Temporalizing landscape to disrupt history

In his 2007 animation Minguo Fengjing, Qiu Anxiong (b. 1972) braids together different understandings and experiences of China’s volatile Republican period (1912–49). In this article, I show how waves of guoxue re (‘national studies fever’) and minguo re (‘Republican fever’) during the late 1990s and early 2000s motivated the artist to engage in historiographical investigation. Turning first to Qiu’s treatment of Minguo (‘Republican’) and then fengjing (‘landscape’), I argue that Qiu seeks to unfix temporal categories such as ‘tradition’ and upend assumed relationships between the past and the present. Through his use of Republican era references – images, songs and texts – Qiu brings attention to multiple conceptions of history that challenge dominant inherited accounts. His laborious animation process continues to perform this work by weaving together distinct magnitudes and metrics of time. Careful viewing reveals a treatment of animation that not only seeks to activate scenes through movement, but even more importantly, endow them with durational existence. By addressing Qiu’s careful attention to that which may seem ‘static’, I show how the artist temporalizes landscape. Through this approach to animation, Qiu invites viewers to reconsider their own practices of perception with regard to time and history alike.