How to be an artist without making art work ?

Abandoning the decision making for images, as a form of noncooperation with the power system, leads to a further level of nonproduction. Yan Lei insists that there is no difference between art and other reallife activities, in particular, commercial ones. He declares: “I think making art and doing other business are the same thing”. This not only brings about the elimination of the ego of the artist; the self, or the subjectivity, of the artist no longer counts.

Of course, the concept of the death of the author has been explored and debated for a long time in contemporary art and culture. The old concept of the author as an individual creator expressing his absolute subjectivity and ingeniousness through hands-on realization of his work seems to be longgone. The author can only be seen as a plural “intersubjectivity”, the one that can no longer escape from influences and mingling with others.

Who is the real author of artnot specific art works but the system of power via processing art as industrialized and commoditized productsis now the vital, and perhaps, at the same time, fatal, question. This is a final position to be obtained: is the artist a predictor of the system? Or is he simply its victim?

— HOU Hanru