We trekked out in search of a panorama for Rachel that we had been told about. The rather unlikely subject of the museum was the Chinese national anthem, a museum mostly riding on the knowledge that the anthem had been written in Shanghai, therefore this was a scene of birth. Despite the slimness of the topic in intellectual terms, the museum was rather fantastic in its use of new media. Various loops of old films and photographs playing on screens downstairs including Paul Robeson singing the anthem, and upstairs an assemblage of various ‘texts’: an interactive book which turns the pages as you glide your hand over its surface but it is a projection, a bank of one minute films of contemporary people who have a relationship with the anthem (the films start speaking when touched and can run simultaneously), wall texts showing the chronology of the anthem, and many, many photographs and film posters of poet Tain Han, who penned the lyrics initially for the film ‘Children of Troubled Times’, and Nie Er, composer of the music.  In 1935 it is recorded and therefore distributed across distances along with the film version. Its significance in a national resilience to imperial invaders (Japan) was, according to the museum, critical. Nationalism born in a time of adversity, like most of the ‘best’!

The central theatre-piece was a panorama, recently made, lasting about ten minutes. The sequence was predictably chronological, opening with the silhouette of a boy with a trumpet, running around like a shadow puppet. The range of dissolves, shifts in colour and rhythm and sound affects made it a powerful experience.

Janet Harbord

 

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