Meiling Cheng Dappled : “Untamed Histories” Surrounding the China Brand

Grey China Grey: the colour of mourning and repentance; of humility, plainness, and punishment; of aging, despondency, and melancholy; of equivocality.1

From an Oral History Sitting across a table from me in his studio in , Yang Zhichao recounts his recent experience of enacting his performance piece A Hundred Days from May 12th (Bairi wu yi er) in Sichuan province one hundred days after the 7.9 magnitude earthquake hit on May12, 2008.2 Yang Zhichao and his wife, Zhang Lan, armed with two identification cards as professional reporters from Beijing, first travelled to Chengdu, where they heard about a disaster site that had received little coverage by the media. Local rumours alleged that officials in the little town of Muyu, Sichuan, had grossly underreported its number of earthquake victims: the regional government claimed ninety out of the probable three-hundred dead, with most of them school children. So the artists hired a veteran taxi driver to take them from Chengdu to Muyu’s only high school and, with the driver’s whole-hearted support, took pictures of the earthquake wreckage along the mountainous way.

Devastation of the 2008 The calamity the artists witnessed earthquake in Muyu, a little town in Sichuan province. on the campus of Muyu High Photo: Yang Zhichao. School brought them to tears. A three-story-high student dormitory was completely flattened to the ground, burying all of its residents. Yang Zhichao felt especially A pencil among the earthquake debris of Muyu High School. emotional when he saw broken Photo: Yang Zhichao. pencils scattered amid the rubble. The sight inspired his immediate performance response. Trying to be inconspicuous, he set the action in a debris-covered corner between two half-crumpled classroom buildings. Having secured their camera on a tripod and asking their driver to press the shutter button, Yang Zhichao and Zhang Lan each sat on a stool to begin their makeshift operation. Zhang Lan—who previously had worked in a hospital—placed a bit of pencil lead into a prepared silicone capsule, and then surgically inserted the capsule into Yang Zhichao’s abdomen. The artists finished the performance in twenty minutes without encountering any interference. Before they left

Vol. 11 No. 4 43 the schoolyard, however, several Yang Zhichao and Yang Lan, Revelation IV: A Hundred undercover policemen stopped Days from May 12th, 2008, performance. Photo: them and, on the excuse that they anonymous taxi driver. Courtesy of the artists. had no approval letter from the local government’s Propaganda Department (Xuanchuan bu), ordered their taxi to follow the police car to the police station. The police interrogated Yang Zhichao, Zhang Lan, and their driver in separate rooms for an hour, accused the artists of illegal reporting, searched all their bags, and confiscated the film in their camera.3 Fortunately, the artists were not body-searched: they each had hidden a roll of film and a memory card from their digital camera in their underwear during the taxi ride to the police station.

Moving Toward the Grey Yang Zhichao, Revelation I: Earth, 2004, performance A Hundred Days from May 12th is the at Jianwai SOHO, Beijing. Courtesy of the artist. fourth installment in Yang Zhichao’s performance series titled Book of Revelation (Qishi lu, 2004–), which refers to the well-known Biblical source. In Revelation I: Earth (Tu, July 14 2004), Yang Zhichao placed 1.6 grams of fine yellow earth taken Yang Zhichao, Revelation II: from the bank of the Yellow River Ashes, 2006, performance at a forest fire-incinerated site in his hometown, Lanzhou, on Huairou mountain, Beijing. Courtesy of the artist. province, into a silicone capsule and had a physician surgically implant the filled capsule into his belly.4 In Revelation II: Ashes (Jin, 2006), another capsule, filled with ashes from a forest fire-incinerated site,

was surgically inserted into the Yang Zhichao, Revelation III: Night, 2006, performance at artist’s abdomen. In Revelation III: Tang Contemporary Gallery, Beijing. Courtesy of the artist. Night (Ye, 2006), a surgeon, wearing a pair of infrared glasses in an unlit windowless room inside the Tang Contemporary Gallery in Beijing, made a two-centimeter incision below Yang Zhichao’s navel to let the darkness sink into the slit before he sutured the artist’s wound.

