In the 1980s, I had the opportunity to go to the United States for advanced studies. Before that, when I was studying and teaching at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, I was already very interested in photography. I liked working in the darkroom by myself and taking pictures, but it was in the U.S. that I first encountered reverse film, which we now call slides. We could project the photos we take as large images with true-to-life colors, using them to introduce the works of artists.

During my two years in the United States, I was already starting to use slides to deliver lectures or introduce works of art. In 1983, I planned to travel to Europe to visit those museums and galleries I had always wanted to see. I used the money I made from selling paintings to buy a set of equipment. I prepared two cameras, one for taking reverse film, one for taking film negatives, and also a small tape recorder to note the content of the slides.

My goal was naturally very simple: for me, I wanted to see the works that I dreamed of. For example, I wanted to see da Vinci, I wanted to see Michelangelo, I wanted to see the Impressionists, I wanted to see Picasso and Matisse. My goal was to see the original works in person, not in print. I wanted to photograph the originals and then take the slides home to share with my students, colleagues, and artist friends. Because when we looked at catalogues, one of the biggest constraints was the image reproductions. Even if they were printed with the best color quality, they were still too small.

I still remember that in the late 1970s, ’78 or ’79, after we had just purchased a catalogue, the students all wanted to view it, but there was no way they could all see it. We couldn’t lend catalogues to the students because they might be lost or damaged, so they could only be viewed in the reading room, but then not many people could view them at once. Later, we thought of a solution: we made two display windows in the library to house the catalogues, and every day we turned the page. The first day was Picasso, the second day was Matisse, the third day was Derain, and so on—one day, one page. This was probably our earliest form of projection.

At that time, I felt that although the library books were great, they did not solve the problem of appreciation. Of course, another option was to buy readymade slides from museums, but this was not an adequate solution. First, the slides sold in many museums shops were of poor quality. Second, the number of slides available was very limited. For example, the Louvre may have 20 slides for sale, but I wanted to photograph 50, 80, or 100 slides. So I think the purpose of my trip was quite explicit: I wanted to photograph everything I could, within the bounds of my economic and time constraints. I would bring back firsthand materials, and then I could project the slides for everyone to see.

Narrator: As slides were not widely available in China at the time, Zheng Shengtian not only had to shoot a large number of slides himself, but he also had to prepare all the accompanying equipment in advance. He sent a Kodak projector and a portable screen from the United States back to China and even designed a projection room using window curtains at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts with the appropriate height, depth, and darkness. He nailed a wooden board to the wall to fasten the projector. All this hard work is inseparable from Zheng’s educational philosophy.

Zheng Shengtian: In the past in China, we would say that knowledge comes both from books and personal experience. For the visual arts, I think training your eye is the absolute most important thing, so I always emphasized this point: I have nothing to teach you, but I can help you see more things. This is the entirety of my guiding principle. In a China where it was still largely impossible to travel abroad, I was the one who went to fetch the fire. I lit the lamp that enabled everyone to see.

Luckily, when I returned, China was relatively open and had just gotten through the anti-spiritual pollution era. This movement had passed by the end of 1983, so leaders at all levels were relatively open. They themselves wanted to see, including the heads of our institution, or the heads of other academies. They also wanted the chance to see foreign art. So I started to do these slideshows in the school where I was teaching, the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts. As word slowly got out, other institutions and professional conferences began to invite me for different occasions. I can’t count the number of speeches I gave in those two years, but I often traveled to give speeches, and I always brought my projector and slides with me.

There were typically two kinds of presentations. One was relatively improvised. For example, my students and I might just take out a few slides, and if we had 10 or 20 minutes we would go through them together. Some were for fun, some had professional content. But if it was for a formal presentation, that was a different kind. I would prepare in advance based on the target audience. If the audience was art museum professionals, my presentation would introduce Western art museums, Western education, or a specific artist. If they really liked the Vienna Secession, I would give a lecture on that, introducing Klimt and Schiele. There were some artists who had a lot of works in the museums I visited, such as Rodin, and I could use them as a featured topic. These lectures continued until about 1988.

People only started to use slides privately in the early 1980s, and they weren’t easy to get in China at that time. If artists had contacts abroad or in Hong Kong and Taiwan who could mail them slides, they could do some projections, but it was unusual. By the mid-1980s, China gradually began to engage the outside world, and in the 1990s, slides became accessible and affordable for many artists. I remember that it was around the 1980s that some artists started to photograph their works as slides and send them to me. As time went on, more and more came in. So for artists, slides became an indispensable tool, and if an artist couldn’t get them, they would seem behind the times and inefficient.

