55 days at Peking
20 June 1900 to 14 August 1900
Unlike embassies, Diplomatic Residence Compound (DRC) is not extra-territorial; it is considered Chinese territory, but tightly guarded by armed police and sepa- rated from the surrounding area. Chinese citizens are denied of free movement in and out of the compounds. The guarded gate can be equated to a frontier, separating two very different worlds inside and outside the DRC. DRC is a rather unique Chinese phenomenon; the rationale behind it is to segregate foreigners from the local population and to manage effectively foreign influences. It is also a legacy from the earlier communist time, an arrangement to provide foreign nationals a better living condition when the overall living standard in China was very low. Today the role of DRC is changing; it is no longer exclusively occupied by foreign diplomats, embassy personnel, journalists and foreign company executives as was the case two or three decades ago. Today it is open to all foreign nationals. The aura of DRC is fast fading and perhaps DRC itself will soon become history.
That reminds me of the disused legation quarter, Dongjiaominxiang, which was the earliest area in Beijing where foreign legations concentrated during the Qing dynasty. It is the predecessor of today’s diplomatic areas and above- mentioned DRC in Beijing. In 1900, during the boxer’s rebellion, the area was surrounded by the Boxer’s Rebellion soldiers and Qing Army, in an attempt to kill foreigners and Chinese Christians living there, which ended in the Eight Na- tions’ Alliance attacking Beijing. The historical episode is known as 55 days siege in Legation Quarter which lasted from 20 June 1900 to 14 August 1900.
Despite the arrogance from the imperial court and Chinese literati towards any- thing non Chinese, China has a long history of encountering foreign cultures. Nestorian Christianity was found in Tang Dynasty China. The Jesuits missionar- ies reached China as early as 16th century and in the following centuries they were allowed to establish churches all over China. The missionaries played an important role in cultural transfer between China and the West. The recent history of China is, however, fractured by mayor cultural, political and military conflicts with hegemonic foreign powers. With the two Opium Wars, and the First Sino-Japanese War, and the Boxers Rebellion and the ensuing revenge from the Eight Nations’ Alliance, the course of the 19th century left a deep scar on Chinese modern history. The wounded pride and sense of humiliation are still constitutive part in the collective psychology of contemporary China, which often ignites nationalistic sentiments whenever the national pride is in question. The century also marked the beginning of China’s long and reluctant process of opening up to the world.
The official historical narratives focus on the western colonial aggressions on China, rarely on China’s xeno-phobia. The Boxer’s rebellion was at least partly spurred by a xeno-phobic sentiment, which is still alive in China today. The Boxer’s Rebellion is an extremely controversial historical incident, whose true character has always been obscured by the official narrative throughout the era of the People’s Republic. The different views and different attitudes towards the Boxer’s Rebellion reflect the divides among China’s different social classes.
The boxer’s spirit is ghostly latent in today’s ostensibly modern China, ready to morph into whatever form of mass hysteria, against whoever challenges China’s pride.
20 June 2017 to 14 August 2017
55 Days at Peking is a 1963 American historical epic film produced by Samuel Bronston and directed by Nicholas Ray. The film is a dramatization of the siege of the foreign legations’ compound in Beijing during the Boxer Rebellion, which took place from 1898-1900 in China.
The exhibition is titled after that of the film. It is structured to coincide the timeline of the real historical events in 1900. As if to call forth the historical event as a rehearsal, the exhibition begins on the 20th of June when the boxers sur- rounded the foreign legations and ends on the 14th of August when the Eight Nations’ Alliance ended the siege 117 years ago. By the coincidence of time and the juxtaposition of the past and the present, the history appears as a horizontal stretch of every day while the historical event in turn frames the exhibition dura- tion as a (contemporary) historical course.
In the main room, a tripod mounted monitor shows the epic historical film 55 Days at Peking in extreme slow motion. It is stretched to the duration of 1320 hours, to coincide the 55 days of the real historical event and the exhibition period. That is to say, the film begins to play as the exhibition begins and ends as the exhibition ends.
The diplomatic compound apartment (DRC No. 12 Space) is spatially arranged in a temporal structure. The south side room will host black and white navy ensigns or national flags of the then Eight Nations’ Alliance when they attacked Beijing in 1900. The lack of color neutralizes highly symbolic impact of ensigns and flags and they in turn create a temporal distance. In the north side room, installed on the ceiling are 17 contemporary national flags, in full color, of the original Eight Nations’ Alliance which is now 17 nations (as Austrian-Hungarian Empire dissolved into Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia which further divided into Czech and Slovakia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia,
Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia). The corridor functions, symbolically, as a temporal passage linking the past to the present.
