A DIFFERENT KIND OF DRAGONT h e P r o c e s s o f M a k i n g S t u d i o Z i

A Chinese Dutch artists and designers collective in Rotterdam

Master Contemporary Asian Studies

University of Amsterdam

Supervisor: Gladys Pak Lei Chong

Author: Sabine Wong/van der Horst 0417661

Amount of words: 29708

29 August 2013

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Nimisha Waij for walnuts and proofreading. To professor dr. Diederick Raven, professor

Jeroen de Kloet and dr. Tina Harris for reading draft manuscripts. To the individuals of Studio Zi to

opening their workspaces, collaborations and hearts to me. To my supervisor Gladys Chong. To Koen

Mok for many great and little things.

Cover image: Dragon by Koen Mok ©. Studio Zi logo by Fin Zhao ©.Photoshop edit by Sabine Wong.All other images copyright lay with their respective owners.Nothing may be re-used without the artist’s consent.

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Table of ContentsIntroduction 5

Character Appendix 10

1. Theoretical framework 11

1.1. On creation, selves and collectivities 11

1.1.1.Matter and mind in the process of making 11

1.1.2. Mind over matter? 12

1.1.3 Art and Deleuze 13

1.2.Assemblage theory 15

1.2.1. Irreducibility 15

1.2.2. Decomposability 15

1.2.3. Segments of content and of expression 16

1.2.4. Re/de-Territorialization and Coding 17

1.2.5. Assemblage versus intersectionality 17

1.2.6. Assembling within the meshwork 18

1.2.7. Ensnarement of desire 19

1.2.8. An assemblage within animist ontologies 19

1.2.9. Ant meets spider - Alternate ontologies 20

1.2. Hybridity 22

1.2.1.We have always been hybrid 22

1.2.2 How to understand hybridity 23

1.2.3. Multi-culturalism in Dutch society 25

1.2.5. Problems with hybridity, rather: multiplicity 26

2. Methodology 27

2.1. Anthropology and art 27

2.2.Methods 28

2.3. Ethics and my position as a researcher 28

2.4 Setting 31

3. Red/Blue/Purple = Chinese/Dutch/hybrid? 32

3.1.Introduction - becoming purple 32

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3.2. Searching for home and belonging 33

3.2. Food and cultural heritage celebration 41

3.4. Joyful deliverance through making 46

3.5. Beyond hybridity into cosmopolitan multiplicity 49

3.4. Conclusion 52

4. Assembling Studio Zi 53

4.1. Laying out the territory 53

4.2. Coding the assemblage “How Chinese are you?” 53

4.2.3. Power in the assemblage 54

4.3. Healing the route to roots 55

4.3.1. Being othered in the past 56

4.3.2. Transformation of relationship to being Chinese 56

4.4. Dangers of hybridity 57

4.4.2. Controversial ‘Chineseness’ 59

4.5. Strategies of Hybridity 62

4.5.1.Self-orientalism 62

4.5.2. Hybrid bridge builders 62

4.5.3.Chinese only exhibitions 63

4.5.4. Positive stereotypes on Chinese 63

4.6 Conclusion: 64

5. Old China: A dream within a dream 65

5.1.The mirage of China Light: 65

5.2. Enchanted by boundedness 70

5.3. Chinese New Year 70

5. Making the Museumnacht 73

Conclusion - Making is Being 79

Literature 83

Images 87

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Introduction After embarking my research on Chinese art & design collective Studio Zi, I found out I was

participating in an ethnographic movement initiated by themselves. It is a stream of making, combining

material exploits as well as symbolic story-telling that did not come forth from me as a designated

researcher or ethnographer, I merely joined their midst while they were already practicing ethnography

writing, creating exhibitions as they assembled together in a loosely knit community of artists and

designers in Rotterdam who share a Chinese background. This thesis is the result of this process, of

deep thought and attempting to contribute to something valuable - innovation of culture through

making - and how this particular collective does this.

Art and anthropology were two processes where I occupied the liminality, transcending binaries.

The book Between Art and Anthropology opens with an interesting analogy to illustrate the ways art and

anthropology can work amongst each other:

A simple analogy is the flow of two liquid coloured paints that are mixed on a surface, where not only do new colours evolve but skeins and threads of both colours are interwoven and intermingled, and yet in places remain completely separate. Despite the two colours maintaining their original identities in place, together they achieve new colours and forms. Schneider & Wright ‘Between Art and Anthropology’ 2010:1.

Serendipity has it that it is same analogy used in the video of Studio Zi printed above here in a

code.1 In it founder Fenmei Hu sits in front of a piece of white paper. Two blobs of red

and blue paint appear on the paper that swirl around and turn into threads - one red

thread, one blue. The word zi 紫 means purple: the color that is found when the two are

combined. These two threads spin off towards the edge of the screen, as the material that

binds the artists and designers that form the group of Studio Zi. The red

symbolizes their Chinese blood and blue their Dutch nationality. Together they

form the image of a hybrid self created through art and design. The symbol of

Studio Zi is an abstraction of a Chinese lucky knot, an intermingling of red and

blue.

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1 This is an enchanting coincidence. I had written the description of the video before I opened the book that contains this quote and the words are strikingly similar. Serendipity plays an important part in scientific discoveries albeit not often acknowledged notes André Klukhuhn (2002).

Figure 1. Film still from the video 4:04

Figure 2. Film still from the video 4:06

What I have discovered are not two threads turning blue, red and purple where they mix, but rather a

multiplicity of differences and processes of becoming. This research is about the assemblage of Studio

Zi that operates mainly from the city of Rotterdam. Different as they are, its members assembled on

the basis of their shared background of being ‘Chinese’ and their passions for creating as artists and

designers. Having grown up in Dutch environments, in migrant families scattered across the

countryside with parents toiling in kitchens for six to seven days a week. The changing worlds around

them captivated their wondering interest and a strong urge to create developed within them and create

they did. Sketching and drawing on everything, wrapping papers for plastic packages of westernized

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Chinese food: Foe Yong Hai and Babi Pangang they filled with lines upon lines upon lines. While for

the first generation migrant members the change in location was beyond their control as they migrated

at a young age at their parents decision - pen and paper were what they could touch upon and express

themselves with. For the second generation migrants feeling different ánd the same, growing up in

overwhelmingly white countrysides where their family was the only Chinese one in the village, creating

empowered them as well.

Grasping the pencil a whole world could reveal itself unto the paper, a world of their own

creation where they have the power to express as it they see fit. Later following their passion for beauty

and creation, they went onward into higher arts education, quite often against the will of their parents

who wished their children would have a more financially stable education. And even later at the advent

or late beginning of their careers they decided: “Together we are stronger”, as some art scenes

appeared to be just as white-dominated as the countrysides. Thus they founded Studio Zi2 to be

mutually inspired by their background, using the same creative power to work with this in their own

way.

My fieldwork was an action research where I joined the assemblage to create and initiate

projects to better the community of Rotterdam and the collective itself through artistic

means. SZi3 creates cultural projects on a voluntary self-supporting basis since their

foundation in May 2011. The multidisciplinary art installations are characterized by their

colorful and sleekly designed performance.

SZi’s art projects are not so much “haunted by Chineseness” as art historian Francis Maravillas

(1991) influenced by the events of 1989 states diasporic Chinese artists are. Rather they are playful,

celebratory and politically innocuous. Also not all of their projects are related to China or Chineseness

at all: the Museumnacht I participated in was perceived by the group as not having anything to do with

Chineseness. Chineseness is explored through ‘New Chinese’ creativity - often inviting fresh art school

graduates from China to be inspired by each other or showcasing work of young animators from the

mainland - as well as through ‘Old Chinese’ symbols, imagery and holding to dates for festivals - for

example holding dumpling-making-workshops and traditional tea ceremonies on the Moon Festival as

well as organizing the cultural aspects of Chinese New Year yet always bringing a fresh twist to the

traditional by use of color-schemes. For example serving pastel-colored cupcakes next to the traditional

tea ceremony. Hybridity emerges through these combinations of materials and the creative applications

of both traditional and modern and influences from various sources ‘Eastern‘ and ‘Western’. Like

figure 1 and 2 show: threads form trails that intersect and meet each other at hives of activity, here

organisms form and the assemblage is formed.

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2 In the rest of the thesis I will refer to the collective by the abbreviation of SZi.

3 3 Next to this is a QR-code of the introduction video of Studio Zi. It can easily be scanned in order to go to visit this link http://youtu.be/C8SH7-qyKuo. It can be scanned with a smart phone that has a QR scanner app.

Art has the ability to slow down the flow of perceptions that constitute our experiences of the

world and the self (Deleuze in Colebrook 2002:42). The question that guided me throughout my

research is: How do projects of SZi and its members - both as works of art and as processes of

making - relate to the production of hybrid selves?

For this question the theory of assemblage works like a toolbox to explain and examine SZi.

The projects of SZi, its members, the works of art as processes of making and even this thesis

together all form the assemblage. As I makes this document, it makes me and it makes SZi. As the

fieldwork changed me, I changed the content of their projects, I am within what I have researched,

never outside. SZi’s work is self-ethnographic in the way it tells stories of Chinese Dutch migrants and

it is anthropological in the way they seek to transform social reality. Rather than becoming or claiming a

right to being “Chinese Dutch”, a categorization that has no real meaning or content and consists of

merely a linguistic stereotype, SZi members claim the right to be themselves and to make what they

want. Their works express affections such as homesickness, jubilance or psychedelic introspection.

Their projects work to chart healing routes back to their roots. As they assemble in a collective, they

map Chineseness in a celebratory way. They are their own ethnographer. I am merely reflecting upon

them and reaching out within webs of theory - materials in their own right - and crafting a thesis about

this group to see how their making works.

Among the inner core of the group there are discussions over how Chinese symbolism and

imagery should be used, clearly demonstrating the contestation on cultural identity and art that is also

shown in academic literature - “Does our work need to be ‘Chinese’ in some way because we have a

Chinese background? And what does it mean to refer to ‘China’ or ‘Chineseness’ in our work?” This is

debated amongst the members of the fluctuating group, keeping in touch through email. The

peripheries of the group stretch out to as much as twenty-five at times or as little as an inner core of

seven (or less). All members are ethnically Chinese professionals in the creative industry and this is

safeguarded by the founder as primary condition for entering the collective as a full-fledged member.

Yet there is also a danger to the territoralization of the assemblage. Racial, national and ethnic

identity are often conflated in the Netherlands and then called: ‘culture’ (Guadaloupe & De Rooji

2007). The same process of inclusion that draws SZi members together in a familiar “cozy sense of

Chineseness” (Ang 2001:241) excludes others from participating and rarely it dictates the content or

form of projects SZi participates in.4 As Deleuze and Guattari declare in “Anti-Oedipus - Capitalism

and Schizophrenia” (1972), one of the seminal texts for assemblage theory5: “A revolutionary group at

the preconscious level always remains subjugated even in seizing power as long as this power itself

refers to a form of force that continues to enslave and crush desiring-production.” (1972:348). The

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4 Celebrating cultural heritage and background is not problematic, but when making is restricted and for example a member’s personal free interest to draw more on other say Japanese influences in their work is inhibited, this is problematic.

5 A work that seeks to guide in deeply uprooting internal and external fascism from the fabric of social life.

group assembled to fight cultural essentialism, yet by marking the territories of the group to only

extend to those who are “Chinese” and sometimes to mainly doing so-called “Chinese things” they

might feed the “tragic popularity” of notions of cultural purity (Gilroy 1986:7 quoted in Kraidy

2007:58) and attributes to the reification of culture.

There is a need for ethnographic research on Chinese Dutch migrants, for there is a gap in

literature and lack of visibility of migrants hailing from “China” (Chow 2011). Taking on a creative

profession means moving up in social hierarchy over their parent’s generation who slaved as restaurant-

holders so that their children could attend higher education. An artist or designer is perceived higher

ranking than food-producers based upon the emphasis on providing novel, innovative ideas through

the mind rather than sustaining the physical body. Becoming artists and designers they challenge

dominant Dutch discourses of migrants mired in a backward past6 and becoming artists and designers

which tend to be seen as cultural creators and innovators that push the society onward (Welz 2003:

257). By wearing its cultural identity like a badge (Ahmad 2001:76), SZi has increased its ability to

participate. Thereby Chineseness itself becomes commodified in a multi-culturalist Netherlands.

The process of making arts installations is a physical ‘hands-on’ task that for its non-textuality is

challenging to research. Anthropology is usually seen as the translation from one cultural text to

another (Ingold 1994:331). The ‘process of making’ through the engagement with materials is a field of

emerging research in new material studies (Iris & Dolphijn 2012; Ingold 2013). Materials are seen to be

alive and full of motion and agency, rather than taking objects for granted in material studies and

presuming the inertness of matter. Ingold dubs this theoretical approach the meshwork. I have coupled

this way of looking and thinking with DeLanda’s adaptation of Deleuze & Guattari’s assemblage.

The liminality in this research has also been between that of researcher and research-object, as I

myself am a distant Chinese Dutch migrant and I quickly became very close to the members of the

collective - ‘going native’ as they would say. Rotterdam is my hometown, which strays from the cliché of

anthropologists going to exotic and distant realms for their research. I discovered plenty of diversity

and difference though at this familiar setting. Also since this was an action research I worked with the

team to create the art projects rather than just describing the people and their actions passively as in an

ethnography, thus the borders between anthropology and art were blurred. I was making and thinking

together with them, engaging with the materials and proposing new ideas and forms.

This is what professor Tim Ingold in his book Making (2013) sees as a possibility for

anthropology and art - to study with the people and to learn from them, anthropology with art rather

than of. Proposing new ideas is something that is direly needed in our current environmental and

economic crises (ibid.:8), just passively describing a group of people is not what should be the

anthropologist’s task I agree with him. Anthropology can be transformational, not only by borrowing

or building upon ethnographic qualitative data to give a mouthpiece for others to share solutions (ibid.:

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6 Although Chinese migrants occupy a special place in the Dutch migration narrative as model minorities (Chow 2011)

9). Participant observation is more about learning from people rather than just collecting ‘data’ about

them and in the conclusion I will outline the lessons I received from the collective which are beneficial

and life-giving to other grassroots collectives working for a particular goal in society.

The thesis is built up as follows. First I lay out the theoretical toolbox, to explain the meshwork

and the assemblage - both instruments striving for social justice and equity in their own ways - useful

for studying the interweaving of the collective with its material and symbolic aspects. Then I highlight

some artworks of the members and life-stories connected to their works in a more ‘anthropology of ’

fashion, loosely following the categorization in subgroups they proposed themselves as first generation,

first generation students and second generation. Following this I will deal with the why and how

assemblage of SZi and outline several dangers for this group. Tales of migration and wishing to belong

in Dutch society are threads that bind the collective together; the unwilling experiences of being an

outsider. Then an ethnographic chapter that shows the mirage-like version of ‘Old China’ that was

made during Chinese New Year and China Light and finally an treatise on Making the Museumnacht

The dream-catchers of SZi transgress the borders of imagination and materiality.

Character Appendix

First off, I have chosen to anonymize members only during parts that contain personal

information. As their works are recognizable, I have decided not to anonymize them in these parts. I

used colors for their names, these are totally arbitrary. Members have given me permission to write on

them and to use their full name.

Three groups can be identified in SZi on the basis of their background and environment when

growing up, which was pointed out to me by several members and friends of the collective. Since the

group is always fluctuating, my research focused on the ten very active members of the group during

the time that I was there, with the exception of Blue who I sought out for the influential role he played

in the initial fase of SZi’s formation.

One group is the first generation migrants who came at a young age to the Netherlands, such as

Darkblue came at age nine, Orange at age sixteen and Yellow at infancy. This group I will call the first

generation migrants, 1G.

The second group are the second generation migrants who were born and attended higher

education in the Netherlands, such as Lightblue, Lightpurple and Brown and Purple, these five

members are the second generation migrants, 2G.

Then a group of Chinese students who came here later in life, after either finishing their

bachelors in China, or as one who studied for as well bachelor and master here, such as Blue, Red and

Green, this group I will refer to as the first generation migrants as students. 1GS

1G group: Darkblue (9 y.o.) Orange (16 y.o.) Yellow (2 y.o.), [Grey - not really part of SZi]

2G group: Lightblue, Lightpurple, Brown, Purple, Darkgreen

1GS group: Blue (19 y.o.), Red (24 y.o.), Green (21 y.o.)

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1. Theoretical framework1.1. On creation, selves and collectivities1.1.1.Matter and mind in the process of making

“[T]o inhabit the world is [..] to join in the process of its formation.” (Ingold 2010a:6)

! “Form is the end, death”, “Form-giving is life” Paul Klee, Swiss painter 1961:76 in ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Ingold 2010:1)

To understand the artist and designers collective SZi, I would like to flesh out the theoretical debates

around making. For this I will look at creation, selfhood and collectivity through a Deleuzian and a

Ingoldian framework: the assemblage (as interpreted by Manuel DeLanda) and the meshwork. To

explain how making works, we will need to look at the gap between theory and practice. One of these

gaps is the hylomorphic model, which - initiated by Greek philosophers - presents a specific manner of

humans making things which does not do justice to the empirical experience of making. Then via the

assemblage versus the meshwork discussion I will show how the practice of making forms a challenge

to western scientific ontologies on the relation between matter and mind which is visualized vertically

rather than horizontal.

First off, the process of making is not some intellectual buzzword or new “concept”, it is very

clearly and succinctly: the process in which things are made by people and these things can be anything.

Academics - the thinkers - were at a long time loss how to properly describe or understand the way

things were made by the tinkerers. Tim Ingold criticizes the way that material culture debates were

overly theoretically, foggy and mind-boggling in his article ‘Materials versus Materiality’ (2011a:(xx).

Materiality was a concept that he attacked for the sake of it being unclear to what it implied, instead he

argues we should look at the materials the actual wood, clay, stone, plastic polymers etcetera that not

only constitute the everyday objects we use but also form the houses and the floors on which we move

and live. The properties and qualities of materials play a hugely more important role when looking at

making something, than was earlier presupposed via the hylomorphic model.

The hylomorphic model was the basis for understanding the process of making by the thinkers.

Starting with Plato’s pupil Aristotle in the Greek ages, the imposition of form unto matter as if matter

is inert clogged our perception of how things are made. Plato placed strong importance upon an

abstract transcendent rationality, he called “Soul” as the do-er of things, rather than the body using a

tool (Ingold 1999:20). As Plato envisioned a society based upon an individual body/self, the

subservient body performing menial tasks on behalf of the mind’s command proved excellent to justify

the existence of slavery, as the workforce could be the arms using the tools while the philosophers

could be the thinkers that ruled the society with their supreme knowledge and intellect (Coleman 1989

quoted by ibid.). In contemporary societies the hylomorphic model still brings hierarchy in western

societies. Through clearly delineating different tasks for the body and mind, emphasizing the

transcendent nature of the latter, menial and physical labor become regarded as lesser. Anthropology

professor Diederick Raven (xx):6) notes that there seems to be a near universal thrift between 11

‘tinkerers’ and ‘thinkers’. This distinction not only occurs in western societies, but amongst

Confucianists as well as in Japan (Kondo 1990:240).

1.1.2. Mind over matter? The design or idea is held to be more important in the process of making than the materials

themself. This relates to the Platonic representation where outside of the cave ‘Real True Ideas’ hover

and cast shadows that we humans, locked up in illusions and shackled to our limited reality, perceive to

be real. The hierarchy of idea above matter is triangular. While the approach that Ingold proposes is

egalitarian and processual; we as humans “swim in an ocean of materials” in which we hold no specific

higher position, as makers, he proposes, we are “participants” in a field of materials (2007:29).

