Contemporary Shroud Fashion (1998)

Overview

Li Wake travelled to Beijing in June 1998 with a desperate post-modernist passion and had models dressed in his "shroud fashion" walk through the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, Wangfujing and other venues, and virtually performed a "living dead" shroud fashion show in front of a crowd of people. The footage was then mixed with clips from Pink Floyd's "The Wall" and edited into an MTV format, which was projected onto the wide screen of the Beijing Theatre, where the shroud fashion models moved from the outside of the theatre into the inside of the theatre, walking freely in front of the screen, occasionally delivering ballots to the mailboxes. At this point, revolutionary songs, Enya's score, and funeral marches alternate, and a poppy patchwork of music, video acts, and props combine to form a kind of absurd self-eulogy-like martyrdom ritual.