The conversation took place with Shirley Soh on 3 October 2012 in Robert Zhao’s studio at Goodman Arts Centre. Also present was Tan Siuli (TSL).
      
Shirley Soh (SS): I’d like to start our conversation with a general question: What do you see is the role of art, first in your life and then in contemporary society?

Robert Zhao (RZ): I think the role of art in my life is [...]try to understand myself actually. I do it because a lot of times what I find myself doing is art. It is just something that I have been doing, anyway. For example, since I was young, I have always been very obsessed with animals. When you are young, you probably just have a lot of toys, and they are animals, you watch TV documentaries, then you go to the zoo.

When I was a bit older, when I could explore this myself, I found myself buying a lot of animal—related stuff. These range over all kinds. I was very attracted to taxidermy and then, at the same time, because I travelled, I was also attracted to souvenirs that contain animal parts—all kinds—morbid kinds and very strange ones. Then I also found myself collecting animal traps. I [would] always go to the market just to look for traps, and then I would go to the very kitschy, touristy areas to look for very trashy animals, key chains and magnets. But I don’t know why I did all this. This was way before I did photography, that I have always been collecting these things.

Only recently I realised that I could use art to formally address the things I am interested in, or obsessed with, to try to find some way to understand why l am interested in them and to see if there is a greater reason why I collect these things. So it helps me to understand myself in a way. Does it make sense?

SS: Yes, it does, it does. How long has this journey been, from the beginning when you said you were interested in animals? How old were you then?

RZ: I was interested in animals since, I think, as young as I can remember—very, very young.

SS: Where did the influence come from? Books? Your father?

RZ: My father, mostly my father. Because, until now, the only thing that he ever watches on TV are documentaries. And the only places that we go to for family outings every year are the zoo and the bird park.

SS: So you would say he played a very large role in forming this interest of yours in animals?

RZ: Yes indirectly. Because when I was much younger, whenever I travelled during the holidays, I always made it a point to go to the zoo. And I took a lot of pictures, but I didn’t know why.

SS: That’s the role of art in your life. What do you see as the role of art in our contemporary society?

RZ: [That’s a] very big question, and very hard...

SS: Yes, it is. [laughs] Shall we keep this for later because I will talk about your activism and your art.

RZ: Okay.

SS: Moving on from the role of art in your life, I was thinking your answer is very revealing, that it helps you make sense of your life, your interests, what you are doing and you use the word ‘obsession’, in fact. What would you describe as fundamental influences in your art practice?

RZ: [The] influences come mainly from my past. I was trained mainly as a photographer and I was brought up in a Christian family——a very staunch, conservative Christian family. So, photographer plus animal activist plus conservative Christian family, all of these form a lot of what I am doing today. They, sort of, overlap—photography, faith and then my interest in animals. Some of my projects are based on my days when I was interested in animal rights. During that time, I was producing a lot of images for them, in a documentary format, in a very seemingly objective way. I went around trying to look for the more dramatic images that can help to fight for some cause to liberate animals. This was before I went to London, so I had a very strong visual portfolio of animals in captivity.

SS: What ages were you when you were very involved in your animal activism and went around taking pictures?

RZ: From 18 to 23.

SS: How did you get into activism?

RZ: How? I love animals [and] I thought, since I love animals, the only way I could do something about it was to protect them, and it seemed like a logical step [...] to help them fight for their rights. I think, logically, everyone who falls in love with something would want to fight for it. I was like that. But. at the same time, I was also interested in and discovering photography. I realised it was a very, how can I say it... convincing...

SS: And powerful?

RZ: No, not powerful. Convincing and...

SS: Easy?

RZ: Yes, almost easy. [It is a] very, very, convenient medium to use to fight for this [issue]. At the same time, I also realised I was taking a lot of very cruel things, animals that were really suffering. I went to London with this portfolio and then I realised London has a very strong history of animal rights. So my work was very well-received there. An Asian, going to England showing the work I made there and the response was something like:” Wow, we applaud you.” And in my second year I won a student prize. At that time I was very shocked, I wasn’t even expecting to win any prize in my own country, and then when I went there I received so much attention. Up to the point of the award that night, I didn’t expect to win. I thought [I might get] top three or something. After I won, the chief judge came and talked to me, and said, “Your images are really so cute.” Actually, they were very aestheticised images of animal suffering.

SS: And it was cute, the guy said.

RZ: Cute in that it was aesthetically very ‘drama’, I think. It was [seen as being] so ‘nice’. That sort of disturbed me. Whenever I wanted to submit some pieces for exhibition, I looked through the images and I found myself doing all this. It is very pointless. And it is actually very sad when I go through my images. It is really very, very sad.