A double row of dates of 55 days, of the real historical event in 1900 and of the entire exhibition duration, in the form of numbers, such as 20-06-1990/20-06- 2017, in vinyl letters, are printed on the walls, starting at the corridor, continuing into adjacent rooms and spreading throughout the entire space. It can be seen as a numerical form of time, unfolding in a fragmented fashion. The numbers are like the names of the days, they call forth the 55 days historical duration
into presence and arrest the 55 present days from the current flow of time. This timeline also serves as a basic grid for both the historical storytelling and con- temporary everyday narratives to unfold. Within the 55 days of the exhibition duration, progressively, things, images, video clips and texts are added to the space around the timeline, to interpret, reinterpret and in some cases misinter- pret the days from both the year 1900 and 2017. Within the double durations, each double day is regarded as an archeological site for both the artist and the audience to excavate what has just past on the one hand and on the other re- invent the historical readymade. The project aims to create a double narrative, a parallel temporality that is simultaneously historical and present, simultaneously truthful and fictional.
The project is about time, the visibility and perceptibility of time. It is as if various temporalities, from the fictional cinematic time to the unfolding of present time, are inserted into the rigid frame of 55 days, the real historical duration. The proj- ect posits that history is a form of time, and it resides in the distorted cinematic time, in the deconstructed historic continuity and in the fragmented every day. History becomes real when it is freed of its monumentality. History should be ordinary and full of anecdotes. It is the total sum of ceaseless ticks of time.
It is only a little more than a century that sets apart the 55 days siege in Dongjiaomingxiang and the 55 days exhibition in DRC No. 12. A century is long and short at the same time in our increasingly relative perception of time and history. Over the century, China has marched from feudal-colonial time to the age of global capitalism; a lot has changed, but some subterranean blind forces, which often triggered regressive momentums in history, remained constant. Depending on one’s perspective, sometimes the past appears nearer than it actually is, or sometimes one finds a cyclic motion in historical processes. With the 55 days at DRC No. 12, can’t we imagine that we are under siege again, this time by the invisible forces from within?
