"Post-Sense Sensibility - Spree -"

from the Perspective of an Eye Witness and the Organizer

Qiu Zhijie

A Witness vs. Qiu Zhijie

Witness: On the afternoon of May 10th, a phone call informed me that there will be an art event at the Beijing Film Academy Theater the next day. The voice on the phone stressed how this would be nothing like I 抎 ever seen before. In an elusive and mysterious tone, he said, "Make sure you 抮 e there on time between 2:30 and 3 p.m. They will lock the doors exactly at 3! Listen, I 抳 e heard this is not even a play, there will never be any re-runs..." How strange, I thought... I canceled all my plans to find out what this was all about.

---- The Beijing Film Academy is in the midst of the admission process. Prospective students are arriving from various regions for the entrance exam. With all kinds of people busily entering and exiting the main gate, it takes me quite a bit of effort to locate the theater. Once I walk into the narrow corridor leading to the theater, I see a TV monitor displaying a room with an eerie atmosphere. Spark! Suddenly a light flashes on the monitor. The view almost resembles an execution site. The taped-up words on the wall above the TV read, "Post-Sense Sensibility: Spree ." I take a quick glance at my watch, 2:50 p.m., I 抳 e made it....

Qiu Zhijie: Our imaginary foe of the first "Post-Sense Sensibility" exhibition was the notion of "conceptual art." We were averse to how this notion was taking precedence over everything else in the popular art practice. By showing-off your intelligence and knowledge to others, such practice led conceptual art to degrade itself into a kind of "idea art." To a great degree, this is merely a consequence of what the very terminology of "conceptual art" implicates. This term leads our attention to the content of the concept, rather than to the on-the-spot experience of art. Therefore, not only did we oppose bad conceptual art, we fought against "conceptual art" itself. Furthermore, we opposed every art form which had been bestowed in the name of art: the worship of the banal, the worship of extreme simplicity, the worship of the trivial, the worship of seriousness and the worship of humor, to name a few. This time, in the "Post-Sense Sensibility - Spree- ," what we ultimately opposed was the concept of "exhibition" itself..... As for the question of how this whole project came about, I can only answer by saying I did not wish it to be perceived as an exhibition, neither did I wish it to become a directed play.

Witness: --- As I enter into the room at the end of the corridor, I see a big table on the right covered in a white table cloth, just like the one you would find in regular art exhibitions for drinks and guest books for comments and signatures. I reach out my arm to get a glass, but instead I feel cold air on my hand. Within a mere 50 cm distance from my hand, I see three heads! The closest guy is looking at me with a stupefied face. The second one winks at me with a smile, while the third shows me a panic-stricken face. The heads all look so real! Actually, it turns out that the heads belong to people squatting under the table with their heads sticking out from holes in the table. Their brains are surrounded with different kinds of meat products: ham, sausage, soy-sauce beef, lamb meat. A half-figure of the Buddha is leaning against the wall, standing quietly with his eyes looking down, so as to avoid the scene on the table. "The meat here is all clean," reads the line on the wall -- the meat can 抰 possibly be all sterilized, but who knows, people can do anything these days. Taking a piece of meat within 20 cm of someone 抯 head is rather strange though, I should drink up a glass of water to forget all this. Hai! I groan, what is this? This can 抰 be water, it 抯 got to be some kind of alcoholic drink. I take another look at the table, but I see nothing else, only two empty kegs abandoned on the floor. There 抯 nothing I can do I guess, I trash the glass and head further inside....

Qiu Zhijie: When we gathered to plan this event, it was originally scheduled for November during the Shanghai Biennial in either Beijing or Shanghai . However, we did not wish it to become one of many other additions to the periphery exhibitions happening at the perimeter of the Biennial. We also feared the following possibility: while some peripheral shows were trying to present art that stands outside of the establishment and proclaimed to be underground, progressive, and distinguishable from the conventional and main-stream art represented inside the Shanghai Museum, in our opinion, the exhibition form that they had adopted were still confined to the established system, with not much difference between the two. The exhibition we had originally planned for Shanghai would have been even more eccentric than the " Spree ." Since our initial idea continued to develop more bizarrely, and began to lose much relationship with the tradition of exhibitions, we decided to let go of it.

