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Chapter 1
- Hong Kong University Press, HKU
- Chapter
- Additional Information
1 On 12 April 2004, on the “What’s New” page of Meishu Tongmeng,1 the biggest contemporary art website in Beijing, its Editor-in-chief, Wu Yi, published my new work Fifteen Gunshots…from 1989 to 2003 and added the following editorial note: Revisiting Xiao Xiao’s famous shooting at the ’89 China Avantgarde Art Exhibition, we see in her new work Fifteen Gunshots… from 1989 to 2003, the process by which a work with feminist characteristics is misread by society and by its era…. Fig. 1 Fifteen Gunshots...from 1989 to 2003 (October 2003). (Photograph by Li Songsong.) About Fifteen Gunshots...from 1989 to 2003 Heaven knows love. Earth knows hate. Ghosts know having Neither love Nor hate. Fifteen years ago, after I fired the two shots at the ’89 China Avant-garde Art Exhibition at the National Art Museum, Beijing, and after he and I were released from the Dongcheng District Detention Centre, some intangible force attracted me, and from 1989 to 2003 we spent in all fifteen years together. 1. Meishu Tongmeng (Art Alliance), website at: http://arts.tom.com Dialogue 4 Today I raise the gun again and fire fifteen shots at myself, one for each year. It is over between us. I am not good at discussing theory, let alone art. I know how to be alive. The form of a work of art, its very existence, is just the manifestation of an inner demand. Depending on your psychology in any given situation, it may be a poem, or the firing of a gun. The word “art” adds nothing. It’s an instinctive survival mechanism. It’s where you’re at in life. Xiao Xiao Beijing, 23 December 2003. 2. From the afternoon of 5 February till 9 February 1989. Fig. 2 At about 11.10 a.m. on 5 February 1989, Xiao Xiao fired a shot at her own work Dialogue, at the ’89 China Avant-garde Art Exhibition at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing. On a winter day fifteen years ago, a woman shocked the art world by firing two shots in the National Art Museum, Beijing. The Museum was closed down for four and a half days.2 Major news media across the whole world, including the Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France Presse and United Press International, reported the event. It made instant history and startled people all over the world. At that moment, a man entered my life. A misunderstanding, a woman’s fears and illusions, and her silence for the sake of love, allowed him to appear as a co-creator of the work. [52.91.255.225] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 03:10 GMT) 5 Chapter 1 It was again a woman who raised a gun in late 2003 and took aim at photographs of herself, firing fifteen shots in all. She was telling the world: “I was the sole creator of this work.” A dispute about who was to be recognized as its author brought to light some littleknown history. The story begins with the gun. April weather south of the Yangtze is like a woman, all moaning wind and drizzle. People call Hangzhou heaven. I was living on the second floor of the small country-style building facing the longjing tea hills, with the luscious tea hills and green trees meeting my eyes through the floor to ceiling windows of a single room dwelling. It was past noon when I lazily got out of bed, raised the window curtain and walked outside. The weather was gloomy, a fine drizzle fell, and my sadness matched the weather. The maudlin maid bemoans her nameless doom. “Dreadful weather, raining non-stop, we’ll all be growing mouldy,” I muttered at the skies. My life was frustrating. Let’s have some music to lift my spirit. Jazz in a mournful metre slowly permeated the air. I got in the shower and turned on the taps. Water rushed over my head as I looked down at my somewhat flaccid body. “I’m getting old!” The water buffeted my body, but there was no way it could wash the melancholy from my brow. I pushed open the shower door, put on a white bath-robe and went out. “Dagadagadaga”: the music was stuck. Pirate CDs! I went over and switched it off. In the sudden quiet, the sound of the rain splashing on the roof beat heavily on my head, and my heart gloomily sank. I brewed a cup...