Daoism and Eco-art and Zhengbo
This article is a research report I wrote about Taoism and the artist Zheng Bo.
Anthropocene and ecology art practice in east Asia
Scholars such as Bruno Latour have in recent years come to realize that the dichotomy between nature and society, science and humanities, and objectivity and subjectivity is the cornerstone of modernity, and they advocate replacing the term Nature with Gaia to refer to the earth and all things that live on it (Latour, 2017). Dipesh Chakrabarty points out that now that the inextricable link between climate change and human activity has been recognized, we can no longer maintain the The disciplinary divide between history and natural history can no longer be maintained (Chakrabarty, 2009). We need to reexamine the history of modernity and globalization by substituting an ecological perspective into the study of history. Artists need to think about the history of global capital and the history of humans as a species together.
In her book MushromsattheEndoftheWorld(2015), anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing reflects on the concept of the Anthropocene, a term that defines "the epoch in which human disturbance outranks other geological forces", noting that "while some interpreters take the name to imply human triumph, the opposite seems more accurate: without plan or intention, the
humans have made a mess of our planet." She deconstructs the privileged role of humans in the Anthropocene, arguing that this mess is not the result of our species' biology, but rather the effects of industrial capitalism (Tsing, 2015).
The origins of ecological art in the West echoed the socio-political movements of the 1960s, including the opposition to the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, the Women's Liberation Movement and the emergence of the environmental movement. 1962 saw the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which sparked public concern about environmental issues in the United States and the formation of various environmental groups, which expanded into a worldwide environmental movement (Carson, 1962). Some of the earth artists began to turn their attention to environmental issues and the study of natural phenomena and forces.
When T. J. Demos published ContemporaryArtandthe Politicsof Ecologyin 2013, the book focused for the first time on artistic practices outside the West, but missing from East Asia. Artistic practices in East Asia become a key point for the study of ecological art. Chinese art has been interested in mountains
and water(山水) and heavens since ancient times, and mountains and water painting was the first ecological art practice to emerge in China, but activist-based practices are rare in East Asia.
2.2The Daoist worldview
As the opposition of 1 and 1(0) in the ontology of the couple, the plant, like the black man in slavery, is the most fundamental "zero", the "zero" degree state in the concept of society. The duality of 1 and 1(0) is always established to the exclusion of the more total "zero" behind it. As suggested by Zairong Xiang, the Daoist doctrine of yin and yang has a coexistence with "zero" wisdom, and the "zero" degree represented by "Dao" confirms the queer existence of "two"(Brilmyer, Trentin & Xiang, 2019). DaoDeJingprovides a numerical logic known to the world to articulate this cosmology. "The Dao produced One; One produced Two; Two produced Three; Three produced All things." "The Dao produced One"tells us that there is not nothing before "one", "Dao" is the "non-one" before this "one". Also, "All things under heaven sprang from It as existing; that existence sprang from It as non-existent." is not emphasizing the cosmology of "creatio ex nihilo". It emphasizes the theological concept of creativity, instead of the theological concept of creation. Creativity lies in the coexistence of yin and yang, and the vitality of zero, which we call
"Dao"(Brilmyer, Trentin & Xiang, 2019). Last but not least, philosophers Roger Ames and David Hall pointed out that "wuwei" in Daoism cannot be translated as "no action" or "non-action," but "non-coercive action that is in accordance with . . . the de [focus] of things" contained within one’s field of influence (Ames & Hall, 2003).
Franklin Perkins summarizes the metaphysics of East Asia. According to this worldview, humans follow the laws of nature without ruling it. "It is not just that things implicate each other but that things include each other … The story of the whole universe can be explicated from any one point."(Perkins, 2015) This cosmology has influenced life and action in East Asia in a comprehensive way.