Witness: ---the interior space of the theater is high, more than 200 square meters. I see a mound structure of wood on the left, and a glass house beside it. In the center lies a gigantic spring mattress, and someone is filling it up with tomatoes that are vividly red. I realize now that this was the scene I just saw on the TV monitor outside the entrance. The whiteness of the cloths covering the two tables stand out the most to my eyes. Some people are looking at a pig 抯 body hanging from the ceiling, with some live chickens tied to it. The chickens are batting their wings hysterically. After I make brief eye contact with the chickens, they begin to cry ecstatically. The whole scene resembles a sacrificial rite.

More than ten revolving paper lanterns are hung from the ceiling, and the shadows of various sound words are projected on their surface, turning around and around. "Ha Ha Ha Ha," here, "Ai, Ai," there, "Ze, Ze, Ze..." over there. The various sounds interlock and resound with each other, filling up the whole space, making us simply speechless. People are hissing to each other, with an anticipation of something about to happen.

Qiu Zhijie: Exhibitions are for showing to others. Two students taking the entrance exam for an art school, putting their works up outside the school gate and sharing their drawings to each other, this is an exhibition. Bringing a scroll or fan under the sunlight in our house, and putting them away neatly into a box afterwards, this is also an exhibition. No! People would say, none of these would count as an exhibition in a conventional sense. A formal exhibition is held in a rather spacious room to attract as many people as possible. The works are categorized into different genres, signed, and priced. In an exhibition catalogue, there is a brief summary of an artist 抯 biography, often accompanied by one or two articles. After an initial commotion by the mass-media, it is then followed by other reports and criticism. In case of an one-man show, it would be categorized systematically: based on the period, media or theme --xx series, yy series, and so on. This is precisely the exhibition format people are accustomed to. The history of such a system is actually much shorter than the history of art itself. It is merely two hundred years beginning in the Paris salon of the 19th century. Prior to the development of such an exhibition system, art possessed other effective ways. From a stained-glass window of a church, a song and dance in the midst of hard labor out in the fields, from inside a cliff deep in the mountains to a personal letter, we used to encounter art everywhere. When the master calligrapher from Qing dynasty, Liu Yan, was studying at the Shouchun School of Calligraphy in Shouzhou, he met a young man named Deng Shiru, and was astonished by his blooming talent. Unfortunately, being unfamiliar with the ways of working, this young genius lacked any means to find exposure to the real masterworks. Liu Yan then wrote a letter of reference and urged him to go visit the house of the major collector, Mei Miao, to widen the young one 抯 perspective. While spending half a year at Mei 抯 household, Deng Shiru incessantly copied the real masterpieces from their collection and became a master himself. ---This too is a type of art 抯 production system, but they have all sank into oblivion.

Witness: There is a sudden commotion in the room. I see a strange looking person running back and forth in the middle of the space with silk stockings covering up his whole face. On top of his head is another head of a man. After another look, I see a man whose face resembles the head on top of the man in silk stockings, standing behind him. That fake head must have been copied off from this person. This couplet of fake and real human heads pass through the crowds, brushing close to you and all of a sudden even appearing right in front of you. The man from whom the fake head was copied is tiptoeing as if not knowing what is happening. After they have circled the room once, they sit down on the chair, with the two heads leaning on one another, they seem exhausted. At this moment, right next to them, one slightly chubby man begins to take his clothes off, leaving only his shorts. A few assistants begin to tie his body tightly using a leather belt on the table. At last an electronic massage chair enters the room to have this man rest inside. The lights are dimmed. Here I realize that the paper lanterns have stopped moving, I wonder when that happened, by now they have already moved high up in the ceiling. Rays of light are shedding upon the body of the semi-nude fat man, microphone placed close to his nostril. His body tied up so tightly, the leather belt embeds deeper and deeper into layers of his fat. His breathing grows heavier and heavier, and its sounds reach us through the microphone. At this moment, music slowly enters the scene and gradually overpowers the sound of breathing-----