A memorable moment was in 2001 when I brought about a dozen international curators from documenta to visit six cities in China and see artists’ works. That caused quite a stir because they were some of the biggest curators in the world. Domestic artists were well-informed, and as soon as they heard about the visit, they thought of a thousand ways to grab me and have their works viewed. But we couldn’t go to every studio. At that time, artists were very poor and lived on the highest floors of their apartment buildings, so asking people to make the hike would be tiring. Their apartments were also tiny, so we could really only do a collective presentation. As an artist then, if your slides were well photographed, you had a good chance of attracting these curators’ attention. So if the slides of my 1980s presentations mainly introduced foreign art, then by the 90s, they primarily introduced domestic artists, bringing them to foreign curators from the West.

But it wasn’t easy for me to find a place in every city to show slides. At that time, artists didn’t have studios, and we couldn’t use government agencies, as contemporary art had no recognition. The most interesting case was in Guangzhou. They arranged a place, saying it was a great place to show slides. We arrived in Guangzhou and stayed the night, and then we drove to this place the next day. It actually was not bad. It had a large lounge like a cafe, but it didn’t have any visitors; it seemed empty. Then the artists showed their slides. I was puzzled, I said it had a good screen, but there was a rod in front of it—why would there be an iron rod in front of it? After viewing slides for a while, it suddenly dawned on me that this was a nightclub and that the rod in the middle was for pole dancing.

While planning the 1989 exhibition, a core group of our preparation team would look at slides every night and choose which artworks to approve. If we wanted the work, we had some staff members send a letter saying when we needed to have the work shipped and to where. After this was nearly finished, my more concrete task was the exhibition promotion. I hadn’t studied marketing at all, and I didn’t know how to do it—I relied entirely on my imagination. At that time, I found an Italian magazine that I had brought back from France titled Flash Art. Flash Art had an annual publication that contained the names and contact information of artists, critics, publishers, galleries, and art museums in every city and country in the world. I used this book to find all these important art museums, galleries, and magazines, and I sent letters to this list, about 500 in total. Each letter had a copy of the exhibition information, including an introduction, our exhibition-related programs, and slide materials, 10 slides per letter.

In the 1980s, following the ’85 New Wave movement, there were several very important conferences. One was the Zhuhai Conference in 1986, and the other was the Huangshan Conference in 1988. They were in response to a natural need that arose from the ’85 New Wave. Why?

Because during the ’85 New Wave, we were fighting for the freedom of exhibition, publication, and assembly. Across the country, there were many exhibitions, events, and works by avant-garde artists, and they were in dire need of a centralized display or an opportunity to exchange information.

So in this conference, there was a critical component, which was viewing the slides the artists brought from across the country. From this conference, we could see the works of this period, but we could also see that the avant-garde art of this time actually represented the end of an older era and the beginning of a new one.

In October 1986, before I went to France, I had to prepare my slides. I had to introduce the main art styles of China, such as Soviet-influenced ink portraiture, post-1950s landscape painting, flower and bird paintings, traditional painting, Western-style oil painting, the latter of which was entirely influenced by the Soviet Union. These comprised over 90% of Chinese art. In this context, so-called avant-garde was peripheral, but it was also a very important phenomenon. So in France, I gave many lectures introducing what I thought was a crucial emergent phenomenon, but which had only been taking place for around a year. I left in 1986 and was there for 10 months, and the ’85 New Wave had just started in 1985.

Four artists went to France at that time, and I thought I would do something different from them. Those artists might have taken classes or something, but they went back after three or four months, whereas I stayed a little longer. I was doing two things. The first was to investigate the state of French art. I was thinking that by 1986, Chinese avant-garde art was ascending, whereas French and Western avant-garde art was descending—it was already systematic and institutionalized.

I wanted to know what problems their so-called contemporary art was encountering as it descended, and what implications this might have for those of us ascending. So with this in mind, I met with many artists, critics, gallery owners, magazine editors-in-chief, and museum directors, and I traveled to many places.

Then the second thing was that I wanted to introduce Chinese avant-garde art. That was the first time it had been introduced in the West, so I could see a wide range of reactions among French people. The students in the academy thought this was completely pointless, like “China is so great, why would Chinese people want to learn from the West? You have such great traditions, why learn from the West?” But art museum people were more interested.

