REAPPEARING EXIT III----Performance art of Zheng Lianjie:Hometown, Floating Table

　On September 9, 2001, New York-based Chinese artist Zheng Lianjie executed two performance pieces,Home-Cocktail and Floating Table in the province Mengtougou outside Beijing.

　　Hometown

　　Procedure:Starting ten o’clock in the morning, Zheng Lianjie laid down nude in a mudpit with his head buried, his limbs spread out,and a plastic straw attached to his mouth for respiration. Pressing against his back was a 1.6 X 0.8 meter glass, with a cocktail glass placing on top of it. The cocktail contained a portion of local-brewed Beijing RedStar Erguotou hard liquor. The performance lasted for thirty minutes and was carried out in absolute silence.
　
　　Cocktail:An emblem of Western culture, the distinction of which is its mixture of different kinds of liquor,which manifests its nature of multiplicity and creativity.

　　Glass, with its transparent and abstract character,blocks the natural flow of air, with its weight pressing against the human body. The deliberate choice of a hot summer day under the burning sun conveys a sense of half suffocation between innate human nature and modern contemporary culture: a dichotomy being manifested through a tense atmosphere of self-contradiction.

　　The grass starts to whither before the arrival of autumn.It scratches my skin like a sharp knife. The fierce sunshine tests my will and boils up my sense of awareness. Thoughts are evaporating; consciousness is suffocating. Perspiration becomes a continuous function and sweat bursts from every single pore. The Erguotou cocktail shimmers with its uncontrollable beauty, its aura permeates the whole environment, Its presence,so real, so colose and yet so far. It lies on the other side of the glass, eternally beyond my reach-civilization’s glamorous illusion, though remote and far, its weight and pressure can still be felt.

　　Two days after the performance, the historical calamities of September 11 took place in New York City.

　　Floating Table:

　　Procedure: Around 3:00 PM, at Yongding River outside Beijing, Zheng Lianjie laid down in the water with a 1.6 X 0.8 meter glass plate flat on top of him, special guest Miss Liu laid nude on top of the glass in various positions, the whole process took 30 minutes and was carried out in silence.

　　Materials: Glass being a metamorphosis of water, elusive and abstract, possesses both the quality of solidity and emptiness, acts as a mirror reflecting the dual nature of existence: the phantom of life in its tangible and ineffable form.

　　The gentle breeze frolics with the virgin cloud amid the radiance of the sun, with verdant mountain calmly sitting in the background. My body is washed and overwhelmed by the limpid water of Yongding River. Autumn water drifts through between my fingers, trying to reach a Sisyphean shore. My eyes are shut to experience the emptiness where my thoughts were usurped by the ice-cold surrounding. My boiling blood soaked thoroughly in the water.

　　My purpose of using the glass to separate the bodies is its close relation with water, for both are reflective and transparent. This approach to relationship is both harmonious and contradictory, conveys my vision of a life-long journey of continuing change. The courage to dream has to go through the empty body and phantasmal dream, to reach the remote and ultimate heaven.
I will travel until the water checks my way, then sit and watch the rising clouds.

　　(Wang Wei, 701-761, My Retreat at Mt. Zhongnan)

　　Water carries us to navigate through myriad of illusions, on the vessel there lies a sparkling life.
　　
　　Staff of Reappearing Exit III

　　Guest performer: Liu Dongyin

　　Photography: Li Wenming, Wang Dongsheng, Xu Zhiwei, Karen Patterson, Minoru Iwasaki, Zeng Huang, Zhang Yanhui

　　Video: Li Xiaoming

　　Independent director: Zhao Xiaoning

　　Writer and playwright: Wang Pengbo

　　Other members: Ruan Peihua, Zheng Mengjun, Song Bin, He jian, Guo jingshuang, He Hongzhang,He Zhengdi