19 or how a massacre is remembered

Mar 1

19 or how a massacre is remembered was an immersive installation performed at Columbia University’s Shapiro Theater exploring the memory of Chinese dissident Liao Yiwu through all the June 4ths he remembers in an essay entitled “19 Days” published in the Paris Review.

On June 4th 1989, Liao wrote a poem "Massacre" about the student protests in Tiananmen Square, the largest non-violent protest in China that turned into a bloodbath. It spread like wildfire, becoming an anthem for that generation and causing his arrest and imprisonment for 4 years in a hard labor camp. With an arresting narrative and innovative use of video, light and sound, this meditation on memory and life was a dreamscape of the mind of a man whom Salman Rushdie calls one of "the few people who are real writers".