The corporeal conceit of having an object surgically embedded inside his body was not alien to Yang Zhichao’s performance oeuvre when he embarked on A Hundred Days from May 12th. This latest addition within his Revelation series was nonetheless distinct because Yang Zhichao framed his process of making the piece, with the assistance of his wife, as integral to the artwork. Like two independent reporters unaffiliated with any institution, Yang Zhichao and Zhang Lan self-funded their inquiry into a disaster site

44 Vol. 11 No. 4 so as to directly collect from local residents hitherto untold stories, flyaway rumours, hushed recollections, and often unverifiable, if strongly claimed, evidence. The artists then devised a creative way to respond to, document, and transfer these stories to the public realm. Although visiting an earthquake site to stage a private memorial for the victims is not necessarily a political act, the troubles that Yang Zhichao and Zhang Lan encountered in Sichuan circumstantially establishes the political relevance of A Hundred Days. The piece exposes the regional government corruption that resulted in the shoddy construction of public school buildings; it contradicts what the central government propagates as its official version of history, which touts the state’s triumphant mobilization of political resources in remedying natural disasters, while eliding its simultaneous coercion of the victims’ grieving parents into silence.5

If the traditional Chinese phrase zheng shi describes the version of history penned by the government-sanctioned agents—that is, the orthodox history—then the version of history privately composed by Yang Zhichao and Zhang Lan’s action during A Hundred Days serves as a vernacular counterpart to the official history: ye shi, which means, literally, “wild histories”—the folk-generated compilations of hearsay, gossip, opinions, anecdotes, leaked secrets, dissenting remarks, covert images, furtive eyewitness accounts, embellished memoirs, and private investigation reports.6 Wild histories are parallel versions of history, consisting of orature and often anonymous or pseudonymic discursive documents that are untested, uncensored, and unsubstantiated. Like rhetorical infiltrators, wild histories insinuate themselves into the public memesphere and cultural memory without vetting by the institutional mechanisms that establish the country's officially authorized and disseminated history.

Yang Zhichao and Zhang Lan enacted their self-assigned ethical roles as artists-citizens to compile their wild histories. Their serious intent and the weightiness of their subject matter bestow a heroic import on their contribution. Yet wild histories could just as well be trivial, parodic, spurious, or far-fetched. Orthodox history tends to be highly regulated—"tamed"—in order to appear in harmony with the State's projection of a national self- image. Conversely, wild histories are, in their essence and politic, untamed histories, for they amass indiscriminately those accounts of putative and alleged reminiscences that are untamed and largely untamable by the powers that be. Slyly subversive in intent, untamed histories are mixed in tone; they may by turn be accusatory, poignant, speculative, sentimental, hyperbolically facetious, even phantasmagoric. They may function as apocryphal archives, colloquial chronicles, or simply as unauthenticated and non-attributable addenda to orthodox history. Like narrative horses without bridles, these untamed histories gallop on the edge of official surveillance; they track the fence surrounding the center for their own merry-go-rounds, their quixotic chases after shadows, or their amateurish derby without the benefit of referees. When given the chance, these untamed histories may also risk jumping over the fence toward the center to perform their rider-less rodeos, generating sub/cultural forces through the sheer “horse-power” of their vocal energies and physical maneuvers.

Vol. 11 No. 4 45 What Does the Grey Say? Unlike their mentor , who got into trouble with the State for his art activism on behalf of Sichuan earthquake victims, Yang Zhichao and Zhang Lan had no desire to overtly challenge the political centre of power. Thus, does their memorial performance of A Hundred Days from May 12th merely add a paragraph to the ongoing chronicle of surreptitiously engaged untamed histories in the as yet authoritarian China? Does the dystopic performance piece serve only to supply a contrary footnote to the nation’s aggressive promotion of what Wang Jing calls “the country brand of China” following “the Saatchi & Saatchi vision of turning the nation into a brand?”7

By designating A Hundred Days as part of his Revelation series, Yang Zhichao seems to subsume the performance piece’s regional specificity under its potential global resonance. In this context, his body, with the sealed capsule, becomes an enfleshed archive, analogous to the prophetic or apocalyptic Book of Revelation, which is replete with cryptic messages and redemptive symbolism, waiting to be discovered by future initiates.8 Nevertheless, I suggest, there is no contradiction between the regional and global references in A Hundred Days; rather, their joining amplifies the multivalence that underscores Yang Zhichao performance, turning the artist’s body into simultaneously a mourner’s mnemonic sanctuary that symbolically recollects the dead Chinese schoolchildren and a mystic’s corporeal temple of riddles for current and future humans. The same juxtaposition of glocal semiotic allusions characterizes the three earlier installments in the Revelation series, rendering the entire series a demonstration of Yang Zhichao’s commitment to his live art’s civic efficacy as untamed historical narratives.

