Cai Guoqiang: To Be An Innocent Boy All His Life

In the fireworks display of the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, 29 fireworks with the shape of "big footprints" set out from Yongdingmen gate step by step through Tian'anmen Square to the "bird's nest", announcing the arrival of the 29th Olympic Games in Beijing. That night's fireworks made the world once again pay attention to this ancient, atmospheric and romantic country, and also let the audience remember Cai Guoqiang, the chief designer of visual effects art at the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games. Many years later, Cai Guoqiang recalled his bidding for the creative plan for the opening and closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games. After listening to his proposal, the bidding person could not help but comment: "your naive (idea), which is very good."

The heart of a long journey has not changed

As a matter of fact, Cai Guoqiang was well-known in the art circles at home and abroad long before he made "big footprint".

In 1957, Cai Guoqiang was born in a small village in Quanzhou, Fujian Province. He grew up with his favorite grandmother. When he was young, his grandmother was a young lady of the local gun and ammunition manufacturing family, so Cai Guoqiang seemed to have a natural affinity for gunpowder. From 1981 to 1985, he studied in the Department of stage art at Shanghai Academy of drama. At the end of 1986, with the help of friends from the Forbidden City in Beijing, he went abroad and traveled between different countries and cultures.

Heaven and earth are canvases, while gunpowder is a brush. After going abroad, Cai Guoqiang continued to explore gunpowder painting full of oriental charm, and constantly expanded the scale and art form of his own blasting, and successively produced gunpowder art works with childlike romantic imagination and avant-garde color.

In 1994, Cai Guoqiang participated in the exhibition "creativity in Asia" held by the Hiroshima Museum of contemporary art. Under the theme of "the earth also has black holes", he exploded the device floating on the big balloon and became the first Chinese artist to win the prize since the establishment of "Hiroshima Award". In 1995, Cai Guoqiang was invited to New York. When he was at the nuclear test site in Nevada, he ignited a homemade "bomb" and a small mushroom cloud appeared in his hand, which shocked the art world by teasing and dispelling violence. The work was named: blasting project a century with mushroom clouds: plans for the 20th century. At that time, the mushroom cloud photos also became the cover map of art history books in the 20th century. The hands of artists symbolized the hands of human beings; the mushroom clouds released symbolized the conflict between the use of fire and the possession of nuclear energy.

Cai Guoqiang. IC photo

In 1999, Cai Guoqiang won the Golden Lion Award in Venice Biennale, and he became the first international artist in Chinese cultural circles to win the award. In 2001, he was the chief designer of the fireworks show at APEC conference in Shanghai. Later, his work "Fourteen sketches of APEC landscape fireworks show" was sold at the auction of "contemporary art in Asia" held by Christie's in Hong Kong on November 25, 2007 for HK $74.247 million, which set a world record for the auction of contemporary Chinese art.

In 2013, on the Seine River between the Louvre and the Musee d'Orsay, he created the most romantic night between Paris and the world, the one night stand, the blasting project. In 2015, the work "ladder of heaven", which had been repeatedly frustrated for 20 years, was finally blasted successfully in Quanzhou, Cai Guoqiang's hometown. The sky ladder made of gunpowder went straight into the sky and lit up the night sky before dawn. The persistence to the realization of the ladder of heaven may be the best proof that Cai Guoqiang's inner youth has never changed after years of traveling north, South, East and West. From beginning to end, "ladder of heaven" is only a simple work of art. It is only about a 505 meter high ladder and a young man's initial curiosity and desire for the universe. It is as simple as he likes to say: "that's it."

I'm still young when I come back

After traveling all over the world, this year, 63 year old Cai Guoqiang chose to "return" to the original place of his journey, the Forbidden City. On December 15, 2020, the "journey and return" art exhibition of Cai Guoqiang, sponsored by the Beijing Winter Olympic Organizing Committee and the Palace Museum, officially opened, presenting selected works of Cai Guoqiang's "one man's journey to Western art history" in recent years. The year 2020 coincides with 600 years of the completion of the Forbidden City. In the last exhibition hall, Cai Guoqiang used VR technology to create the final work "sleepwalking the Forbidden City". Daydream generally reappears the gorgeous fireworks celebration when the Forbidden City was built 600 years ago.

