First opening in Beijing

Censorship creates a kind of paranoia that is hard to imagine if you are not subjected to it. I was confronted with it on my first day, when my friend Liu Gang warned me that all e-mail's would be read by "them". True or false? They might just have the manpower and the inclination. Self censorship immediately kicks in: can I use that for a google search, or will my connection get even slower? Why does hotmail not work, but google does? True: if I post a photograph of the tank man on this blog, the whole blog will be removed. False: who knows what is false, or true?
The day before yesterday I went to my first opening. It was an anniversary of the China/Avant-Garde Exhibition held 20 years ago at the National Art Gallery. Back then, it was closed by the police after 4 hours. This time we arrived at the first venue only to hear that yesterday evening the police had asked for most of the exhibits to be removed. In a corner, some photographs of the original 1989 exhibition remained. A bus was taking us to the next place: The Agricultural Exhibition Center. Sounds funny for an art show, but it is in fact very prestigious.


Again nothing but a huge empty hall. More and more people started to arrive. The situation became hard to read. Everybody seemed to be randomly photographing and filming eachother.


With paranoia and censorship you never know where you are at. We strongly came to suspect that the whole absurd situation was itself a conceptual statement. There never had been an exhibition, we were made to experience what it was like 20 years ago, etc. We also began to feel a bit stupid, pawns in an only moderately satisfying happening. You get that a lot in the art world. What the hell, it was a nice, sunny day.


The picture above shows Gao Minglu, the curator, surrounded by some of the artists from 1989. He gave a speech: Yes, the exhibitions had been there, they had to be removed and there was only one venue left, a bus would take us there presently.
There was a show. Documents and photographs of all the works from 1989. They were black and white, which made the works look even more out of date. Most of them resembled Chinese remakes of Dada, Expressionism and Cubism: not so 1989. But some of it was really good and it was a break through at the time and place. It is incredible how quickly many artists developed since then. Many of the now famous artists where among the exhibits and those present. Then there where perfomances: Xiao Lu (who shot herself in a mirror in '89) got married to herself, somebody wrote things on the wall with his shit and then ate it, another cried and ate roses. A good time was had by all and many pictures were taken. As an introduction to the Chinese art scene, the whole day could probably not have been better.
Next day the international press (on the Internet, very difficult to get a decent newspaper here) confirmed that the shows had been closed by the police.