It is often assumed that an artisan begins work with the design or image of the object already in

mind and then when the image or design is realized in the material the job is done (Ingold 2011:22).

Ingold (2012) disagrees with the way that matter is rendered inert by this assumption. Ingold (2012)

challenges the conceit of the maker as a transcendent form-imposer. He likens a maker to a participant

running around in between materials in the process of creation. Similar to the bird that is making its

nest. If one takes the example of marble and a sculptor chalking away the figure he had already

envisioned - this is clearly forming matter to a predisposed design. It is not working in partnership with

materials and their inherent properties. In the hylomorphic model the power to create a sculpture is in

the human mind, the creator plucks a transcendent concept out of the immateriality and projects it into

physicality. Yet what is genuinely making the figure? Is it the design or concept? Or is it the repetitive

motion of skillfully engaging hands coupled with tools, applying force on the hard marble (Ingold

2007;2011a;2012;2013)? Philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (2004:377) argue that the

essential relation is not between matter and form but between materials and forces. The force of a

repetitive skilled hand-movement with a tool in hand upon a wooden block is what gives form.

These forces can be found within the body of the sculptor and the skillful way he uses the

tools, but also the materials themselves interact and have properties of their own. The connecting force

between materials and intentionality towards a specific shape or outcome of the project is skill. Skills in

this sense are understood as that which is needed for every task - no matter how mundane - ranging

from wielding a spoon or fork to constructing a work of art or even writing a master’s thesis. Ingold’s

approach can be summed up by Skilled Practice Involves Developmentally Embodied Responsiveness

that abbreviates as SPIDER in response to the ANT of Actor Network Theory. The two have a

conversation below here.

Ingold (2012) proposes to consider qualities of materials in the way a craftsperson does. In our

alchemistical worldview this was the common way the material world was engaged with, alchemists

looked at the properties and qualities of materials to seek the point where it would merge or transform

into another thing - solve et coagula. The very root of the word material comes from mater - mother

whose meaning derived from feminine-gender Latin and Greek words for “wood that is alive or has

been alive” (Ingold 2011:28). The original meaning of matter was nowhere near the inert understanding

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matter of today. Therefore Ingold (2011a:67) urges for “Rethinking the animate, reanimating thought”,

which I will entail more on in the meshwork explanation.

The forces do not necessarily need to be bound up within individual minds and bodies, as

Ingold’s quote of the meshwork illustrates the interconnectedness of ourselves as organisms. Ingold

states (2011:16): “the entangled currents of thought that we might describe as ‘mind’ are no longer

confined within the skull than are the flows of materials comprising corporeal life confined within what

we might call the body.” The mind is not limited by the skin or skull (Malafouris 2012:3843).

Philosopher Andy Clark 1997:53) called the mind “a leaky organ”. Yet not only does the mind leak

from the skull, in fact everything leaks. The boundaries between life’s organisms are only sustained by

the continuous flow of materials across them (Ingold 2011a:86). Matter persists in movement, in flux,

in variation (Ingold 2011b:4).

Without these boundaries between organism, the conceit of ideas rising up in “isolated minds”

is preposterous. Ingold & Hallem (2007:8) liken ideas to places where pedestrians come to visit. One

person might find a path that leads towards an idea, linger on it, perhaps circle around it and then

return later. Every time the idea is visited it is slightly different. When the person leads others towards

the idea it is also changed, as each visitor brings their own particular experiences of each time the idea

as place is visited. But Ingold & Hallem (ibid.) state that there would be no ideas without the trails of

people moving to and fro. Only when seen in retrospect can ideas be perceived as “the spontaneous

creations of an isolated mind encased in a body, rather than way stations along the trails of living

beings, moving through a world.” (2007:8). This is why we can say: “to inhabit the world is [..] to join in

the process of its formation.” (Ingold 2010a:6). As our bodies and minds are shaped by the world, we

form it via our every interaction with the Fabric of life7 or as Ingold calls it: meshwork.

1.1.3 Art and Deleuze“A schizoanalysis schizophrenizes in order to break the holds of power and institute research into a new collective subjectivity and a revolutionary healing of mankind. For we are sick, so sick, of our selves!” (Seem in Deleuze & Guattari 1972:xxvii)

Trails of thought leading to ideas are sometimes worn by excessive traffic. Gilles Deleuze seeks those

thoughts that resist being discovered by the casual observer, hidden pathways overgrown with

shrubbery. Western thought has been influenced by seeking to find some kind of representational truth

behind the phenomena, leading all the way back to Plato and his ‘the true Ideas’ behind the shadows we

are looking at in the cave (Colebrook 2002:21). The word phenomena - things appearing to view -

presupposes a truth behind perceptions and images is what leads to stereotyping, cultural identity

essentialization and a general way of simplifying social reality in categories (ibid.). Deleuze works

against the tendency for thought to settle with the most obvious or the least resistance.

For Deleuze philosophy, art and literature are powers to transform life (ibid.:12). Each

art form has its specific power. Philosophy and art’s interaction should create difference and divergence

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7 I prefer this term

rather than common sense or agreement (Colebrook 2002:12) Philosophy has to do with creating new

ideas, while art has to do with creating new experiences. But the two can transform each other.

Art creates affections and perceptions, which free forces from the particular bodies of

those who experience them (ibid.).When we can almost grasp emotions as they are channeled by the art

piece, art has the ability to externalize emotions in a de-personal way. Boredom can be expressed

through art without it meaning that the public or the artist who makes a piece is bored.

Art has the ability to slow down the flow of perceptions (Colebrook 2002:24). This flow of

varying differing perceptions is the only truth according to Deleuze (ibid.). Or as Claire Colebrook

(ibid.:6) puts it: “There will be nothing but a ‘swarm’ of appearances with no foundation of the

experiencing mind or subject”. Yet humans derive selfhood, considering themselves to be a self based

upon their flow of perceptions. As Colebrook puts it (2002:24): “I regard myself as a person with an

identity, not as a flow of perceptions. So when I experience sound, color and texture, I subordinate it in

an everyday concept.” As art slows it down, it does not help to build selfhood - rather it disengages the

ordered flows of experience into its singularities. These singularities are experiences of differing

perception that elude us as we experience objects as wholes. So rather than constructing an identity, art

has a way of disintegrating the identity into flows of perceptions, in which the senses are open and not

limited by restraining structures of thought.

O’Sullivan (2010:197) notes that aesthetics might be a name for the “rupturing quality of art: its

power to break our habitual ways of being and acting in the world (our reactive selves); and on the

other, for a concomitant second moment: the production of something new”. A genuine encounter is

close to this, this is what Deleuze calls it when we come face to face with an object of senses that

rupture our habitual ways of thinking and in that moment we are able to produce “unfamiliar and

perhaps more productive economies.” These new productive economies are what Deleuze & Guattari

call ‘desiring-revolution’. As Mark Seem (in Deleuze & Guattari 1972:xxii) notes: “[T]he evolution of a

life-style and of a political system which give priority to the protection, the maximum use, and the

enjoyment of the one resource that is almost equally distributed among all people: personal energy

under personal control.” This is part of what art, philosophy and anthropology share - the “call for a

new earth and people that do not yet exist” (1991:61 quoted by L’Heureux 2011:7).

For Deleuze & Guattari (1991:61 quoted by L’Heureux 2011:7), the artist is “a seer, a

becomer”. This means that they have gone through hardship: “to have seen Life in the living or the Living in

the lived, the novelist or the painter come back with red eyes, and short breath” (ibid.). Through making, producing

and continuing to liberate Life where it is ensnared, art can provide us with a means of resisting the

common realm of perceptions, affections and opinions which oppose themselves to Life. It frees all

that lies in the path of the transcendental plane of immanence that a life effectively is. Let us plug this

all into assemblage theory.

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1.2.Assemblage theory

“Technology is at the heart of a process of blurring fundamental categorical divides

between self and other; a sort of heteroglossia of the species, a colossal hybridisation

which combines cyborgs, monsters, insects and machines into a powerfully posthuman

approach to what we used to call 'the embodied subject.”

Rhizomes, Rosi Braidotti (2005:3)

The assemblage theory I use comes from Manuel DeLanda. He builds upon Deleuze & Guattari’s

proposition of the assemblage in their books Anti-Oedipus as well as a Thousand Plateau’s. DeLanda

(2006) subsequently clarified it and made it more viable to be used in social research. So what exactly is

an assemblage and how may we use this to approach SZi? Assemblage is translation from the original

term agencement that Deleuze & Guattari used (Puar 2012:57). Agencement focuses on the connections

between people, things and places rather than what they signify on themselves, it is a relational

perspective. Assemblage in English has the connotation of bringing together and building, constructing

something (ibid.).

1.2.1. Irreducibility For Deleuze an assemblage means that a whole is not reducible to the sum of its parts.8 As Deleuze

takes the example of a horse, man and a weapon, coupled together they are something more than a

mere collection of things. There is a property that is immanent in all of the heterogenous parts, that

when brought together emerges - in case an added strength of attack. Skill is again the connecting

factor in this; if a Mongolian horseman rides a horse with a bow, he can maneuver with his bow while

riding and this adds to his strength. But if an unskilled rider fumbles with his bow atop his horse, this is

not an assemblage, but more a collection of things. The properties of the parts need to interact with

each other through skillful engagement. Then a property emerges that is more than the sum of its

parts, therefore an assemblage is irreducible.

! DeLanda (2006) introduces the notion of ‘emergent properties’, which although implied by

Deleuze&Guattari is not explicitly mentioned. He takes the example of hydrogen coupled with oxygen,

together they are more than the sum of their parts as they form into water. This becomes clear when

coupled with fire. Hydrogen or oxygen both strengthen the flame, while the assemblage of water

extinguishes it. Therefore water has properties that hydrogen and oxygen don’t have. Suddenly when

coupled this assemblage can extinguish fire. For emergent properties it is vital that lines of

communication are kept open between the members of the assemblage.

1.2.2. Decomposability Another important aspect of the assemblage is its decomposability. Hegel thought parts would form

into a seamless whole. In his time in the 19th century this was a reality, when you would take a heart

outside of a body, it would stop living. His view was that a whole such as “a society” was a seamless

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8 As explained by Manuel Delanda in his public lecture ‘Assemblage Theory, Society, and Deleuze.’ 2011.

totality, of which we were mere products. Deleuze’s assemblage went against this idea (Delanda 2011).

He focused on interiority and exteriority. Exteriority means the parts interact with each other but they

retain their own identity. Interiority means the parts themselves get changed internally by their

association. This is where the assemblage and the ‘Ingoldian’ meshwork differ. Whereas Delanda (2011)

still regards organisms as having an inside and an outside like a circle, Ingold (2011a:69) sees them as

lines or trails, continuously interweaving with other organisms and materials as trails. Therefore from

this perspective parts of an assemblage are always changing already. Ingold (ibid.)’s radically different

idea is: “Things are their relations”.

Versus

Figure 3 An organism as a circle. (Ingold 2011a:69).

Figure 4 An organism as a line (ibid.)

1.2.3. Segments of content and of expression

Another thing assemblages have are segments of content and of expression. In a Deleuzian ontology

the world lacks segmentation, it is body without organs, similarly Ingold’s environment without

objects.Where Aristotle sees a world divided in species and categories, it is without for Deleuze.

Delanda (2011) uses the example of an embryo, in the initial cell there are no divisions and then it

grows and subdivides into tissues, limbs, etcetera. Intensities are the properties that cannot be divided.

If you think of a fetus, the original cell is unsegmented, the segments are produced in the actualization,

they are not given beforehand.

An assemblage is composed of material and expressive components. The distinction between

these are the role that the different parts play, expressive or material. Expression can exist in many

forms, not only textual. Assemblages have twofold expression - material and symbolic. Although

symbolic expression can always been seen as material - even the voice itself has to come forth from air

drawn from the lungs and friction past the vocal chords and written language always involves either ink

and a pen and paper, it is still important as a shorthand to refer to symbolic means of expression.

Delanda (2006) has been criticized for being reductionist by only focusing on materials. Ingold in his

previous work focused more on the cultural aspect (Ingold 2001:28), noting that storytelling is

essentially what makes us humans different from animals, that our endowment of the material world

with meanings and metaphors, is the overlay of culture (Ingold 2001:28):

“Weaving together, in narrative, the multiple strands of action and perception specific to diverse tasks and situations, it serves, if you will, as the Skill of skills. And if one were to ask where culture lies, the answer would not be in some shadowy domain of

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symbolic meaning, hovering aloof from the “hands on” business of practical life, but in the very texture and pattern of the weave itself.”(Ingold 2001:28)

Although at points in later work (2007;2011a) he asks why the word ‘material’ needs to be added to

world. So are stories material components of the meshwork as well? He formulates the goal of his

recent theory to go against the conceit that relationships between humans and nature are always

mediated by culture, therefore it might be that he drifted away from dealing with cultural symbolic

forms too much (2011:64). The expression in symbols cannot be reduced to the mere materials, its

meaning echoes and reverberates through mechanisms such as intertextuality and "memes".

1.2.4. Re/de-Territorialization and CodingWhat is important for an assemblage to stay together is everyday practices. For a community to have

emergent properties, Delanda (2011) asserts, it is vital that they communicate and stay in contact,

otherwise the assemblage will fall apart. There are lines of reterritorialization and deterritorialization.

A community has its boundaries, these are not only physical territories. Sometimes the boundaries are

strengthened which is a process of reterritorialization. When there is conflict boundaries can be

enforced like between ethnic groups - the physical territories but also inclusion and exclusion - “Are

you really one of us?”. Then Delanda (ibid.; 2006) added another parameter to the assemblage, which is

coding. Coding can be high or low. These are the ways in which time and space are formatted - whether

or not the community adheres to a strict set of codes regarding their behavior and their time and space,

such as in a monastery. With the two handles of territorialization and coding the machinelike property

of the assemblage becomes apparent.

1.2.5. Assemblage versus intersectionalityFor the theory of assemblage to be used meaningfully it is important we note the distinction between

intersectionality and assemblage (Puar 2012:63). Where the intersectional approach splits individuals on

the basis of their signifiers such as race, gender, age and class, the assemblage does not look at these

signifiers and rather looks to the bodies, objects and things that are related and connected to each other

directly and the ‘intensities’ that are transmitted between themselves (Puar 2012:60). These intensities

are properties that cannot be divided anymore (Delanda 2011). Rather than making generalizing

statements about “Chinese Dutch artists” or even “Studio Zi as a collective” as if it is a seamless whole,

assemblage theory means looking at the emergence of difference. Jason Puar (2012) quotes Donna

Haraway in his title: “I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess”. In it he compares the intersectional

approach with assemblage theory, arguing the latter is more viable for researching women of color.

Intersectional approach he argues, is still used as an approach to measure difference from the ‘white

women’ norm (ibid.:53). The cyborg is a coupling of organisms and machines, while the goddess

builds on primordial roots of holy black womanhood. Finally he proposes a cyborg-goddess-hybrid,

why not an organic-machinistic coupling that is divine as well. “Now that is a becoming-intersectional

assemblage that I could really appreciate” concludes Puar (ibid.:63).Similarly the meshwork has this

sacred or holy quality to it. Perceiving the meshwork of all life interknit together and influencing each

other is astonishing. When we see each organism or artwork as Deleuze sees them: a unique bundle of

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lines of flight or of becoming, a haecceity, this astonishes us (Ingold 2011a:64). This feeling of

astonishment has been banished in science states Ingold (2011a:70) who argues for reanimated thought.

1.2.6. Assembling within the meshwork I propose to see the assemblage consisting of heterogenous parts as part of the meshwork

rather than as Ingold (2011a:92) does, to oppose them: “The world, for me, is not an assemblage of

bits and pieces but a tangle of threads and pathways.” as says Spider. Threads and pathways can

coagulate into bits and pieces as well. The completely de-territorialized assemblage is the meshwork,

although it is similar to atoms at the quantum-level and molecules at the higher - the two do not seem

to exclude each other. Hives of activity emerge from the meshwork of interconnecting trails.

To research making in the context of SZi, the meshwork approach is too wide and all-consuming. The

theories of Delanda suit to bring life to a assemblage-meshwork-hybrid as you will, an approach with

which social groups and their material and symbolic components and expression can be understood,

rather than evening out all axis of power vertically like in the meshwork, which is not the case in

everyday human reality. Although when in a direct relationship with matter, during the practice of

making something with your hands - all the power truly lies within one’s hands in that

moment. Understanding that this meshwork is the foundation through which assemblages forms

together with their territories spreading across materials and organisms alike.

To return to how we may use the assemblage specifically within this setting, Deleuze and

Guattari state:

We will never ask what a body means, as signified or signifier ; we will not look for

anything to understand in it. We will ask what it functions with, in connection with what

other things it does or does not transmit intensities, in which other multiplicities its

own are inserted and metamorphosed, and with what bodies without organs it makes

its own converge. A body exists only through the outside and on the outside. A body

itself is a little machine (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988: 4)9.

So regarding the transmission of intensities, intensities are properties that cannot be divided and are

transmitted through the works and the workings of the assemblage, from everyday conversation to

making an art project together. These intensities have the capacity to transform and to heal. Sickness of

ourselves is what can be healed through making. By making and extending our physical power in this

specific way, by relating in a egalitarian manner with one and other in the assemblage - binaries are

healed. Using the meshwork we do not only relate to the human or material aspects of the assemblages

but also the sun shining in the room we are working, the air plays a role, the food we imbibe, the words

we use - all of these are part of the process of making seen through the meshwork.And when one’s

sentiment is joyful, all these parts can contribute to the healing of ‘being in the moment’ and creating.

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9 I replaced ‘body’ in the original text with ‘Chinese art collective’.

1.2.7. Ensnarement of desire As we work through the hands, the mind and its constant classification is brought to a

shuddering halt. As we bring the stuff of dreams into the world of stuff, we become what Ingold calls

“dream-catchers” (Ingold 2013:7). They brings forth a triumphant joy (Bennett 2001:4) defiant of all

capitalist ensnarings that suffocate life (Deleuze & Guattari 1973; Ong Ken Seng 2012).

These ensnaring of desire by various self-deprecation mechanisms keeps us from doing this (Deleuze

& Guattari 1972). Desire is meant in not in a sexual sense, the desire to eat, walk and write are all

mentioned by Deleuze & Guattari (Foucault in ibid./ Colebrook). “What stops us from creating new

values, new desires or new images of what it is to be and think?” asks Claire Colebrook (2002:5).

Foucault (in Deleuze & Guattari 1972:vi) states: “Behind every investment of time and interest and

capital, there lies an investment of desire, and, vice versa.”. Desire is what causes things to flow

(Deleuze & Guattari 1972:5). Stopping the flows or subverting them into other forms is how power or

fascism shapes individuals from the inside out.

In Anti-Oedipus fascism is pursued on the inside and on the outside, Deleuze & Guattari mix

Marx and Freud to see how It is the internal colony and sentiments such as depression and loneliness

are its weapon. These are the first to go when Anti-Oedipus is pursued as breaking loose from reliance

on mental professionals through “mutual self-care” (Seem in Deleuze & Guattari 1972:xxii).

By being locked in discourse and fanatical opinions over imaginary concepts, we fail to see the

daily practice of science and democracy that Kenrick asks us to consider. By dismantling hierarchies

through our thought, action and being, we become free to bring forth the stuff of dreams into the

realm of reality. Physical hands on work is key to firmly 'grasp' realities beyond language. Therefore

making is an alternate ontology opposed to the mainstream modern science.