Qiu Zhijie: At least two things take place in a salon-style exhibition. One is the spatialization and materialization of creations, the other, the categorization of individuality under the rules of classification. When we think of Li Shi or He Xiaoqi, we connect the two of them as belonging to the same chain: a type of brush use, a new composition or methodology rather than simply appreciating their individual work of art. An object defines the style, and it becomes a sample of that style. Such a custom in understanding the work based on a certain style has completely penetrated us. What becomes most important here is the method and a set of rules established by that particular work. The House of the Emperor and the wealthy could posses materials, but they cannot "monopolize" the style, it is the particular form employed in a scroll itself that defines its dissemination. An overwhelming majority of literati never had a chance to see the real writing of the Er Wang (Wang Yizhi). By their period, "The Orchid Pavilion" was already sodden inside the tomb in Taizong, and yet, everyone used their brushstrokes to learn from the masterpiece. Under the salon system, an artist obtained space, a wall and a ground surface. He also became aware of the existence of other artists in the space. He began to try his best to define his creativity inside this given space. He started to hope that he will be the one to get the most attention. Based on the solutions deriving from comparison and calculations, he designed the work. To exhibit, especially with a conscious awareness of being exhibited together with other art works, turned into a primary prospect for creative activity. Perhaps one could say this developmental process became an inevitable middle link with the traditional method. After the exhibition, artworks are sold or result in earning the artist a reputation. Such an exhibition cannot avoid fostering a structure based on competition or perhaps working to aggravate the competitive mode of the traditional method. When you decorate a guest room, you have to make a decision of which painting to install on the largest wall and which to put on a less obvious place, you wish all the art works to work together in creating the appropriate ambiance for the space --- this slightly resembles the duty of a curator we see today. In the relationship between a curator and artworks, the curator needs to mutually contend with the rights and intentions of an artist. In today 抯 exhibition, if an artwork is placed in the most unnoticeable place the artist merely seeks to utilize this placement in turn to make oneself appear to be the most special. Competition cannot be avoided, because this type of art exchange has already been institutionalized to lay a concrete fixed straight track for the artists. By thinking of others consciously, and only wanting others to hold his perspective, an artist can no longer confront the inner mind of the self. They are competing with one another at different times with different things; at times whoever appears to be the smartest seems to be practicing the "conceptual art," at other times who appears the most crazy seems to be making "surreal art;" whoever seems to be the most cruel is creating....and so on...... As skyscrapers continue to go higher, the desire to outdo others continue to grow under this competitive system. Perhaps other systems could lead to other possibilities. The present exhibition system works only to foster this type of desire.

Witness: At this point, the light focused on the fatty 抯 body dims down, and instead the glass house placed next to him lights up. The audience shifts their attention. I shove through the crowd to get a closer look. With the rhythm of upbeat dance music, two people enter inside the glass house. One of their skin seems to have been all peeled off, exposing his muscle lines. It turns out that he is actually wearing a tight body-suit depicting the diagram of a dissected human body. He is holding a rabbit in his hand. As soon as he enters, he starts wiping the red surface of the glass house without saying a word. I can 抰 tell whether he is wiping blood or red paint. The woman with long hair behind him, somewhat attractive by the way, has her lower body covered in the same body suit with the muscle lines, but on her upper body she is wearing a formal suit. Once she enters inside the small room, she starts to sway her hips and legs, making her hair dance in the air. She is dancing a type of strip dancing you see in night clubs. With the sound effects, she creates various provocative body movements, sticking her tongue out from time to time. I feel the excitement welling up inside my own body and I also felt it among the surrounding crowds. While we forget the passing of the time, that man continues to wipe the blood on the glass diligently.

