WRINGING OUT ATTITUDE
 
“Attitude determinism” always informs us of “there”—the most “correct” position, ergo the most important position. Hence we establish vice in advance, that is to say, we know what is incorrect or bad, and who the enemy is. Attitude leads us to judge the world in which we reside by means of ethics, and to form a single perspective. In other words, what we strive for is mere adherence to a prescribed environment. But meanwhile, we are trapped in a world governed by ethics and shielded from possibilities of thinking.
 
As artists, we cannot consider anything (apart from vice) that lies outside of ourselves and our environment. We cannot even think about the most fundamental condition of this environment, whose singularity is precisely the starting point of many of our actions, as well as the “unreasonable” motive for accidental behaviors. Then, is it possible that in an environment saturated with all kinds of ethics and attitudes we may, in an “amoral” fashion and without attitude, discuss our pure behavior, why it occurs, its location, and how it is perceived?
 
We have already lost our capacity to judge that which is uncontrolled by any ethical attitude, i.e. art, because what is important is not the thing, but rather the attitude. Therefore, when this thing is processed through a single perspective, it has already been deprived of legitimacy. Furthermore, a certain moral collective entity seems to prevent us from taking unethical action against the thing. This collective unconsciousness renders us capable only of explaining the environment in which this thing exists—that is, of dealing with a “preregistered” evaluation standard for the environment. Ac-cording to this standard, art, the thing, can only be considered as a tool: what social problems does this thing reflect, what historical consciousness, what struggle tactics? As a result, we handle all issues concerning this environment by way of an imaginary unity and arrive at a set of procedures and criteria designed to deal with vice.
In this situation, an artist has to demonstrate, to the greatest degree possible, his ability to cope with the environment (the focus of public opinion, the connection with political news, the allocation of resources), and to present a speech that might catch the attention of the collective eye.
 
Because we inhabit an actual environment, a single perspective would, in reality, only hinder our understanding of it, subjugating us to the single-perspective environment. We would be able to neither possess our own temporal experience nor draw up unconventional measures for coping with the environment. For this reason, perhaps, we need to wring out all morals and ethics from contemporary art practice.
 
汪建伟
Wang Jianwei