Blow Up the Olympics

Although no one we know was lucky enough (apparently the odds were about one in twenty-one) to land themselves a ticket to the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, small clues are slowly beginning to emerge about what the no doubt spectacular ceremony is going to involve. The announcement that Chinese artist Cai Guoqiang has been employed as chief designer of special visual effects for the ceremony is one especially exciting piece of news, as, aside from large-scale installations like hanging a huge group of tigers or exploding cars from the ceiling, the New York-based artist is best known for his use of gunpowder in explosive projects like Black Cloud in Clear Sky outside the Metropolitan Museum in New York), Ye Gong Hao Long at the Tate Modern in London and Tornado as part of the Kennedy Center of the Arts 2005 Festival of China.

Cai has explained that one of his reasons for taking gun powder as a media is that it is one of ancient China’s four famous inventions – surely this patriotic sentiment cannot go ignored when designing the opening ceremony - and many are already speculating that Cai is planning to house one of his explosive works in the iconic Bird Nest. Other commentators suspect that Cai, worried about being overshadowed by an opening ceremony that will no doubt contain a huge amount of fireworks, will opt to forgo the use of gunpowder altogether and instead find some other way of contributing to the ceremony.

In other news about what to expect from next year’s opening ceremony, China Daily quotes Zhang Yimou, who has been employed as one of the artistic directors of the event, as saying "10,000 faces of different colors, from different countries and regions would be artistically presented to express the theme of one world, one dream."

Links and Sources:

Cai Guoqiang’s Official Site

Art news: 蔡国强 炸出日本广岛奖

Stunned.org: Clear Sky Dark Cloud

China Daily: One world, all smiles

Wikipedia: Cai Guo-Qiang

The Official Site of the Beijing Olympics: The lucky few: 1/21 chance for opening ceremony tickets