Qiu Zhijie: Exhibitions are taking place everywhere today. The number of works in an exhibition has also grown large. With such a development, when people go to look at artworks inside an exhibition space -- be it a gallery, a museum, an archive, or other alternative space--- the amount of time one spends in front of an artwork has become shorter. Hence, a competition to catch the attention of people has grown fierce. If every viewer is only able to stop in front of a work for five seconds, then it is within that initial five seconds that the viewer determines your success. Because of this, the artist mobilizes every possible means such as space, sound, and lights, so that these elements would work interactively to create an effective result. Therefore, an indissoluble bond exists between the exhibition system and the installation. It is the nullification of the contemporary exhibition that has nourished the contemporary installation of an exhibition. The original intention of installation was to arrange the display. The question is: if installation was only one among numerous other possible methods in art, why has it grown into such an over-valued and suppressing production and consumption model? Let 抯 say we have a calligraphy scroll in our house, we usually pay minimal attention to the calligraphy, paying a brief look either consciously or unconsciously from time to time, because if we take a moment to really stop and look at it, we would have to stop our lives temporarily. In the course of decades, however, this piece may have created an imperceptible change and may have effectively seeped into our lives. That did not happen within that initial encounter of five seconds. One time, I witnessed a video piece employing a complex camera work in an exhibition. People could not watch it from beginning to the end, hence such boring video piece with mere repetitive lens work turned into the winner in the exhibition. In the contemporary exhibition system, the previously mentioned type of art (exemplified in the scroll) has lost its ground and is completely overlooked. For the sake of such art, and also for other kinds of art that bear the same pressure, we have to call the current exhibition system in question. Furthermore, the relationship between the artists were never this tense historically. A creator in the ancient times did not even desire to hold a signatory right. Under a clear and bright sky of late spring, they would sit on the river bank for a calligraphy gathering. They exchanged rhymes and verses. We must possess other ways of playing a game aside from the exhibition.

Witness: The music slowly fades out, and with it the light dims out. The space turns completely dark for two minutes. Everyone is at a loss. I hear something moving on my left, where there are wooden structures. I look up. On top of the structures are these jointed monstrous figures standing, and I realize another piece has just begun. At this moment, a man suddenly makes an announcement, "this is a piece by Shi Qing." ----the monstrous figures turn out to be two people wearing special leopard body-suits with their faces all puffed up with make-up. Their ears are sticking up from their heads and their buttocks are linked together, making them appear as a two-headed monster. There are two of them, one standing still on top of the wooden structure, the another on top of the wooden structure holding a steaming pan. Twisted up to the coarse surface of the legs of the wooden frames are snake-shaped aluminum ventilation pipes. The other one of two-headed monsters is lying on his stomach on the ground crawling around the wooden structure. He holds a clay figurine in his hand. Behind him is a girl with her hair all disheveled, crawling like a cat from time to time, with a bright lit flashlight blocking her mouth. She is also holding a small two-headed clay figure in her hand. As we look above, a video is being projected upon a small piece of glass. The image is blurry, and on the blurry image we find the views of the daily lives of these two two-headed monsters: on a subway, being driven out from a restaurant...on a street.... As we look down, we find that woman with disheveled hair with a table knife, chopping into the bloody footprints left by the two-headed monsters with a dull expressionless face. All of a sudden, the light turns red. The woman walks up to the space between the two wooden structures. She takes a table knife and cuts out the thin membrane covering up the private parts of the two-headed monsters. Small grains of rice begin to patter down on the bodies of the monsters.....the light turns into gloomy blue. As she chases up the two-headed monsters with armful of searchlights, one by one, the monsters dive into a pan filled with Chinese medicine.{?????????? is this the same pan which was steaming before????}

Qiu Zhijie: Because the competition has become this furious, people make strenuous efforts to be remembered. We have begun to take measures similar to advertisements to manipulate and calculate the responses of the audience. Aside from the "hardware" of an exhibition, such as an exhibition space and a catalogue publication, the "software" of an exhibition also developed: you need to repeat that particular image or that medium, and you even need to repeat showing that particular piece so that it becomes your competitive product (trademark). Your developments have to take place within a recognizable degree. Then you could earn a unique label, finally ready to be compiled neatly into the pages of art criticism and history. Your label has to be simple and neat enough to be readable by the cashier at a supermarket, and to be priced and to be purchased. Such knowledge has already been innumerably passed down to our young artists by the successful forerunners. A kind of self-exposition consciousness has been internalized at last. We see a clear relationship between the contemporary exhibition system and capitalism in this current situation.