Yang Zhichao’s Revelation series reflects the transforming subject position for contemporary Chinese experimental artists, who are remodeling their aspirations as creative contributors to their own country and to the globalized international community. We may understand this ongoing transformation of what being an artist means in post-Deng China as a process initiated by two indigenous circumstances: one, the professionalization of Chinese artists, and, two, the two-decade-plus lineage of “Chinese experimental art.”9

As Richard Kraus observes, the gradual professionalization of Chinese artists started during the Mao regime, which employed a vast number of artists as bureaucratic cultural workers to produce utopian communist propaganda and monolithic artworks in the style of socialist realism. In the reformist China, "the greatest force for change has been the introduction of a market for culture, operating alongside the older state system for reproducing and distributing art."10 The prospect of a potentially sustainable professional practice has encouraged many artists since the late 1980s to pursue independent—unofficial—careers; their exodus from permanent state employment has in turn allowed them to develop a more multifaceted relationship with the government.

46 Vol. 11 No. 4 Professionalism, however, often compels a professional without the institutional subsidy to heed the dictates of the market. Therefore, following ideological and stylistic uniformity, commercialism—expressed through an exclusive interest in profit-making—has emerged as the most pervasive source of constraint on artists’ continuous quest for creative experiments, even though it has also offered the self-employed art professional the possibility of financial success and social recognition. This scenario of commercialism's potential threat to spontaneous art making is familiar to most independent artists in late-capitalist countries such as the United States. What makes it different for Chinese artists is their relatively shorter, but also more intense, exposure to the force of commercialism, which, since the drastically depoliticized post-Tian’anmen 1990s, has risen as the safest, most practical, and officially least problematic route for "private" professional pursuits.

With the arrival of the China brand, which announced itself most grandiosely in the globally telecast opening ceremony for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, producing contemporary artworks has proved (by several international record-setting auctions in the past decade) to be a rewarding means of cultural production and career advancement for Chinese artists. Yet the same cultural and economic circumstances made available by the China brand—with its mixture of rampant commercialism, the elevated international stature of China, and China’s access to the international art world via globalization—also functions as an impetus for some artists to choose an alternative path, such as practicing non-commercially oriented experimental art.

According to Wu Hung's analysis, "self-positioning" oneself as an "experimental artist" in today's China is to aver a sense of mission to expand creative territories for from a decidedly marginal stance against "various kinds of cultural hegemony."11 I propose, however, that an experimental artist's self-positioned marginality does not have to always stand in opposition to the political status quo, nor does it over- determine an artist's professional practice. Experimental artists like Yang Zhichao, for instance, avoid direct confrontation with the government whenever possible. His professional portfolio, too, includes multiple components, combining commercial output in various media and genres, occasional overseas commissions, and exhibition opportunities with less commodifiable experimental projects such as the self-produced A Hundred Days from May 12th.

A Hundred Days bears witness to the human cost of official corruption exposed by a natural disaster. As such, its occurrence disturbs the master historical narratives, those woven in support of the China brand. By subsuming A Hundred Days within his ongoing series, Yang Zhichao effectively superimposes a biblical/metaphysical hermeneutic frame on this performance artwork about a specific local calamity. Who exactly is the target audience for Yang Zhichao’s untamed histories? Before attempting to answer the question, I would like to consider a few more examples from the same genre.

Vol. 11 No. 4 47 Red China Red: the colour of traditional and revolutionary China; the colour of festivity, auspiciousness, loyalty, and devotion; the colour of blood, passion, sacrifice, and martyrdom; of fire, rage, and impatience; of aborted vitality latent in prosperity.

