Since July 1, a hardy band of Chinese artists, critics and curators has been retracing the 6000-mile path of Mao Zedong's epic Long March, staging art events along the way. The participants are traveling not by foot but by train, bus and plane. By late October they will have covered the entire route that Mao followed in 1934-35, as his battered Communist forces fought their way across 11 provinces before reaching a distant haven in Yanan. The project, which is meant to reexamine the near-mythic status of the Long March as well as the problematic cultural legacy of Mao's regime, will involve more than 100 artists at various points. They include many names already familiar outside China, such as Cai Guo-Qiang, Ma Liuming, Wang Jianwei, Zhang Peili, Song Dong, Yang Fudong and Lin Tianmiao.
The organizers of the new Long March, both in their 30s, are Liu Jie, previously active as a curator in London and New York, and Qiu Zhijie, a widely exhibited artist and prolific essayist. Interviewed in Beijing in late June, the two explained the rationale and logistics of their privately funded project. At 20 sites along the route, each chosen for its historical resonance, various public events have been planned. In Ruijin, the starting point of the original Long March, there has already been a screening and discussion of Jean-Luc Godard's 1967 film La Chinoise, which explores the Maoist posturings of late-'60s French youth. At other sites, impromptu exhibitions and performances will examine the sometimes fraught relations between the dominant Han Chinese and the country's many ethnic minorities.
To spur reconsideration of the political and cultural role of women in China, there will be a public reading of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex before an all-female audience in the remote Lugu Lake region, home of one of the world's few surviving matriarchal cultures; an exhibition of works by Chinese and international women artists is also planned. And in Yanan, a reading and discussion of Mao's famous 1942 talk that spelled out the principle of "art for the people," opening the way to decades of Party-controlled art and literature, will take place in front of the cave that once served as his domicile.
The four-month Long March project is expected to yield a traveling exhibition, a book and a documentary film. In the meantime, those curious to follow the course of the new Long Marchers can go to the Web site (www.longmarchfoundation.org), which contains frequently updated reports and photos.
--------Christopher Philips