Diary of the Spectacle
by Lee Ambrozy (post from ArtReview.com)
On a day of orgasmic auspiciousness in China, 08/08/08, crowds piled into bars, parks, official ‘fanzones’ outside the Olympic stadium and the old Workers’ stadium, and along Beijing’s ancient north-south axis to watch the opening ceremony collectively on big screens and get the best view of Cai Guo-Qiang’s city-wide fireworks display (they would be the only ones to see the real real fireworks, rather than the computer graphics that appeared on TV). But far removed from these displays of patriotism, and perhaps soured by an already suffocating ‘Olympic spirit’, most of us in Beijing’s artworld chose to scrutinize the ceremonies from our couches.
Still, with cultural giants Zhang Yimou (celebrated director of House of Flying Daggers (2004)) and ace fireworker Cai Guo-Qiang, fresh from his huge exhibition at the New York Guggenheim, behind this production, our expectations were almost as high as the $300 million budget. Responses from the intellectual and creative communities in China were quick and overwhelmingly negative. On his blog, Ai Weiwei, design consultant on the Bird’s Nest and now an outspoken critic of the government in the run up to the games, called it ‘an encyclopedic display of a spiritual consciousness fallen into enemy hands’.
The Chinese know how to exploit manpower, and communism loves its gala performances. Zhang Yimou seemed to be borrowing the techniques of North Korea’s Arirang Mass Games (recently photographed by Andreas Gursky): using people-as-pixels to form staggering, intimidatingly huge collective images in which the individual is subsumed entirely, yet still crucial to the perfection of the big picture.
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