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Two separate realms
That China’s presentation of the Olympics was not a paragon of journalistic rigor isn’t surprising. Their video feed of the opening ceremony included “having a little girl lip-synch a patriotic song”, “representing contingents of ethnic minorities with actors”, and, apparently, splicing in the entire fireworks display from premade footage (“complete with simulated camera jitter and haze”, according to Artnet). What is more intriguing is the statement released by artist Cai Guo-Qiang, who organized the performance (and recently had a major show at the Guggenheim). In response to the Western media’s criticism, he issues an almost art-for-arts-sake justification that is puzzling (doesn’t some sort of epic real enactment serve as a controlling principle for his previous body of work?) and could anyway use some expansion (why is separating the “mediums” artistically significant), but anyway does arrive, at the end, at a provocative artistic statement.
It is quite customary to prepare a backup reel for major televised events of this scale, and this has been true of the opening and closing ceremonies of previous Olympic Games. We were aware of this and thus created our own reel from dress rehearsal footage of the footprint fireworks. The sequence was then created using computer graphics.
From my own perspective as an artist, there are two separate realms in which this artwork exists, as two very different mediums have been utilized. First, there is the artwork that exists in the material realm: the ephemeral sculpture. This was viewed by people attending the ceremonies inside the stadium and standing outside on the streets of Beijing. This artwork was documented from various vantage points on video, which has been broadcast by many international media outlets.
Second, there is a creative digital rendering of the artwork in the medium of video. It is a single version of the event viewed by a large broadcast audience. Such a conceptual work can exist simultaneously in these two separate realms. And perhaps to also take Footprints of History into this second realm was necessary because in many of my explosion events, such as Project to Extend the Great Wall of China by 10,000 Meters, the very best vantage point is not the human one.