Notes for Tomorrow

Yan Shi (b. 1975, Shenyang, China; based in Guangzhou)
"010013" 2019
HD 4K video, 16:9, 12:00 min.
Courtesy of the artist

Yan Shi’s 010013 is set in Anguri Nunu, meaning a lake with swans. This is the place where the nobles of the Khitan Liao dynasty (907–1125) once hunted swans with eagles. It was said that the blood of those swans dripped down like rain, and historians indicate that it is this culture of violence that ultimately led to the collapse of the Liao dynasty. Today, the memories of this history have been erased from the area and all that remains is a busy road, the site of Yan’s performance.

With a camera taped to his leg, Yan runs across the road, back and forth, avoiding the cars and trucks that are roaring past. Every step is dangerous. The video implies a potential tragedy while gesturing to the precarity of life, captured all on camera. As the artist says, the recording functions “like an anthropological museum that preserves the swan-killing gadget that is usually made of fine jade, like a screwdriver, and can pierce the swan’s skull.”

Moreover, by dangerously traversing the busy highway, the artist–both his vulnerable flesh and the momentum of this crossing action–calls attention to the universal conditions we are faced in 2020: conditions impasse, finiteness, and transcendence.

By Su Wei (based in Beijing, China)