SS: You feel sad?

RZ: Yes, I feel sad. I feel genuinely sad. I feel like I am just trying to build my own career on these suffering animals.

SS: But they are suffering, the animals?

RZ: They are. They are kept in really squalid conditions.

SS: You don’t think that by showing these pictures, you are really showing their suffering and sharing that with the world.

RZ: Yes, people will know about it, but I don’t know how much change it would bring about. Or maybe I was not interested in change, I don’t know.

SS: That was your thinking, as a second-year student in London.

RZ: Yes, and I was also doing other things in photography then. I was interested in how naive we are with photography.

SS: The audience?

RZ: The audience, how they are very, very easily convinced.

SS: How did you find that out? When was that point you found that out?

RZ: Actually. [I’ve known this] all along, since I got my first camera when I was in primary school.

SS: [You knew] already then?

RZ: Yah, I actually started doctoring images, film in those days. You take a marker pen and start drawing on film, then you develop it and there will be some spectre or aura around the images.

SS: Ghosts?

RZ: Ghosts. supposedly ghosts. After I took the pictures in the classroom in our primary school and brought the [doctored images] back, everyone was very scared——“what’s going on?”; Everyone was so scared.

SS: [laughs] A prank of sorts, right?

RZ: I wasn’t pranking, I just wanted to find out what was going to happen.

SS: I come now to your Institute of Critical Zoologists. In its mission statement, you say, “The Institute of Critical Zoologists aims to develop acritical approach to the zoological gaze or how humans view animals” Could you——because now that you have done research visiting zoos, markets, natural history museums and art galleries——describe this zoological gaze? What have you uncovered in how humans view animals?

RZ: Mmm...actually, I have never ever shot a live animal before. The [animals in my pictures] are always dead. I tried it once. I think it’s so hard and actually also very strange to work with a living animal.

I think the zoological gaze is [...such that] when you see animals, they are always very entertaining and very interesting. You always see them as something that they are not. They can never be [that way]. Ironically, for most people, zoos are the only place where we can have an encounter with animals, especially today when we live in cities and concrete. So it is actually important that zoos exist somehow, so that live animals can still be seen. Because we can learn the A to Z of animals, and Z is for zebra, but yet when we look at a zebra in real life, I don’t think art can ever replace that feeling. What I have come to realise so far is that we can never truly appreciate an animal on its own terms.

SS: Okay, this thing about how to appreciate it on its own terms, that it is almost impossible. Now I am going to talk a bit about this gaze and the question of truth and authenticity. Is the art truth more authentic than the wildlife truth? Maybe I can hear your views about this truth and authenticity, especially in your work.

RZ: Actually, they are very connected. Basically, it is the concept of nature [that I want to examine], what we perceive nature to be. What is nature: is it the last frontier? Is it Disneyland? Is it Bambi? Is it a David Attenborough documentary? Is it a very nice Night Safari? Or is it the aviary? Nature means a lot of things to different people. For many, nature means the last authentic spot out there that is untainted by humans. To a lot of people, nature and humans are, sort of, separate, that we are not part of nature and anything that is man-made is not ‘nature’. But that is not true, because nature——if you want to define it simply——is cruel. It is harsh. It is not beautiful. It can be cruel, you know——animals die. [In nature] you have to be alert all the time because it is very savage and unpredictable. It is nothing like what we romanticise about it.

And yet we cannot say that we are not part of nature and I am not even sure if ‘natural’ is the word to use anymore. I think we have come to a point where we cannot keep on separating nature and human, that what we are doing is also natural. You know, it might be easier to appreciate nature or authentic nature that is very connected with human acts and not so separated from human acts. In wildlife photography, there is a whole religious movement where you cannot doctor the images. You cannot pose the images, it must all be ‘natural’  because everyone is looking for that authentic slice of wildlife in a nature photography or wildlife photography competition. But this sort of photography involves going in [to nature] and taking a ‘slice’ of it out for the viewer, and it is actually all very unnatural if you come to think about it [because] there is no way you can encounter nature like that. It is far from how we would encounter nature.

SS: Okay, I am more interested in what you were saying that in your art you don’t want to change people’s thoughts.

RZ: I don’t want to. Why?

SS: Yes, I am very interested because coming to this idea of your audience, what do you want your audience to come away with, then, when they look at your work?

RZ: Maybe it is to entertain an alternative perspective or to give room for other ideas, to give room to think about things. And to acknowledge, no, not to acknowledge... [pause] A lot of times, I feel that a lot of things and situations are actually very helpless when you come to research about them.

