The title contains nothing more than an ordinary diary entry on the state of the weather on an apparently unexceptional day. It is the opening day of the exhibition 'It's Me!' in the Forbidden City Tai Miao (Beijing Workers' Cultural Palace), organized by Leng Li. The artist and independent documentary filmmaker Wu Wenguang shows how he and his friend Yi Liming travel there by car through thick snow, while an unintelligibly slow and deep voice seems to be making threatening comments in the background. They arrive to find the message "The exhibition 'It's Me' has been cancelled for some reason. Apologies to all visitors, 21 Nov 1998." The works are all inside and the visitors, who include many celebrated Chinese artists, stand around outside looking lost. The well-known Chinese art critic Li Xianting makes a short statement to the press in which he declares, among other things, that "if there is no space for art in this country, then there must be something wrong with this country." Wu Wenguang ignored the ban on filming this affair and made his documentary with a fine feeling for cynicism and humour. Wu Wenguang occupies a key position in the documentary movement in China, using both cinema verité and a personal narrative style in his videos to capture the sometimes bitter events of daily life in China. Earlier examples of the same kind of incident are the exhibitions 'The Stars' in 1979, and 'China Avant-Garde' from 1989. The latter had pointedly used the traffic sign for 'No return' as its symbol. The government thought in fact that it could use force to call a halt to this kind of thing by cracking down on the student protests at Tiananmen Square. However, Beijing has continued to maintain its very large community of artist-intellectuals whose most progressive elements use exhibitions as their principal mode of organization. In order to avoid the premature closure of exhibitions, details of the times and venues of openings are announced to insiders at the last minute by telephone.
– Johan Pijnappel
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Wenguang Wu, 1956, Yunnan (China)
Living and working in Beijing (China)
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