The Jianghu Of Chinese Contemporary Art: A Communitas And Its Aquatic Shape

My research interest follows Victor Turner, concerning processual unit and social anti‐structure. To be specific, the groups with liminal feature, that sprung up and vanished in the social shifting.When doing field work to study the Contemporary Art Circles, my primary interest is to find a "communitas" like Turner talked about. This group matches the three key cultural manifestations: liminality, outsiderhood and structural inferiority.The first generation of contemporary Chinese artists emerged from the late 1970’s, in the circumstance of centralized system loose, personality cult disintegration and mind‐shaking by western culture in the post‐MAO era. They were like crumbs falling apart from the collective, and adrift in purchasing of personal freedom. They formed this communitas, and tried to break traditions and boundaries by their radical creations and actions. And because of this radical, they became "the others" against the mainstream, alienated and hide from their sight.But after that part of the story, here comes the problem, it has been more than 30 years passed by the time point I entry, several generations of artists have come out, and the way they creating changed a lot too, only the communitas remained‐‐‐‐neither vanish nor structuralized. It just maintains in a status of size limited, isolated and alienated, wearing its veil of mystery. According to Turner, liminal is just an unstable "between" phrase, every anti‐structure will sooner or later go back to structure, or become structuralized itself. How can this one survive, and stay in liminal?Inside this little bubble, the nature trend of structured is been resisted constantly: Authorities, including their own ones, never gain homage; sorting and classifying disgusted people so strongly; every present or potential rule would be attack, as soon as it been realized exist; high mobility and uncertainty in art institutions and projects; artist intentionally self‐banished and hide from the mainstream; even the obscured, non‐logical language style in their communication, etc. it seems there is a "structure fear" deep down in this circle that pushes people to fight for living in a liminal.To describe the complexity and dynamic equilibrium state of the group, this article will introduce a culture‐related metaphor‐‐‐‐Jianghu, on one hand to describe a sustainable anti‐structure space and social ecology, on the other hand to analyses the cosmology of social structure in traditional China.As a culture metaphor, Jianghu indicate water body ecology with the feature of high fluidity and anti‐structure. It also has many usages and signifies that could provide rich resources of meaning. The metaphor of Jianghu have wide influence in Chinese culture, maybe even embedded in our cosmology, making us believe that there is another secret and distant Jianghu in our society, contains those of uncertainty, unstable and un‐classified. The word was mentioned a lot by art locals when describing their community, for it vividly pictured the communitas, and for the narrative power in it also helped to fabricate the net of meaning for the locals.The Chinese imagine Jianghu as a far‐away secret zone to the mainstream , that is the structure world. The water metaphor is a contrast to the land based order of feudal china. jianghu is open, but invisible. It shares the space of our city, just concealed in another dimension. It’s centerless and has an untouchable yet very strong boundary. It essentially bases on those "I‐thou" relations, thus the only way to involve is to involve in a personal relation with someone already in it, or involve in a story that happens in it. However, from time to time there are some ritual occasions were held, to gather people, to confirm or strengthen the connections, and to confirm the independency and the boundary of the communitas.The article also will explore the connection between Jianghu and the "Diversity‐orderly Structure" of Chinese Native Soil Society. And outlook the further possibility of the aquatic modeling will inspiring the research or liminal social groups.