The funniest case was the director of the Lyon Museum of Contemporary Art. He had been serving as the director there for about two years and was quite proud of himself for doing an exhibition in a communist Eastern European country. So I met with him; he only had ten minutes, and he primarily spoke about his great successes. Then I said, “Do you have time to view our Chinese artists’ work?” He replied, “Oh, China is so far, we don’t have plans to do anything with that.” I said, “Just five slides, please take a look.” Upon seeing them, he asked, “These were made by Chinese artists?” I replied, “Yes.” He said, “Do you have anything else? Anything else in your backpack?” I said, “I do.” “Can I see it all?” I took out another 20 or 30 slides, and he said, “Wait a minute, I’ll call our team down, and we’ll look at them together.” After finishing the slides, he said, “We must keep in touch; do you need our catalogue?” Afterward, he became enthusiastic about preparing a China [exhibition]. Just five slides swayed him, slides that I had prepared. I maintained a relationship with him, and in 2004 we did a very large exhibition.

Narrator: An iconic event of the ’85 New Wave movement, the Zhuhai Conference was jointly organized by the Zhuhai Art Academy and Fine Arts in China. This groundbreaking event received government support and resources from the start. The main organizer of the Zhuhai Conference, the artist Wang Guangyi, recalled the origins of the conference in an interview:

Wang Guangyi: The formation of the Zhuhai Conference was actually quite serendipitous. It so happened that I had just transferred to the Zhuhai Art Academy, a newly established painting academy in the Special Economic Zone that was recruiting young artists from the interior in the hope of doing art and culture. The government had some money, an amount that seems minuscule now but was a lot at that time, something like 300,000 yuan, for the academy to stage an exhibition and concurrently hold a symposium. At that time, they were still thinking it would be official artworks. Before I transferred there, the ’85 New Wave movement was already underway, and I was familiar with Li Xianting and Gao Minglu in Beijing. [At that time], there were already many slides, but they were only published in the media, and there were no opportunities to hold a large-scale conference. I thought this would be good—I was young at that time, and in the meeting I spoke directly. I said I had an idea that young people from all over were making this new art. [The Zhuhai Art Academy] knew about the New Wave movement. They thought it was a good idea, since the academy was also a young organization, to invite young artists and curators of the new generation from across the country, and thus get art and culture started in the Zhuhai Special Economic Zone. They asked me, if the Zhuhai Art Academy alone hosted the event, would it not be a national [event]? Could we invite a national institution in Beijing to partner with us and make the conference more influential nationwide? I said that that would be doable. Fine Arts in China is a national newspaper. They asked if I could make it happen, and I said I was close with them. I was young at the time. I said I could do it, but I had no idea. It was like this: if the Fine Arts in China agreed to do the conference, then the Zhuhai Federation of Literary and Art Circles and the Ministry of Propaganda would support it and invest 300,000 towards academic discussions. At the time, the Northern Art Group was Shu Qun and me. It was still difficult to make long-distance phone calls, but I made a long-distance call to explain this to him... Then, once Li Xianting and Gao Minglu heard about this, they said, “Guangyi, do you think it can be done?” I said that the Zhuhai Federation of Literary and Art Circles and the Ministry of Propaganda had already drafted a document that just required the official seal of Fine Arts in China, and the matter would be done. Old Li was not the editor-in-chief at that time, the editors were Zhang Qiang and Liu Xiaochun, and Old Li said he would talk with them first. He went to communicate with them, and he really talked it up. Liu Xiaochun and Zhang Qiang were promoters of New Wave art in their roles at Fine Arts in China, and they said this was great, and it was stamped. I remember very clearly, Shu Qun, Old Li, and I were waiting in the office outside, and Liu Xiaochun and Zhang Qiang went inside, one the editor-in-chief and the other the publisher. After waiting half an hour, they came out and said “Guangyi, this is a good thing; we will both attend when the time comes,” and I said of course. So that’s to say, the reason we could do this thing was very happenstance.

Wang Guangyi discusses the influence of the “Zhuhai Conference” on his artistic practice:

Narrator: The Zhuhai Conference had a significant impact on the work of the participating artists, as Wang Guangyi discussed in an interview.