1.2.8. An assemblage within animist ontologiesWestern anthropologists have failed to study their own culture in the way they tried to analyse natives having other ways of life. ! ! Francis Hsu, 1979 ‘The Cultural Problem of the Cultural Anthropologist’

Tim Ingold’s work is of great inspiration to me. The reason for this lies in his attempt to apply a

different set of ontologies to western scientific production. His fieldwork with the Cree Indians

inspired him to challenge the embedded dichotomy within modernist western science that presents a

vertical axis of agency overlain on materiality, rather than a horizontal relational perspective that connects

human actors with the various objects and beings inside the direct environment (Ingold 2011a:74;

Knappett 2005). An animistic ontology experiences human life as going through a world that is

continuously birthing itself, rather than taking place across a surface that is already formed (ibid.). All

life is creation, it is not as if creation is an act or variation added on to a stable and inert life.

(Colebrook 2002:26)

This continuous creation he compares following Merleau-Ponty (in ibid.:69) to the way that a

painter views the world, in which things are not static but ever changing into other things - “of the

world becoming a world”. Important in this view of this world are trails along which organisms

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develop. Rather than an organism being a circle with an inside and an outside - the environment, an

organism is a line - a trail - of development. Ingold (ibid.:70) states on this: “This texture is what I

mean when I speak of organisms being constituted within a relational field. It is a field not of

interconnected points but of interwoven lines; not a network but a meshwork.” (Ingold 2007:80)

(2011a:) explains his view:

All organisms are bundles of this kind. Stripped of the veneer of materiality they are

revealed not as quiescent objects but as hives of activity, pulsing with the flows of

materials that keep them alive. And in this respect human beings are no exception.

They are, in the first place, organisms, not blobs of solid matter with an added whiff of

mentality or agency to liven them up. As such, they are born and grow within the

current of materials, and participate from within in their further transformation.

1.2.9. Ant meets spider - Alternate ontologies In a whimsical tale Ingold (2011a:64) lets an ant have a philosophical conversation with a spider,

thus presenting the ANT - Actor Network Theory as opposed to SPIDER - Skilled Practice Involves

Developmentally Embodied Responsiveness. Whereas the ANT sees the world in heterogenous objects

and organisms separate from each other and connected to one and other through a network, such as

the spider is connected to the web which is connected to the tree’s branches, the SPIDER sees its

connection not only to the web which is actually a spit out part of its own organism and not only to the

tree’s branches which are deeply rooted in the ground, but to the entire meshwork of organisms.

This perception is very valuable for re-animating our ’scientific worldview’, it becomes difficult

to apply this to social situations. Where Ingold lives in a lovely faery-tale world of ants and spiders, he

obscures the political aspect of social reality completely as British anthropologist Justin Kenrick

(2011:16) notes. According to Kenrick (ibid.) Ingold takes out a specific part of the Cree Indian’s

worldview and builds upon that without referring ethnographically to the power-relationships these

groups are embedded in, this generates an idealized romantic charge. (ibid.:17). He even calls him on

having fallen prey to the myth of the Noble Savage (ibid.). This far I would not go, as I do honestly see

the viability of the radical ontology that Ingold proposes in re-structuring the way that ‘Science’ and

‘Religion’ are often proposed to be binary opposites. A ridiculous but pervasive notion10 which is also

fruitfully examined by Bruno Latour in “We have never been modern” (1993).

What Ingold proposes ís truly valuable for it offers us a way to explore alternate ontologies

theoretically. The future prospects and implications of these ontologies for equity are great, in the

academic imaginary our views are opened to radical new thought. Why this is necessary is expounded

by Latour’s research on western scientific production. Professor Latour (2011) notes: “The modernist is

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10 As the founding fathers of our current modernist, disenchanted worldview such as Copernicus and Newton were in fact serious practitioners of alchemy (Klukhuhn 2008) and their discoveries made within an alchemistical worldview have been taken out of context. This is why Deleuze strongly mistrusts the higher sciences and turns towards lower sciences such as metallurgy to find his inspiration (DeLanda lecture on Materialism 2011). Physicists have drawn too much importance to themselves.

a strange antropod”. As he continues to explain: it sees itself as severed from the world. From this

perspective the alluring song of a nightingale and the organism self of the bird belong to two wholly

separate ontologies. It is this de-enchanting worldview that breaks down a beauty of the bird’ song into

molecules and wave-particles by looking at it through a scientific theoretical lens. While the

appreciation of the song itself belongs to the realm of poets and artists. ‘Modern science’ is the result

of a specific history of Western societies and the canon and ontology of its truth production needs to

be addressed and deconstructed in order to release the grips of Eurocentrism. Ingold proposes against

this a holistic ontology where this split never occurred, bringing back science to the realm of poetics

and alchemy rather than cold mechanistic models of explaining some world out there.

Kenrick (ibid.:32) critiques Ingold for implicitly reproducing a category opposition between

egalitarian hunter-gatherer and Western world-views. Instead of focusing on categories, we need to

focus on processes11 through which we may find egalitarian relations. Essential is that we approach

science and political relations on a basis of equality. For this goal Kenrick (ibid.:31) sees we may learn

from indigenous groups as well as developing the political and personal skills that are needed to:

“defuse processes of exclusion by identifying, disentangling and supporting those processes which

continually recreate space for mutuality.”(ibid.:32). Kenrick urges us to engage directly in collective

endeavors to recover the world from outdated dualistic ideas that order must be imposed by a superior

realm unto an inferior one, rather than understanding how order emerges out of “an engagement of

equals” (ibid.). This mutuality that Kenrick speaks of is already found in Western societies. But how to

find these processes?

Joyful assemblage is what unlocks this egalitarianism. Why I add joy is that when people gather

around a particular goal or “to assemble is to act: actively map out, select, draw together and to

conceive of units as a group” (xx) publicethnography), joy and positive feelings are essential to

construe ethical behavior (Bennett 2001). Cultural theorist and Singaporean theatre director Ong Ken

Seng (2012) insists on joy and play being the cornerstone of ethical behavior, that ethics flow naturally

from a playful engagement. Desire-production is then freed from ensnarements and new and exciting

options can be made manifest by the assemblage.

When people assemble in an open and egalitarian manner, their forces are connected together

to bring forth social change. This was the foundation of democracy once. Kenrick (ibid.:33) notes

science and democracy can embody the central egalitarian principles and practices that enable us

“generate genuinely positive change and understanding through connecting us with - rather than

dividing us from - other peoples, species and our species life” (ibid.) once these are freed from their

Eurocentric bias. Dismantling hierarchies and working together in collaborative actions are essential in

order to make this a way of life rather than a slogan. Democracy and science are not primarily

institutions or signifiers of superiority, Kenrick insists: “Instead they are the daily practice of keeping

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11 My italics.

lines of communication open in order to enable knowledge to be generated and decisions to be

made.” (ibid.:)

The meshwork approach provides a wider view that incorporates materials as well as organisms,

which makes it clear that we as makers are genuinely “swimming in an ocean of materials” (Ingold

2011:29), that the central axis is not between agency overlain on materiality, but rather that we are all

lines of flight, lines of becoming and contributing to the weave of life in every moment and with every

step we take. The assemblage brings forth a more practical approach to forming our world as we thread

along our trails, determining how territories and codes play a role in the heterogenous parts working

together, producing our desires, freeing ourselves and embodying social change. Where urban

spaces are emerging as hubba’s of continuous and erratic movement, sound and interaction -

suspended through the lens of materiality it forms a gigantic beehive or ant colony, where forms slip in

and out of imaginaries and into and out of material realms. Codes of behavior moves like a dance, one

synchronizes his movements for a while in an assemblage, dancing in synchronous harmony, generating

a sense of sameness through this coded dance. Not only harmony but also discord strikes by codes -

structural violence moving through the beehive. To examine the particularities of this discord, we need

hybridity theory.

1.2. Hybridity 1.2.1.We have always been hybrid Hybridity as a concept arose within biology and horticulture when two plants or flowers

combine into a new species. Its crossover into social sciences disciplines did not go exceedingly fluent.

Hybridity theory deals with processes of cultural fusion (Kraidy 2007:55; Nederveen Pieterse 2009:78).

Rather than this being a new phenomenon, mixing and blending has been happening for centuries

(Pieterse 2001:222;231). The question is be: what is actually being mixed? As there are no cultural

essences which might mix.

Humanity is a “hybrid species”, states Nederveen Pieterse (ibid.:223) since our Homo Sapien’s

common ancestors are said to hail from Africa. This also makes humanity a cosmopolitan species - an

often forgotten fact (ibid.:229). The borders between cultures have always been messy and it is clear

that the myriad world-cultures have had symbiotic relationships to one and other - transnational flows

of people, ideas and practices has continuously renewed cultures throughout the ages (Gilroy 1999).

East and West exist as figments of the imagination employed for political purposes (Goody 1996). The

myth of isolated ‘cultures’ has long been disproven.. Therefore: “We have always been hybrid”.

Yet cultural, racial and national purity discourses have dominated social life since the age of

colonization and the slave trade (Kraidy 2007:60; Nederveen Pieterse 2001). Taking note of

hybridization processes is important to counter these pervasive and tragic notions. Culturalism is a

subversion of this same racial purity discourse, arguing that ‘cultures’ are somehow static, internally

coherent and monolithic.

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Globalizations through increased technology and mobility has sped up hybridization processes.

To clarify: globalizations do not equate with modernization nor westernization. The rise of a new

cosmopolitan elite through the rapid economic growth in Asian countries challenges this hegemonic

bland idea of “white man’s burden” to aid the spread of modernity. Rather we are looking at an

increasingly complex and culturally hybridizing world where power relations are shifting - swiftly re-

delegating the adagem of ‘the West and the Rest’ to our conceptual trashcan.

1.2.2 How to understand hybridity Hybridity theory could provide a welcome fresh breeze, as it focuses on “fuzziness and

mélange, cut ‘n mix, criss cross and crossover” as opposed to the dominance of neat, demarcating and

bounding social theories (Pieterse 2009:78). Postcolonial theorists have taken up hybridity as a key

theory to deal with non-western/white cultural productions made by diaspora (Kraidy 2007:54). Yet

hybridity is contested and there is a big anti-hybridity backlash (Ahmad 2001;Pieterse 2001).

Pro hybridity scholar Homi Bhabha (1994) looks at hybridity in the context of the postcolonial

novel. He especially focuses on Toni Morrison’s ‘the Beloved‘ which he celebrates as a way to resistance

of the colonized, as these hybrid cultural forms contaminate imperial ideology, aesthetics and identity

by natives who are striking back at colonial domination (Kraidy 2007:57). He stresses hybridity’s ability

to subvert dominant discourses. Mimicry is the term he introduces for this process through which

difference is represented in such a way that it challenges hegemonic power. Bhabha applies the notion

of mimicry to cultural productions, as being the same way of appropriating cultural forms of

expressions and subverting their meaning as a practice of resistance (Kraidy 2007:57). The cultural

hybridity put into practice through mimicry forms this notion of the ‘third space’.

Ahmad criticizes pro-hybridity scholars such as Hall and Bhabha for their naive optimism.

‘Exotic’ cultures are reified and commercialized in such practices and anything produced by a racially

other needs to be addressed with a “reductive ethnic designer tag” (2001:76) Hall’s work is employed by

the New Labour party in the project for “a modern, multicultural Britain” (Ahmad 2001:76), showing

itself in quotes such as “Instead of a bland Britain, Britain is buzzing with difference; no longer a state

in monochrome, but a nation in full living colour.” (ibid.). Ahmad (ibid.) holds that these kind of

narratives on hybridity serves to maintain the marginal position of colored minorities within the British

national imaginary, as they come forth from the multiculturalist will that emphasizes their distinct

otherness and different origin.

1.2.3. Cultural identity and art

From the literature it seems there are two choices for migrant non-white artists or especially

Chinese migrant artists. One is to brush away ethnic identifications and attempt to gain entrance to an

international avant-garde art-world by conforming to the unilateral developed Eurocentric form of

aesthetics. The other is to capitalize on their difference, resulting in a commodification of cultural

identity that is criticized by Ahmad (2001) and Saha (2012).

As Sheldon Hsiao-Peng Lu (2010:87) point out: overseas Chinese artists are focused on “the

cultural politics of alterity” in contrast to mainland Chinese artists who are aiming for entrance into 23

international avant-garde art spheres. He sees the artist in this role as an ethnographer who is playing

the double role: on one side the native informant of an ethnic Chinese in the West as well as the

ethnographer. His conclusion: “Diasporic art, then, is self-ethnography and self-othering.” (Lu 1998:87)

! Francis Maravillas describes (2007: 254) that Chinese diasporic artists are haunted by

Chineseness. Their work is often regarded as “exotic emblems of ‘Chineseness’’ (ibid.) is accused of

manifesting a “rootless” international aesthetic (ibid.). Could there be a way beyond these seemingly

dual pathways? Why is it not possible for non-white as well as whites to simply be human? As Ien Ang

(2003) notes: boundary-making itself is problematic. But there is much to say on this as for example

indigenous groups direly need to have boundaries so they can be counted on to receive group rights for

example (Kenrick 2011:13). Pretending there are no boundaries results in dangerously universalist

thinking in which non-whites and non-males are generally discounted from actually existing, as

happened with Enlightenment’s liberté, egalité and fraternité.

Peterson (2012:204) argues there is a need for a constructive alternative to critical discourses on

institutional multiculturalism. She argues for an emphasis on identification as a process. Petersen (ibid.)

argues that we should look at the aesthetics of the artworks, rather than looking at ethnic identity. Yet

here there is a crucial problematic point, as Alfred Gell (1998:42) points out: our western aesthetics

have an almost religious zeal to it and are the product of particular Western bourgeois tastes.

Could cultural ‘fusion‘ of arts be able to bring forth de-colonialized aesthetics which can level

power differences? An example could be British Sri Lankan artist and musician M.I.A, who makes

hybridity seems passé. Saha (2012) describes M.I.A. as making successful use of cultural

commodification processes to turn the wheels in her favor and carefully avoiding Orientalist gazes and

even tongue-in-cheek playfully employing them in her marketing strategies. She has managed to steer

clear of being boxed in a specific label and employs a form of refugee aesthetic to articulate songs that

are filled with political messages and controversy.

As Pieterse (2001:236) notes: “Hybridity is not parity”. Power relations play an important role in

determining hybrid practices as cultural canons play a role in it. It is very important while looking at

these hybridizing practices to denote: where does the power lie? Is it a symmetrical or an assymetrical

hybridity? Which cultural canon has the strongest influence in this specific hybridizing practice? There

are several axis of power-relations that play a role within SZi’s projects: Orientalism versus

Occidentalism, Han-centered versus Eurocentrism and the effect of the Dutch environment in which

their projects are catering to Dutch tastes of Chineseness.

The power relations between Chinese and Western aesthetics are clearly asymmetric.

Christopher Crouch (2010:10) notes in ‘Contemporary Chinese Visual Culture: Tradition, Modernity, and

Globalization.’ that Chinese art is dominated by western conceptions of art . One example is that rock

bands from China are never simply referred to as rock bands, it becomes necessary to place ‘Chinese’

before that label, much more than when one refers to Dutch rock music for example (de Kloet

2010:28).

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1.2.3. Multi-culturalism in Dutch society! Ghorashi (2002) proposes a transnational approach in which hybrid identities such as “Chinese

Dutch” become a part of the discourse in the Netherlands, that currently lines its migrant discourse in

terms of cultural assimilation instead of recognizing plurality. The Dutch political and media landscape

contains xenophobic and culturalist notions of preserving the purity of the Dutch nation (Guadaloupe

& De Rooji 2007) . The Netherlands is not one of the most welcoming of nation-states to the influx of

migrants, as Dutch publicist Paul Scheffer has declared the existence of “a multicultural

drama” (quoted in Chow 2011:59).

Anthropologist Halleh Ghorashi (2002; 2010) notes that Dutch have a thick identity in which

they define themselves narrowly and apply strong limits to demarcate their sense of self. Yet Dutch

citizens pride themselves on open-mindedness, tolerance and progressiveness - an image build upon

opposing an imagined Muslim backwardness (Mepschen et al 2009:3).

! This Enlightened self-image has contributed to a taboo on racism which has subverted

xenophobic sentiments into cultural essentialism: culturalism (Mepschen et al. 2009:3). As Stolcke

(1996:755) argues for France and Britain ‘culturalist’ language is accepted among right-wing and

conservative politicians following aftermath of the racism horrors that swept across Europe in WWII

which has widely discredited racist discourses of exclusion in Europe.

In the Netherlands this has lead to the cordon sanitaire around Dutch colonial history (Wekker

2007:43). Liberal and left academics constructed racism as the antithesis to modern liberal societies

(Stolcke 1996:755). Racist notions were seen to be rooted in the past of slavery, as “a sort of historical

residue” (ibid.:756). Feminist anthropologist Gloria Wekker (2007:44) points out how the broad

consensus that the colonial order and the current multi-ethnic society are completely separate from

each other is influencing contemporary discourses of “race” (ibid.). The taboo of racism has been

subverted into an acceptable culturalist language widespread all across the Netherlands. A conversation

overheard in the bus in Rotterdam illustrates the absurdity of this discourse: “He cannot help the fact that

he beat up that woman, he is an Latino from Argentina. It is his culture.”

Chinese migrants are often posited as model minority and in such a light they does not

challenge to the discourse of the Enlightened Dutch self (Chow 2011). As cultural theorist Yiu Fai

Chow (2011:64) states: “When a society needs to have an ethnic minority to prove that its system

works, it foregrounds the Chinese.” The perception they are a model minority myth is far from

innocent and has the function of disciplining Chinese as well as giving rise to power struggles between

ethnic groups (ibid.:59). It serves to justify the system by claiming to other minorities - “the Chinese

can do it, why can’t you?”. The myth is framed by cultural reasons that presuppose “so-called Chinese

traditions and values” form the foundation of their success (ibid.). Fascinatingly while Chinese Dutch

are applauded for ‘being so Chinese’ other migrant groups are told to be let go of their ‘backward

homeland culture’ (ibid.). This is what Chow calls: ‘multicultural schizophrenia’.

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1.2.4. Going beyond ‘culture’

The fact is there is no a singular Dutch culture nor does a Chinese culture exist. Cultures

contain a high degree of abstraction (Ingold 1994:330). Ironically in cultural anthropology ‘culture’ has

become somewhat of a dirty word12. Tim Ingold (1994:330) states: “You will never encounter culture

‘on the ground” (ibid.). The meaning of what we refer to as culture has shifted by what issues scholars

have had to tackle. Initially a teleologic image was held in which there was one culture, a civilization

mission of humanity which divided the world into barbarians and civilized folk (ibid.). The plural use of

cultures as sets of practices and beliefs is fairly recent as a means to explain difference.

As Gupta & Fergusson (1992:10) quote a young white reggae fan in an ethnically diverse

neighborhood in Birmingham: “there's no such thing as "England" any more . . . welcome to India brothers! This is

the Caribbean! . . . Nigeria! . . . There is no England, man. This is what is coming.” In this quote he is re-making

England and defining it as other territories. In fact he is showing the assemblages of India and

Carribean stretch their colossal territories up to there, incorporating bodies and blocks.

Hybridization is how globalization spreads. Rather than the McDonaldization that wipes away

all national and ethnic cultures into a dull and grey monocultural consumerism, diversity through

hybridity seems to thrive (Pieterse 2009). Yet racism does not conflict with globalized hybridity, in fact

the two processes are intimately linked. As Ahmad puts forward strongly:“What this view fails to

understand is the fact that those who beat, kill and commit acts of violence against non-whites can and

often do like eating ‘curry’, dancing to watered down appropriations of hip hop, R&B, garage and

whatever else.” (Ahmad 2001:76).

