Last year we were in China for 4 months. I broke my leg in a bicycle accident. One day we visited an exhibition of work by Peng Yu and Sun Yuan, two conceptual artists. It was the opening show for yet another gallery space opening in Beijing, backed by Shanghai money, and the wine was exceptionally good. The inside of the gallery space was filled by an enormous trampoline, and you had to jump up and down in order to be able to see what was written on the floor behind a wall. This is what I heard, because I was in a wheelchair and not able to jump up and down. Beijing in general proved to be very handicapped-friendly, but on this occasion I started feeling like a curious art object myself, parked all alone next to the entrance, sipping wine.
A friendly elderly gentleman offered to bring me another drink. When he returned with the glasses, I realized that he had only one hand to hold them. The other arm had been chopped off below the elbow.
From handicapped person to handicapped person, I asked him what had happened. He turned out to be German, but he had been in China so long that he mixed it with Pidgin English all the time. His arm had been lost in an accident with a machine when he was seventeen. He had been a mechanic and had to change jobs. He started to sell advertisement slots in a magazine about mining machines. Doing this, he traveled as far as China and got stuck there. Today he is working for the Communist Party of China, selling publicity space in their official magazine.
He was also doing this and that. Just now, he told me, he was organizing the first street festival in China outside of Beijing. There were to be Chinese elements – a parade in costumes, and dancing and singing minorities – and German elements: beer by Hofbräuhaus and traditional Dresdener Stollen, a Christmas cake, from a German bakery. Plus 500 of the best Chinese art works would be displayed on a temporary wall in the middle of the street.
We went to see it. The shuttle bus drove us far out into the countryside. The farmers liked the clown from New Zealand best and gaped at masturbating dogs (oil painting), Bush being captured by Superman (sculpture) and at the blind woman that could paint tiny birds with a tiny brush.
“Hello!”, waved Mr. Linke. “How nice that you came!” We talked, met one of the Luo Brothers, who showed us the “gay” leather trousers he had bought in Berlin when he made his artist print edition for the football World Cup, and eventually Mr. Linke said: “I’m about to organize an even bigger street festival. Wouldn’t you like to do something for it?”
This was my plan:
At the street festival in the middle of China there was
to be a boxing ring. On both sides, adults and kids would find costumes.
In China it’s no
big deal to have a very large costume made that makes you look like a mobile
phone. I would have looked for one of the companies that design these things
for publicity. On the left hand side, all the costumes would be the old things
of China: the old dark blue cotton shoes, the flowered sleeve protectors,
the small stove, the buns – and on the other side all the new things
in China: the mobile phone, the artificial fingernail, the hamburger etc.
People could get into these costumes, which would be padded from the inside, and fight against each other in the boxing ring. The winner could get his photo taken.