally quite conservative.They saw the overregulation of the market and the welfare state ascreeping socialism”but they also linked this to the 1960s counterculturethe New Leftlong hairpop musicantireligionfree love”immorality—all those things.Reagan and Thatcher stressedGreat Britain”American patriotism”Victorian old style values”moralityfamilyand so on.So it was quite conservative even though Margaret Thatcher wasin her own waya revolutionary.That is Neoliberalism 1conservative Neoliberalism.It’s very much against humanitiescultural radicalism in the universitiescountercultural ideas-and so they try to get rid of itthough they never achieved this.The second kind of Neoliberalismprogressive or modernist Neoliberalismbegan in the 1990s.It developed the strong focus on free marketpushing back the state and so onbut it was no longer culturally conservative.And in part the creative industries emerged because in this version of neoliberalism. Modernismartistic creativitybeing radicalbeing a pop starthese were now part of the program of modernization.The cultural industries suggested a link to new forms of creativitynew forms of innovation emerging in the cultural economy-which was becoming much more important.So the second Neoliberalism linked art and culture to the economy and thus dropped many of the themes of conservative Neoliberalism.The sixties were no longer demonised but hailed as a new productive cultural resource.At first people in the humanities and arts thought“OhgreatWe’ve been valued.Finally they see us as useful.”But in fact it was so only if you serve the economy.So those two kinds of Neoliberalism have done different things.And in some ways the second one could be more damagingbecause the first one was from the outside-rightwing conservatives attacking art and culture-and this one was from the insideinside the universityYeslet’s get involved in the market.”Those are two reasons.
The third reason as you suggest in the questionis that it’s the humanities itself that is somehow complicit.I think the tradition of culture studies involved an attack on elitismon the university as the bastion of the power and privilegeon the disciplines as an apparatus of power.All these accusations-and many were well founded—undermined the sense of why the humanities are valuable.An academic called Graeme Turner at University of QueenslandAustralia wrote a very good paper on thishow cultural studies and humanities were part of their own problem.I should say maybe that they also in certain areas became very narrow in their thoughtsfocusing exclusively ontexts”as in deconstructionism.They had nothing to say about the world outsidejust this narrow textual focus.In these ways I think the humanities were attacked from the outside and emptied from the inside.
We have to ask what are the humanities about?They are about what it is to be human.It sounds very simple butWhy are we human?What are human beings?”are valuable questions.If that goesthen I think we’ll live in a much more dangerous and frightening society when nobody discusses those questions.But we have to broaden out so on the second part of your question“What do humanities do?”They need to engage with communities outside the universities.About the real issues.Terry Eagleton is very humorous on this question when he talks about culture studies fixated on some archaic minor issues.He talks about cultural studies writing about the history of body hair when two thirds of the world are starving.So it must engage with real issues.It must strive to occupy the place of the public intellectual.You know academics have privileges.We do have.But we also have responsibilities.Our knowledge should be autonomousit should be freeit should be selfregulated.And the neoliberal idea that this should be linked to performanceto economic outputto commercial things.It’s a disasterBut we must have responsibility to engage with real issues.I think that’s our job and in the field of the cultural industries the humanities should engage with our production of culture and all its different issues.It’s not only to do commercial research or helping commercial development.It can do that a bit.But it’s there to articulate what value culture might be or should beabout what this society should be.In that sense the humanities are very valuable.And their defense should be a matter of urgency.
WangYesterdayyou said that you were quite interested in the development of Chinese society and thought it stood for a new direction and new possibilities.Please tell us why you think so.
O’ConnorI’m still unsure about this.There are two things.First of all the rise of China-whether it’s a peaceful rise or not.The rise of China has a basic weight that changes things.It’s not like the rise of South Korea or even the rise of Japan which were very different.This is a rise of a very large economy with a very different history to the West.When I first came to China in 2004I’d never known any Chinese history.It was another universe for me in terms of my knowledge of history.So its distinct history as well as its weight is going to change things.My recent work has been about how the West and China diverged.In a famous book called The Great Divergence Pomeranz suggests that even in 1830s China had the highest GDP in the world-until it was overtaken by Europe.So the weight of Chinaits pure sizeits distinct historyand the fact that for 2000 years it was the biggest economy in the worldis absolutely crucial.The second aspect that makes me think about differences and possibilities is that the Chinese state still sees itself playing the major role in economy and society.As is wellknownfrom that comes a lot of criticism in the westyou knowthe authoritarian”state and so on.Some of that can be argued.From my point of view the role of the Chinese state stands as a certain representation of persistence of the socialism in the face of that Neoliberalism that has so changed the landscape of the West.Here the statethe various collective agentshave no right to say or do anything about the economy.Any state that insists on its role in creating social unityyou knowis called some sort ofauthoritative state”.So I think the Chinese state represents a different countermodel which remains very relevant.
When we come to the questions of environment and global changeany solution is going to involve the collective power for those changes.The inability of western governments to make significant changesto challenge vested interest mucky makes us think.As I say I’m unsure about this still.But I also see the presence of China at least as putting a big question mark against the narratives of the AngloAmerican or western progress of modernity.It makes us ask the questionWhat is modernity?What might it be?How would we see the difference?Is there a different future?”
WangI was told that you held a strong interest in Chinese aesthetics and artcan you tell us what aspects of China and Chinese art attract you?Does Chinese culture have any influence on your academic research?
