So the title of my paper is ink, and the piece I'm talking about is myth shooting the sun.
Now this is sort of the. What can I say?
This is the an important example of destruction for the positive, and we'll see why.
In a second, I'm going to tell you a few little stories and they can send gunpowder arrows and fire.
So he is the person we're talking about and we can see here supposedly live four thousand years ago.
But of course, he is a mythological figure. Also knows who die or he.
For those who are interested in this sort of thing, we can see the character written in the old and in from the Sean Chancellor,
which is a Han Dynasty dictionary and from the genuine, which is how you see it on.
That's going back quite a long way into the period, but nowhere near as far as when Hoey was supposed to have lived.
So the tale? And she says a lot to us today, because I mean, if you see when I read it out in the second,
it's it has a lot to do with how we think of the environment today and a lot
to do with perhaps this certain type of politics that which is on the rise,
perhaps and how we can get rid of it. Although there's no e and there is no Yao of Yao and Shrimp, the early emperors.
OK. So when it came to the time of Yao, 10 songs came out together, scorching the series with crops and killing the grasses and trees.
The people had nothing to eat the young youths out jogging, not Fong Fang yo show all caused harm to the people.
So Yao sent E! To Kill. That's out in the wild fields and fields and meadows to kill the going upon the
raging waters to seise the Dar Fang in the marshes of the green hills above,
he shot the sons and below he killed the Yuya. He smoked the shochu in Dongting Lake and captured the [INAUDIBLE] sea in the forests of Mulberry.
The multitudes were overjoyed and installed Yao as the son of heaven.
So that's the story taken from a Han Dynasty.
A collection which was written before 139 B.C. called the financier, and it's the part that's called the treatise on the fundamental norm.
Now, also from the Han Dynasty, but from the later hadn't been nasty.
That was from the former Han Dynasty is we find this the ruling shrine.
And I would recommend the book if anyone's interested in reading further on this.
This is good for us because it tells us a lot about things that can be seen in these freezers, architecture, clothing, et cetera, et cetera.
But it does have the tail of EA here.
And I then quote again from another Han Dynasty telling of the tale, which is actually written around the time that the ruling shrine was was made.
It is said that it is said that in the time of Yao, 10 sons came out together.
The grasses and the trees withered and died. Yao ordered E!
To shoot the sense on the stone. Having shot nine of them.
The crows within the nine suns were all dead. Their wings and feathers fell to the ground.
And so just one son remained. Now, I've put this in because it takes us back, but it doesn't take us back quite far enough because of course,
the Bronze Age was later than was in this so-called in the mythical mythological dynasty of this year.
But these are Shang Dynasty bronze arrowheads. OK, so we've seen this already.
The idea of how run GM bearing arrows with straw boats.
Now this is something that people in China who you know on in everyday conversation may say this.
I've never done it myself, but it has the meaning of to achieve one's goal by making use of the manpower or financial resources of others.
So it's it's a common saying. And in in the left, we see a 19th century woodcut of the event.
And we've heard about this earlier earlier on Drew Young. He decided they'd run out of arrows.
He was the general on the on the one side and he had run out of arrows, so he thought of a way of doing it.
The way to do it was to make straw boats and straw people to put in those boats.
And of course, the arrows all go over and he can.
He basically collects arrows. And so here we have.
He is told he is superhuman for doing that. He was a well-known strategist.
So that we have and we've seen it already.
This is the borrowing your enemies arrows built of the skeleton of an old fishing boat excavated in treasure.
I imagine similar to the boat that was in Venice, is that right?
Perhaps so. But yes. Anyway, so this is a the Museum of Modern Art.
I don't know if it's on permanent display, but I would certainly like to see it in person.
Okay, so we moved from single. The romance of the Three Kingdoms to sway humdrum, which is another is.
These two are four of the so-called great vernacular novels of Chinese literature.
Now, anyone who's read this book or has studied it will know that it has 100 chapters,
but there is a version with one hundred and five chapters and then its fifth chapter.
We have this story, which is that, I mean, it's a sort of spectacle in the self.
I think it's quite interesting.
The Traitors chief ordered 5000 soldiers to attack the deepest recesses of the mountain forest using fire arrows, fire cannon and fire torches.
So is to set it all ablaze.
He ordered his commanders to have carts pushed forward to set them alight and to push them down towards the grain stores on the mountain slopes.
All now charged forward. Then suddenly they shouted, Doomed.
Are we doomed? We had there ever been anything so extraordinary?
