The OC Part II: ‘Wildness’

The Opening Ceremony via Getty Images

Part 2 of ...
If the opening ceremony can be understood through the theoretical framework of the ‘mass ornament’ on the one hand (the aestheticization of the masses due to (1) the authoritarian state subordinating its individual constituents into a collective, and (2) the effects of Fordist production techniques on the psyche), on the other hand it can be said that the mass ornament was constantly contradicted and undermined through an emergent form of ‘wildness’, to borrow a term from Sanford Kwinter. While the mass ornament may be seen as the dominant technique used in the production and choreography of the OC, this ‘wildness’ maintained such a pervasive presence in the show to be recognized as a leitmotif, but a far more exciting and progressive motif because it is completely unexpected and demonstrates the surfacing of something new in Chinese society.

In the big show ‘wildness’ was demonstrated through the constant use of dissipation, gradients, waves, and swarms as a visual opposition to the strict geometrical formations of the mass ornament. The wild worked to dissolve the framework of the mass ornament into a more atomized form of expression.

The wildness first appeared during the countdown that began the show: after the drums made the figure of the number the lights would dissipate from the center outward. Later in the show it was demonstrated during the pixilated expression of the printing press segment—the rolling waves of their choreography and again the way that the letters dissolved in a random pattern rather than through a more rigid geometry.

Two other examples are the dove made from the lighted figures and the running of the tai chi demonstrators towards the end. In both, a strong formal figure (the dove and the circular formation) is contradicted by a more fluid, random expression. Of course, it could be said that these demonstrate the appearance of randomness and individuality, rather than its actual occurrence. At the very least I would like to believe that it is aspirational.

Even the Olympic architecture demonstrates a new direction in terms of freedom and expression. Nicolai Ossourouff, architecture critic of the NYTimes, writes “the National Stadium reaffirms architecture's civilizing role in a nation that, despite its outward confidence, is struggling to forge a new identity out of a maelstrom of inner conflict.” HdeM have pointed out a subtle technique of subversion in the building—offering spaces within the shell that are difficult for control and surveillance—and the facades of the Water Cube and Bird’s Nest are much less rigid and authoritarian than their predecessors, the Worker’s Gymnasium and Stadium.

Swarms via Google

According to Kwinter, the “wild” is “the logic of animal societies (packs, flocks, and swarms) of the inmixings and inadvertencies of the natural world and of complex adaptive systems in general.” They utilize three characteristics: intricacy, messiness, and indirectness. The last, according to Kwinter, “ is actually the secret to achieving a robust, adaptive, flexible, and evolving design…They are wild systems that range and explore and mine their environment, that capitalize on accidental successes, store them, and build upon them.”

photo by Sze Tsung Leong via 'The New New City' in The New York Times

In the Chinese urban environment, the formal and informal coexist in close proximity to one another. Top down urban systems are appropriated through bottom-up mechanisms. Mario Gandelsonas has written about this in his essay “Exchange/Translation/Identity.” In speaking about the complex relationship between infrastructure and public space he writes that

“new freeways that cut through the urban fabric do not produce the ‘walls’ within the city that were created by the urban renewal of the American city. By utilizing leftover spaces for inventive public uses, such as parking for bicycles and fields for sports, they activate areas that remain quite dead in their original Western versions.”

Shuo Wang has discussed the wildness of Beijing’s urban explosion in his essay “Wild Be(ij)ing.” He states that

“In a decade, 5 million rural migrants have rushed into the city. Their new vision of the city reshaped the urban ground in an unprecedented explosive way. The largely uncontrolled economic upheavals presented its domestic urban condition as a paradigm of urban wildness that thrives against any prediction from the discipline. Beijing’s future is unpredictable; only one thing is for sure, that urban planning can never hold up the energy of constant eruptions.”

To me the ‘wild’, and its appearance in the OC, offers a positive view of the transition of Chinese culture. The wild is about self-organization—about a bottom-up, evolutionary process of becoming, and therefore contradicts our understanding of China as a heavy-handed authoritarian system. While the latter undoubtedly exists (any newspaper article written about the Olympics will tell you that side of the story) and while there is still problems with freedom of expression and free media, etc, there is something else happening in the streets and with the rapid transformations in Chinese cities and among Chinese citizens as they gain more economic freedom and more confidence. There is still a long way to go, but I don’t think the current system can sustain itself forever. How, and when, it will be undermined remains in question, but the fact that it is in progress is clear.

Previously: The OC Part 1: Mass Ornament

See Also: From Ants to People, an Instinct to Swarm (NY Times)

The OC Part 1: Mass Ornament

Opening Ceremony of the 29th Olympics in Beijing

Part 1 of ...
At the 8^th minute of the 8^th hour of the 8^th day of the 8^th month of the 8^th year of the new millennium, the Opening Ceremonies of the 29^th Olympics of the modern era commenced with great fanfare in the city of Beijing. Described as the ‘coming out’ party of the Chinese nation it has been lauded as the greatest opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.