Recently, Cai Guoqiang received an exclusive interview with the 21st century economic reporter. When talking about the first contact with VR technology, he humorously called it CR Cai Guoqiang VR. Different from other virtual reality works, Cai Guoqiang insisted on making a large number of real shots. He spent five months with craftsmen from Quanzhou, his hometown, to create a white marble forbidden city model. He also set off a fireworks festival on the Bank of Liuyang River. He combined 3D scanning, modeling, 360 degree panoramic photography and CG technology to present a work that "makes the real shot look like CG". He told reporters: "some works can not rely on cleverness, must be enough clumsy, enough time, will naturally produce its energy and pattern."

Zhang Zhongwei, director of HTC vive arts, a VR partner, said in an interview: "Cai Guoqiang's thinking on new media is dialectical: he challenges the accuracy of VR with the uncontrollability of gunpowder, an ancient medium, and talks about new construction forms in the digital world with the texture of traditional handmade stone carvings. These challenges make the production process of works very different from that of ordinary VR works. " Perhaps, in an age of technical convenience, he is still willing to sincerely "stupid Kung Fu", which is also the biggest juvenile romance after Cai Guoqiang left half his life.

21st century: in your opinion, what is the biggest difference between VR fireworks creation and field fireworks creation?

Cai Guoqiang: I have done a lot of fireworks, and I will start to think about what else can I do differently? Can VR images create a sense of non documentary travel? At first, I doubted that the form of VR was wrong with my temperament, but that's why it attracted me. When it introduces me to a debugging and less direct state, instead of directly and forcefully talking to heaven and earth, I will panic. I use VR to play the unique sense of out of control, danger, tension and excitement of fireworks to create different experiences. People can directly pass through the smoke column in the air, and the perspective can change suddenly. On the contrary, it makes people feel a certain degree of release.

21st century: how do you understand the existence of gunpowder?

Cai Guoqiang: in a sense, gunpowder has magical and healing effects since it was invented, not just for destruction. When I use gunpowder, I also face questions from society about its destructive and curative effects. When there is constant fear and violence in some parts of the world, some of the human beings who create the energy of mass destruction are creating beauty with the energy of explosion, which itself gives people a little more hope.

The 21st century: the fireworks are very shocking, intense, dangerous and uneasy. After blooming, it gives people sadness and loneliness. Do you feel the most about fireworks before, during or after the fire?

Cai Guoqiang: it should be the moment of ignition. The tension and anxiety brought about by uncertainty, a moment waiting for the outcome of fate. I always want to show that I can't see by seeing. Let the invisible energy show its charm, you should face its unexpected results. Sometimes I open up the creative process, let the audience participate in it, and tie them to the fate of the artist, hoping for the result of success or failure.

21st century: Why are you so addicted to presenting the invisible world with "visible"?

Cai Guoqiang: it may be related to the traditional culture of Quanzhou, my hometown. In fact, I am a person who is afraid of death, which makes me full of fear and thinking about death when I was very young. This secret and torture, let me have been looking for the invisible world, and a channel beyond the fear of death. Through art, we can gradually untie our fear of death and understand human beings through art.

In all things in the universe, only 5% can be seen, and 95% is dark matter and dark energy. As I grow older, I gradually realize that death is a return to 95%. I was afraid of my grandmother's death since I was a child, but it is a comfort to believe that she still exists in 95% of the universe. The idea that death doesn't mean total disappearance affects me. I use a lot of gunpowder in my paintings, and I also make a lot of works that will disappear in a moment.

The 21st century: the temperament reflected in artistic creation is always inseparable from the background of the era. You started to create with gunpowder in the 1980s. How have you observed yourself or your works changed?

Cai Guoqiang: this year, during my isolation in the countryside of New Jersey in the United States, I found more than a dozen notebooks from the 1980s to the 1990s, just like returning to my original mind. At that time, he was keen on thinking about the problems of human beings and the earth, such as material prosperity, the decline of human nature and environmental destruction. At the end of the 1980s, my mind began to wander the universe. Around the 1990s, I did a lot of projects for aliens, including the epitaph of human beings. It is the idea to make a coffin shaped ice out of sea water and send it to the universe to float in space. I hope that one day the aliens can receive the DNA from the earth, so as to understand the feelings of the earth people in searching for cosmic compatriots. I hope they can be linked with the times.

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