How could it be that the sudden wind that had been blowing so fiercely all at once changed direction veered around towards the north?
A clamour like thunder could be heard on the mountains. Chow Douching had used his magical powers to change the course of the wind and fire the fire.
Arrows and flaming torches flew back towards the tracers,
just like millions of golden snakes and dragons of fire twisting and turning, the furious flames flew towards the tracers troops.
The tracers had no place to hide. And all were consumed by fire and flame.
So. This is a fire that is fire, this is gunpowder.
And here we have this is actually with the Ming Dynasty, this is an example of the sort of arrow that became the rocket.
And actually, it doesn't look that dissimilar to the sort of rocket that will be let off on the 5th of November,
coming up for fireworks for Guy Fawkes Day. So it is this sort of arrow that was used in this.
It says in the in the text that you can put one or two into a bamboo tube,
light the fuse and it will fly 100 paces around 100 paces and it can be used in on battles, in water or on land.
And we've already seen that.
I mean, these things sort of remain in people's minds so that the battle on water was the single year in Iowa, and we can see how that fits in.
Another example is this the bow fired fire pomegranate arrow.
I think this is particularly interesting because this would make a great splash if you if you feel that not my place to say so, of course.
But you know, if you put half of it would make a great splash.
I think so. This is the this is the only translation isn't by me.
So I put Joseph Needham down there. I don't know if he did it behind the arrow.
Arrowhead wrap up some gunpowder with two or three layers of soft paper and bind it to the arrow shaft in a lumber shaped like a pomegranate
covered with a piece of hemp cloth tightly tied and seal fast with molten pine resin like the fuse and then shoot it from the bone.
Now, to go even further from from the point we see this is a ching dynasty watercolour.
I put this in because it was on the theme of arrows, but also we have this in the collection here.
And you can actually see it upstairs in the gallery later. China Gallery. Not to this page, but but it is there.
All right. So back to this again is Hoey, and he is basically, I mean, shoot, shoot the Crows to kill the to rid, rid, rid of the be rid of the birds.
Now I should have said before, and I didn't say that at the time that of course, shooting down the nine suns is shooting down the crows.
The Crows live in the sun and they have three three legs.
There's still one left, of course. There's this one sun, and it still has a crow with three legs in it.
And here we see the crows on the grass here. This is also from the Qing Dynasty, like the other thing we just saw,
but this is from the second year of the Qing Dynasty of this was in late Qianlong period.
And just in case people were under the impression that this was an obscure tale, this is known by a lot of people.
I mean, this is even something that you can play at home here. I imagine it was formulated in China, but I don't know because this is a game.
Joey. We've got the sort of.
This sort of bow, this sort of reminds me of this time they're using the Olympics, which almost shoots itself.
You just hold it and shoot it. So here is the sort of supersonic version.
Anyway, so this is, you know, I, you know, if you're interested in these games,
feel free to look it up, not something I would do myself, but there we are. Thoughts. All right.
So I'm speaking about one object in the exhibition, but in fact,
this is the second which is on the same theme or very, very close to the same thing because this is shooting the Sun.
And here we see the Sun has fallen, this is in the exhibition upstairs, I think it might be the second painting.
And what we see here, I think, is that it is a depiction of real weight and real light,
which you don't get usually in in traditional paintings of hooey because you you usually don't see,
as you saw in the wintertime, we saw just saw crows. In fact, you rarely see the Sun in these in tradition, traditionally in Chinese depictions.
And this is the. The original results of the performative act, which was myth shooting the Sons Project for extraterrestrials number 21 from 1994,
which took place in Holland, and this is where our piece comes from.
So we can see it is actually. Signed at the bottom, and it's got it, the Holland cycle, which 1994 and in Chinese.
And on another version or another part of this particular.
A large piece of paper there is there's more about it, so we know that it was done in December the 18th in Holland.
Now this was given to Michael and Juan Sullivan by Typekit, shown in 2002 and entered the collection here in 2015.
And we are very, very lucky to have it. I mean, it is the only what young peace we have in this,
in this museum and of the four hundred and fifty objects that were given by Michael Michael and Juan Salvador in 2015.
Now. Just to finish, I will remind you what I said at the beginning of this, if we think very hard,
we can imagine how this can apply to all our lives at the moment with the environmental issues and with politics as they are.
But while you're thinking about that, we can, uh, I would invite you to go up to the gallery later on and have a look at these two paintings.
So thank you very much.