An echo that never fades part 1
On December 18, 1900, St. Nicholas Church was completed in Harbin, China.
On November 7, 1940, a Monument to Fighters Against the Communist International (the only one of its kind in the world) was erected next to the church.
On June 8, 1941, after the Soviet Army liberated Harbin, the Monument to Fighters Against the Communist International was dismantled.
On November 7, 1945, a Monument to Soviet Red Army Martyrs was erected next to the church. Due to fluctuating Sino-Soviet relations, the monument was at times surrounded by scaffolding but was also honored with flower tributes from Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin.
On August 23, 1966, during the Cultural Revolution, the church was destroyed. A Chinese priest was tortured to death by Red Guards, who forced an iron bucket over his head and struck it repeatedly. The church bell rang incessantly during the burning and was ultimately transported to a farm.
On August 23, 1966, an elderly Jewish man who had once lived in the church was detained because Red Guards suspected the earplugs he wore while sleeping were made of human bones. He was released in 1970 and spent the rest of his life searching for the church on the now-vacant green space.
On September 11, 1968, a Monument to the Proletarian Cultural Revolution was erected on the site of the former church, with an inscription by Lin Biao.
In 1971, after Lin Biao’s defection, his inscription was scraped off entirely.
In the spring of 1972, the Monument to the Proletarian Cultural Revolution was demolished overnight, leaving the area as green space.
From the 1970s to the 1980s, following the Zhenbao Island incident, a massive underground civilian air defense project (7381) was constructed on the site.
By 1980, the area had become an empty, open, five-colored circular flowerbed.
In April 1996, construction began on an underground shopping center. During excavation, the tomb of a Russian general was discovered. He had been honored with a gold weapon inscribed with the word "courage" for his bravery during the Russo-Japanese War.
By 2014, the site had become an underground shopping mall and metro station.
The work An Echo That Never Fades is not intended to reconstruct an established historical picture, but rather a meditation delving into the essence of time, the flux of memory, and how power shapes existence. The century-long trajectory of the former site of the St. Nicholas Orthodox Church in Harbin, China, forms the narrative core of this work, serving as an allegory layered with multiple meanings. It explores the cycle of being and nothingness, the dialectic of construction and deconstruction, and the fate of the individual adrift in the tides of time.
At the heart of this work lies a reimagining of the concept of ruins—not merely the disappearance of physical remnants, but the disintegration of faith and collective memory. This land in Harbin is like a historical text constantly overwritten, each ideological shift leaving indelible marks. From religious solemnity to revolutionary fervor, and then to the pragmatism of consumerism, the intertwining of different states of "presence" and "absence" constitutes an ontological rupture.
The performance component of my work involves repeatedly striking an iron bucket in different locations. This action directly references the tragedy of 1966, when Red Guards demolished the church and the priest was struck on the head with an iron bucket until he died. The act of striking the iron bucket is like swimming upstream against the river of time. It is not a mechanical reenactment of past events, but an experiential attempt to awaken the subtle echoes slumbering in the depths of history through physical intervention. Each strike is like an interrogation of silence, creating a momentary sound in the void, pointing to the voiceless cries muffled by the hand of power. It is a challenge to the linear flow of time, a futile attempt to find faint connections between fragmented pieces of history.
Concurrently, the sound installation within the exhibition space consists of nine iron buckets. Each bucket is adorned with several large bones covered in gold leaf. Inside each bucket is a bone conduction audio device playing poetry I have created. This installation attempts to explore the complex relationship between commemoration and passing, the sacred and the profane.
The sound installation materializes fragments of memory into tangible existence. The juxtaposition of nine iron buckets serves as a metaphor for history repeating itself, and also hints at the plurality and fragmentation of narratives. The gold-leaf-covered bones create a disturbing juxtaposition, serving as a cautionary tale of rise and fall: the opulent gold leaf does not symbolize eternal glory, but rather a bitter mockery of the vanity of power, attempting to conceal the shadow of death and the wounds left by violence. The contrast between the coldness of the bones and the warmth of the gold leaf reveals the fragile essence beneath the shell of grand narratives and the insignificance of the individual.
The bone-conducted sound blurs the boundaries between inner experience and the external world. The poetry is not received through traditional hearing, but is transformed into vibrations within the body, directly reaching the skull, touching the abyss of consciousness. This is a private, almost invasive experience, as if the trauma of history is internalized as a deeply personal pain, symbolizing the complex and hidden connection between individual and collective memory. Those unspeakable experiences, swallowed by the tides of time, are manifested through bodily resonance.
The title, An Echo That Never Fades, is an ironic appropriation of the language of power, pointing to the political nature of memory and how power shapes reality through the codification of memory. The erasure of political leaders' inscriptions and the demolition of commemorative towers serve as a cautionary allegory about the rise and fall of power, revealing the illusory nature of "lest we forget." My work is not an endorsement of any particular ideology, but a questioning of all mandatory memory mechanisms, attempting to find the authentic texture of individual experience within the cracks of official narratives.
The Jewish old man who persistently searches for the lost church is an allegorical figure detached from time, a ghost wandering through the labyrinth of history. His "madness" is a subversion of rational historical narratives, a challenge to the time order disciplined by established logic. What he seeks is not merely the remains of a building, but a stubborn questioning of a lost state of being.
Ultimately, this land has become an underground shopping mall and subway station, serving as a metaphor for the commodification and spectaclization of history. The hustle and bustle of commerce seems to erase all traces, but what lies buried underground is a past that cannot be completely obliterated. My work is to capture these suppressed ghosts of memory amidst the clamor of modernity, questioning the essence of the passage of time and the individual's place in the river of history.
An Echo That Never Fades does not offer definitive answers, but poses a continuously questioning proposition: to what extent can we truly grasp memory? And what have we intentionally or unintentionally forgotten? Who holds the power to define and write history? After the collapse of grand narratives, where will individual experience lead? This work invites viewers into a space for contemplation, to reflect on the complex entanglement of time, memory, and existence, and to re-examine our relationship with the echoes of history.
Installation Views : LIU Shimeng, An echo that never fades ,Tianzhu church, Gangwei, 2024