From A Cut Finger Wang Chuyu, Reading the Constitution, 2002, On June 4, 2002, Wang Chuyu performance, June 4, 2002, Beijing. enacted a solo performance piece entitled Reading the Constitution (Xianfa yuedu, 2002) in his own apartment in Tongzhou, Beijing, without an invited audience. The artist slit his right index finger with a razor and began reading a popular edition of People’s Republic of China Constitution (Zhongguo renmin gongheguo xianfa). His blood oozed out profusely, staining the booklet.12

On the thirteenth anniversary Wang Chuyu, Reading the Constitution, 2002, of the June 4th Tian’anmen performance, June 4, 2002, Square massacre, Wang Chuyu Beijing. commemorated the untimely deaths by miming the clash between flesh and steel. His blood, a sacrificial libation, paid homage to those unexpectedly martyred in the Wang Chuyu, Reading the Constitution, 2002, crossfire between youthful naivete performance, June 4, 2002, Beijing. and wrangling political wills. The front cover of the PRC Constitution booklet displays a logo, a red round stamp comprising the outline of the Imperial Palace Museum, located to the north of Tian’anmen Square, and the five-star symbol from the Chinese National Flag. As a visual prop, the booklet’s cover soaked in Wang Chuyu’s blood restages the trauma of a national tragedy. In Chapter II of the PRC Constitution, Article 35 reads, “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.”13 Cited as a legal text, the booklet, with its blood-lined pages, spells out its own contradiction: Does this document record a nation’s legitimizing principles, which deserve patriotic bloodshed to protect its integrity? Or does it inventory mere bureaucratic verbiage, mocking its reader’s earnest folly?

Wang Chuyu first linked his cut finger with the PRC Constitution in a public performance that took place in in April 2002, in a little theatre inside the Hong Kong Cultural Centre. The artist slashed his finger with a razor and then distributed twenty-five copies of the PRC Constitution among his audience, which comprised mostly Hong Kong residents somewhat

48 Vol. 11 No. 4 Wang Chuyu, Constitution familiar with performance Excerpt, 2002, an audience member participating in the art. Inviting the twenty-one artist’s performance at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre. audience members who had Courtesy of the artist. accepted his bloodstained booklets to come on stage one by one, the artist urged each participant to improvise a response to the Constitution booklet. Most read a section or two in Cantonese through an open microphone on stage. A few diverged from this common pattern: One mumbled through all the lines; one alternated the recitation between Cantonese and Mandarin; one burst out crying; one read the Constitution booklet upside down. Wang Chuyu entitled this interactive performance Constitution Excerpts (Xianfa zhaiyao, 2002), which inaugurated Reading (Yuedu, 2002), an ongoing performance series revolving around the artist’s conceptual modification of the PRC Constitution.

To date, the most combustible event in Wang Chuyu’s Reading series occurred across the Taiwan Strait during his participation in the Taiwan International Performance Art Festival in August 2007. Wang Chuyu had specially prepared a fake document for the occasion: a pamphlet entitled The People’s Republic of China, the Republic of China, Constitution (Unification Edition) (Zhongguo renmin gongheguo, Zhonghua minguo, Xianfa [tongyi ban], 2007), in which he compiled the entire constitutions from both governments, reproducing one chapter from the mainland, followed by another from the island, alternating from one to the other chapter by chapter until the end. Considering the political tension between China (PRC) and the portion of Taiwanese citizens who lean toward Taiwanese Independence (ROC), Wang Chuyu’s choice of the word “unification” on his pamphlet’s cover is nothing short of incendiary, even though his intention remains ambiguous. By recognizing the ROC and aligning its constitution with that of the PRC, Wang Chuyu seemed to satirize China’s official policy in eventually “unifying” Taiwan under the mainland’s sovereignty. Yet his pamphlet also appears to have symbolically unified the mainland and the island in one volume. Given the political context, however, the artist’s conceptual subtlety and political ambivalence failed to amuse his Taiwanese audience.