1.2.5. Problems with hybridity, rather: multiplicity Dialectical thought always creates oppositions. If one is to oppose one specific standpoint,

another is devaluated, yet the two remain locked in relation to each other. In the words of Michel

Serres (quoted in van der Tuin and Dolphijn 2010:156): “An idea opposed to another idea is always the

same idea, albeit affected by the negative sign. The more you oppose one another, the more you remain

in the same framework of thought” (Serres with Latour 1995: 81). Therefore arguing for cultural

contamination reinforces the conception of purity just as arguing for hybridity reinforces the idea of

two separate cultural streams mixing and forming bricolages.

Unity in diversity sums up what the collection of writers and thinkers in‘Zo zijn onze manieren

- multiculturaliteit in Nederland’ think we should strive for in the Netherlands. As we have been hybrids

all along, notions of cultural purity and the ways in which boundaries can be drawn have changed

over times. Cosmopolitanism is what often proposed as a possibility over hybrid identity. Pheng

Cheah (1998) sees how this is linked to the rise of international neoliberal capitalism and how this

can result in a bleak kind of universalism.

26

12 Entailed to me by anthropology professor Gerdien Steenbeek at University of Utrecht.

2. Methodology2.1. Anthropology and art

Anthropology has always had an uneasy relationship with art (Gell 1998). The problem in the

relationship between anthropology and art is that it is usually seen as an anthropology of art,

exemplified in the quote of Taylor instead of an anthropology with art (Ingold 2013:8). Reducing an

artwork to an object of inquiry, the fluxes and flows of materials that have onset their creation are

bypassed. My objections to looking at “objects” are because of the connotations of completeness and

finality and due to the implications of separations between them (Ingold 2011b:4), I studied processes

of making by engaging in it together with SZi.

As other anthropologists (Calzadilla & Marcus 2006; Between art and anthropology) are trying

to feel through the edges of the discipline and actively seek collaborations, I see fertile ground for

artists and anthropologists to work together. This is a way to creatively engage the limitations of words

and to release the deadlock of dialectic thought - by making an interactive installation for example.

Sensory experiences as well as self-reflexive writing are perceived to be a way for anthropologists

through the ethnographic turn, yet why should we remain bound by the textual medium? From a

Western perspective - history is that which is written - text and print have hegemonic importance in

Western societies, as they form the exemplification of an externalized intellect and ratio.

Throughout my research I have made a humble attempt to invert the logic of inversion. It has

been a rather unorthodox scholarly journey for I experienced deep contradictions in looking for

linguistic categories and encoding data textually while my research was attempting to go beyond that. I

was making, being, reflecting, this exercise - part ethnographic, part anthropological - shall mirror that.

To avoid the problems of representing knowledge as if it is ready made, I employ a self-reflexive style

of storytelling. My account is deliberately incomplete as I merely aim to draw lines rather than paint a

complete picture (Ingold 2011a:222). Rather than fixing SZi up in a rectangular picture frame with all

the colors and shapes fleshed out saturated in paint as if to capture the ‘truth’ of the collective’s

‘essence’, I have chosen to ‘represent ethnographic reality’ as I experienced it: messy, fleeting,

confusing, as everyone is trying to make sense of somehow ‘being Chinese Dutch’ and how to create

art projects given the materials and spaces available.

In the ethnographic turn there has been a critique on how what we put into words immediately

transforms that which we speak about. There is a lack of anthropological inquiry in the fields of art,

music, dance and time (Ingold 1994:330; Calzadilla & Marcus 2006). This is because anthropology is

seen as a form of translation from one cultural “text” to another and therefore forms of

communication and data that are not textual tend to be overlooked and dismissed as fields of inquiry.

The process of putting something into words fundamentally changes its nature (Ingold 1994:331;

Raven 2008:3; DeLanda 2006:45-6). This is especially true for practical skills such as craftmanship,

music or dance.

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2.2.Methods

2.2.1.Participant observation:

For this research I have chosen to focus on the application anthropology with art. The way I have

implemented this was by participating fully in the projects of Studio Zi, submerging in the social group.

According to Ingold (2013:x) Participant observation is not a part of ethnography, but of

anthropology. He objects to the use of the terms qualitative and quantitative data and especially of the

employment of participant observation as a method to procure qualitative data. Rather it is an

anthropological method in which you learn with the group that you are studying.

I have participated in meetings with collaborators, internal meetings. I have helped in the

preparation and execution of the Museumnacht event, volunteered at the kid’s workshops SZi hosted at

China Light and was floor manager and allround assistant during Chinese New Year. Besides that

several I attended several small events such as helping at catering gigs and at bicycle tours. Overall I got

a good ‘feel’ of what it is like to participate in SZi and I became very close with some of the members.

2.2.2.Interviews:

During my time with SZi I conducted eight semi-structured interviews but most of my verbal

information was obtained through informal conversations. I talked on their projects and various things,

yet a problem was I did not want to steer the conversation into any direction as I was obsessed with

following the flows, it felt wrong for me to be looking for categorizations and trying to steal away the

specific data I could use to enhance my story of what in my opinion needed to be told. I wanted them

to tell their own stories and what was meaningful to them, therefore I focused mostly on the informal

chatting and conversations. Later I had an interview with Darkblue when a PhD student interviewed

her. I heard so many different things than what I had heard from her in interviews. When the student

asked: “Were you able to choose your own husband?”, I was flabbergasted. It had never occurred to me that

second-generation Chinese Dutch might be that unfree. My own perception focused on similarities and

perhaps methodologically I might have overlooked some differences because of that.

2.3. Ethics and my position as a researcher

Why study this particular group of artists and designers enjoined on the grounds of their

ethnicity? Like anthropologist Dorinne Kondo (1990:8) describes, it can be useful to trace one’s own

journey into the research as a reflection on the positioning. Especially when researching identifications

as in my particular case as fifth generation Chinese migrant, my own background is essential for this

fieldwork. Although the period of research was only short - officially around two months - I managed

to go deeply into the processes of making together with Studio Zi members. They became my friends

and my creative companions and we managed to build an evening on the Museumnacht that was

amazing, touching and fun.

My own search of trying to belonging to somewhere or something plays a role in my choice to

study them. Again the lines are twofold. One stemmed from my desire to fulfill my self-ascribed destiny

28

of “being creative” that I had never found within the walls of the academia or my life. Finally I

discovered that being is in itself inherently creative, as I am constantly constituted by the fluxes and

flow that surround me - not only materially but also digitally. My own self has changed through this

research experiences, I became part of their assemblage.

The other reason was coming to terms with my position within Dutch society in which I

experienced fluctuating positions of being an insider versus an outsider. Growing up in a multi-ethnic

neighborhood in the center of Rotterdam, where my white-ish face was considered ‘normal’ as

opposed to the colorful and diverse other faces that comprised my classroom, while later when we

moved to an outskirt of town I was suddenly an outsider. This sense of being an outsider observer I

carried with me. My identification as being partially Chinese played a marginal role for years, yet later I

declared to grasp this intersection of selfhood. My own hybridity was voluntary in that sense.

On the ethics question, I could not shake the unsettling feeling during my fieldwork. I felt such

a impenetrable resistance towards taking distance, sitting on the side of my art project that was

unfolding through an interplay of materials, tools and people, that whirlwind of energy that created the

final installation. Sitting on the side and taking out my notepad and jotting down notes of observation

rather than engaging hands-on seemed highly unnatural. I encountered severe and deep questions

about the nature of science and anthropology, placing itself always outside of that which it seeks to

observe and describe. While I was on the inside, participating and being shaped by my experiences with

this group. Attempting to procure ‘qualitative data’ through my participant observation, I felt like I was

a thief in the night, stealing away tidbits of information, always wondering how deeply I should

consider ‘informed consent’. I cut the bags and I ran, snickering up to my ivory tower of academic

knowledge and imposed superiority to judge and criticize based upon theoretical reflections. This was

not what I wished to do or what I came here to do. I came to do anthropological fieldwork. For me the

culmination of that is a personal transformation that does not end with my own self as there is no such

thing. It is a way of learning and of education with the people I study with, instead of studying about

them. What did I learn from my experiences with Studio Zi? How could I write a thesis that is not

ethnographic, one that merges anthropology with art instead of being an anthropology of art.

Where to draw the line? Between artistic and academic inquiry, between science and poetry,

between East and West, between Chineseness and Dutchness. I disagree that this line should be drawn.

Why should I describe only and not be transformed with openness and willingness by my experiences

with the collective? What is the lesson I learned that could benefit the reader instead of presenting a

post-modern dissecting criticism that will bitter the reader. As I have seen harsh realities, I have felt

underneath there is a joyful play enlivening urban Rotterdam. Post-modernism has razed all ideological

houses to the ground, we are standing in the midst of a desolate wasteland and I will muster up the

courage to raise one pebble from the ground to start rebuilding, however humble, however fragile, a

structure that will lead to the re-integration, a line that can flow freely but one that shall not be a

boundary. A thread that can interwoven with other threads, arranged by color based on hybridizing

29

aesthetics, rather than the color of skin of its maker, producing a breathtaking tapestry of artistry.

This skin color blind artistry is not a reality though. I felt hurt nearing the end of my fieldwork.

Regardless of being asked to work or assist further with SZi in the future, I could not be a “real”

member of the collective. This was expressed by the founder during the first conversation with a new

partner about a project13, it was just the three of us, the conversation had taken a turn towards cultural

essentialism as Fenmei put forward the idea of pitting SZi against a Japanese team, which she

emphasized should only be ethnically Japanese. Then as if to protect her public image of SZi as

Chinese only, she remarked: “Ah and she? She’s not [a] real [member]”. This sent through my body the

‘intensity’ of hurt (Delanda 2011), which subsequently severed my linkage to the assemblage. Later she

entailed to me this would probably cause other almost- or non-Chinese to want to enter as well,

jeopardizing the defining trait or selling point of ‘a Chinese artists and designers collective’. Also since I

am not a professional artist or creative, I could not join.14 As I really cared about the collective - I was

part of the assemblage and was told that I could help in future projects and get paid whenever there

was a budget, so this remark thrust right on my sensitive spot.15 Although I kept my poise - or not as I

remained silent and kind of laughed uncomfortably - the assemblage of the conversation between me,

Fenmei and the project-leader quickly dispersed as the intensity of hurt caused an embarrassment on

the side of the project-leader (Delanda 2011).

It was revealing though to see how Deleuze & Guattari’s quote about the revolutionary group

proves true: “A revolutionary group at the preconscious level always remains subjugated even in seizing

power as long as this power itself refers to a form of force that continues to enslave and crush

desiring-production.” As they had taken the power to assemble and make together, against the white-

dominated art scene environment pre consciously it was still re-enforcing the same cultural essentialism

that hurt them in the first place. Beyond my own own pain, cultural essentialism was re-initiated in that

very conversation. As the founder stated that only those who are ‘really Japanese’ should go in that

team and no others who have strong ties with Japan should be able to join. Later this caused quite some

problems in the group because members disapproved of this idea and expressed their distaste over the

tensions between Japan and China.16 Then the idea was subsequently changed. It was the final drop for

one member who left the collective shortly there after.17

30

13 A project that would not involve money of course, because all arts are supposed to be done for free apparently. (Left Hobbyism as our right-wing politicans will have it.)

14 As was later explained in an email after I informed about this.

15 Of wishing to belong to something greater than myself, of feeling Chinese Dutch myself, which was denied to me on the basis of my racial appearance.

16 I felt responsible for not saying anything, but I was still struck by the comment that I wasn’t really a part of the collective.

17 This is explained more in chapter 4.

2.4 Setting

Rotterdam is the place where SZi centers its activities. The hallmark of a hybrid city, it is one of the

most ethnically diverse (De Valk et al 2001:81), the poorest yet most industrial city of the Netherlands

(van den Berg 2012a:156). The population is nearly 600.000 widely spread out in conglomerates due

being bombed in WWII. Much of the city’s ancient architecture was razed to the ground and has given

rise to sky-scrapers forming a bricolage of modern and historical buildings.

The art scene is alive and diverse - mingling high and low art in community art spaces sprawled

around many old warehouses as well as the Witte de Withstraat in the center of the city. As Rotterdam

is Europe’s largest port (Richards & Wilson 2004), the flows of industrial goods and migrant workers

generate a sense of Rotterdam being a place for business, while the city’s municipalities are attempting

to build an image of Rotterdam as a cultural and artistic center. In 2001 it was declared Cultural Capital

of Europe (Richards & Wilson 2004.) Public art is widely employed to contribute to social cohesion

(Springer 2006). Municipalities are trying to create a more feminine and soft image of the city (van den

Berg 2012). The mainly feminine cast of SZi fits well into this profile of making Rotterdam more

multicultural through their community-based art-projects. The collective does not have an actual

collective studio space anymore. Meetings are at individual studio’s and or in their old studio space

turned cooking studio het Zesde Geluk on the 1e Middelandsstraat on the Kruiskade.

2.5. Population

For this specific research I have focused on the art works as well as backgroundstories of members of

Studio Zi. The people I have spoken to and worked together with all are part of what is designated as

‘the Chinese migrant community’, although as Kim Kuo (2009) - cultural anthropologist has noted:

there is no such singular community as Chinese migrant groups are fractured and separated along lines

of generations, interests, jobs and prove to be highly diverse.

Most Chinese Dutch hail from Wenzhou in Zhejiang Province (Kuo 2009; Li 1999:47; Gijsberg

et al. 2009:4). Chinese migrants started coming into the Netherlands in the period between World War I

and II (Li 1999:24; Buikema & Meijer 2003:2). There were around 100,000 to 120,000 Dutch

with a Chinese background in the 1990’s (Li 1999:43). From all migrants in the Netherlands

Chinese migrants are the largest group of entrepreneurs. Restaurants are their main expertise;

two-thirds of the companies Chinese Dutch found are food-related (ibid.:15).

.

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3. Red/Blue/Purple = Chinese/Dutch/hybrid?3.1.Introduction - becoming purpleIn this chapter I will give an overview of the artworks of the members of SZi. This chapter will be

more taking more an anthropology of art perspective. As promised I will not pretend to paint a picture

deeply saturated in paint but I will draw a sweeping line across the surface to show some understanding

of the specifics of the hybridizing practices SZi’s assemblage engages in.

Figure 5. The first draft of the logo.

The same kind of line that you see in their initial logo featured

above. SZi thrives on improvisation and playful engagement with

their ancestral roots. In May 2011 Studio Zi opened a gallery

called ‘Studio Zi’ on the West Kruiskade. The space was provided

by the Alliantie, an organization striving for safety and a more

attractive neighborhood. The collective was founded by Fenmei

Hu for several reasons. First off the stereotypical idea that Chinese

only work at restaurants and were not creative bugged her. She wanted to disprove these stereotypes by

showing Chinese Dutch were indeed creative and quite successfully so. Also Fenmei knew several other

artists and designers with a Chinese background, which she sought out. “I was just interested in very simple

things, just talking and being together.” She toyed with the idea for starting an art collective for a long time

and finally was convinced by a friend to just go for it. “Together you are stronger” is what compelled her,

“When you are an artist by yourself, you try to make a way for yourself in the world but as a collective there is much

more you can do.” In the media it was said to be the first Chinese artists and designers collective in the

Netherlands. Although I discovered there is another Chinese artist-collective called ‘China op de Kaap’

in which Green also participated in.

As the text underneath the initial logo shows, SZi presented a medley of creative disciplines

ranging from art, design, fashion, various media arts to traditional Chinese tea ceremonies. The latter is

how I stumbled unto the collective while roaming the Zeedijk in Amsterdam, I went to have a cup of

tea in the traditional ceremonial way at Tea2Choc. This concept-store was owned by friend of the

collective Hoi-Chin18 who later introduced me to the group. After I had gotten enthusiastic by seeing

the introduction video to SZi animated by Man-Yee Mok.19

SZi members are re-creating themselves through their creativity; by not only drawing on

traditional elements of Chinese culture but working with a bricolage of aesthetics across different

media.

32

18 Now they have relocated and moved to Rotterdam as well.

19 Qr-code is printed in the introduction.

This news item of Rijnmond about the opening said: “The Eastern background of the

artists is directly apparent upon entering the gallery: dragons, manga and origami-art catch

the eye immediately. The works that are hanging in Studio Zi are definitely not all typically

Chinese, although many of the makers say that they do ‘something’ with their cultural background.”20.

In this video reportage on the event it becomes obvious how diverse this area in Rotterdam is with

various ethnicities, races and ‘cultures’. Fenmei Hu and Koen Mok are interviewed by the reporter both

state how they are interested in the “inspiration by the other’s works” and the “fusion” that can take place. As

SZi’s artists have their unique engagements with materials, techniques and style. I will discuss them on

the basis of themes running under their work as individuals and as a collective to try to understand

how their making emerges out of the meshwork of trails drawn by their life-stories.

3.2. Searching for home and belonging

Figure 6: Yuhu & Lisa by Fenmei Hu.

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20 Translated by author. Source: http://www.rijnmond.nl/nieuws/02-05-2011/studio-zi-chinese-kunst-op-rotterdamse-west-kruiskade, checked on 18 June 2013.

This work from Fenmei Hu featured in the art calendar of Rotterdam is written to combine

characteristically Chinese elements in a western effectuation. Her sense of aesthetics was acquired in

the Netherlands it makes sense this expressed that. She arrived at age nine in the Netherlands after

growing up in the Wenzhou countryside with her grandparents. Longing for her childhood spent in the

mountains speaks from this work, a time when she still blended in with her environment.

Her parents were restaurant-holders. The story of her art-works begins with her initial rejection of her

Chinese background in her work, she wanted to paint like everyone else. But then she tells that her

background caught up with her. As she explains in a video-interview:

When I was young, I didn’t know I was going to be an artist. But I was always drawing. When I was in the final year of my high school a teacher told me: “Why don’t you do something with your drawing?”. I was like: “Is that even possible?!” Then I discovered there were schools to study drawing and painting.

As her parents came from Wenzhou’s countryside they did not have any understanding of art. As

Fenmei told me: “To them it was just calligraphy and landscapes, that is art for people living in the countryside”.

Fenmei did not even know the Chinese word for art so when she was accepted into art school, she told

her parents that she was going to draw (畫畫 - hua hua).. Her mother was furious and refused to speak

to her for several weeks. She went against the will of her parents who preferred her find a more

financially reliable profession. This is the story of many Chinese Dutch second generation migrants

who are restricted in their freedom to chose what they wish because of their family’s insistence that

they make money and ‘gain face’.21 Fenmei wanted to blend in with the other students, as she entails in

the video interview:

“When I was studying, I tried to paint like my Dutch fellow students. I couldn’t, because everything I painted had a Chinese edge to it. I would paint a blonde woman and suddenly then she would have Chinese eyes. I didn’t even notice it until a teacher told me about it. Now actually I think it is very special that I am working as a Chinese artist in the Netherlands. That special-ness I embrace now and I express it in my paintings.