O’ConnorI must admit that interest stems from a negative or contrasting perspective.What I mean is that it has a different history.What I would call“modern aesthetic art”emerged really in the 18th century.It contained the idea that art has its own spherehas its own rules.It’s one of the driving characteristics of modernity in Europe.There have been many discourses which claim art as universal value and practiceI do not think this is the case.We spoke above about international contemporary artwhich also presents itself as global.But its languages and narratives are absolutely European and North American modernism.When we look at Chinese artit doesn’t fit in the pattern of the primitive artor modern art because it’s highly sophisticated.It has lots of commercial aspects-such as Chinese novelsa bit like Edo in Tokyo in Japan.Part of it involved modern merchant society or early bourgeois society.So it’s got a history there.And yet what it has made of its subject matter is very different.It’s interesting because it’s not European.By that I don’t mean it’s primitive or in the old styleit’s sophisticated.It’s got huge history.It’s got huge cultural depth and yet it’s not European.How these kinds of differences can show what is singular about European modernity is something I really want to explore.
WangShanghai once occupied a very important and crucial position in the development of Chinese modern art.Some think it is related to the socalled Shanghai culture tradition while others argue that it is due to the systemas in Shanghai there used to be many concessions of western countries.How do you think of the past glory Shanghai used to have in terms of modern art and its unsatisfactory condition today?
O’ConnorQuite honestly the importance of Shanghai is that it was where modernity landed in China.But that is not to saywestern ideas landed in China”because there were not just western ideasbut also other eastern ideas.East meets East”as much asEast meets West”.In the West we constantly underestimate the role of Japanese thought in Chinese modernity.It was also not just about EnglandAmerica and Francebut a story full of Irish and Polish revolutionaries and Germans and Russians.A whole range of people went into that space of modernity.What’s so interesting about Shanghai is not someEast versus West”or modernization of Chinese culture.It’s actually a sort of free space in which a lot of different ideas emerged.What I see as connected to Shanghai are different ideas of Chinese modernity.Many of them were shut off by the 1949 revolution.It was impossible to carry these on in those days.Given the rapid economic development and the economic difficulties of the first 40 years of the PRCit was never going to go back to that sort of experiment in modernity.Personally I think now China should have security to look in a mature sort of way at those different modernities that emerged in Shanghai.What is there in contemporary Shanghai culture is something differentunique whose strengths should be developed.And on the one handthe city promotes that golden ageyou knowthe decadence and the style and the glamour.It promotes that as Shanghai’s image and people are buying to it.At the same time Shanghai culture is very controlled.It’s controlled in three ways.First it’s strongly controlled ideologically by the city authorities much more than in Beijing maybe because Beijing is closer to power.People say.But also there is a different structure of authority in Beijingthere is not just one big authority.Therefore there are always routes around through different lines of power.The cultural economy of Shanghai is very heavily dominated by big state owned enterprises.The Shanghai Media Group is an enormous company and it sucks in all the opportunities for cultural producers.There are other such companies in the city.In marketing the city tries to recreate the atmosphere of free space and the golden yearsbut in reality cultural production in the city is far from being this free space.The third reason is it’s too commercial.It has commercial energies but they are very shortterm.This is maybe natural in some waysmake money now because who knows what will happen in the future.But there are some ways for the city to intervene if it is really serious about recreating its cultural energy.It should begin to invest into new kinds of spaces and possibilities where new businessesnew cultures and new experiments can take place.Shanghai really needs to do thatneeds to relax a bit to give more scopenot to theprivate sector”in the sense of largescale global companies-I’m not saying bring in Disney-but to its own small companies and freelancesShanghai or Chinese actors that are essential to a vibrant cultural economy.
WangHow do you evaluate Shanghai Expo from the perspective of cultural construction?After the Expois the most serious social problem economicpoliticalor cultural?
O’ConnorWhat can we say about Expo?I could say it says everything about the strength and weaknesses of contemporary Shanghai-if I can be controversial in the last questionIt shows absolutely amazingI mean worldamazing ability to mobilize the resourcesphysical or financialand organization of these resourceswithin such huge projects.There is no other place in the world that can do thatmaybe apart from Beijing.But the question iswhat is the content”.I think there are real problems with the contents in there.I went to the Chinese pavilion on Sunday and I went to the‘dialogue’section.I must say it’s a scene that I’ve never seen in a long time.People queued up to go on a little train to whiz past fairly lowcontent exhibits.It is a scene repeated across the Expo.The questions that it raised about the future of the city-I felt there was a real lack of hard content and real serious questions.The questions and some of the answers could be found in the real city outsideSo in some ways the Expo set us thinking about Shanghai itself.Physically it’s there-that’s quite clear.It’s now for us to think about and get serious about some content.
中文摘要:
贾士汀·欧康纳(Justin O’Connor)现为澳大利亚昆士兰科技大学创意产业学院教授。2008年前曾在英国利兹大学文化产业系任教。1995—2006年在曼彻斯特城市大学任教并担任曼彻斯特城市大学“曼彻斯特流行文化研究所”主任。其主要研究领域是城市文化、创意产业、文化政策和城市再生。曾为英国、澳大利亚、俄国等多个国家的城市创业产业发展提供咨询。代表性著作有《艺术与创意产业》、《创意城市、创意经济:亚欧视角》等。2010年贾士汀受聘为上海交通大学人文学院访问讲席教授,在交大工作期间,王杰教授对他进行了访谈,就创意产业研究与马克思主义美学研究的联系、马克思主义美学的新发展等问题进行了探讨。
关键词:
文化产业;创意产业;马克思主义美学;艺术