"The Red Army Crossing the Grassland," Oil on Canvas

Newsclip: "A Fate of the Red Army has been Changed"

Long March Memorial, Songpang

Town of Songpang near the grasslands

Chinese newspaper clips reporting "Performance artists cruelty murdered animals."

"Nude Photo Album, 'young women's private memory of youth 'become popular in China."

Kan Xuan, "Peace," 1999

Sun Yuan and Pen Yu, "Link of Body," Performance, 2000

Ma Liuming, "Walks on the Great Wall," Performance, 1998

Zhao Liang,
"Memory of Body,"
1999-2000

Lu Hao, "City on the Wheel,"
Installation, 2002

History

The Grassland Swamp

The Long March led the Communists through eleven provinces, over raging rivers and snow-capped mountain ranges, through swamps and forests. They had to fight against Nationalist (government forces), armies as well as the troops of provincial warlords, local bandits and hostile tribesmen. At one point where water was unknown they could survive only by drinking their own urine.1　 At times, when there was no food, they resorted to cooking leather belts and shoes to make 'beef soup.'

They once marched twenty-seven consecutive days without one day of rest; once they marching fifty miles in one day. At night, torches were forbidden to avoid detection by the enemy, and each soldier marched with his hand on the shoulder of the man in front of him. The average daily coverage was seventeen miles over the course of the year, or twenty-six miles if the eight-week recuperation in Sichuan is excluded.

Field Marshal Lord Montgomery called the Long March 'an amazing feat of endurance.'2 General Samuel B. Griffith, the American military historian, described it as 'an even more majestic achievement than the retreat of the 10,000 Greeks from Persia to the Black Sea four centuries before Christ.'3 Edgar Snow said of the Long March that Hannibal's march over the Alps 'looked like a holiday excursion beside it.'4 In China itself, the Long March has become part of the mythology of modern Chinese Nationalism and Communism. The spirit and earnestness of this epic journey is frequently referenced by the current Chinese leadership who liken their 'reforms' to the New Long March.

Clips from the musical,
"The red Army is not Afraid of a Long March"

The human body's endurance and limitations and how these themes manifest themselves in art will be related to the issues of 'body as metaphor' and art and corporeality. As witnessed in the historic Long March when the Red Army members resorted to eating leather shoes, bark and roots to fend off starvation, the human instinct for survival is often heroic.

The human body as site for art, as a site for potential transcendence, will be explored in performances that take place in various locales such as a Muslim mosque, Tibetan temple and horseman's tent.

The Grassland Swamp

The Grassland Swamp

1 Dick Wilson, The Long March 1935 - The Epic of Chinese Communism's Survival, Penguin Books, 1977, p.13.

2 Viscount Montgomery, Three Continents, Collins, 1962, p.20.

3 Samuel Griffith, The Chinese People's Liberation Army. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968, p.47.

4 Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China, p.205.

Chen Wenbo, "Amber," Mixed Media (pig meat and amber)

Song Yongping,"My Parents," 1999