Figure 7 Wind blowing through hairs

34

21 According to second generation migrant Wong in mini-documentary ‘Tweede Generatie Chinezen zijn niet helemaal vrij’ http://www.rnw.nl/nederlands/video/tweede-generatie-chinezen-nederland-niet-helemaal-vrij

I try to make a combination of the Dutchness and the Chinesness inside myself. The Chineseness in this painting is the Chinese woman and the Dutch part is the wind that is blowing through her hair. These are real leaves I found on the street. This other painting is flowing the other way. This is the same theme. This Dutch wind that I am just letting it flow over me. I am just leaving it the way it is.You know.. It is a matter of fact that I am living in the Netherlands and of course you can give direction to your life in the way you want. But finally I just want to…. I think it’s alright here and I’m just allowing it to flow over me. But actually I don’t even want to go so deep. I just want to create an appealing image.

At art school her Chineseness was considered an oddity. As the only Asian artist in those four year of

attending, she says she felt alienated by her difference and attempted to hide away her Chinese identity

and not to draw upon it in her work. She wanted to be like everyone else but she could not hide away

her Asian appearance: “Initially I felt rather lost during my studies in the sense of :“I don’t want to be different.” But

I was still blackhaired and squinty eyed you know.” After graduating from art school she had a coach from

Kunstenaars&Co who advised her to make use of her special background and to focus on her Chinese

background. “I really embraced my Chineseness” she told me. This is also reflected in her work through the

materials she works with as well as the figurations.

Figure 8 Pu’era, a painting made with Chinese tea by Fenmei Hu.

Such as Fenmei’s paintings with steeped tea. The outgrowths of the tea-rock holds tiny naked women

frolicking freely upon the surface of the stain, their hairs and hands flowing to the edges. Her use of

35

materials reminds me of my own uncle who was a fourth generation Chinese Dutch painter22. He

worked with huge canvasses, painting broad and rough Chinese characters, fragile flowers and typical

Chinese landscapes.

Diasporic Chinese artists are generally tending to stick to more traditional representations

haunted by Chineseness, Maravillas (2007) explains. The spectre of Chineseness is a haunting artists

cannot escape from, hinging on the cultural prohibition to de-sincization that Ang (2001) entails.

Reflecting upon her journey of migration and the sudden disruption in her life is shown through her

explorations in her paintings as well as through the project she did ‘Chinees Meisje’ in which she

returned to the country-side of Wenzhou where she was born to visit her grandparents together with

two Dutch friends. Australian Chinese diasporic artist Ah Xian tells on his dilemma of physical and

cultural dislocation:

How can an artist brought up in a Chinese cultural context retain its values and traditions while at the same time enter into a contemporary world dominated by the languages and values of the West? How can I negotiate this Chinese culture that, in a sense, is being devalued from within? (Ah 1999)

This same sense of negotiating Chinese culture was cause for Fenmei to initiate the assemblage. She

told me that she would have never become an artist if she had stayed in China. This echoes with

Deleuze (in L’Heureux 2011:7)’s assertion that artists are those who seen hardship with their own eyes.

Her hardship in the Netherlands of being excluded in very simple ways, just by being ascribed to be

different on the basis of her appearance, while there is a cultural prohibition to speak about race in the

Netherlands due to the cordon sanitaire. Her silence in words could express itself and release in her work.

The freedom to fulfill her dreams is what she experiences in the Netherlands, the gust of wind that

brushes up her hairs.

The struggle for freedom shows itself as well in her entrepreneurship - to become financially

free to pursuit one’s own goals and ambitions and as well to be able to participate in all layers and

realms of society regardless of color. This financial freedom has not really manifested itself as SZi still

hardly makes any money and mostly operates on voluntary participation. The struggle for individual

self-expression seems to me a liberal idea that resonates with the Enlightenment thinking that evolved

in the eighteenth century - the enlightened self-interest (Ong 1999:51). An underlying tension in her

story is the rebellious sense of fighting against parent’s lack of understanding of art and against the

white Dutch art institutions, while at the same time being disciplined into Chinese values by the model

minority myth (Chow 2011) of assimilating and conformity. In her family’s disapproval of venturing

36

22 Ben Wong was his name. Besides his profession as a doctor versed in the healing practices of both Western as well as Chinese medicine, being student of Eastern as well as Western philosophy as well as a a Taoist poet, speaking fluently Chinese and having a black belt in karate. It is beyond obvious that he remains a phantasmagorical figure for me. Tragically he passed away at age 58, writing and explaining the character of 道

to me as I sat with him at the dinner table at age 18 and expressed my interest in Daoism.

into the art world and the desire of Chinese Dutch artists for individual freedom to be themselves -

“jezelf zijn”.

It is an attempt to find and make a path that is truly her own as a Dutch Chinese, as well as the

other members of Studio Zi. Neither only completely Chinese or Dutch but both. This possibility is

still hard to penetrate into the thickness of Dutch notions of identity. Therefore she assembled

together with others in a similar position as her so they can learn from each other and “be stronger

together”, bringing forth the emergent property of art as healing for the parts of the assemblage, by

combining ‘old‘ and ‘new‘ symbolic expressions of Chineseness.

Fenmei Hu engages in self-ethnography to propose new forms of self and identity through

exhibitions. Below is a cartoon made by Man-Yee Mok of Fenmei Hu’s story of migration.23 Here the

story of her migration is told visually as part of the exhibition ‘Chinees Meisje’ in which Fenmei Hu

returned to her home village in August 2010 supported by the foundation Kosmopolis. Upon return

together with her two Dutch friends she created an exhibition in Utrecht showcasing one hundred

years of Chinese Dutch migrants in Utrecht. This is clearly the self-ethnography that Lu (1997:87)

describes of diasporic Chinese artists. By staying in a strong relationship with Chineseness in her work

as painter and entrepreneur, she is not ‘betraying’ or letting go of her background and serves those

aspects in herself that were passed down by her parents., while allowing the wind of Dutch life come

over her as well. The wind that flows in two directions.

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23 Found on http://www.chineesmeisje.nl/DenHaag/Stripverhaal/tabid/394/language/nl-NL/Default.aspx, checked on 19 June 2013.

24

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24 Translation from original site: 1) Hi, my name is Fenmei Hu, welcome to my village YuHu.2) YuHu is a village at the foot of a mountain near city Wenzhou in China.This is a very pretty village! It has many beautiful sceneries and many rice fields.3) These are my grandparents. I live with them, because my parents are in The Netherlands.

25

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25 Translation from original site: 4) Lots of young villagers in YuHu migrate to Europe just like me.5) YuHu is getting emptier. Lots of money are send back from Europe to YuHu. People are building new houses of stone and investing in YuHu.6) In YuHu aging is a big problem, because many people who stay behind are elderly. Just like my grandparents they usually babysit the grandchildren.

26

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26 Translation from original site: 7) After 20 years, the whole village is renewed. Everything which can be rebuilt has been rebuilt. Except the mountains! I think it is a pity many nice places of YuHu have to make place for modern houses, banks and supermarkets.Elderly people like my grandparents are happy with the prosperity and luxury. the sometimes loneliness of being seperated of their children and grandchildren, they just take for granted. every coin has two sides, even the golden ones.

3.2. Food and cultural heritage celebration

Tiananmen in 1989 caused many Chinese artists and intellectuals to flee the mainland and seek

opportunities elsewhere, often expressing themselves in radical and anti-hegemonic political art

(Maravillas 1991). During my fieldwork the young artists 1GS of SZi I met who attended their

bachelors in art on the mainland did not have this strong defiance of the PRC nation-state. In fact their

work often seemed happy, celebratory of Chinese culture or not referring to Chinese culture at all.

Such as Cola Zhang’s master thesis and art project that focuses on Chinese food culture:

Food is much more than an eatable stuff that kills your hunger, it tells stories, shows emotion, carries memories, and represents culture. Food is identity, as Ludwig Feuerbach's well-known phrase "Man is what he eats". [..]You can surmise a person’s cultural background and living conditions from his daily diet. In China, where the land nourished me, food is the thing matters most. We say, “Have you eaten?” instead of “How are you?” as greetings. All the Chinese know the idiom that Man regard food as sky, which means food is the first and foremost concern. We pay great attention and passion to food throughout the thousands years in history. I can even say, you can understand China if you know about the food culture.

Yan Zhang’s Recipe for Harmony 2012 Master Thesis

Figure 9. Recipe for Harmony, video installation by Yan Zhang.

She explores her Chinese heritage through western aesthetics. Cola is not a ‘diasporic artist’, Ong

(2003:87) challenges the term diaspora since it tends to indicate being shattered without a means for

41

return which does not do justice to the complexity of contemporary border crossings. In the case of

Cola who is attempting to find a working visa so she can stay here longer and as well Dada, they both

are Chinese nationals who either have or are working on their Dutch Visa arrangements. How long they

will stay is not sure, but they can return to China easily. Their work as migrant artists is not haunted by

Chineseness. She together with Dada Wang have contributed to a wide range of works such as ‘Animal

Shake’ which is a playful installation through which lemonade can be made from animals. Yet

understanding her own cultural heritage stance seems her priority. Her artist statement reads:

Zhang Yan is a young media designer, who has just achieved her master degree on Media Design and Communication in Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam. She comes from Shanghai, a huge city melting together diverse cultures, which cultivated her as an open-minded person. Yan's works now focus mainly on short animation, and use mixed-media technique to combine reality and fantasy within one single image. In terms of the content, she is fascinated in traditional Chinese culture, attempting to better understand her own background, while hoping to carry forward the art aesthetic.

As her statement reads, she sees a singular arts aesthetic. Cola did some entrepreneurial work to show

the ‘New China’ by hosting a ‘Taste of Animation’ night at WORM, a venue in Rotterdam. Here

animation work was shown from new and upcoming animators, that showed a distinct styles and

narratives developing in art schools in mainland China.

Figure 10 Master thesis of Cola Zhang

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Her graduation work revolved around Chinese stories and creative myths connected to

various food-types. Based on these stories she created the installation ‘Recipe of Harmony’

as her graduation work, together with a master thesis called ‘Eating for reunion’ a video

presentation of which is embedded here next in a QR-code. Taste and food as a theme is something

that runs as a red thread throughout SZi’s collective projects.

As their first Museumnacht project Tastes Of Memories -

with which they won the Nieuwe Maan price with which

they scored their first budget for free projects of 10.000

euro’s. It was an interactive installation that drew many

visitors and received critical renown. As an entrance into the Rotterdam

cultural scene, it immediately put them on the map. SZi was asked by

organizers of Museumnacht itself to join, they did not receive any

funding for this project. As the video in the QR-code shows it was a

festive event, full of vibrant joy. By sharing memories and tastes, their

experiences of childhood people bonded in a temporary assemblage

that spanned physical and digital territories27 without regards for breaks

along intersectional lines. This project seems to have achieved their goal

very well.

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27 As digital visitors could continue to upload images of their favorite candies and the stories behind them.

3.3. Dutch tastes: Sweep of the Dragon’s t(r)ail

Figure 11 Wishing Dragon made by Kwannie and Man-Yee

This Wishing dragon was created by Kwannie Tang and Man Yee Mok for the Chinese New Year in

2012 Dragon year. It has the wishes of three hundred visitors in its tail.28 The Dragon is a typical

Chinese symbol of course and as the title indicates SZi is attempting to make ‘a Different kind of

Dragon’. Beautiful about this particular dragon is that it is connecting all the wishes of the visitors in its

tail as it rises towards heaven. The practice of making as an artist with a mixed or Chinese ethnic

background can be conflicting as Dutch tastes expect something ‘Chinese-like’.

Most of the second generation migrants reject working excessively or only with elements of

Chinese culture. Also they felt typecast by the way that they were approached from outside. Like

Kwannie said:“Oh you’re a Chinese art-collective? Well then I am sure you can do some ‘Chinese things’…” As Man-

Yee and Kwannie complained several times: “If I ever have to make another fake Dragon tattoo, I’m not going to

do it!”. Cola interviewed Man-Yee and Kwannie for a documentary, in which they said they do not draw

on ‘Chinese culture’ in their work. Cola explained to me how she thought it was wrong to see it in such

a way:

“For me it’s something, it’s a stereotype. How can you say my work is not that Chinese? So what is Chinese? What is the work for you is easy is for you. The new generation they don’t know what’s the New China, what’s the new Chinese. So their mind their image of China they keep it’s still twenty years ago.”

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28 Found on http://www.kwannietang.nl/index.php?/duo-projecten/wens-draakhistorisch-museum/

Cola told me of the necessity for SZi to go beyond the stereotypical representations of China in their

works:

I think for Studio Zi the most important thing is show the new image of new Chinese, not doing Dragon things.. Of course the dragon is very Chinese.. You can make different Dragon, it’s also not very Chinese dragon… They made one..

This quote clearly shows how difficult it is for artists with a mixed cultural background to navigate

between stereotypes and celebrating their background and heritage in their works. However they might

feel: proud, happy, neutral or negative about their ethnicity as Chinese, it should not have to be an

essential part of their artworks. When I told Koen Mok I picked out one of the few works I could find

with a typical Chinese symbol, he asked me rhetorically: “That’s right. Why should I use any Chinese references

in my work?”. Like Tibetan artists who are judged their work is not Tibetan unless there is a Buddha in

it. If they do not put a Buddha in, they are judged for betraying their background (quote). This racial

and ethnic essentialism is surely not conducive to the transformative power of art as it forces bounds

and boxes - ensnarements - upon creative desire-production. The trail left behind by SZi’s work

contains the power to deconstruct identities as essential bubbles unto themselves, as memories and

wishes float from this assemblage’s different Dragon’s tail - reaching heaven.

Figure 12 Dragon illustration by Koen Mok

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3.4. Joyful deliverance through makingFigure 13 and 14 Pillow

Kwannie Tang works with

various materials as a visual

artist. For the exhibition Far

From Fong that revolved

around the question how

young Chinese-Dutch artists

draw upon their roots to

create a contemporary image

of our society, she was asked

to make a sitting-object. The

final design of her work has

a bowl-like shape by its

black shining curve, on the pink pillow on top of it

she embroidered all kinds of personal experiences

and notes.29 This again illustrates how the self is

actually built up from experiences as varied and as

multiple as they are. The assemblage of SZi aids in

this defining and searching for what it means to be a

hybrid self, but in fact life’s complexities go beyond

drawing upon a Chinese or a Dutch background. By

capturing moments of experience, a narrative is

formed. The quotes on the pillow shown on Figure

13 shows how fleeting reality is and which moments

or things can provide solace. Her feeling when she

was in Asia was “Everybody looks just like me” and

the quote about living in her room for eight years is

about the difficulty she has as an artist to find a

sustainable income so she can move to a bigger

place. Capturing these fleeting moments is a way to grasp them, to make them tactile through textile.

Making in this sense can be like an exorcism, expelling those experiences that define who we are and

sharing them.

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29 http://kwannietang.nl/index.php?/projecten/cbktent-far-from-fong/

Figure 15 Pillow with texts visible: “Wow iedereen lijkt op mij.” “Gelukkig kan ik mijn eigen

fietsbanden plakken” “Sanne, lieve grote zus”, “Waar is mijn prins op het witte paard?” “8 jaar op

mijn kamer met mijn oude wasmachine”.30

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30 Translation by author: “Wow everybody looks just like me”, “Luckily I can fix my own bicycle tires”, “Where is my prince on the white horse?”, “Sanne my dear big sister”, “8 years on my room with my old washing machine”

Figure 16 ‘Octo’ in process for Solar Festival.

Man-Yee Mok draws upon her fascination for the Japanese culture in her work. Humor is a key aspect

of her work. What becomes obvious from Kwannie and Man-Yee’s work is that they create for the joy

of creation. Much of their projects are for either no or a small amount of money and they do their

work with a tremendous joy. As Kwannie also said: “I don’t really think SZi members have an identity-crisis or

something…” The production of desires through making art is a strong force for joyful deliverance -

healing.

Figure 17 Getting dressed in octo-starfish-suits

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3.5. Beyond hybridity into cosmopolitan multiplicity

Figure 18 Illustration commissioned by

WNF Life Guard

Seeping in multiplicity, the images Koen

Mok creates combine natural and urban

landscapes, as this illustration shows, a water-

creature sits astride a land-dwelling toad,

while rockets shoot off and rainbows sprout

off clouds. The badge of WNF is watery,

while flowers, stars, planets and even a tiny

yellow school-bus takes off in an unknown

direction. As if the universe had imploded

and then exploded once more. When I asked

him what kind of themes he usually has in

his work, he said “Women usually, because

they are always popular”. When he makes an

illustration, it takes a few hours. He leaves

room for coincidence, “Taking a line for a

walk” as painter Paul Klee (2006:221) noted

it, allowing color-schemes and combinations

to emerge through a process of

improvisation. Improvisation that has become skillful practice. As he experiments with taking the line

for a walk are executed without a preconceived plan in a playful and improvisatory fashion, the works

are a process of becoming in and of themselves.. “I like to allow chance to play a role, combinations of

colors I stumble on accidentally and I then happen to like, I use it in my work.” His work is the result

of a divergent thinking moving across video-games, music, popular culture and various media. Even the

lines themselves diverge and are running off the edge.

Kalam Man

Kalam Man is a art teacher as well as a visual artist, who makes imaginative portraits. She says she does

not draw on her Chinese background in her work. By looking at her works it becomes obvious she

opens the limitations and binaries by exhibiting a fundamental questioning, an inquiry into self and

animal, object-subject/artist-painting, male-female. Psychedelic in nature, they slow the flow of

perceptions by opening the senses when gazing upon these works - unsettling and challenging binaries.

The artist statements from her website31 rings:

Kalam Man is inspired by  human faces, mustaches and beards, fashion, being a woman and funny, weird stuff. Her work is refined, humoristic, realistic and playful. Most of the

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31 www.kalamman.nl

works are portraits and every portrait has its own realization made by lines, shapes and colors.

Figure 19 ‘Sexy Beast 1.2’

Figure 20 ‘I’m proud of my last name’

In this drawing Kalam is inspired by her last name. It is a self-

portrait of herself as a man. She plays with gender binaries

here.

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Figure 21 Photograph of Kalam Man in front

of her painting.

Almost like the Droste-effect, gazing upon this

photograph opens into the strange loop of self.

An androgynous figure with a black square as

hair looks you straight in the eye, with another

identical one at heart-level, while the maker

herself stares at you with the same intensity.

Perhaps her drive towards multiplicity and

inquisition into selfhood went beyond the

boundedness of SZi, as she decided to leave

the collective.

In the work for a Dating Show - ‘Who am I’ by Kalam Man and Man-Yee Mok, the self is divided into

maps of personality, food, appearance, free time and relationships. Identities in Rotterdam are created

from so many different aspects and habits. The multiplicity of selves occur over so many more axis

than binary oppositions. Here they chose many different oppositions so as to create a spectrum of self,

ranging from if an individual likes to eat with chopsticks or with fork and knife to whether someone is

more a listener or a talkative person.

Figure 22 Zoom in of ‘Wie-Ben-Ik’ stamboom

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It seems that the 2G group feel free to find their way in the Dutch society. Although when some of

them were living in the country-side their appearance were a cause for alienation, now living in

Rotterdam they no longer need to reflect upon their homeland culture. There is no binary opposition

between Dutch and Chinese in their work, the multiplicity and the aesthetics build upon various

influences.

3.4. ConclusionFenmei works explicitly with Chinese references and creates images with a typical Chinese feeling.

While the other members are vastly different in their usage of Chinese symbols. What draws members

to the collective is the way in which they can build upon and be inspired by the a new re-appropriation

of what it means to be Chinese and setting forth an example to other Chinese Dutch that they too can

choose the road less travelled, rather than becoming an engineer or an accountant. Yet many second

generation migrant members of SZi already feel more free and at ease with their hybrid identity, in the

multi-ethnic diverse surroundings of Rotterdam, the color of your skin does not matter so much.

