A Day To Remember, 2005

Video PAL, colour, sound, 13'.
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris (France)


On june 4th, I went to Perking University, the place where the incidence was originated from, an Tian'anmen Square, the place where the incidence occurred. I took with me a camera and a few simple questions, repeated them to those who I met and recorded down the whole day's encounter. People reacted to my question with blank face or dodging words, or just shied away.


The blood and life sixteen years ago have been forgotten and faded way, leaving behind helpless silence and blank memory. As it remains a taboo in today's China, people don't talk about it openly for their own sake; or they are reluctant to recall it to live in reality. Many young people even don't know about it for this topic has been covered and forbidden for years. Sixteen years have passed. Mother's hair has turned gray; beloved ones have tried up the tears. Glorious as forever on this first street of China, silence prevails.


Silence, forgetting and deliberate covering, people's memory turns into a vacuum. The bygones twisted into a blurred picture, true memory gone, illusion remains.


Liu Wei