Jie I–V/Analysis I–V: Eclipsing the individual in the instruction-based practice of the New Measurement Group (Beijing, China 1988–1995)

In 1988, artists Chen Shaoping, Gu Dexin and Wang Luyan began collaborating with a distinctive approach to art-making in Beijing, China, forming the New Measurement Group (NMG). Active until 1995, they based their practice on a series of complex collective instructions, which they would execute to create artworks. Their resulting drawings would then appear in different forms such as tables, diagrams and numbers, which were then bound together into books for presentation in an exhibition context. This article considers the NMG's art practice as situated within a Communist approach to art-making, one structured upon collective ownership of production and moral codes, and reflecting China's artistic, economic and socio-political context at the end of the 1980s and the early 1990s. Additionally, this article considers their collective instruction-based practice within an international history of instruction-based art; that is, art based on artists' instructions for themselves or audiences to enact, a genre having a longer history within a western context, specifically through the genres of conceptual art and Fluxus. To understand the NMG's contribution to art-by-instruction, this article discusses their practice alongside some aspects of the exhibition series 'Do it' – the role of the audience, the value of subjectivity and chance, and consideration of the art-making process. Since its inception in 1993 by curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist and artists Christian Boltanski and Bertrand Lavier, 'Do it' has featured certain kinds of instructional artworks; that is, artworks based on artists' instructions and enacted by audiences. Though very different, this curatorial project offers the possibility of discussing and considering the NMG's distinctive process-based approach to art-making in greater detail.