| Large Soy Sauce Vat (Performance)
The animal used in Liu Jin's "Large Soy Sauce Vat" was a live pig weighing 60 kilograms with its limbs bound. He fabricated a large traditional vat measuring 1.5 meters across and 1.2 meters high. Timber was piled below the vat, and four-fifths of the vat was filled with soy sauce. The the artist climbed into the vatm holding the live pig, and had his assistant light a fire under the vat. After voilent struggling the pig was subdued, and as the fire burnt merrily two girls looking on wept. Liu Jin held the victimized pig with an indistinct expression, silently immersed in the iridescent soy sauce, experiencing the unique sensation of heat slowly arising from beneath the vat. Man and animal entered the fiercely boiling vat of soy sauce as if part of a hotpot dish. The element of self-torture in the performance had a startling emotional power. The artist in the vat, cooking and turning color, directly points at common cultural practices of cooking. The symbolic meaning is plentiful and palpable, startling onlookers. Liu Jin and the pig together in this "soy sauce bath" became progressively dirtier, as if using the experimental method of art to personally acknowledge and show the filth residing in the "vat culture" of traditinal Chinese culture. The performance ended after twenty minutes and the audience applauded the artist. The entire performance lasted until the end of this report.
-Gu Zhenqing
Qingliang Mountain Garden, Nanjing
May 28, 2000 |
Large Soy Sauce Vat 
