A scene from Before the Flood, a documentary made by Li Yifan about the relocation of Fengjie, a town in the Three Gorges region. File photo

Dossiers and archives may not sound very artistic but they seem to be finding favor with some of today's Chinese artists.

At an ongoing exhibition titled Microscopic Narration at the Iberia Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing's 798 Art District, about 300,000 pages of photocopied legal documents, case photographs and six TV monitors playing short interviews comprise a section of artist Li Yifan's multi-media work, Dossier.

These exhibits are from case histories of migrant workers' disability compensation fought by renowned labor lawyer Zhou Litai. For his work, Li shredded some files to make new paper, carrying transcribed chapters of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's, The Social Contract, by three disabled migrant workers.

The exhibition also includes the screening of two of Li's documentary films, Before the Flood, about the relocation of Fengjie, a town in the Three Gorges region, and Village Archive, about the lives, labors and religious activities of the residents of a small village.

"To some extent, I'm doing the work of a sociologist, but in an artist's way," says the 42-year-old Chongqing-based artist/filmmaker. "I'm making these works not because I love art or film, but because I have something to say about society, and I'm using the language of art only because I know it."

Li's method, which he terms "pathological research", is based on a lot of fieldwork. He spent 11 months in Fengjie to investigate and shoot materials for Before the Flood, which include an old man losing the small inn in which he lived, a Christian church's bargaining for compensation, and the conflicts between relocation officials and the old town's residents. For Village Archive, he spent another year at Longwang village in Fengjie to film villagers' lives through four seasons.

Li is not alone in incorporating sociological research into art works. In artist Qiu Zhijie's Project of Suicide Intervention on the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge too, sociological research plays an important role.

"If this work is seen as a knife, then the sociological research involved is the whetstone," says the 39-year-old artist.

Built in 1968, the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge was a symbol of the achievements of New China, and certificates of merit and notebooks used at that time usually carried an image of the bridge.

However, according to official statistics, more than 2,000 people have committed suicide on the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge. At the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, which is supposed to be the world's No 1 suicide spot, 1,500 suicides have been recorded so far.

As an artist, Qiu is stricken by the contrast between the bridge as a collective memory of his generation and the number of people who have ended their lives there. He decided to create a work on the subject and carry out research into the suicides at the bridge.

For more than half a year, Qiu and his students interviewed people who worked at the bridge, as well as nearby residents, tourists, and those who tried to commit suicide. Qiu even patrolled the bridge with other suicide-prevention volunteers and managed to save two people who attempted to end their lives.

"When you get involved in such a project, you cannot just be an observer," he says.

When the first exhibition of this project, Ataraxic of Zhuang Zi - A Suicidology of The Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, was held in Shanghai in July and August, media reports of suicide cases on the bridge and questionnaires about the issue that Qiu designed and collected, were presented as part of the exhibition.

Besides art insiders, the exhibition also attracted the attention of many ordinary people. Qiu attributes this response to the theme of the exhibition - despair - something most people face in life.

"More Chinese artists are using sociological research and cross-disciplinary methods to create works about society, history and memory. Unlike artists who try to establish symbols, they present their work through an assortment of materials," says Wu Hung, one of the curators of Microscopic Narration and a professor of art history at the University of Chicago. "We cannot say yet that this has become a trend, but it is definitely an interesting phenomenon."

For Li, attending the exhibition Microscopic Narration is an opportunity not only to present his works, but also to declare his stance on an artist's role.

"I hope to help revise the contemporary Chinese art scene and remind artists that an artist should also be an intellectual, not just a craftsperson. There are too many empty art works nowadays," he says.

Li's point is echoed by Qiu's advocacy of "total art based on sociological research". Qiu and his students at the China Academy of Art have done several projects, such as The Survey of Zhongshan Park, which focuses on parks named "Zhongshan" all over China and their relation to history, memory and citizenship, and a project on basement guest houses in Beijing.

"I doubt the meaning of 'art for art's sake', and I don't agree with the old idea of regarding art as a simple representation of reality, either. If we don't know enough about reality, how can we represent it in art?" asks Qiu. "Sociological research has changed my understanding of many issues."

Qiu's exhibition Ataraxic of Zhuang Zi - A Suicidology of The Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge in Shanghai, included paintings, dossiers and installations with elements mentioned in Taoist classics, such as butterflies and gourds.

"What shows up in the exhibition room does not have to be an art work, as long as it is related to the exhibition. And it is not necessary to distinguish clearly what is art and what is not," says Qiu.

As for the link between art and the social problems they reflect, Li believes that his films will remind people of "the price paid by society in for modernization", and that through the making of Before the Flood, he has in a way contributed to the legislation of the Property Law, designed to protect private and State-owned property, that took effect on Oct 1, 2007.

In Project of Suicide Intervention on the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, Qiu tries to offer an artistic treatment of the people who attempted suicide, by asking them to draw pictures of the bridge's railings and to trace characters of a saying about the value of life. However, Qiu believes that an artist's job is to intervene at a higher level.

"Through this project, I hope to dissolve those elements in mainstream ideology that harm the integrity of humanity," he says. "Art should definitely relate to society, but it should be at an ideological level."

Microscopic Narration: Social Images by Zhang Xiaotao and Li Yifan will run until October 10.

Qiu Zhijie's Project of Suicide Intervention on the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge is being held in Singapore until Sept 27. It will also be shown in Nanjing, Beijing, Berlin, Paris, New York, Hong Kong and Taipei.

(China Daily September 2, 2008)