Witness: ---- Some leaflets are falling down from the dark ceiling, one by one. I catch one of them, printed on them are the lines from personal ads on the internet: the one inside my hand reads lines by a lesbian woman looking for a partner, with her phone number and e-mail address. As I look away from the leaflet in my hand, I hear the crashing noise of a gong. I turn my head only to realize that the performance on the spring mattress in the middle of the space has already started for a little while. Above, a beautiful young girl is sitting on a swing, swaying to and fro in the air. With a mirror and a lipstick in her hand, she puts on make-up with a self-pitying expression. Above the swing is where the gong is hung. A young stud with long hair is jumping over and over on the mattress strenuously to hit the gong. He has to jump so that he does not disturb the swaying rhythm of the swing. Striving to take a breath, he looks exhausted. Under his feet are the tomatoes being mashed away, with its juice spattering onto his body. The sound of the gong intensifies in the darkness of the ceiling, and the leaflets keep falling down upon us, one by one.

Qiu Zhijie: As the contemporary model for exhibitions was contaminated by capitalism, its relationship with colonialism is also dubious. We have to bear in mind that the times when the salon-style exhibition came into being exactly coincided with the most vicious period of colonialism. The Queen had to display the glory of the empire to her people. She assembled materials and cultural products from her extensive colonies: Hong Kong , India , Fiji (?????), North America and Australia , to hold a world exposition. At the same time, there emerged the disciplines of modern linguistic studies and cultural anthropology, so that the research and assemblage of experiences in other cultures could be presented and stored neatly under the system of Western-centered mainstream culture ---- today 抯 international exhibitions, such as the Venice Biennial, was precisely born out of the model of world expositions. The act of plundering in the colonies built the foundation of the modern museum system, and it became the primary location for generating a model for exhibitions. While there have been international shows with themes that have set cultural pluralism clearly as their theme, going as far as pronouncing its counteraction towards the Western-centered paradigm, nonetheless its flavor of colonialism is inherent in the institutionalized system it is built upon, hence it cannot be changed by the hands of a considerate and conscientious curator. Even if that person is colored or even if this type of exhibition takes place in former colonies such as South Africa or Shanghai , it cannot be changed.

Witness: The gong suddenly stops ringing, and the boy falls exhausted on to the mound of mashed tomatoes. The girl on the swing also loses her balance, falling on the ground. Before I realize what is happening, the sight of abandoned ropes of the swing shaking to and fro enters my eyes. Two hired-laborer looking men are climbing down the frame. As soon as they hit the ground, they walk up to the wall at the front to take the paper screen, which has been resting against the wall, and they carry it to the center of the room. Once they reach the center, they completely cease to move. The whole room is in commotion, everyone knows something is definitely about to happen. We all wait ----- the atmosphere intensifies as we keep waiting.

Qiu Zhijie: The evil of the contemporary exhibition system and the authoritative new-colonialism represented by the international exhibition has cast a vast dark shadow on art in China . This is obvious to everyone. Hence we began to seek for an alternative model, nonetheless to say, a difficult task. Perhaps many might call our " Spree " as nothing but an exhibition after all-----to that I can only respond by saying I feel ashamed and I send you my best wishes in finding a better alternative to replace ours.

Witness: The paper screen is finally lit from behind with someone 抯 shadow cast upon its surface. Those workers (who just climbed down to carry the screen) begin to grab things and smash them toward the shadow. Immediately, the shadow responds by taking evasive, nervous movements ---- jumping and moving according to his premonition, dodging from attacks which could come any time from unknown directions.

