Safely Maneuvering across Lin He Road 

1995, Guangzhou; performance,

90 min

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Lin Yilin's action, Safely Maneuvering across Lin He Road, is a striking example. He uses tons of bricks to build up a wall on one side of a busy main street in the new town of Guangzhou. He then takes some bricks down from one end of the wall and moves them to the other end where he piles them up again. Repeating the same gesture for hours, he moves the whole wall to the middle of the street and, finally, to the opposite side of the street. This hours-long labour not only turns a stable wall into a moving one, but also disrupts the heavy traffic. This action creates moments of void in the turbulent flow of urban life. Lin Yilin's void allows those rare moments in which one can contemplate the city's fundamental changes. 

-- Hou Hanru