Layers of society are mixing and forming new hybridized cultures and aesthetics. The economic

rise of China is a factor in this as well, as the 1GS are not diasporic subjects, scattered across the

Atlantic ocean without a hope to return but more empowered transnational subjects that came here out

of a fascination.

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4. Assembling Studio Zi4.1. Laying out the territory

SZi assembled on the basis of their ascribed ethnic identity. Membership is intricately bound up with a

notion of Chineseness - as founder of the collective decreed that only those who are Chinese may join

“Born from a Chinese mother and father”. Most members32 joined the collective through knowing someone

who was in SZi already and being invited like this. Other members have found the collective through

the promotion video or their activities during Chinese New Year. The active members of the group

have fluctuated over time, some stepping back due to spatiotemporal reasons - living too far and having

too little time and currently the active members of the group range around ten individuals. The inner

core consists of full-fledged members and ‘Zi friends’ are those who wish to become Zi member but

who “we don’t know well enough yet” as Fenmei told me and have yet to be accepted as members. Entrance

to the inner core depends on the quality of work of Zi-friends. Also individual motivation and

enthusiasm plays a role, when friends of SZi put in a lot of effort then Fenmei would accept them after

consulting with the group. As I had experienced myself, ethnicity is paramount - having ‘a Chinese

background’ was essential to becoming a full-fledged member of SZi.

4.2. Coding the assemblage “How Chinese are you?”

As a group they came together to fight the inflections of dominance by a hegemonic

Dutchness in the artscene, they remain bound to the process of exclusion by formulating their group

on ethnic identity groups their self-desiring production was inhibited. As Seem (in Deleuze & Guattari

972:xxii) explains: “There can be no revolutionary actions, Anti-Oedipus concludes, where the the

relations between people and groups are relations of exclusion and segregation.” SZi is said to be

based upon an activist principle: changing the perceptions of Dutch Chinese and also laying a

foundation for future creatives of other ethnic backgrounds.

What counts as a Chinese background remains confusing at times. Some of the members had

little contact with Chinese culture or other Chinese migrants while growing up. Brown though born to

Chinese parents was adopted as a baby by Dutch parents. She and her sisters grew up while seeing her

biological parents only once a week. She was asked to contribute in a Chinese art exhibition two years

ago, she told me she asked them in return:“How Chinese am I supposed to be? Because actually {laughing

loudly} I look Chinese, my name is Chinese but beyond that ehhh…”. The curators told her it would be no

problem and this is how she stumbled upon SZi for which her background as adoptee also didn’t

matter.

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32 Around seven of the active members came in through this way.

The problems of delineating Chinese identity showed itself several times during my fieldwork

period in my interactions with the collective. There were often jokes about being ‘fake Chinese’ like

when we were eating hot pot, someone didn’t know what fish cakes were: “Ah we’re really fake Chinese

aren’t we?”. The jokes were always goodnatured. Other kind of jokes were about stereotypes and often

heard expressions now used by members of Studio Zi themselves in effect subverting their means of

being racialized jokes by taking them into their own use. Other ethnographers have noted of this

tendency like Goldstein (2003) and a student anthropologist studying Humor at black schools in

Rotterdam noted that they would use racist jokes as endearing terms for one and other, like

“kankermarrokkaan”. My friends at SZi would joke like “Ching Chong Ching!” and “Hoe lang is a

Chinees?” - literally meaning “How tall is a Chinese person?” - an often heard Dutch joke on Chinese

people. Whenever I’d ask how long it’d take to get somewhere - in Dutch it starts with the same phrase

“Hoe lang duurt het?” and then it would be “Hoe lang is een Chinees!”. These jokes function as a way

of coding in the collective, binding together the group.

4.2.3. Power in the assemblage

What struck me during my fieldwork was the way that leadership is shared harmoniously and fluid.

Although Fenmei is the official leader and decides who joins the collective and who initiates and seeks

out most cultural projects, the decision making process on the content flows smoothly and without

hierachy. Yet Darkblue, Yellow and Grey hold differing positions of power as leaders and owners of

the respective spaces, also they are older and seem to be more close to the ancient Chinese spirit. Grey

for example wields the art of tea ceremonies, channeling Chineseness. It is like the older who are more

adept at Chinese culture - as it is often perceived as a skill (quote) - instruct the younger and more free-

spirited ones. It felt like an opposition at times, where we were like children playing and they were more

sternly watching us from the back as during the Museumnacht. As if we were apprentices and Chinese

culture was something that we could learn.

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Figure The art of the tea ceremony

During the process of making there was no clear leader who dictates what has to be done,

rather task are taken up and appointed very fluidly and with a sense of confidence in each others

abilities.33 Fenmei articulated this as:“Everyone gets a a shot at trying to do something they have never done before.”

Improvisation is key and a lot gets done. Problematic were how there was a small group of three to five

people who were extremely active and taking up most of the work, while the rest of the group could

benefit from having their name associated with the collective. This shows Delanda’s emphasis in that an

assemblage must have everyday contact in order to stay together. The boundaries of the group as set by

leader Fenmei were too loose, while main activities took place in a smaller group. Deterritorialization

set in. Several members complained about this. Assemblages are precarious and have a tendency to fall

apart due to recoding or reterritorialization (Delanda 2006:28).

4.3. Healing the route to roots

The migrants within SZi34 have had an ambiguous relationship with being signified as Chinese.

Forming together in an assemblage has helped them to get over their past hurts of being cast aside as

different from the majority of their environment, as they all share a similar tale of being the only

Chinese family in the village [Lightpurple, Orange, Lightblue, Darkgreen, Darkblue] or the only

Chinese in a “typically Dutch” family [Brown.]

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33 Although the same lack of leadership is also cause for criticism amongst members for sometimes things do not get done.

34 As opposed to the 1GS who did not have this as much.

4.3.1. Being othered in the past

Four out of seven members who are Chinese Dutch migrants aiming to stay in the Netherlands

reported a negative feeling about ‘being Chinese’ when growing up in the Netherlands. The other two

did not tell this to me but did clearly report to “feel Dutch”. Darkgreen said “I could always feel I was

different.” Orange describes how when she moved from China at age sixteen to a small village in the

countryside of the Netherlands, “People were very friendly, they always greeted me in the street”. But when they

continued talking she admits to being very depressed in this time after just migrating. Strikingly similar

life-stories are shared by the members who did not come here as a student, their parents restaurant

holders all moving to a village where they were the only Chinese people in the village. This did generate

a way in which they had to learn quickly and making most of their friends Dutch, perhaps ‘integrating

quickly’, as Lightblue says: “That’s why we did not get so stuck in the Chinese culture”.

As Louie (2001:347) describes that most second, third and fourth generation Chinese

Americans have never been to China and only saw stereotypical and often negative images of China

when growing up; their relationship to China developed through multiple, mediated sources, such as

the stories their parents told them, portrayal of China in the news and through popular culture. Perhaps

this is why most of my informants who grew up in the Netherlands report ‘not wishing to be Chinese’

at some point of the other. The below part from my fieldwork notes illustrates the role of media.

First I asked Lightblue about his parents’ opinion of his creative job and he

told me that they weren’t like other Asian parents, “not like those in Shit

Asian Dads say’”. As I say I don’t know that video, he opens the video on

Youtube and I giggle as a stereotypical Asian father is shown remarking

the low prices of vegetables in the supermarket and telling his son he should be a

lawyer or doctor. Then after that he showed me some movies about Hipsters, like “Shit

Hipsters say”, a spinoff of the original viral video “Shit Girls Say”. It was very funny to

recognize myself and my habits.

Etnographers notes, 13 February 2013

4.3.2. Transformation of relationship to being Chinese

A recurrent narrative in my conversations with the Dutch-Chinese SZi members is that the

work that Studio Zi does has changed that negative image of Chinese culture. By being inspired by

Chinese culture, they are finding a new way to breathe in Chineseness. In this way the migrant members

of SZi come to terms with the externally ascribed identity of Chinese, by re-appropriating what it

means to be Chinese in their own way. Also second generation migrant members can become

acquainted with ‘traditional aspects of Chinese culture‘ such as drinking Chinese kung fu tea, making

dumpling together and working with and being inspired by Chinese symbols such as the lucky knot that

is the group’s logo.

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Roots and routes are guidelines for diasporic or transnational subjects to map their relations to

their or their parent’s country of origin. Returning to China or Chineseness is perceived as ‘going back

to your roots’ . Like Chinese American anthropology professor Andrea Louie (2001:350) notes: the

searching for roots seems to come forth from particular social positions, those of minority, refugee and

immigrant.

Finding back one’s roots through merging with an assemblage brings forth intensities of joy and

healing. Like Brown mentions: “It’s funny that I didn’t have any connection or something with my own being

Chinese, but now actually since I am with Studio Zi, to be honest I found more peace in myself.”. Also Lightblue,

Darkgreen, Darkblue and Lightpurple mention this. In fact all members of the second generation

group report a sense of transformation and healing in their relationship to being labeled Chinese.

Rather than being an outsider, through assembling they feel empowered to be who they are.

Chinese culture is consumed through the commodification of cuisine, symbols, sayings,

customs and beliefs - a packaged version of Chinese culture is created by and for themselves as well as

for a larger audience in the city of Rotterdam. This packaged version is highly interesting for it appeals

to the multicultural inclination without disrupting the cordon sanitaire placed around the colonial history

of the Netherlands.

SZi is chartering the route back to their roots by engaging in self-anthropology. As Lu

concludes: “Diasporic art, then, is self-ethnography and self-othering.” (Lu 1997:87). I concur with his

findings on the grounds of that SZi’s re-engagements with ‘traditional Chinese culture’ are drawing

their own ethnography, such as Chinees Meisje and some future projects envision building a bridge

between the first and second generation of Dutch Chinese migrants. Darkgreen’s sister did

anthropological research into generations of Wenzhouese migrants in the Netherlands and based on

that Orange told me they would like to make a documentary so that:“The two generations who cannot

understand each other now, they can be touched by watching this documentary and then finally see how it feels for the other

generation.” - This can be seen as a form of transformational anthropology that Ingold (2013:5)

proposes.

4.4. Dangers of hybridity! “It’s not as if it is a car” I became involved with a project that would “build bridges between China and the Netherlands” initiated by an

inactive member of SZi - a self-declared hybrid Blue. With an enticing narrative of innovation towards

sustainability through creativity, I was rapidly enamored with the prospect of working on a project that

would combine craft knowledge of Chinese craftspeople with fresh ‘Dutch’ conceptual thinking. Make

in China, not made in China was the slogan. Although his ideas were promising, I was irked by the

underlying cultural essentialism that presumed Dutch people to have a stronger inborn capacity for

conceptual thought than Chinese, thereby feeding into the notion that SZi was built around trying to

disprove: that Chinese are less capable of creative thinking. He was setting up a cultural exchange

project which would build bridges between the craftspeople and the Dutch designers and the end-result

57

would be products that would be mass-produced. I was critical to the way that this would bring about

positive change towards sustainability, especially if the products were supposed to be “cheap and

affordable for every Chinese family” as he put it. This sounded like just another Made in China, where Dutch

designers would come to learn some skills quickly from impoverished craftspeople and then create

some designs, manufacture them there and massively distribute them. The craftspeople would not rise

in esteem and neither would this conceit be sustainable. After emailing him with my honest opinion, I

stepped out of the project.

As he grew up in China and came to the Netherlands to study for his bachelors and masters, he

is part of the 1GS group. Blue very clearly stated his China mainland loving political engagements

through his strong defense of his government. This became clear when he referred to Ai Wei Wei as a

hooligan and he defended the Chinese government didn’t give details on the death-toll of the Sichuan

earthquakes that: “They were just trying to protect the people.”. We watched a documentary together on Ai

Wei Wei and at the moment that this controversial artist was shown after being submitted to eighty days

of being locked up and presumably tortured by the Chinese state, he laughed. Also he formulated a

strong “we”-“you” dichotomy, referring to me and other foreigners as “you guys” and “we as Chinese”,

while continuing on glorifying a list of positive adjectives and values that Chinese people are supposed

to have35. Probably my criticism and stepping out of the assemblage for this project caused him to re-

territorialize, declaring me as an outsider. While before he insisted I was “more Chinese than” a

particular SZi 2G member.

This contrasts strongly from the other members of the collective who say to be more

concerned with the SZi’s ambiance, the friendship and the “good vibe” that involves being part of the

group, they never expressed any kind of nationalist affiliation like this and actually seemed very

politically naive to the contemporary situation in mainland China. It is also celebratory of Chinese

culture. As Fenmei was raised in the Netherlands from age nine onward, she did not receive the

propaganda as much as Blue did, nor did her sources inform her that much of the political situation in

China. This becomes obvious from the initial idea to propose a tournament of Chinese against

Japanese for a tongue-in-cheek project, naive of the strongly problematic political situation currently

between these nations.36 Cola makes art that is celebratory of Chinese traditions and she is fascinated

with sharing these in a Dutch context. Yet I never heard her make condemning statements on

controversial Chinese artists or this ‘we-you’ dichotomy.

Perhaps that is why Blue left SZi as an active member to go on more serious pursuits, as if

motivated by Tu Wei Ming’s ‘the Living Tree’ urging Chinese diaspora to help in innovating the

mainland lagging behind in development (in Ang 2003:228).37 In my conversations with him he used

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35 Peaceful, friendly,

36 As one of my friends from Wuhan related: “Students are out on the street demonstrating for our government to wage war with Japan!”. This was during October when the conflict over the islands Senkaku escalated.

37 Although he said that he never read books, this conception seems prevalent.

the same wordings such as diaspora being “the roots” to “the tree”. “How can they cut the root?” he spat at

me fervently whilst discussing diasporic Chinese artists who did not pay much attention to their

homeland. This nationalist fervor frankly terrified me and I realized the dangers of these superiority

sentiment as well as the essentialist sentiments that motivated him. He is one of the only (ex-)members

I’ve met that I know to be this nationalist.

Red did a video interview with two 2G members. She wanted to ask and find out about their

Chinese background and why they participate in SZi. Red herself noted that it was a touchy subject

when she shot those interviews: “And I think in their eyes they see Chinese as a bad reputation. [Yes that is what I

heard from several people in Studio Zi also.] So they prefer to be Dutch.”

While Red interviewed them their speech was soft, both said they do not have such a link to

Chinese culture, neither in their work nor in their personal life. I struggled with this aspect during my

interviews with some of the members as I do not want to categorize people unless they do so

themselves and to ask them: “Hey you are Chinese, how do you feel about that?” because some might

be uncomfortable with being boxed in. As I myself felt when I was cast as ‘Dutch Dutch’ by Red at

some point, I can imagine they would feel the same way if I would assign them an ethnic identity as a

matter-of-fact and then probe on their feelings about it.

Purple actually left the collective directly having an interview with me when I asked her how she

felt about Chinese culture in relation to SZI. She felt the focus of SZi to lay excessively on Chineseness

and that it should be more on the quality of their work, when I spoke to her she was on the verge of

quitting the collective due to several reasons. As Lightblue wrote in response to her leaving: “Apparantly

we show ourselves to the outside world as being Chinese, [..] For the outside world this is seen again as: “Look! There’s

that funny group of Chinese people!” We place ourselves in a box. We are agaín those little Chinese people. Agaín that

same old mark. Is that really necessary I wonder? My opinion is that we throw off this old image!”

4.4.2. Controversial ‘Chineseness’

“A revolutionary group at the preconscious level always remains subjugated even in seizing power as long as this power itself refers to a form of force that continues to enslave and crush desiring-production. A subject-group on the contrary, is a group whose libidinal investments are themselves revolutionary, it causes desire to penetrate into the social field and subordinates the socius or the forms of power to desiring-production; productive of desire and a desire that produces, the subject-group always invents a mortal formations that exorcize the effusion in it of a death instinct; it opposes real coefficients of transversality to the symbolic determinations of subjugation, coefficients without a hierarchy or group superego” Deleuze & Guattari (1972:xxi-xxii)

Coming together on the grounds of a shared ethnic background is understandable, but also

dangerous. As this is what Deleuze & Guattari point out as a difference between revolutionary and

subject groups, the first being bound to what they rally against, if desire-production is ensnared. The

last part has shown that hybridity is not all fun and holding hands, there is a real danger in hybrid

imaginations, the danger of essentialization runs rampant in the story of SZi. 59

One time it was “jokingly” mentioned that Lightpurple would not allowed to join the Japanese team in

the Cats vs Dogs project, as she is Chinese.38 If she is even disallowed to participate in the creation

process according to her own affinity and interest, she is restricted from producing her desire. Then the

same threads that feature so in the performance artwork on SZi’s first exhibition shown in figure 23

and 24 bind her. Only this time the ensnaring threads are of SZi’s own making.

Performance artists Ka Yee Li & Ian Yang created a work for first SZi exhibition ‘Far From Fong’

inspired by “the struggle of Chinese culture in the Netherlands” as Ka Yee Li’s website39

states. “Their improvised performance embodies the search for freedom within its

boundaries.”

Figure 23 Image of performance by Ka Yee Li & Ian Yang

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38 By the leader during the same conversation in which I was excluded from official membership.

39 http://www.kayeeli.com/autonoom-werk/in-de-knoop-zitten/

Figure 24 Image for performance by Ka Yee Li & Ian Yang

! In excluding members on the basis of their "non-Chineseness", there is a danger because the

identity is then reduced to a racial, national and/or ethnic one, which is problematic. In reality the

forces that build the projects of SZi do not only come from bodies racialized as Chinese, in fact

boyfriends of the three members who helped out for the Museumnacht who were not ethnically

Chinese at all! So yet still SZi insists upon "only Chinese" members, while other members complaint

that there was no credit due to where it was due.40

The problem here is that founder Hu was afraid to compromise its internal purity towards

outsiders. Yet I wonder-  for whom does the collective need to stay "Chinese only” in racial or ethnic

identity and what good does this do? The coding gets cranked up: "Are you really Chinese?" when the

assemblage is deterritorialized. In its current form it actually contributes to the social problem it seeks

to address- namely the cultural essentialism - actually racism masked - that believes people conform to

what their ethnic or racial signifiers are. Catering to the market is why. The “unique selling point” of

SZi is their Chineseness41. Studio Zi caters to what Ahmad (2001:80) calls the “the mainstream’s ever

more voracious desire for all things ‘different’”, by providing a form of Chinese culture catered to

Dutch tastes and aesthetics. This is done not by monitoring the content of the projects, but by applying

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40 While some of the ‘friends of Zi’ worked with great commitment without being credited for it and they won’t be able to join the collective. One is for example a Korean photographer who was not allowed to join the collective.

41 As three core members have mentioned to me.

strict boundaries around the official membership-list.

So on the one hand the assemblage heals those who are struggling with having being a Chinese

other in an otherwise Dutch family (as one was) or village (as all the others were) for making

connections to Chineseness that are life giving, creative and give them the possibility to deal with their

own grief and problems through making. On the other hand the demarcation of "only Chinese may

enter" causes the same mechanisms of exclusion that still spreads the pain, the disease, the tragedy of

cultural purity notions that got them hurt in the first place. Yet notions of hybridizing cultural

essentialism can be useful too in for the goals of SZi as assemblage.