From time to time, running around with his head covered with both hands, the person behind the screen moves sensitively. But his effort is to no avail, because the number of people throwing things at him have grown too many, everyone in the audience has began to take a part. The surface of the paper is now thickly dotted with holes and ripping patterns, it will soon be all ripped apart. The shadowed figure realizes there is no way to out and simply seizes his movement. He squats at a corner with his head covered with hands, no matter how many things continue to fall upon his body. The crowds of attackers suddenly calm down a little bit, the hurling rhythm slows down. I cry out: "Attack! This is art!" With my call, all kinds of things once again mercilessly are thrown upon the shadow. Gradually, the shadow seems to have surpassed his initial scare, and seems indignant. He stands up and crosses over to our side through an opening between the screens. Who would 抳 e thought this was Qiu Zhijie? He seems calm, and he looks directly at the audience with a tense stare. There are many hands with objects still held inside tightly remaining frozen in the air, defining an awkward moment. Confronted by the eyes of the victim, guilty consciousness wells up in the minds of attackers.

Qiu Zhijie: We know that we ourselves have also been deeply poisoned by the contemporary exhibition system. To escape from its power in taking advantage of our position, we decided to set the rules of the game so that the course of action will transcend even the realm of our imagination. Once the situation loses its control, our encounter changes its nature as well. We are no longer spurting along the fixed track heading toward the same goal, our directions will have possibilities for change. Every one of us is creating a junction for others, while we also encounter obstacles and junctions laid by others. We have confronted all kinds of undulatory terrain while we groped in the darkness. In our "fork-in-the-road" style Spree , we did not negate any proposals, nor did we analyze any methods in addressing the whole significance of the event. We sensibly controlled mutual appreciation or repugnance, these were our efforts in seeking the uncontrollability in situations, and to make us not rely on our own value systems.

Witness: ----After both parties reach a deadlock for a while, Qiu Zhijie finally steps out from behind the screen, and walks up to the opposite wall as he divides the crowds in two. On the ground is a fallen statue of a sitting Buddha, and inside his sermonizing palm rests a glass of water. The scroll on the wall above it reads: "Buddha sees 84000 creatures in one drop of water." Qiu Zhijie walks up to the front of the statue. He pulls out a tube and inserts its one end into the glass of water while putting the other end to his mouth. He sucks the water until it is gone to the last drip. He then squats down himself to help bring up the Buddha. The glass is now brought up horizontally, but to our surprise, it does not fall off --- as if the bottom of the glass has gotten stuck to the Buddha 抯 palm. The light extinguishes in the space, only leaving the light coming in from a small room at the southeast corner, the crowds of people surge towards that direction....

Qiu Zhijie: We are neither competitors, nor are we confederates sharing the same past. However we did strive to create a more fertile time relationship between each artwork: sometimes the continuous transitions worked like mirrors piled on top of one another, interlocking, turning, and reflecting from time to time, and stopping at moments to lighten or darken the black abyss that stands in-between. Most importantly, such relationships were not directed nor accurately planned, so we succeeded in avoiding it to turn it into mere play. No one could predict what was going to happen. With the exposed backstage, Spree developed into a whirlpool involving the audience. If we had confederates, there was no one else but our visitors themselves. They were told to enter the theater before 3 o 抍 lock in the afternoon, the entrance door was closed at 3 o 抍 lock. The TV monitor outside the entrance was the only means to report what was happening inside. Such a design worked to divide the audiences into two hierarchical groups, thus adding more layers to the possible responses from a single occurrence.

Witness: I see a small room. The whole wall connecting the room to a bigger room is a sheet of glass. In the space behind the glass wall are more than ten people who look like hired laborers, including both male and female. Each one of them is holding and breathing into a tube that is connected to a huge balloon. Slowly the balloon expands, quickly burying the lower bodies of the laborers under its efficacy. On top of a flight of stairs outside the room, that couplets of real and fake heads have appeared once again, still being reliant on each other. Inside the mouths of the real man he holds one of those decorative lights you see in small shops. The flickering motion of the string of lights communicates a sense of mobility to us. It looks as if the lights are all flowing into his mouth. The string of lights also lie on the ground in front of the glass wall. Inside, the balloon has grown big enough to cover the heads of the laborers. The air from more than ten people are fused together inside the balloon.

Witness 2: -----------The above narrative by the witness has a mistake-------when the laborers were sandwiched between the glass wall and the growing balloon, the couplet of fake and real heads has already climbed down a flight of steps and circled around the space and they have also projected images through the glass wall into the balloon: an image of them taking shots of each other, as well as live images of people surrounding them.