i Haifeng, 10 May 2017
北京55天
1900 年 6 月 20 日 - 8 月 14 日
与大使馆不同，外交公寓不属于域外空间，但享受域外领土应有的自由。虽是中国领土， 中国公民却不能自由出入。由武警守卫的大门更像是一条边境线，分隔或者说连接着 外交公寓内外两个截然不同的世界。外交公寓是一个相当独特的中国现象 ; 其背后的 基本原理之一是将外国人与当地居民隔离，并有效地管理外来影响。北京的使馆区及 外交公寓的前身应该是东交民巷。第二次鸦片战争后，清朝政府建立了总理衙门并将 东交民巷划为外国公使馆区。从 1861 年到 1959 年，东交民巷一直是诸多外国使馆 云 集 之 处 。庚 子 年 间 ，1 9 0 0 年 6 月 2 0 日 到 8 月 1 4 日 ，东 交 民 巷 及 该 地 区 内 的 外 国 人 和中国教民被义和团和清军围困了长达 55 天之久，最后以八国联合救援部队攻克北 京而解除围困。
虽然中国对外来文化有很强的免疫力，但从丝绸之路贸易到早期西方传教活动，文化 交流的历史仍可谓是源远流长。早期基督教(景教)早在唐朝就传入中国。近几个世 纪以来，西方传教士纷纷在中国各地建立教会，大量中国人信奉天主教和基督教。传 教士在中西文化之间的传播中发挥了重要作用。然而，中国近代史上却写满了中华帝国 与霸权主义的外国列强之间的文化、政治和军事上的冲突。随着两次鸦片战争， 甲午战争，以及义和团运动和八国联军事件，十九世纪的历史进程给中国近代史留 下了深刻的伤疤。在当代中国的集体心理中，受伤的自尊和屈辱感仍然是重要的组成部分;当民族自豪感受到质疑时，这种心理易燃物极易触发民众的无节制的民族主义 情绪。那个世纪也标志着中国漫长而不情愿的对外开放进程的开始。
官方的历史叙述集中于西方对中国的殖民侵略，很少对中国的异邦恐惧症进行考察。 义和团的叛乱至少在一定程度上受到了异邦恐惧情绪的激励，这种情绪在当今中国 仍十分活跃。义和团运动是一个极具争议的历史事件，其真实性格、起因以及其复杂 的历史境遇一直被主流历史叙事所简单化和神话化。对义和团运动所持有的不同看 法和不同态度，侧面反映了中国社会阶层之间存在的难以逾越的鸿沟。从某种角度看， 在今天，庚子年间的恐惧，疯狂和非理性精神仍然像幽灵般地潜伏在现代中国的社 会潜意识中，随时可以蜕变成各种形式的大众歇斯底里。
2017年6月20日-8月14日
《北京55天》是1963年由塞缪尔布朗思顿制作，尼古拉斯瑞执导的美国历史史诗电影。这部电影是以发生在1898-1900义和团运动为背景，戏剧化地描述了义和团围攻北 京外国使节居住的东交民巷。
本展览的题目来自该电影的标题，这是有意识地把虚构当作历史考察的起点。这一展 览的中心思想是一个时间结构，是为了重合 1900 年的真实历史事件的时间线，仿佛是 想把历史事件作为时间重现在展览中。也就是说本展览开始于义和团包围东交民巷 的 6 月 20 日(1900 年)，结束于八国联军攻入北京结束围困的 8 月 14 日(1900 年)。 由于时间的重合，过去与现在的并列，历史在此呈现为一个横向的延伸，同时，历史事 件作为一个既定的时间框架把展览本身转换为一个“当代史”的历程。
主厅内，一台安装在三脚架上的电视机以极端缓慢的速度播放电影《北京 55 天》。这部电影的时间长度被拉长到 1320 小时，与真实的历史事件和展览期间的 55 天吻合。 也就是说，这部电影于 6 月 20 日开始播放，8 月 14 日结尾。
“外交公寓 12 号”的空间格局是一个时间结构。南面房间的墙上斜插着 8 面黑白旗 帜，它们分别是当年八国联军进攻北京时的海军旗或国旗。无色抵消了国旗的高度象 征性，且制造了一个历史距离。在北面的房间里，17 面当代彩色国旗被安装在天花板上， 它们分别来自原来的八国联军，现分化为17国家 (奥匈帝国解散为奥地利，匈牙利， 捷克斯洛伐克和南斯拉夫，后两者进一步分裂为捷克和斯洛伐克，波斯尼亚，黑山， 马其顿，克罗地亚，斯洛文尼亚和塞尔维亚 )。走廊象征性地起到了一个连接过去和 现在的时间通道的功能。
来 自 真 实 的 历 史 事 件( 2 0 - 0 6 - 1 9 0 0 到 1 4 - 0 8 - 1 9 0 0 )和 本 展 览 时 间 跨 度 ( 2 0 - 0 6 - 2 0 1 7 到14-08-2017)的55天的双重日期，以数字的形式，例如 20-06-1990，被打印在 墙壁上，从走廊开始，遍布整个空间。它可以被看作是一个时间的数字形式，一个时 间表，以碎片的方式在空间里展开。这些数字凸显历史中的 55 日，捕捉当下时间流中 的 55 日。这个时间线也作为一个历史和当代日常生活叙事的基本坐标。在展览持续的 55 天内，物体、图像、视频和文本等会被添加到时间线周围的空间，解释，重新诠释， 甚至误释这 55 天。每一个双重日期被当作考古学站点，去挖掘刚刚过去的现时或重 新发掘历史现成品。从某种意义上看，每一天本身就是一个作品。该项目的目的是创 造一个双重叙事，一个过去和现在，真实和虚构交替存在的并行时间。
该项目是关于时间，关于时间的能见度和可感知性。多重时间，从虚构的电影时间到 当下的具体时间，都被嵌入到 55 天的历史时间的固定框架中。我认为，历史是一种时 间形式，它存在于失真的电影虚构时间中，在解构了的历史连续性中，在断断续续的日 常中。历史应该从宏大的历史叙事中出走，从纪念碑上走下来。历史是平凡的，充满了奇闻轶事。
从东交民巷 55 天的围攻到外交公寓 55 天的展览只有一个多世纪的距离。一个世纪 在我们对历史的相对知觉中同时是既漫长又短促。一百多年来，从半封建 - 半殖民社 会到全球资本主义消费社会，中国社会发生了巨大的变化。但有时我们会觉得历史离 我们很近，或者说，历史过程本身就是一个循环运动，很多事情会重复出现。那么，《北京55天》的展览是否也可被理解为一个不可见的当代围困?
文 | 倪海峰 2017 年 5 月 10 日
