Cai Guo-Qiang Responds
Earlier, I wrote a short post about about the faked Olympic fireworks. Cai Guo-Qiang responds to the controversy in a letter on Artnet (prefaced by Artnet's summary of the events):
[via NEWSgrist]Some 34.2 million viewers watched the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics in Beijing on Aug. 8, 2008. However, following the spectacular show, Western news reports charged that organizers of the event had deceived the audience by using trickery to augment the proceedings, including having a little girl lip-synch a patriotic song and representing contingents of ethnic minorities with actors. Critics claim as well that the ceremony’s spectacular fireworks show, which was conceived by Chinese art star Cai Guo-Qiang, wasn’t all it seemed to be.
The impressive fireworks display included a series of 29 giant footprints, made of white starbursts, that seemed to traverse the sky from Tiananmen Square to the Olympic Stadium. But the TV presentation of the fireworks, broadcast to the world as well as shown on the giant screens within the Olympic Stadium, included not the actual event but rather a 55-second digital film of the 29 footprints, complete with simulated camera jitter and haze, seamlessly inserted into the broadcast.
Representatives of the Beijing Games have stated that the digital trickery was necessary because the actual effect would not have been clearly visible in the prevailing atmospheric conditions, while filming it from the air would have endangered the helicopter pilot. Here, the artist himself responds to the controversy:
The explosion event Footprints of History: Fireworks Project for the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games consisted of a series of 29 giant footprint fireworks -- one for each Olympiad -- over the Beijing skyline, leading to the National Olympic Stadium. The 29 footprints were fired in succession, traveling a total distance of 15 kilometers, or 9.3 miles, within a period of 63 seconds.
It is quite customary to prepare a backup reel for major televised events of this scale, and this has been true of the opening and closing ceremonies of previous Olympic Games. We were aware of this and thus created our own reel from dress rehearsal footage of the footprint fireworks. The sequence was then created using computer graphics.
From my own perspective as an artist, there are two separate realms in which this artwork exists, as two very different mediums have been utilized. First, there is the artwork that exists in the material realm: the ephemeral sculpture. This was viewed by people attending the ceremonies inside the stadium and standing outside on the streets of Beijing. This artwork was documented from various vantage points on video, which has been broadcast by many international media outlets.
Second, there is a creative digital rendering of the artwork in the medium of video. It is a single version of the event viewed by a large broadcast audience. Such a conceptual work can exist simultaneously in these two separate realms. And perhaps to also take Footprints of History into this second realm was necessary because in many of my explosion events, such as Project to Extend the Great Wall of China by 10,000 Meters, the very best vantage point is not the human one.
CAI GUO-QIANG was director of visual and special effects at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.
posted by Ethan at
10:00 AM
3 Comments:
the fact that the Cai Guo Qiang's fireworks seen on television were basically fake might rise two issues: one related to the artistic value and the other related to the genuinity of coreographic event.
for the first issue - the artistic value - I do not see any problem: Cai created two works: one for the individuals present to the ceremony and the other for different viewers. Was the second digitally created? well, digital creation is a well known medium in contemporary art.
if we look to the genuinity of the coreographic event I would ask: who says that coreography must be autentic? coreography was born with ancient greek theatre and is per se the art to illude humans by creating effects within a circle of imagination.
Do you think that the Capitol Dome in Washington is made of marble?
that's just coreography.
(but maybe I am partial, I am a great fan of Cai's work: I think it is like accusing Picasso of the fact that Guernica was not originally created to describe Spanish civil war). (written by Andrea Ottolia andrea.ottolia@unige.it)
Hi Andrea,
Thanks for the comment...
I agree that the work's concept can be valued outside of whether it was live or not.
But I think your analogies aren't the best ones--at least not for how I view the situation. A better analogy for me is finding out a musician's live performance was actually just lip-syncing to a recording.
One could argue that "hey, what's the problem, even though it's recorded it's still a genuine choreographed event." But that completely dismisses the value we place on a live performance--the excitement of knowing that anything can happen.
Finally, there's the issue of people feeling mislead. If the images of the fireworks were labeled "pre-recorded," then this wouldn't be such an issue. What's problematic is people being mislead (perhaps unintentionally). It's as if we learned that Guernica isn't actually wall-size, it's actually just a small painting.
Dear Ethan,
I think that since there was a lot of smog it was reasonable to proceed like that...
Maybe I make it too easy.
The thing is that I have been a modern and contemporary art lover since I was 13 but in my now twenty years of art collecting it happened to me very few times to meet a (living) artist that convinced me 100%. I could cite only 4 or 5.
The real great art (in my opinion) becomes like a living organism that is totally independent from the intentions of his author, the reasons (sometimes merely financial) of his collectors, the authenticity of the perception…. It’s just there. It is like an elephant in the middle of the jungle. You can theorize against the elephant, you can say that is too fat or too grey, but at the end it is an elephant in the middle of the jungle and you are alone with him.
When you meet a whole body of art that really intellectually captures you some kinds of details are unimportant. Even the fact to be misled (something that I consider a serious issue in normal life) becomes unimportant.
I understand the point you make with musician's live performance that is actually just lip-syncing. I agree. I hate lip-syncing too. But that’s real life. But you can find a musician live performing at any corner of any street of the world. This is another thing.
To me Cai’s work is fundamental, in general, because he has managed to take abstract painting to a level that is conceptually very very innovative: he is not a painter, he is like a shaman that frees the natural forces of nature and shows an inherent balance between construction and destruction: a circularity that is very typical of asian culture but since it visually comes with a loudness that can be loved by western people this work can be really global by putting together different perception between west and east of the world.
The fireworks (I generally find fireworks very boring) is just a little piece of this conceptual construction. It is a conceptual construction: all the rest is a detail.
But this, obviously is just my teeny tiny opinion.
To me the real art collector (or I would better say art lover) is always alone in the jungle impressed by the huge grew elephant that he had the chance to meet on his path. (Andrea Ottolia, andrea.ottolia@unige.it)
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