白日摸瞎 / Shooting in the Dark, Performance/ Film, Lanzhou & Hanchuan, China, 2020
In the city plaza Dongfanghong Square of Lanzhou, I walked around and groped blindly for hours from sunset to nighttime, with a flowerpot over my head to block my view. Meanwhile, my collaborator Jing Xie, who was quarantined in Hanchuan, Hubei, walked around a local makeshift market with her head covered from the early morning to dawn. We blind touched and moved in our respective places, trying to recognize the way and to understand the world shrouded by the epidemic.
The place Dongfanghong means Oriental Red, just as the famous Chinese song with the same name in 1960s, in praise of Chairman Mao, who was compared to the red sun by the whole country. It was surrounded by warm-coloured flowers and decorated in Dunhuang Apsaras fresco in 90s when people came to visit it and took pictures as souvenirs. Now all the ornaments have been removed, and the new colour feels cold and serious, people come and go in a hurry.
My performance started at a time when people showed up from all different directions – those who have left work, those who took a stroll after dinner, and people who did exercises. The site is located right next to the Provincial Public Security Bureau, and I saw some men in police uniform on duty near the rostrum, which made me anxious before the performance as I was prepared to be stopped anytime by the police.
The place Dongfanghong means Oriental Red, just as the famous Chinese song with the same name in 1960s, in praise of Chairman Mao, who was compared to the red sun by the whole country. It was surrounded by warm-coloured flowers and decorated in Dunhuang Apsaras fresco in 90s when people came to visit it and took pictures as souvenirs. Now all the ornaments have been removed, and the new colour feels cold and serious, people come and go in a hurry.
My performance started at a time when people showed up from all different directions – those who have left work, those who took a stroll after dinner, and people who did exercises. The site is located right next to the Provincial Public Security Bureau, and I saw some men in police uniform on duty near the rostrum, which made me anxious before the performance as I was prepared to be stopped anytime by the police.
(Jing at Hanchuan, Hubei, China)
“白日摸瞎” alludes to a situation where people deliberately refuse to see the obvious in front of them and pretend to work hard to solve problems that are not there but appear to be problems inexplicably. People spend energy doing something that they know won’t work. It points to a feeling of confusion and anxiety, when one is heading for an uncertain future.
This is a collaborated work of Hijack打劫, commissioned by HOP Projects.