text by Chen Chieh-Jen
The concept for this film comes from a photograph of execution by lingchi (death by a thousand cuts) taken in 1904 or 1905 by a French soldier in China. [1]
Three victims of lingchi have been photographed by different French soldiers over the course of history. These photographs had once testified to the savage barbarity of China and served as exotic novelties, circulating around Europe in the form of post cards. French writer and thinker Georges Bataille, in his 1961 book The Tears of Eros, discusses lingchi from a philosophical perspective, specifically in relation to the notions of ecstasy and limit experience. Bataille's interpretations of these images have been the ones most often cited in the West, and in this way, lingchi became widely known among western intellectuals.
Discussions of lingchi have been expanded in recent years by analysis and juxtapositions in the fields of law, ethics, culture and philosophy, due to the work of the French historian Dr Jérome Bourgon and others. This has rendered the concept of lingchi a cultural hybrid, and no longer just a form of torture used in China. [2]
In 1996, using imaging editing software and one of the photographs written about by Bataille, I began discussing a different kind of history; one hidden within the history of photography and which I call the history of the photographed.
My idea for shooting this film and reëxamining this lingchi photograph came from both my concerns with the history of the photographed and my complicated feelings upon first seeing these images. Although I had initially put these feelings aside, they became a powerful driving force over time, and I was compelled to look at this photograph once again more closely.
The moment the eyes of the victim enduring torture and the lens of the camera held by the French soldier met, the frozen image and dismembered body manifested the ruthlessness of feudalistic law and foreshadowed the advent of modernity in the non-western world. Imperialism and colonialism, in the the name of modernization, brought various forms of dismembering technologies to bear on the colonized and photographed.
The two large black wounds on the chest of the victim in the photograph seem like passageways connecting the past and future, and gazing at them we pass through the photograph's two dimensional surface and into the body of the victim. Entering these bodily passageways, we can see what happened in this instance of lingchi before and after the photograph was taken. From the destruction of the Old Summer Palace by Anglo-French Forces and the Eight-Nation Alliance, lethal human experimentation carried out by the Japanese Army's Unit 731 in Harbin, the jailing of political prisoners during the Cold War period in Taiwan, the dumping of toxic pollutants in Taiwan by transnational industries, and to the exploitation of low wage laborers,[3] it seems that the barbarity of lingchi has never really ended.[4]
The victim of lingchi in this photograph is gazing at the horizon and weakly smiling—a puzzling smile which is like a powerful vortex. Everyone, including those who can't bear to look at the image due to its brutality, westerners who draw connections between the victim and Christian imagery, Georges Bataille who explains the photograph in relation to erotic ecstasy, and the many academics and artists who have examined and responded to lingchi, they all, including myself as I repeatedly stare at this image, are drawn into the puzzling vortex of his smile. Why is this person who is being tortured smiling? I believe this can be explained in several ways. When the Gautama Buddha was being tortured in one of his previous lives and the executioner was slicing flesh from his body, he attained enlightenment by forgiving his torturer and surrendering to the ignorance of the world. When Georges Bataille was contemplating these images of lingchi, he suggested that the victim's smile was related to two key experiences: followers of Christ praying for salvation as they were nailed to the cross, or Buddhists meditating on the death of all beings; both of which are transcendent forms of peace that arise from extreme suffering.
I think, however, the lingchi victim's smile may also be related to something else: the Buddhist concept of parinama, or the transference of spiritual merit onto another person.[5] The victim is tied up and cannot escape; being dismembered, photographed, force fed opium and in a daze, it seems he cannot choose any course of action. As the camera of the colonizing soldier fixes this image, the victim smiles, creating enormous confusion in all those who view the photograph from then on, and it is through this confusion that the victim demanded that discussion of this image continue on long after his dismemberment and death.
This is an active smile, one which allows the image to transfer the value which lies beneath the smile onto future audiences.
I made this video because of the provocative quality of this smile. Although I recreated an historical incident in order to shoot this video, my motivation, like the smile on the victim's face, was to spark discussion. I believe this dialog with historical imagery of torture created by my film does not exist in any recreation of the past, but rather in how we reflect on historical imagery today, and to what extent we acknowledge lingchi-like brutality in contemporary society. The props, costumes and hairstyles used in this video are therefore from different eras and the torture implements used for lingchi are not historically accurate. Furthermore, the performers were unemployed laborers, students and actors from small theater groups.
I would like to offer my gratitude to Dr Jérome Bourgon and Dr Clair Margat for supplying their academic research, which assisted me in my understanding of lingchi.
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[1] The photographs I used for my film came from Georges Bataille's book The Tears of Eros, and this discussion especially refer to the image on page 204. In his book, Bataille quoted a friend who supplied information about the photographs, including the names of the victims, the photographers and the crimes which resulted in lingchi. According to Dr Jérome Bourgon, however, these details still remain unclear today.
[2] For further information related to the subject of lingchi, see the website Chinese Torture: http://turandot.ishlyon.cnrs.fr/
[3] The five architectural sites that appear inside the torture victim’s body in the film are, in order of appearance: Old Summer Palace of Beijing, which was destroyed by the Anglo-French Forces and the Eight-Nation Alliance; the laboratories of Japan’s Unit 731, which conducted lethal human experiments; the prison on Taiwan's Green Island, which was used for political prisoners during the Cold War/martial law period; the heavily polluted factory left behind by the RCA Corporation of the United States, in Taoyuan, Taiwan; and the women’s dormitory of a garment factory that was unscrupulously closed down by its owners.
[4] Before 1905, lingchi was a form of punishment used by China's feudalistic system of government for criminals who had committed the most heinous of crimes. To carry out lingchi, the victim would be slowly and repeated cut until they died. The practice of lingchi was stopped in 1905, and today this word is used in Chinese vernacular speech to describe any endless, repetitive or inhumane work, or tortuous situation.
[5] As a Buddhist concept, parinama emphasizes the sharing of enlightenment or spiritual merit that one has attained through spiritual practice. I believe the essence of parinama also exists in conversing and connecting with others in everyday life. |
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