BELONG
Performance: ‘Da Dao Performance Festival’, Beijing. July, 2004.
Duration: 30 minutes.

In the middle of the newly-built SoHo financial area of Beijing, surrounded by as-yet unoccupied skyscrapers, I set up on a small patch of grass. Mimicking Beijing’s ubiquitous and pointless uniformed ‘guards’, I began by assembling official-looking gold posts and a red cordon.

The audience of around 100 people arrived as I was cutting two lumps of turf out of the grass. I made a sign saying ´belong´ in English and Mandarin and hung it around my neck.

Digging the holes deeper, I placed my feet in them and replaced the turf before spray painting my trouser-legs green from the grass up to the knees. I was attempting to visually suggest (in a crude way) my having crash-landed amongst the ‘New China’ skyscrapers as if dropped from an overhead airplane, my feet cartoonishly impacted in the ground.

Placing a lump of ice in the shape of a tongue to protrude from my mouth, I silently used shrugs and facial expressions whilst pointing to the sign around my neck to ask the audience the question ´do I belong?’

I hoped that this question could resonate not just with the feelings and viewpoint of a western visitor but also with a Chinese audience, surrounded by tightly-packed, brand-new skyscrapers that testify to the current bewildering pace of change in their country.