4.5. Strategies of Hybridity

4.5.1.Self-orientalism

Self-orientalism can be used so that SZi’s services cater to Dutch tastes for the exotic. It is like the

“Chinese food” sold in the Netherlands, adjusted to what Dutch find palatable. These are the symbolic

expressions of the assemblage through the language they employ during negotiations, the public self-

image they put forward (Delanda 2011). It is a self-described strategy used by SZi members. As Brown2

told me: “I might as well benefit from it [being Chinese].” This benefit lies in gaining more jobs and

assignments. Also Darkblue told me: “Who cares if we’re getting booked just because we are Chinese? We are

Chinese aren’t we! And if we get our benefit from it, I don’t at all have a problem with that.” Chineseness in this

regard is described by SZi members as something distinctive, something ‘different’ and special that is

their “unique selling point” as Lightblue puts it. This is done in several ways. One is to stress the hybrid

nature of their identity and present this as something that makes them more specially equipped to do

certain tasks of mediation and ‘bridge building’. Second is to build on their Chinese identity to gain

entrance to Chinese only exhibitions and to play into the contemporary interest in the exotic and

mysterious Far East. Thirdly they stress positive aspects of Chinese stereotypes in the Netherlands,

hardworking, prolific Chinese artist versus the starving, lazy Dutch artist. This is also echoed by their

surroundings.

4.5.2. Hybrid bridge builders

SZi was contacted by Poetry International to ‘build bridges’ as hybrids are thought to do. SZi’s

founder does have connections to the Chinese community, but her base of fans and collaborators lies

mostly in the artistic and creative community. As has become clear from my conversations with SZi

members, there is no real strong connection to “the Chinese community”. The most active members of

SZi do not have understanding families regarding their creative work and they in fact did not have

many Chinese Dutch friends outside of the collective As Kuo (2009) has argued, there is no real

singular community as such as Chinese migrants are dispersed and form social groups based upon

other denominators and interests than just their ethnic identity.

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Blue who left SZi more or less officially, was in the process of starting his own foundation,

based upon a view partly influenced by religious views of him being ‘the chosen One’ to bring

innovation to China through combining Dutchness with Chineseness as if they were two essences.

Bridge-builder hybrids is a strong and pervasive myth, it has truth to it but it should not be

taken at face value that so-called hybrids are always able to mediate between ‘two cultures’.

Theoretically equality and interconnectedness mean there are no distinct boundaries. This is the

normative part of the hybridity theory, yet hybrids such as Blue create themselves by making and re-

enforcing boundaries. Through the strong focus on being loyal to China and having nationalist

sentiments Blue decided who is and who is not ‘Chinese’, saying at some point I am more Chinese than

an 2G member of SZi.

4.5.3.Chinese only exhibitions

Due to the rise of China there is a great interest in Rotterdam for ‘the Chinese culture’. SZi

emerged just at the right time to make use of this sudden interest. While I started fieldwork in

Rotterdam, China literally was everywhere in Rotterdam. It could be the well-known fieldworkers

blindness similar to pregnant women seeing everywhere baby carriages. But during December to March

there was China RAW Art expo, China Light festival and Chinese New Year taking place, while the

newspapers were filled with scary articles on the rise of China. The sides of trams were taken by huge

photographs of the Pandabears and Dragons advertising the light spectacle in the Euromast park.

Therefore their Chinese ethnicity could be used very well to cater to this new interest.

4.5.4. Positive stereotypes on Chinese

Both dominant and minority groups tend to deploy representational strategies that promote

themselves. For example the collective build upon characterizations of the Chinese as hardworking and

referred to this in conversations with other stakeholders, wielding a positive stereotype on Chinese

migrants to their benefit. This was repeated in the discussion with the Pauluskerk, between project-

group Cats vs Dogs and also in the individual interviews this was mentioned. In this quote the

hardworking nature of Studio Zi is juxtaposed in contrast with other artists “who sometimes do not

work so hard” by .

Once I introduced them in a gallery where they had worked like crazy. But ehm.. and I still didn’t hear you [to SZi members] complain or anything. Fenmei said modestly: “Internally we did.” But there was again something good and that is the case every time. Those people you need. I know enough artists who think they are working very hard but.. - “That is not only amongst artists” the reverend remarked sternly.

Working hard is hallmark of the Dutch Chinese stereotype. This was brought up several times during

conversations I have overheard in conversations of SZi with project-leaders for creative projects.

During my time with SZi and in talks with members I found a strong motivation to create. Because of

the joy that the projects give them and their intrinsic desire to create. Although they do struggle with

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the financial problems many artists encounter - how their skillful work is valued less and seen as a kind

of ‘hobbyism’.

4.6 Conclusion:

Through assembling in SZi, Chineseness is transformed from being a reason for being excluded to a

reason being included and for getting jobs, making a profit. Although most of the work is voluntary,

there are still jobs coming in because of curiosity and interest in their Chinese background.

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5. Old China: A dream within a dream5.1.The mirage of China Light:

The assemblage of SZi hooked up to another constellation when it was hired by China Light to provide

children’s workshops. Also SZi provides the cultural program for Chinese New Year each year which is

organized by another foundation. To give an ethnographic example of the kind of representations of

commodified Chinese culture that SZi is embedded in and contributes to, I will sensuously sketch how

what members of the collective and I call the ‘Old China’ is represented.

From 7 December 2012 to 14 February 2013 the China Light festival was held in Rotterdam. A

diverse assortment of lighted sculptures originating from China dotted the Euromast Parc in

Rotterdam. They portrayed archetypical Chinese symbols: Quan Yin Goddess, Dragons, Panda’s, oh

my! Some light-sculptures were illustrations from Confucian ethical tales that seemed very strange and

out of place in Rotterdam, the stories lacked any connection with the surrounding area. Also sculptures

that seemed directly imported from attraction parks in China: a very disturbing looking Santa Claus

laughing with his reindeers.

Figure 25 Temple in China Light

As my part of my fieldwork activities - participating with SZI - I was asked to help out at the

kid’s workshop. Arriving well before dusk to prepare, I walked through the pale premise with bloated

sculptures that looked less than impressive without the light turned on beneath them. Across a blue

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Oriental temple and a huge Quan Yin sculpture was the workshop tent. The kids workshop consisted

of making “Chinese kites”, colorful paper and tools were provided. Around thirty children attended

with twenty-eight parents, five of the children were Asian-looking, twenty to twenty-five were white

and around seven children looked Middle-Eastern.

Figure 26 Children during the workshop making Opera Masks

A blonde boy of around four to six years old drew the Chinese character 土 on his kite, which

means soil. As I point it out to him enthusiastically, that he has managed to write a real Chinese

character, his friend tells me that he always confuses she and he. I remark to the boys that in Chinese

this distinction cannot be heard. “Yes that’s why he says that in that way” his young friend says seriously.

When I ask him where he learned that, he says “Oh nobody.” Cola takes a picture of me and the boy

together. Another five year old girl with cute braided blonde hairs and an slightly stressed out mother

tells me while I’m helping her that there are “Chineesjes”42 living in her flat who once played the piano

for the entire flat. She boasts of playing piano, violin, cello and guitar herself and she would play on the

day of her birthday. At the end of the workshop parents are sitting drinking glühwein and collecting

their children’s belongings. One child steals an example kite and acts as if she made it herself. We clean

up but then Man-Yee says I can go outside and that I’ve helped enough.

Kwannie and Man-Yee employed their usual creativity to make workshops for the children, as I checked

the Facebook page of SZi they did different things: making opera-masks, kites and typical Chinese hats.

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42 Literally meaning little Chinese people

Figure 27 Chinese hats workshop.

After spending time with members of SZi the choice to participate is seems not built upon

transnational attachments to the Chinese nation or any affiliation with the commercial goals hidden in

China Light’s national advertising campaign. The goal of SZi for this project was to make a bit of

money, as they were hired and jobs are scarce in the cultural industry these days. The kid’s workshops

paint a picture that is rather stereotypical, as the hilarious picture of figure 30 shows. It could be noted

as self-orientalist by taking these images that are typically seen as Chinese, showing a kind of reified

Chinese culture through its symbols. It seems this is what they are asked for to do though and this is

where the annoyance stems from - just because they are a Chinese designers and artists collective, it

doesn’t mean they should only have to do ‘Chinese’ things. And even this presentation of what are

Chinese things are a stereotype, that especially youngly migrated 1G and 2G members have who did

not experience China mainland as much through direct experiences and their image is built up out of

mediated representations (Louie 2001:347; Chu 2008:185).

There is a growing concern about Chinese diasporic artwork that employs primordial Chinese

symbols for the way it conforms to Western stereotypes of China (Maravillas 2007:275). For example

Chinese artist and critic Wang Nanming asserts that Chinese artists who are living abroad produce work

that can be seen as a kind of “Chinatown culture”, one that is completely separate from the “dynamic

environment of China’s cultural present” (Wang 265-66 quoted in ibid.). This ‘Chinatown culture’ can

67

become a commodified version of culture adjusted to Western tastes.

It became clear that the cultural signifier of what is ‘Chinese’ strongly differs between the three

groups within SZi. In China Light a kind of ‘Chinatown’ culture was presented in the workshop for

kids that SZi created and organized. It seemed in a strong way to cater to Dutch tastes of Chineseness,

using typical Chinese things. But this takes place in an entire light-festival drenched in primordial

symbols of ‘Chineseness’, so it is clear why they chose to blend in. Since SZi now became part of the

assemblage of China Light which occupied the territory of the Euromast Park, they had to conform to

the internal coding of behavior. Therefore they could not apply their own revolutionary ideas as they

were hired and worked together with this particular assemblage with its own properties. The emergent

property of this larger assemblage was promotion and enchantment with the Chinese dream, which I

will entail now now.

Figure 28 Panda bears

Emerging from the kid’s workshop tent, my eyes hurt from the bombarding blast of light.

Walking to the right of the tent, I discover deliriously cute panda bears with a sign posted next to them:

“The panda bear is a sign of friendship. The friendship that the Chinese nation wishes to offer.”. I chuckle under my

breath. That image is a redundant example how this festival is one big ‘China’ promotion stunt. Ong

(1993) states that an image of “a kinder and gentler capitalism for the twenty-first century” (767) is

created on the basis of Confucian ethics. These panda bears seem to be the bringers of that. I see how

wittingly or unwittingly creativity is furthering capitalist ideologies as a means of entertainment

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(Horkheimer and Adorno 1944 in Bennett 2001) as well as employing enchanting imagery to rouse

nationalist sentiments - what anthropologist Richard Jenckins (2000:19) calls collective enchantments.

The goal is to promote an image of China that is ‘friendly’: the Panda bears being the spokespersons

for that, ‘skillful and diligent’ expressed in the dance performance of the man and women dressed like

swans in white and ‘diverse’ through the ethnic outfits donned by the dancers.

As I continue walking through the faery-tale like scenery, I see a woman in red perform an

alluring swan or peacock dance with her hands twisted in delightful patterns, weaving intricate patterns

on Oriental music that managed to get me enthralled. The second dancers wear clothes that remind me

of the costumes ‘ethnic minorities’ in Yunnan don, showcasing the diversity of ‘Chinese’. “It is like a

faery tale” the former volunteers at the kids workshop whisper under their breath to me while I struggle

with mixed feelings. As we move across the ‘Harvest Route’ adorned with multicolored lanterns in the

shape of vegetables, a typical Chinese music plays and I hear people mumbling “It’s like the Efteling”.

Besides the majestic Dragon in the park, whose fountain is freezing over a nearby tree, I hear two

Dutch people say to one and other “It’s quite impressive, isn’t it - this Chinese culture.” China Light is a

promotion of China placed by a Chinese businessman with the intent upon making business, Man-Yee

has made it clear.

Figure 29 Quan Yin

Rotterdam municipality does not fund this park, yet it is one of Rotterdam’s biggest parks that

is being used for this. I can’t help but think that the appearance of this festival is a strategic ploy for

69

Chinese businessmen to gain entrance through rearing moral support for China. If there is more

support base and interest in “the Chinese culture” then this could correlate with economic interests on

both sides. Promoting Chinese culture in the trade and harbor town of Rotterdam seems to be tightly

woven together with financial interests. This becomes obvious also at the Chinese New Year, where

Dutch minister Aboutaleb holds a speech on the stage about the benefits of opening to Chinese culture

and the “great benefits of relationships between China and the Netherlands” and the “potentials of trade” in future

endeavors.

Enchantment and the fascinating ‘Exotic Other’ are tropes that are employed for the betterment of

Dutch and Chinese nation-states. It became clear to me that SZi members participate in this because

these are the kind of assignments they can easily acquire as ‘Chinese Dutch collective’. Their hybrid

identity allows them to be a bridge-builder and to be asked to promote events like these to the Chinese

community too, so that it is not only an event for enchanting westerners but also Chinese communities

themselves, reminding them of ‘the Chinese dream’ as you will. SZi members themselves were rather

neutral about the festivals, some liked it and others were less interested.

5.2. Enchanted by boundedness As I walk through this ‘dream of China‘ in the Euromast Park, I can’t help but feel nostalgic

myself. I struggle with my own unbidden sentiments, a cozy sense of ‘Chineseness’ sneaks up inside of

me (Ang 2003:241), at this point I love ‘China’ and I am a fool for it. The state is unpleasant, but the

collective enchantment of a Chinese superpower seems to me ever as a truly welcome shift in global

power. As China is westernized and the West is easternized, I finally envison a break from the

unchallenged Eurocentric Western domination. Enchantment has striken me and boundedness seems

like a warm and viable opposition to a bland and monochrome ‘cosmopolitanism’. I imagine a kind of

healthy hybridity in which cultural practices are mingled and exchanged, ancient Chinese culture and its

ecological wisdom embedded in philosophy could hopefully spread across the globe rather than empty

American consumerism, what if a Taoization of the world could occur rather than a McDonaldization?

The reality is that all of it is a mirage, just as the flashy lights of this park. My version of Taoism is just

as far away from the Chinese everyday reality of ecologic nightmare as this ‘Dream of China’ here is. I

know that nationalism is unhealthy and how the sense of community it invokes is imaginary (Anderson

1983). Yet cast under the spell here I feel excited that this powerful nation is rising, I feel ashamed to

admit that I feel pride flowing through my veins. Academically I fight racism and biological

determinism, I even challenge that cultural practices are handed down genealogically as they arise in

environments. Yet still personally I feel this strength oozing from my genetical pool and that does give

me a sense of internal belonging whenever I am in China or I meet ‘Chinese people’, Taiwanese or

whatever. The park seems successful in his magic spell on me.

5.3. Chinese New Year

Another spell of belonging is the Chinese New Year, a festival set in the park of West Kruiskade. I

enter the big gates adorned with big colorful flags with Chinese characters on them on the 13th of

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February. This festival is run by ‘stichting China Festivals’ which is a sister organization of SZi and

three members hold a position at the board.

Promotion material for the foundation has been supplied by SZi members. The park is

arranged in a square shape, on the sides are several little shops and there is one stage on the far end of

the entrance. The shops on the side fall under my ‘jurisdiction’ for I’m responsible of taking care of

everything behind the scenes.

The stage is where the Dragon’ and Lion’s Dance performance takes place, it starts there and

then the elaborate colorful suits passes by around forty43 shop-owners in the street. The rest of the

program is taken care of by SZi and includes several traditional Chinese dance groups, kung fu

demonstrations including Kung Fu Panda, as well as modern hiphop dancers. In a newspaper clipping44

Fenmei states that she aims for a broad audience, young and old, Chinese as well as other groups.

This same atmosphere is brought forth by the promotion video of the previous year, where

traditional Chinese opera, Lion’s dance and kung fu performances blended in with an upbeat

mix of typical Oriental music and drum ‘n bass.

An Asian-looking man in a typical Oriental red jacket sells silk clothes with floral designs, incense,

Buddha statues and other new age attributes. His voice roars across the square with a typical Rotterdam

merchant accent. Another shop sells tiny baby-dragons, panda’s attached to strings and red lanterns

with Chinese characters on them. Next to that there is a shop of mobile gadgets and more Oriental

clothing. In the Tea2Choc shop Jinai, Maria and the interns are working constantly to deliver freshly

steamed dim sum and snacks to visitors.

When I look around the park I see the modern architecture of Calypso in the distance, the

Dragon parade will pass through there Lulu the speaker tells me. “The lion’s dance is a dream of the

Chinese emperor” Lulu narrates. “The emperor did not know what lions were, because he had never

seen one, but after a man came to visit him in his royal palace, he saw one in his dreams. After this

moment he instructed the dancers of the court to dance like he had seen in his dream.” This is the

dance that is shown on and off the stage now. The dream within a dream is what captures the spirit of

this festival. A painful nostalgia grips me, as I see how elements of ‘Chinese culture’ which are not

relevant in contemporary China are brought forth and re-appropriated by the migrants who made and

visit this festival. I see the production of identity taking place here (Hall 1990:224), in cultural theorist

Stuart Hall’s words “a re-telling of the past”. It is like a dream within a dream of what it means to be

Chinese.

Cultural identities are not unchanging essences waiting to be uncovered by the ‘cultural

pollution’ (de Kloet in Guadeloupe & de Rooij 2007) that cultural integration to a migrated country

entails. Rather than being passed down generation through generation it arises from practical

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43 http://www.chinafestivals.nl/rotterdam-nieuwjaar-festival-programma

44 Metro Rotterdam 13 Februari 2013

engagement with the environment. Yet the strength of reconnecting with imagined essential identity is

pervasive (Hall 1990:224) and can be strongly comforting. As I had experienced myself in the China

Light mirage.

A group women is huddled together including the woman Lulu introduced to me as her

mother, they are wearing pink clothing so bright that it is almost fluorescent reminiscent of traditional

Chinese clothing. They are preparing for their dance show. Later they appear on the stage, fabrics

flailing around as they dance and beat the drums. Hellen is doing Chinese calligraphy for hours, her legs

are freezing. I bring her a jacket that Jinai is not using to heat her legs. She is five months pregnant,

otherwise she would present the event today. She invents Chinese names for people who want, but the

line of people keeps on growing. The interest in Chinese culture is great and SZi has a chance to create

a kind of Chineseness through making the cultural program.

Figure 30 Writing names for visitors in Chinese calligraphy.

It becomes obvious that the representation is that of a modern, new West and a traditional, old China.

The fast-paced hip-hop music is Western although the dance is performed by Chinese youngsters, the

Kung Fu demonstration is done by both white and Chinese people but they are timeless motions and

ooze a kind of Chineseness like is demonstrated by the movies by Zhang Yimou, as Chu (2008:186)

notes: “autoethnographies that aim to fulfill the desirous appetite of Western audiences.” . The

hybrid identities that SZi members are constructing seems to be based upon a reified cultural image

that is built up through experiences of Chineseness while the new and modern in it seems Western.

While Cola stated: “I have never seen the Lion’s Dance in my life in China..” as she commented on Chinese

New Year using symbolism that is not at all relevant in contemporary China.

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5. Making the Museumnacht

"Verily, I may have done this or that for sufferers; but always I seemed to have done better when I learned to feel better joys. As long as there have been men, man has felt too little joy: that alone, my brothers, is our original sin. And learning better to feel joy, we best unlearn how to do harm to others and to contrive harm. " Nietzsche. Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1969 (quoted by Bennett 2001:12)

“Cultivating joy is nowhere near as straightforward a practical exercise as exposing metaphysical assumptions and unstated, a priori postulates.” Buchanan, “Introduction”, A Deleuzian century? 1999:9

The Museumnacht event consisted of two parts, emphasized by the ‘Double Tear’ concept

that led the project. One was the Happy Tear project in which we transformed the space of

‘het Zesde Geluk’ into an interactive installation where visitors had to wade through a

metaphorical pool of happy tears towards a wooden construction on which a typing machine was

situated on a desk with a simple chair. There the visitor could write his or her memory of a joyous

moment in their lives that moved them to tears, which he or she would then place into a bottle that was

swung to the desk of the typing tear. There the story would be printed unto eatable white chocolate

and placed upon a lollypop.