Qiu Zhijie: The main characteristic of the event was its resistance against the completion of works. I myself cannot even acknowledge whether I have made a few pieces of art work during the event, or if they count as one piece together. The degree of everyone's work permeating and interlocking with each other was so great that we have no way of narrating them separately. No appropriate themes could be bestowed either. However, this particular point only becomes critical when the moment comes to label the documentation photographs on various media in the aftermath of the event. The music by Zhou Ren was always there throughout the whole developing process of every situation, now and then running the show, and thus making the myriad of changes taking place simultaneously feel very strange. His music intensified the shade of fiction, like the writings on the pages of picture books. Fiction was another important aspect. The use of hired laborers and volunteers were all meant to play with this type of fiction. Props were not only exposed beforehand, they were all left behind in the scene afterwards. Once it started, Wu Ershan's hung pig, Shi Qing's torturing equipment, Wang Wei's swing, my paper lanterns, always remained on the scene. Liu even hung back the clothes stripped off from the performers, and Zhang Hui smashed his fake head into pieces at the end. We completely did away with curtain falls, leading the objects in the scene to accumulate, further reinforcing the impossibility of repeating or rewinding the event once it began.

Witness: The paper lanterns are still rotating, other lights are successively turned on, the whole room is now lit so bright like a daytime. Two people in raincoats have appeared on top of the steel cage. Between the two cages is the pig and white feathered chickens. The black cloth covering the two cages is taken off, exposing two black Tibetan mastiffs. Its hard to believe that they have stayed inside the cage for so long without barking once. These two dogs, the most violent dogs on the world, seem disoriented in the precarious atmosphere. I hear motor sounds around my eyes. I look up to find a man and a woman in raincoats above the cages holding electronic chain saws in their hands. Once they pull the cord, motors roar, the chain saws begin to vibrate fiercely. They raise the chain saws to cut through the pig's flesh, cutting it horizontally and then diagonally. The pigs body is soon split open. Under the huge impact of the chain saw, bits of pig flesh splashed all over, covering the people in raincoats. To escape from being hit by the splashing meat, the audience scatters away. Together with the attached live chickens, the cut-out pieces of pig meat fall down on the floor. Two people squat on the floor to cut the pieces even further to feed them to the mastiffs. Yet the dogs do not seem to show any interest. By now the pig's body has already been cut into two with the remnants of its legs swaying in the air. Suddenly one tomato is thrown from the crowd, smashing onto the performer's body. It seems that someone cannot stand the scene and has begun to express his anger. The same person grabs the piece of meat from his body and also from around his feet area to throw, turning the scene into an uproar. The powerful music and the motor sound fuse together, and suddenly a red box opens up. From inside, countless numbers of white mice crawl and run out in all directions. The bystanders scream and scatter, the music comes to a halt.

Qiu Zhijie: This kind of spree can only happen once. This enables the performance to no longer keep its purity {???????This is very confusing when translated into English....I think I understand what you 抮 e saying, but people would think you are trying to say the opposite, or I wonder if I translated it wrong?} Is fiction which can only happen once still fiction? Fiction that can only happen once is the very fiction of reality itself.

Witness: Up above the crowd the paper lanterns are still revolving around and around. The pigs legs which were swaying in the space between the two lanterns which say, "Ha Ha Ha" and "Tan" (to sigh), "Chang" (to sing), "Ku" (to cry), have ceased to move. The site of the Spree has already turned into a ruin. As I walked out together with the flow of other people, I passed by that table covered with meat products, I picked up a few pieces of ham to eat. After the Spree , I no longer feel awkward in doing so. I wonder who cleans up the mess after the Spree .

Qiu Zhijie: After the Spree, people are needed to clean up the mess. After all the visitors retreat, they confront the last stage which is filled with an unexplainable beauty. For a few minutes, nobody would know what to do. If we wanted the Spree to be an exhibition, it is best for such an exhibition to start after all the viewers have left the scene. What had been shown to the audience was the process of installing the exhibition, but they never see the actual exhibition. What they saw in the Spree were premonitory actions of the post-exhibition age.