Wang Chuyu staged his public art event Constitution, Unification Edition (Tongyi ban xianfa, 2007) on a busy street in Taipei, near National Taiwan Normal University. Distributing his pamphlets among some performance

Vol. 11 No. 4 49 festival viewers as well as random Top: Wang Chuyu, The People’s Republic of China, passersby, Wang invited these the Republic of China, Constitution (Unification participants to respond to the Edition), 2007, performance as part of the Taiwan International document. Within minutes, a Performance Festival. Courtesy of the artist. young man set fire to his copy of Left: Wang Shuyu, The the pamphlet; all other participants People’s Republic of China, the Republic of China, soon followed suit by throwing Constitution (Unification Edition), 2007, performance as their copies into the fire. When the fire subsided, the artist bent over the part of the Taiwan International Performance Festival. Courtesy debris and covered his face with the ashes from the burned pamphlets. This of the artist. interactive street performance ended with the artist’s improvised response to his audience-participants’ impromptu act of arson, provoked precisely by a politically loaded artifact, one made for and consumed by a collective action in Taipei.

Is Wang’s gesture of smearing his face with ashes a lamentation over futile yet irreconcilable human differences? Has the artist foreseen potential bloodshed from the cause of unification—hence, his ad hoc requiem for the future dead?

Black China Black: the colour of ink and historicity; of power and formality; of darkness, mystery, and depth; of erasure and forgetfulness; of loss.

From a Calligrapher’s Archaeology Bilingually published in both Chinese and English, the hardbound catalogue for Qiu Zhijie’s solo exhibition Archaeology of Memory (Jiyi kaogu, 2007) evokes a classical Chinese book, with folio-style pages and an exposed spine, sewn on the right by black threads. The catalogue’s thick grey covers resemble concrete surfaces; its Chinese title, printed as hollowed characters within a vertical black rectangle, looks like a piece of ink rubbing

50 Vol. 11 No. 4 A scene from Qiu Zhijie’s from an ancient stele.14 The design Beijing Studio with the construction of Cenotaphs in for this square-set (28 x 28 x 2.5 cm) progress, 2006–07. Courtesy of the artist. catalogue echoes that of the individual component for Qiu Zhijie’s large-scale installation featured in the exhibition, which took place at the Long March Space inside Beijing’s 798 art district, a chic international tourist attraction.

Qiu Zhijie, Cenotaphs, Entitled Cenotaphs (Jinianbei, 2006–07), 2006–07, concrete-and-cement cube, 16 framed calligraphic Qiu’s installation consisted of eight solid citations. Courtesy of the artist and Long March Space, concrete-and-cement cubes (80 x 80 x 80 Beijing. cm), which took the artist and his team of masonry artisans a year of incessant labour to make. The similar appearance of the eight concrete cubes reflects the routine process of making them. Each cube is composed of seventeen concrete slabs layered together; these layers remain visible from the side view, but they reveal nothing about what’s enclosed in them. Except for the top layer (the seventeenth slab), each of the rest of the sixteen slabs bore imprints of Qiu Zhijie’s calligraphic practice, including his “archaeology” of China’s long calligraphic, ideological, and social histories and of his own personal life. He searched for phrases, sentences, and codes that resonated with his current memory; he then wrote down a given selection in a calligraphic style that either imitated its original source or fit its thematic message. Afterward, his assistants hand-carved the artist’s inscription into the concrete slab for Qiu Zhijie to make limited editions of ink rubbings from his calligraphic exercise before they covered up the carved and rubbed slab with another concrete slab. Qiu Zhijie and his team repeated the same process layer by layer until they sealed the concrete cube with a blank top slab.

Qiu Zhijie creating a rubbing of calligraphic script from his Cenotaphs series in his Beijing studio, 2006–07. Courtesy of the artist.

Vol. 11 No. 4 51 Thus, the look-alike concrete cubes from Cenotaphs series are actually Qiu Zhijie’s Beijing Studio showing the calligraphic eight different giant tomes with all their pages sealed. Each tome includes rubbings, 2006–07. Courtesy of the artist. sixteen different texts assembled, recalled, or composed by Qiu Zhijie. The first tome collects revolutionary slogans of successive Chinese dynasties; the second, pithy statements from Chinese intelligentsia on international politics; the third, newspaper headlines from China’s republic and communist national histories; the fourth, a list of songs from the karaoke inventory; the fifth, individual statements that had become part of public memories; the sixth, fragments of personal letters and casual notes Qiu Zhijie received from friends; the seventh, his diaries written onto the computer and turned into illegible codes by computer viruses; the eighth, e-mail messages received in scrambled codes. They progress from