SS: Precisely. What does your art do when you know that people are feeling helpless when they look at these big issues, climate change, cruelty to animals in farming. What is your role, knowing that there is this sense of helplessness in the face of all these big issues?

RZ: [long pause] Actually, I might still be...determining my position. That’ s why I can’t give you a concrete answer. As an activist, I would advocate but now as an artist, I try not to do that. More and more, I try not to influence people now. People are already very much influenced. I don’t know if art should influence people.

TSL: Then what do you make art for?

RZ: Maybe art should be the ground where you don’t have to care. [laughs]You can do your own thing, and be liberal.

SS: Okay, you don’t want to change people’s-

RZ: I just want to question, to raise doubts.

SS: Okay, let’s look at this thing of using fiction, you want to make people question and to think through, right? You don’t want people to have a one-dimensional picture of the issue. Using fiction and fictionalising, you employ that strategy, you must believe that it works. Is it very important that your audience sees through the fictionalising?

RZ: Is it important? [pause]

SS: Some people could say it is deception too. I am trying to tie in this idea of the very obvious strategy you are using—fiction and fictionalising—and this thing that you hope to make people think about things. Would you then say your audience needs to see through the fictionalising? If they don’t see through it, they are also duped, in a way, then how do they think about the subject?

RZ: [pause] I think the work is... I try to make it... when I present it. I try to give people enough room to fall down...

SS: Fall down?

RZ: To, sort of, not be sure, to start to...

SS: Question?

RZ: To start to be placed in a position where you are not sure and you don’t know what you are looking at and you rely on the kind of system that I put there—all the text and the other images, to help you navigate your way through my work. I think it’s not important if they know it is a staged thing. I think some can tell immediately, some don’t and that’s fine because you have different audiences anyway.

Fictionalisation is just a way to [deal with the bigger picture]. A lot of things that we encounter today are already very much fictionalised and we just need to be more sensitive to how we grab information to understand things. We are always searching, we are always trying to understand something——understand our lives, understand nature——but we also have to be very selective about the kind of tools that we use to try help us understand things. Ultimately, the whole meaning of our lives becomes determined by these [...] tools that we pick up, so we can always be on the alert and in the state of questioning.

Even though we are bombarded every day by so much images. I think our visual language is not as defined as how we read text. Because I am trained in photography, I hope to believe I am more sensitive to images and how instead of trying to grab information [quickly] to understand things. If you can just grab it wholesale and you can walk away with my story but I think I leave enough space for you to want to stop... [pause]

SS: And question.

RZ: Yes, I hope.

SS: Especially now with your PYT work, is there a shift in the way you are presenting your work? So far we have seen a lot of photographs, archives, presenting documents and text but now it seems like you are going into installation. Is that a shift or a continuation of your practice? [...] Do you also think, now, looking at your work, The Quieting and the Alarming, using a room, having an image that you cannot see properly through peepholes, and having a very large one that you want to place precariously, there is a shift or is it just a continuation?

TSL: How do you perceive it? Do you see it as a turning point or do you see it, as you say, as a natural progression or an extension of what you are doing?

SS: Especially when you talk about the image being no longer, in a way, innocent. It has to be constructed.

RZ: Yes, but it is more as a progression. I have been working along this line and I also want to see if I can portray the wild boar. [...] I have been trying to understand these conversations we have been having about the wild boar and at times, they are very emotional, very funny. And [going by] the conversations between people on the internet forums, I think this project is very close to home. I also want to see if I can work my images a little more, to let it have more mileage without the text or the traditional way l use it.      

SS: So, on this wild boar issue, it’s an open stance in your work?

RZ: What do you mean by “open stance”?

SS: Letting the audience make up its own mind on the issue. Is that what you want your audience to do?

RZ: The wild boar issue carries a lot of the things that we talked about earlier, like the concept of nature. The uncertainty about the concept of the wild boar makes you ask: is it a pest? Or is it nature? Is it a man-made problem or is it a natural problem, and what are the solutions? Actually, a lot of what is happening with this issue-like people being attacked, people being friends with the wild boar, having emotional attachments, people being objective about it——all of these are very interesting for the whole situation. You come to appreciate how in Singapore we relate to nature and the different ways people have come to think about nature. So far, I think it is very hard to see everything or [even] to have people see one another’s point of view, so in the exhibition, I hope to be able to touch upon a bit of everything. to see if I can just show all these different processes of the discussion. That’s it.

SS: Thank you so much, Robert.