Wang Guangyi: This wasn’t obvious at the time, but now I look back on it, and for me, I was seeing the newest works and ideas from artists around the country, seeing them just as they were made and expressed; this really meant something to my personal work. For me, I got a lot out of it; it was really academic. From a communications perspective, that is in the social sense of communication, before Zhuhai of course some artists knew me, like as Wang Guangyi of the Northern Art Group, but many more people came to know me through the Zhuhai Conference, because I organized it. Of course for me, the academic significance of the conference was the most important part, because I was seeing all these new works just as they were made. This would actually be quite difficult for you to do even now. Everyone was very excited looking at the slides, clicking through them all, one by one.

As I was growing up, slides were a particularly important medium for me. I’ve loved photography since I was a kid, and photography is simply negatives and positives. Slides are positives, while we wash and develop negatives into photos. Slide film also has to go through a darkroom development process; one cannot see the finished work onsite. Now cell phones and digital cameras have monitor displays where you can immediately know how the image is. Not at that time—the makers of photographs, movies, and film in general all [relied on] experience. I might travel carrying numerous rolls of slides or film. Perhaps a month after I came back, I would send them to a photo agency for development, and only after that would I know what I had.

At that time, there was also a necessary step, which was to keep a record of the slide. After finishing a roll of film or photographing an image, you would immediately write where it was taken and what the occasion was on a booklet or the film case, as a backup.

[Slides] were creative, and now [digital photography] is completely functional: everyone is a photographer, everyone is a documentarian. In the 1980s and ’90s, these were expensive materials that people were reluctant to buy, so they were precious, and we were quite careful every time we shot a picture or slide. At that time, when we used slides it was either for our own work or for prints. Back then, publishing prints was not digital like nowadays. Everything required images and slides to make plates, which were then printed. In those days, artists also had other vocations. They weren’t full-time artists; they were also teachers, designers, graphic designers, or had other jobs. My main job at that time was at the Beijing Youth Daily, and my dedication and attitude toward my work actually influenced my art practice.

In 1985, I returned from Shanghai and Nanjing with works from “[The First Yunnan-Shanghai] Neo-Figurative Painting Exhibition.” After I came back, the exhibitions we staged in Shanghai and Nanjing did not elicit much of a reaction from critics or society as a whole, as Yunnan was still considered peripheral. These shows were more about the artists’ own impulses.

It was only once I arrived in Zhuhai that I realized our spontaneous art activities in 1985 were part of this historical transformation in China. Some figures whom I had only known by name attended. Zhan Jianjun is an example, because in studying painting at that time, we were all familiar with Five Heroes of Langya Mountain, which I admired. Shao Dazhen as well: When I studied theory in undergrad, we often read his introductions to Western theory. I remembered all of their names, and when they participated in this conference I was stunned. I also felt that all of the depression and solitude that those of us graduating around 1982 had experienced became the reason we could participate in an important conference, or a condition for being invited. All at once, I sensed a dramatic shift in the atmosphere.

Later, when the conference started, it was like any other conference. We divided into groups to view each region’s works screened in the form of slides, and representatives from each group made presentations.

After the Zhuhai Conference, Wang Chuan and I went to Shenzhen, where we once again experienced the atmosphere of Reform and Opening model projects. At the time, a song titled “Tomorrow Will Be Better” was popular, and this song resonated with my mindset and the hope I felt in Zhuhai and Shenzhen for a better future. I believed that there was hope in making modern art and that the future was wide open. I brought this feeling back with me to Yunnan and shared my reflections and insights with artists there who wanted to take up modern art, including Zhang Xiaogang, Pan Dehai, and Ye Yongqing. I said that the atmosphere was excellent, and it’s important that we make modern art. I offered many words of encouragement and even some provocative language, because I was so young at the time.

Soon, everyone thought that those of us in Yunnan should keep pushing forward, and that we should establish a larger group to bring together more painters. We did this very quickly. The October after the Zhuhai Conference, we organized an exhibition in Yunnan that included many artists from Chengdu, Chongqing, Kunming, Shandong, Henan, and Shanghai. We even adopted the same method as the Zhuhai Conference, using slides to display the works. We projected each artist’s work in the Yunnan Provincial Library’s large conference hall. There were smaller meeting halls adjacent to the main conference hall where we exhibited images of the works and the artists’ notes. It was very lively; the entire art community of Kunming attended.

Following this exhibition, Kunming was enlivened, and numerous exhibitions of modern art started popping up. So in that sense, I think the Zhuhai Conference had an important impact on elevating and advancing the artistic atmosphere of the time. Although everything was presented in the form of slides, the conference’s influence and power of dissemination was in fact the fastest and most direct at that time.