NARRATOR:

The Century with Mushroom Clouds: Project for the 20th Century is an explosion performance created by Cai Guo-Qiang in 1996. The collection includes a documentation series of eight colour photographs in landscape orientation, each measuring 64.6 centimetres high and 91.5 centimetres wide. They were inkjet printed in 2007.

The photographs document the artist conducting a performance by making a gunpowder explosion at a different location. There is a miniature mushroom cloud rising in each photo.

The performance locations are places of historical or artistic significance across the United States, such as Manhattan in New York, the Nevada Test Site for nuclear weapons, and the Spiral Jetty sculpture at Utah. All photos were taken during daytime or at dusk. The artist stood at some distance from the camera. Turning his back to the camera, he faced the scenery from a far distance. The scenery includes the dense skyscrapers of the Manhattan business district, the Statue of Liberty, the nuclear test site in a deserted area, the Spiral Jetty at the edge of the Great Salt Lake, a barren mesa, and a desert. In each location, the artist raised his right arm holding a palm-sized tube of gunpowder, and detonated the device, which produced a white mushroom cloud which rose up into the sky. Some of the mushroom clouds were about the same height as the artist, others were twice his height.

In the photos, the farther away an object is from the camera, the smaller it appears. Which means a miniature mushroom cloud that rises in the middle ground of the image creates the illusion that a huge mushroom cloud is rising from the prosperous city far away in the background.

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