52 Vol. 11 No. 4 Top: Qiu Zhijie, Cenotaphs, collective cultural inheritance to arbitrary individual keepsakes to random 2006–07, concrete and paper rubbing. Courtesy of the artist. codification by intelligent machines. If the first three tomes represent what Middle: Qiu Zhijie, Cenotaphs, the artist gathered from China’s orthodox history, then the remaining 2006–07, concrete and paper rubbing. Courtesy of the artist. majority are his own compilations of untamed histories. Nevertheless, Bottom: Qiu Zhijie, Cenotaphs, his attitude to both official and vernacular histories appears the same: 2006–07, concrete and paper rubbing. Courtesy of the artist. no matter how black his ink was and how white the calligraphic scripts contoured by his ink rubbings were, they eventually all turned grey, like dust settling on concrete cubes.

Vol. 11 No. 4 53 In this light, the catalogue for the Archaeology of Memory becomes a self- reflexive comment on the elusiveness of memory, for the document both provides an indispensable supplement to Cenotaphs and joins the ranks of the eight unreadable tomes to which it refers as yet another transient human gesture toward the semblance of permanence. The main catalogue essay, a Chinese manuscript written in a brush pen by Qiu Zhijie himself, is reproduced in a slightly reduced scale, with its calligraphic text laid out in the traditional Chinese way, going vertically from the right to the left. The essay’s translated English version follows, its text printed in the usual horizontal typeset, from the left to right and the top to bottom, yet its page order follows the Chinese style in going from recto to verso on each spread. The essay both begins and ends with an unrhymed couplet, which reads, according to the catalogue’s English version, “The Emperor Decomposed Long Ago, Only the Scent of the Nanmu Tree Remains” (Diwang zaoyi fulan, zhiyou nanmu xiang ru gu, 2007).15 The couplet sums up Qiu Zhijie’s Daoism and Buddhism-inspired syncretic philosophy regarding human history: Despite the great power that an emperor may attain, his political ambition, like his mortal body, cannot last forever. In contrast, nature’s effortless vitality ever sustains itself through perpetual renewal, like the fragrance from the Nanmu tree.

The fragrant Nanmu tree, known as Phoebe zhennan in its Latin name, is a plant species endemic to China.16 Ironically, the plant is becoming endangered in China because of the loss of its habitat. Therefore, even Qiu Zhijie’s chosen symbol for nature’s self-sustainable, long-lasting scent might one day disappear.

The Scent of Untamed Histories As my brief narrative recounting of the performative artworks by Yang Zhichao, Wang Chuyu, and Qiu Zhijie shows, Chinese experimental artists both operate in complicity with and maintain a critical distance from the China brand. In general, these artists appreciate the opportunities for enhanced international exposure of their work facilitated by the current global fascination with China because, despite their nationalistic pride, the international exhibition, circulation, and evaluation system for art remains their most desirable source of professional recognition and rewards.17 The fact that Yang Zhichao would overlay a biblical reference onto his performance series, that Wang Chuyu would adjust his interactive public artworks for various geopolitical contexts, and that Qiu Zhijie would incorporate English translations in a catalogue profoundly rooted in Chinese histories and philosophies all indicate these artists’ interest and sense of obligation in addressing a larger-than-domestic constituency.

The same awareness of accessibility to the international art historical and cultural production systems, however, may also encourage these Chinese artists to shape a creative praxis more complex than the task of securing individual professional advancement. They may try simultaneously to generate more opportunities for work, to exercise creative agency, to express cultural subjectivity, to fulfill socio-ethical responsibility, and, within the

54 Vol. 11 No. 4 limits of self-preservation, to register a political voice. Indeed, why should these artists choose only one position—either for or against the China brand, for or against rampant commercialism, for or against the orthodox history—when they can play with multiple positions at various moments?

Monochromatic routines are the negatives of untamed histories. When exposed to light, these narrative horses shock, dazzle, amuse, critique, contradict, survey, and augment the ever-expanding global chronicles by being colourful, malleable, agile, and tactically peripheral. Dappled as dappled goes, in China and beyond.

