Zheng Bo / Pernod Ricard Fellow 2016

Zheng Bo (b. 1974 Beijing) has been making socially engaged art since 2003. He has worked with a wide range of com­mu­ni­ties, including the Queer Cultural Center in Beijing and Filipino domestic helpers in Hong Kong. His par­tic­i­pa­tory pro­jects have been exhib­ited in numerous public insti­tu­tions in China and abroad. He received a Prize of Excellence from Hong Kong Museum of Art in 2005, and a Juror’s Prize from Singapore Art Museum in 2008. Since 2013, he has been working with weeds as a way to think about ecology and pol­i­tics in Greater China. He received a PhD in Visual & Cultural Studies from the University of Rochester, taught at China Academy of Art from 2010 to 2013, and cur­rently teaches at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong.

STATEMENT OF INTENT

Zheng Bo: "I will inves­ti­gate the linkage between polit­ical par­ties as a per­sis­tent polit­ical form despite our con­tempt, and weeds as an irre­press­ible eco­log­ical force despite our dis­com­fort. Specifically, first, through archival research of tex­tual and visual mate­rials, I would like to revisit the 1920s when Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, Cai Chang and other Chinese stu­dents studying in France estab­lished the “Chi­nese Young Communist Party.” By asking the seem­ingly illog­ical ques­tion – what roles did weeds play in this episode – I want to com­pli­cate the canon­ical his­to­ries of the Chinese Communist Party and inter­na­tional com­mu­nism, and push for a more his­tor­ical under­standing of the roots of con­tem­po­rary eco­log­ical crisis in China, and glob­ally.

Secondly, I want to engage in deep con­ver­sa­tions with soci­ol­o­gists, polit­ical sci­en­tists, and botanists in Paris to fan­ta­size a post-human polit­ical party named "Weed Party". How would this party’s ide­o­log­ical, orga­ni­za­tional, and emo­tional shape differ from that of pre­vious com­mu­nist par­ties. These con­ver­sa­tions may take the form of dia­logues, let­ters, walks, and col­lec­tive draw­ings and dia­grams. This pro­ject builds on my pre­vious and cur­rent prac­tice – Weed Party: Shanghai (2014-15, focusing on the botan­ical foot­prints of the Chinese Communist Party in Shanghai) and Weed Party: Taipei (cur­rent, focusing on eco­log­ical impact of the Nationalist Party’s retreat from Mainland China to Taiwan in 1949). The Fellowship will allow me to fur­ther my long-term pro­ject of rethinking inter­na­tion­alism, expanding the notion of an inter­na­tional alliance of the working class to incor­po­rate other working beings."

Image: Zheng Bo, Garden (Lane 62, Zhaojiabang Road), 2015. Weeds, soil, tiles, bricks, window bars, ads, garbage. 297 x 543.5 x 100 cm. Credit: the artist and Leo Xu Projects