Figure 31 Eatable ‘Happy Tear ’ lollypops with happy stories73

Figure 32 The type-writer and the bottle

The ‘Sad Tear’ part of the project centered around the art works of the homeless, drug-addicted and

impoverished visitors of the Pauluskerk. I helped develop the concept together with Cola,

the filming was done in February by a male friend of Lulu, the Pauluskerk project manager.

Our concept was to make a documentary film showcasing the works that the Pauluskerk

visitors created in the communal workspace, consisting of drawings, paintings, poetry,

comics and spoken word. I as the only Dutch speaking person during the filming session collaborated

with the Pauluskerk visitor-artists before, during and after they were filmed. Also Cola and I visited the

writer’s cafe of the Pauluskerk where we collected poems of the visitors there, which Cola scanned as

writing and edited into an animated film. Cola and I edited the film together, where I added Dutch

subtitles to what was said.

Figure 33 Stills from the two homeless poetry and art movies74

These art installations were meant to displace feelings - from the participants into external

sharable expressions through the lolly and from the bodies of the homeless/refugees/poor

through the projection of the film into the bodies of viewers. The goal as was discussed

during meetings was to provide visitors with the affection of compassion. Rather than representing the

homeless-artists as sad or disenfranchised, I wanted to empower them. That is why I called for an

exhibition in front of the camera. SZi’s assemblage deterritorialized by letting in these ‘outsider artists’

in a collaboration, where their artworks - expressing their own sets of sentiments, ranging from rising

proudly from childhood sexual abuse through performing spoken word to cartoon-renderings of aliens

and science fiction fantasies like lazer-powered automobiles. Healing intensities were brought forth by

being heard and seen in public as whole and worthy human beings, who were not represented by

something they signify: homeless/refugee/poor but by what they do: making and creating, even in the

face of terrible adversity. One way a craftslady puts it: “Always keep going, if you can’t walk, you can

still sew. If you’re in bed, you can still embroider.”. She exhibited her masterfully crafted Victorian

embroidery shown below here in figure 33.

Figure 34. Still of movie

The process of making touches upon the very nature of our humanity. Where an collective is

together ideas flow through synapses hanging in the spaces between their seemingly separate bodies

and skulls, laughter and vibrations of the vocal cords express, then push, shape and restrain the ball

of energy that is - a creative incentive, “an idea” - that is then joined with physical manifestation

processes - not imposed in a vertical line from individually isolated mind through mechanistic

bodily motions into a dead and inert matter - but in a more playful sideways motion. If making of

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the various props that the Museumnacht installation consisted of would be perceived in a fast

forward time frame, it would appear as a perpetual flow, a motion - in which materials couple with

able (and less able) hands, feet, voices and bodies - stitching, sewing, gluing - passing the prop in

formation from person to person. Laughter and smiles of encouragement accompanies the

process. If taken from a perspective that zooms out of the creation of props, ideas and talents lay

scattered around the group like dormant forces waiting to be released into production of desires.

Forming together in an assemblage is what brings out the emergent properties that already are

immanent in its parts. The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

Materials play a part in this. The already second hand wooden pellets we used to build the

foundations of the installation found their way into the concept-store of an old friend. It was only

part of an art installation if taken the short-term perspective. Later they became parts of the

furniture of her shop, this part of the assemblage could easily be decomposed and added to another

assemblage.

Materials tend to be willful to. The tear-suits I will take as an example. Man-Yee purchased

the materials on the market of Rotterdam, fleece fabrics in various colors and foam to make a sturdy

interior of the suit. Man-Yee and Kwannie prepared the suits and I had to sow it together. It was a

struggle to go inside the fleece suit to put the foam in the correct placing, my hair became static and

it was a clear interplay between the materials and forces of which my body consists and those inside

the materials, to form it to my purpose took skill and practice. The second suit I sewed together I

used a different technique that made it far more time-effective and easier. Although I had even a

physical example I could not emulate exactly the other suits in this manner, as I had not seen the

technique that was used by Man-Yee and Kwannie and I just improvised something. The properties

of the materials - the conduciveness of fleece to static energy, the toughness of the foam which

struggled against the fleece and softer internal fabric - all played a role in the process of making the

suits.

As Ingold (2012) likens a maker to a participant running around in between materials in the

process of creation similar to the bird that is making its nest.44 The process went similar to that,

although now there was an assemblage of several birds each making their own part of the

installation It is through the cooperation and determination that the concept of a collective art

project is manifested in its material world - not only between human ‘individuals’ but also between

materials and people - smiles accompany the process, a nudge of appreciation, then the hands seem

able of more. The “energy” seems to flow through my hands as they seem to “hum” and inside me

there is a sense of “being moved”, of emotion - (e-nergy in motion). Desire is the flow of life that

is the force of creation.

That is why the meshwork coupled with assemblage can best be used to describe SZi

working together, as spores of sensory experiences are mediated in their collective buzzing mind that

through physical engagements with the environment and the materials - in objects purchased such as

the Blokker’s faux green grass mat and a glass bottle - are combined into the culmination of their

collective dream or imagining.76

Materials, conceptualizations and physical engagements retrieve the stuff of dreams into the

stuff of the world. An essential point is the joy with which this project was made. Working with the

art collective I learned how the creation process is characterized by a high degree of joyful play

(Ravetz 2011b) . This joy is what generates, it is one of the forces that Deleuze & Guattari (1987) that

direct the materials - it does not only direct the physical structures of the art works, but also the

strong sense of togetherness.

Figure 35 The tears and clouds above the installation.

Cultural theorist Jane Bennett (2001) describes the joy that propels ethics. It seems to come

forth from the way creative projects engages all the senses allows the individuals making and experiencing

the installation to be fully present in the moment, with opened senses and a sense of wonder. During the night

itself I donned one of these tear-suits and become a performer. In the performance I invited the

visitors to come and participate with their physical body materials and mental-emotional

imaginations, they become a part of the landscape of mind - the installation itself (Malafouris 2012).

Their physical bodies are bound up with the water, the wood, the cement floor, the particles of air

drifting in through their nostrils, the symbols and the colors speak to their senses, as my voice

soothed their mind to recall a part of their experience, a memory that encapsulated an emotional

sensation that gives you goosebumps and joy and then I instruct them to externalize it. Write it, not

only by hand, but in fact with a machine. The typing machine is on top of the wooden construction

and their hands rack their minds while they type a few sentences, some disobey the rule to write only

three and they fill the paper with a long text, then it is thrown in a bottle towards a tear-elf who

types the story into an even more digitalized manner - in a computer and then it is printed on a piece

of eatable paper, upon eating the memory again the feeling of exalting joy is internalized.

This highlights the way that the environment is both external and internal, how feelings and

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materials coalesce by means of language. Tears turn the internal of emotions into an externalized

fluid. This whole process exemplifies how art can work to externalize emotions from within

bounded senses of self in which the self is transcended. “A fleeting return to the childlike

excitement about life”as Ong Keng Sen (2012) notes. In his view it is resistance not to produce

anything. The Museumnacht event is not a production, it is a participatory event such what is the

highest aim that a collaborative art production can strive for - the transcendence of the personal. As

Deleuze & Guattari (1972) quote Miller (4) :

“Ever ybody becomes a healer the moment he forgets about himself." And Miller continues: "Reality is here and now, ever ywhere, gleaming through ever y reflection that meets the eye. . . . Ever ybody is a neurotic, down to the last man and woman.The healer, or the analyst, if you like, is only a super-neurotic. ...To be cured we must rise from our graves and throw off the cerements of the dead. Nobody can do it for another—[..] (Miller in Deleuze & Guattari 1973:4)

The process of making the Museumnacht ‘Double Tears’ has a sense of transcending the binary

embedded in the hybrid selves. The joy in the process gave rise to ethics - the celebration of the

homeless’s work and to the voluntary participation in these events. There were very little references

to Chineseness or Chinese identity during the process of making or the night itself. It was perceived

by members I spoke to as not having so much links with Chineseness. Although the The project

was wholly funded by their own earnings of last year’s prize money.

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Conclusion - Making is Being Words dancing in front of my eyes ‘Your journey is sincere’A voice of reassuranceA white cubeWater flowing

You are what you areCreation is your BeingThe meshwork of lifeis God itself

The light that illuminates itselfThe center that has no centerImmanence

Do not deify the philosopherIf you meet Deleuze on the road,You must kill him.

I open with a poem written after reading excerpts of Peter Hallmark (2006)’s book on Deleuze

and Ian Buchanan’s ‘A Deleuzian century?”. The music video next to it features ‘Never Have I Ever’ by

Nicolas Jaar. They are intended to put the reader into an integrative paradoxical state of mind before

commencing to the conclusion.

SZi works to bring about social change while at the same time attempting to find an

“verdienmodel” making some money as well through their art and design. This second goal makes

them prone to focusing on their Chinese background, as this is their ‘unique selling-point’. When they

work with Chinese references, there are two streams of symbols, from Old China and New China,

with the 1GS bringing in an influx of skills and aesthetics from New China such as Cola showcasing

new Chinese talent through hosting Taste of Animation, with 1G building upon their longing for an

Old China such as Fenmei’s painting and also Jinai who opened the shop ‘the Sixth Happiness’ after

her namesake - a British lady who went to China and fell in love there - the movie her father loved

and she was named after. The 2G members have their sights set on opening themselves for

inspiration and cultural fusion from all that surrounds them in the hybrid multi-ethnic city of

Rotterdam, while finding belonging and feeling they can appreciate their cultural heritage through

the Old China events like Chinese New Year.

SZi engages in self-orientalism through the process of becoming part of larger assemblages

bringing exotic emblems of Chineseness, such as China Light. This is because the collective must cater

to the market, that is why difference and Chineseness are emphasized in the course of projects like

these. During Chinese New Year a mix is presented between ancient Chinese and modern Western

culture, this creates a kind of hybridity where China is perceived as traditional and backwards and

Western culture is modern and nouveau. This is in a way assimilating to Dutch discourses where

modern Dutch selves are opposed to backwards migrants.

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These stereotypes of ‘Chinatown culture’ are tempered by having members of the collective

such as Red who are coming from China mainland and still have this veer in their step as they feel

Chinese and have no needs to make amends for being lost children of the motherland. They add this

fresh and critical note to SZi’s endeavors, reflecting and making documentaries like Cola is doing. Also

the various transnational movements such as Fenmei going back to her hometown or Lightblue going

to Hong Kong and others travelling back and forth to find Chinese or Asian refreshments causes the

stereotypes to be reduced in their imagination. Yet these images of the ‘Chinese Dream’ are

everywhere, in China and Hong Kong they are pervasive.45 Appealing as though these imagery might

be through its exoticism or as kitsch as it obviously is to our western aesthetics, it is a form of Chinese

aesthetics. Aesthetics are not universal (Rampley 2005; Gell 1998). The importance of hybridity lies

within the power-relations, whereas China is rising in economic power, the Western cultural canon has

the highest force in international art worlds.

Moving back and forth between China and Netherlands keeps the water fresh of their

assembled well of Chineseness, which they drink as they charter the routes back to their roots. They

appropriate Chinese culture by learning the various skills of making namely: dumpling making, the tea

ceremony, calligraphy, etc. and bringing this into their direct experience, while maintaining a connection

to western aesthetics for a fresh way to breathe in Chineseness. The emergent property is a fresh and

different Chineseness - a meeting between Eastern and Western practices. This emits healing intensities

for the rootless, ‘home’-less, belonging seeking members. Gluing together lives disrupted by binary and

forcefully hybridizing discourses by making. Making brings power to its members, they shape through

physical physical engagements rather being shaped through various discourses on identity. This joining

with the forces of creation functions as a therapeutic remedy against the disjunction of everyday life in

a cultural essentialist environment such as the Netherlands. A different kind of dragon is what they are

trying to create, a powerful force to be reckoned with.

There is a niche and a demand for exotic emblems of Chineseness, this is mainly how the

collective makes some money to stay together and keep working. The cordon sanitaire around Dutch

colonial history remains untouched by the model minority Chinese and it gives an incentive for

white multiculturalists in Rotterdam to rejoice and feel they are contributing to a more multicultural

Netherlands by hiring or employing SZi to ‘build bridges’ with the Chinese migrants community for

cultural events.

Forming together based upon racial and ethnic signifiers proves problematic, for they came

together to battle cultural essentialism, but as the group is demarcated as being ‘Chinese only’ they are

also asked for stereotypical Chinese events. By catering to Dutch tastes through providing a watered-

down version of Chineseness they are contributing to the very problem of cultural esentialism. The

reason for the groups formation was to change stereotypes, but in order to receive at least some

remuneration for their hard work they ‘have to’ make something typically Chinese. Also the public

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45 As I discovered the exact temple from figure X in an exhibition in Hong Kong about ‘Dream of China’.

image is of Chinese members only, while the projects are built up by a larger assemblage of people

with varying backgrounds. They won’t be able to join though as only Chinese ethnic creatives can

become official members. The Chinese background is actually the only thing keeping the collective

together.46 The members of the collective are themselves looking for meaning and wondering how to

deal with this Chineseness, trying to find out what it means to be a Dutch Chinese and if they want

that to play a part in their personal art or designer-work at all.

Day to day conversations amongst members as well as creative projects help to keep the

assemblage together. Through assembling they create an identity that is not Dutch Chinese, rather a

differentiated identity that lies outsides of the spheres of Dutch or Chinese national powers and

disciplining forces. As discourse still pervades their everyday life and inscribes their experiences of

what it means to be “a good Chinese”, at least assembling together with SZi helps the members to

try to create their own version of what it means to be ‘a good authentic person’ rather than ‘a good

Dutch Chinese’. Yet the limitations of Chinese discourses like work ethic and family subservience

and Dutch discourses on neoliberal values are pervasive. From those they create their own codes for

the assemblage by a bricolage of values. They produce their ‘hybrid’ selves through self-ethnography

through documentaries and showing public images on various media and doing interviews. There is

plenty of media attention for SZi due to Dutch multiculturalist interest. These processes cause the

breaking down of boundaries as mutual understanding grows between various social groups, yet the

danger is always eminent, what Ahmad (2001:80) alerts us to: the taste of the mainstream for

anything different.

As I found out during my research making utilizes a distinct ontology over scientific reasoning.

Tu Wei Ming utilizes scary nationalist imagery of the tree and its roots, while SZi as an art collective

does go back to their roots and does these things, but there is little of the nationalist fervor. It stems

more from a curiosity, to see the world as it is becoming, rather than a world already formatted and

set in stone47. This is where scientific reasoning often goes wrong, through the representation of

knowledge as already whole and complete unto itself. The reification of theories, thoughts and the

misusing of people’s intentions. This lies within the very root of the modern scientific pursuit, as the

founding fathers of science were embedded within an alchemistical worldview and their findings

have been ripped out of their ‘meshwork’ and placed as a thing - a pedestal - for the rest of our

mechanistic worldview to be build up upon. Thing upon thing, theory upon theory, rendering the

rest of our material world as inert and static. While alchemy at its core has ever-changing materials,

solve et coagula - from one form into the other. The goal was to understand the way the materials

change and flow so we can make the ultimate material out of it.

There is no language involved when a body is interacting with the materials, making parts of

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46 As was clearly said by the founder when a new member to collective asked what the collective was all about during a meal to celebrate the end of the Museumnacht.

47 Taking a close look, even stones are changing constantly. See the experiment that Ingold proposes with a stone, how it changes when it becomes wet and how interacting forces constantly changes even this material proposed as inert even by this matter of speech.

installations that formed the Museumnacht. Language leads to social essentialism (Delanda 2006:

45-6). The physical engagement of skilled individuals in SZi that produce art works and projects

based upon their inherent desire, this frees them from the limiting concepts about who they are

supposed to be. This is done by the arousal of great joy within themselves. This lets them be free to

be who they are and express themselves materially and symbolically.

SZi members occupy a liminal zone between traditional and modern, Chinese and Dutch/

allochtoon and autochtoon. Forces and materials are meeting in a mix “between culture”, yet where

does this space-between actually lay? There is no actual space-between as there are no monolithic

cultures with clearly demarcated borders. There are however, assemblages with clear borders around

their territories and internal coding. Boundaries can ensnare creativity yet they also create it.

Important is it that boundaries are fluid and open to change, always giving way to creative bursts of

joyful expression rather than ensnaring because of nationalist or cultural purity sentiments. This can

send intensities of hurt or embarrassment through the bodies that make up the assemblage and

cause it to fall apart.

The questioning of boundaries remains essential to the theorist’s plight (Pieterse 2001:239).

Who has the power? Which cultural canon is emphasized (ibid.:235)? Whose forms and practices are

being appropriated and to what goal or effect? In the act of mimicry we have the chance of losing

our authentic resistance by forming our cultural productions to the aesthetics of the elite, rather

than subverting power and challenging hierarchies, they may well be strengthened by our

appropriation. Western aesthetics has the main power in SZi’s work and the opposition of between

modern Dutch and traditional Chinese is only challenged by some projects.

Working with SZi taught me on play, flow and the joy of making. Writing this thesis

provided me with the enchantment of scholarship. SZi brings the world alive through their creative

work through their contribution to their neighborhoods. It is difficult navigating the fields of

cultural identity politics, while trying to stay ‘true to yourself ’ - when it’s not even sure who that

really is. When we remember the meshwork and how we are what we do effectively as we weave our

webs through life, perhaps it should not even matter so much who we are. Perhaps it matters much

more what we make and with what kind of joyful intensity we attempt this. Making is being.

82

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Images

Figure 1 & 2: Stills from introduction video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8SH7-qyKuo

Figure 3 & 4 from: Ingold, Being Alive

Figure 5 http://www.artventure.slweb.nl/studioZi/tabid/389/language/en-US/Default.aspx

Figure 6 http://www.fenmei.nl

Figure 7 http://www.fenmei.nl

Figure 8 http://www.fenmei.nl/

Figure 9 & 10 http://oolacola.weebly.com/-a-recipe-of-harmony.html

Figure 11 http://www.kwannietang.nl/index.php?/duo-projecten/wens-draakhistorisch-museum/

Figure 12 http://www.mokdesignz.nl

Figure 13 & 14 & 15 http://kwannietang.nl/index.php?/projecten/cbktent-far-from-fong/

Figure 16 http://kwannietang.nl/index.php?/duo-projecten/octopus-voor-solar-2012-/

Figure 17 http://kwannietang.nl/index.php?/duo-projecten/octopus-voor-solar-2012-/

Figure 18 http://www.mokdesignz.nl

Figure 19 http://kalamman.com/test-illustrations-2/sexy-beast1-2klein/

Figure 20 http://kalamman.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/im-proud_600x480.jpg

Figure 21 http://kalamman.com

Figure 22 https://www.facebook.com/Studio.Zi

Figure 23 https://www.facebook.com/Studio.Zi

Figure 24 https://www.facebook.com/Studio.Zi

Figure 25 https://www.facebook.com/Studio.Zi

Figure 26 https://www.facebook.com/Studio.Zi

Figure 27 https://www.facebook.com/Studio.Zi

Figure 28 http://thebeautysuitcase.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/schermafbeelding-2013-02-18-

om-16-24-38.png

Figure 29 https://www.facebook.com/Studio.Zi

Figure 30 Still from video http://www.studiozi.nl/portfolio/chinees-nieuwjaar-festival-2013

Figure 31 https://www.facebook.com/Studio.Zi

Figure 32 https://www.facebook.com/Studio.Zi

Figure 33 https://www.facebook.com/Studio.Zi

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