For those of us watching the event with blurred vision—thanks to tears of joy, tears of pride—it may have been easy to miss the latent messages buried deep within the ceremonial event. A superficial reading of the ritual would have us believe that it was introducing the rest of the world to the incredible 5,000 year history of Chinese history—the inventions of paper, calligraphy, gun powder, compasses, and so on, the rich tradition of music and dance, etc—and on the surface this is true. But what is happening below the surface? Are there other narratives that begin to unfold once we peel back this outer skin? I think there are a few themes that begin to emerge once we start to look a little deeper. I plan to discuss them in a few part series on the opening ceremony.

Images from the Opening Ceremony demonstrating the Mass Ornament

i) Mass Ornament – The first theme that I think emerges from a closer look is that of the “mass ornament.” Most everyone who watched the opening ceremony commented on the quantity of people involved in the production. The NY Times stated that “The ceremony was filled with signature Chinese touches like the use of masses of people, working in unison into a grand spectacle centered on traditional Chinese history, music, dance and art.” This use of masses of people to create a grand spectacle can be compared to the tradition of the Mass Games, at once widespread among Communist nations but now only performed regularly in North Korea. Images from the Mass Games in North Korea reveal the basic raison d’etre of the form: “the subordination of the individual desires for the needs of the collective.” A 2003 documentary called State of Mind, made by the BBC, claim that the “mass Games are North Korea’s Socialist Realist extravaganza and a perfect example of the state’s ideology.”

Images from N. Korea's Mass Games

Sigfried Kracauer’s concept of the Mass Ornament, described in an essay of the same name written in the 1930s, offers the best theoretical framework with which to understand events such as the Mass Games and similar forms of entertainment which emerged in the early 20^th Century. The description he gives of the Tiller Girls still seems relevant in a discussion about the Opening Ceremonies and their use of synchronized choreography among masses of people. Kracauer describes the intention of such events when he says:

The training of the units of girls is intended instead to produce an immense number of parallel lines, and the desired effect is to train the greatest number of people in order to create a pattern of unimaginable dimensions. In the end there is the closed ornament, whose life components have been drained of their substance.

These products of American ‘distraction factories’ are no longer individual girls, but indissoluble female units whose movements are mathematical demonstrations…one glance at the screen reveals that the ornament consists of thousands of bodies, sexless bodies…the regularity of their patterns is acclaimed by the masses, who are themselves arranged in row upon ordered row.

According to Kracauer, “the mass ornament is the aesthetic reflex of the rationality aspired to by the prevailing economic system,” which to him meant capitalism, and the effect that Fordist modes of production and consumerist ideologies were having on the public. The lack of rationalization on the part of those in control on the effect that the ultra rationalization of the new assembly line production methods were working together to create the Mass Ornament. Kracauer compares the Mass Games, the Tiller Girls, and the factory when he says that:

The production process runs its course publicly in secret. Everyone goes through the necessary motions at the conveyer belt, performs a partial function without knowing the entirety. Similar to the pattern in the stadium, the organization hovers above the masses as a monstrous figure whose originator withdraws it from the eyes of its bearers, and who himself hardly reflects upon it. It is conceived according to rational principles which the Taylor system only takes to its final conclusion. The hands in the factory correspond to the legs of the Tiller Girls.

So what does it mean that China would use this imagery of the mass ornament in its opening ceremony? Unbeknownst to even the designers and creative directors of the event (because Zhang Yimou is well known for his use of similarly choreographed crowds in his films and theatrical productions as well), China seems to be telling the world that “Hey, we have billions of people. And we know how to choreograph and control them.” That was the understanding that my friends and I all had of the event. Maybe it’s just a ‘gentle reminder’ to the world about China’s greatest resource; an advertisement for its people.

Burtynksy's photographs of factories in China

This might not be a long stretch of the imagination. Images from China’s factories reveal a strong similarity between the factory floor and the stadium: the aestheticization of the masses. Edward Burtinsky’s photographs of factories in southern China, made famous through the documentary “Manufactured Landscapes” demonstrate likeness in color, form, and suppression of the individual. In this age of China’s rapid industrialization this imagery seems to fit right in.

But at the same time, there is something different at play. The migration of the rural population in China is well known and all that do it are looking for a better life. Burtynsky, on his website, describes the transformation of China’s population from rural, agricultural workers to factory workers: “Working the assembly lines, China’s youthful peasant population is quickly abandoning traditional extended-family village life, leaving the monotony of agricultural work and subsistence income behind for a chance at independence.” At the same time you have one of the most rapid periods of urbanization occurring, the emergence of independent wealth in China, and a desire for freedom of expression.

Has this quest for independence been fulfilled in Zhang Yimou’s direction of the opening ceremony, and if so, how? I think that we can witness an emergent independence represented in the ceremony, and I will discuss this in the next part of this series.