Notes 1 I presented an earlier, abridged version of this paper in “Shenzhen + China, Utopias + Dystopias,” an interdisciplinary conference at MIT’s, History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture and Art Program on March 12, 2011. I’d like to thank the organizer, Winnie Wong, for inviting me to the conference. In noting the colour symbolism in this essay, I combine various popular, literary, and associative sources. My choice is inspired by Marshall McLuhan’s famous dictum: “The medium is the message.” See Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (New York: Bantam Books, 1967). The model of my “medium” here is “untamed histories.” The Web sites I consulted for colour symbolisms include Color Symbolism and Culture, incredibleart. org, http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/lessons/middle/color2.htm, and The Color Gray, in Elizabethan Era, http://www.elizabethan-era.org.uk/color-gray.htm. 2 Author’s interview with Yang Zhichao, March 25, 2009, Songzhuang, Beijing. I paraphrased and translated the subsequent citations based on this interview. I also consulted the unpublished text Yang wrote on this event: Yang Zhichao, “Qishilu Si—Bairi wu yier” (Revelation 4—A Hundred Days from May 12), September 8, 2008. Yang emailed this as-yet unpublished text to me on October 25, 2010. In this text, Yang mentions that the official report gave out “200” as the number of the dead. 3 The police also asked Yang about the missing memory card from his digital camera. Yang lied and said that he only used the digital camera “to test the light,” because “for us professionals, a digital camera’s film quality is not good enough.” 4 My retelling of the Revelation series is based on my interview with Yang on March 25, 2009, in Beijing See also Eastlink Gallery, Yang Zhichao zuopin 1999-2008/Yang Zhichao Works, bilingual exhibition catalogue (: Eastlink Gallery, 2008), 068–081. 5 See, for instance, “Sichuan Earthquake,” New York Times, (May 6, 2009), http://topics.nytimes.com/ topics/news/science/topics/earthquakes/sichuan_province_china/index.html . 6 For a distinction between zheng shi and ye shi, see Xie Qian, “Zheng shi’ yu ye’ shi’,” in Sichuan xinwenwang-Chengdu ribao, (September 13, 2010), http://cd.qq.com/a/20100913/000084.hym. I offer an extended theory of untamed histories here. 7 Wang Jing, Brand New China: Advertising, Media, and Commercial Culture (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2008), 32, 293. 8 See L. Michael White, “Understanding the Book of Revelation,” Frontline, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/ pages/frontline/shows/apocalypse/revelation/white.html. 9 I adopt this designation from Wu Hung, “A Decade of Chinese Experimental Art, 1900–2000,” in Making History: Wu Hung on Contemporary Art (Hong Kong, China: Timezone 8, 2008), 31. 10 Richard Kraus, The Party and the Arty in China (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004), 12. 11 Wu, “A Decade,” in Making History, 31–32. 12 My descriptions of Wang’s performances in his series Reading are based on my interviews with Wang Chuyu on July 7, 2006, July 15, 2008, and March 25, 2009, in Beijing; a phone interview with Wang Chuyu on March 1, 2011, Los Angeles to Beijing; and on my study of the photographic documents. 13 “Constitution of the People’s Republic of China” (Aaopted on December 4, 1982), People’s Daily Online, http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/constitution/constitution.html. 14 My description of Cenotaphs is based on my interviews with Qiu Zhijie on July 8, 2006, and July 12, 2008, in Beijing; on the information posted on his Web site, Qiuzhijie.com, and on his exhibition catalogue Qiu Zhijie, Jiyi kaogu/Archaeology of Memory, curated Lu Jie, ed. David Tung, trans. Lauren Allhusen (Beijing: Long March Space, 2007). I saw Cenotaphs in progress during my 2006 visit to Qiu Zhijie’s studio. 15 Qiu Zhijie, “Diwang zaoyi fulan, zhiyou nanmu xiang ru gu,” and “The Emperor Decomposed Long Ago, Only the Scent of the Nanmu Tree Remains,” in Qiu Zhijie, Archaeology of Memory, 6–21 and 22–25. 16 S. Lee and F. N. Wei, “Phoebe zhennan,” in South China Botanical Garden Checklist, http://www. efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=610&taxon_id=200009083. 17 This observation is based on my extensive interviews with Chinese artists in Beijing conducted between 2004 and 2009.

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