Artistic Collective Action I

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While collective action is one of the biggest threats to the Chinese Communist Party today, this tactic has been used to complete extensive works of art throughout China’s history. People gathering together, under governmental supervision of course, to create these massive installations can be used in a way to exert power and authority over its people while still allowing for creative liberty of artists. Leaders of China, whether we are talking about the emperors or party officials have used collective action to their advantage in a multitude of ways; terracotta warriors guarding a tomb, Olympic Games opening ceremonies, and museum installations like Ai Weiwei’s sunflower seeds.

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First looking at the terracotta warriors, we can draw parallels with the Qin Dynasty and the evolution of the CCP. Under the control of a single ruler, Emperor Shihuangdi, China’s many states were united for the first time in its history just like how Mao Zedong united the Chinese people under the Communist Party when he came into power. Both rulers, Shihuangdi and Mao were viewed as harsh and oftentimes repressive rulers, but they were able to progress China toward their goals. For example, under the Qin Dynasty, they established the mechanisms of a centralized bureaucracy that helped mold China politically and culturally into a single, cohesive state; they developed an administrative framework which is still in use today and standardized the writing system and coinage used (Stokstad, 80).

Emperor Shihuangdi, in an attempt to ensure personal immortality, commissioned an underground army of thousands of terracotta warriors to be constructed to stand guard and defend his tomb for all of eternity (Stokstad, 69). Shihuangdi must have gathered thousands of people to complete this effort, an example of collective action being used by a leader in a productive manner. Not only is the sheer size of the effort significant in looking back at artistic collective action, but also the political organization that must have been used to get this effort moving; thousands of potters and artists had to be gathered and organized into groups to complete the terracotta warriors.

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A collective action style organizational process was used by Emperor Shihuangdi to simply have the project completed and artistic liberty was given to these artists and potters in creating the faces of the terracotta warriors. While the torsos of the figures were mass produced using molds, each warrior’s head was individualized and different from the next. From an aerial view of the warriors, they all appear the same; an image China would like to maintain, exemplifying unity within their people, but as you look closer, you begin to see the differences in the faces of each one, showing the individuality of the population at whole.

Moreover, while the CCP fears collective action of their people today, there are actually cases of the government using such a tactic to gather large groups of people to serve a cause.

Stokstad, Marilyn. Art: A Brief History. Fourth Edition. (Prentice-Hall, 2009).