Hung Liu on guns, art, history, forced labor, and taboos

[Music] my name is Hong Luo in Chinese will be Leo Hong I was 18 so how the Cultural Revolution happened in China I was sitting through the countryside from 1968 to 72 for years working with the peasants in the field there's no wage there's no week and whenever there's a short time I always did some drawing of the woman breastfeeding baby and people are so tired of laying on the ground or taking a break I just want to do something else besides just eat and work and sleep from 79 to 81 I really started my so-called professional art training as a teacher's Cooper see we adapted the full ideology from Soviet Union it's called a socialist surrealism like a mother don't said you know are just a part of the bigger revolutionary machine you you should be like a screw in the machine you have to do the great leader always a glowing always taller that anybody else the peasants always smile even working you know in the field harvests that's not true I call them socialist the surrealism because there's nothing like that in real life I've been the US since 1984 I got more and more into using historical photograph because even without knowing anything you look at a photograph you avant-garde is a pending I did in 1993 I had a tiny photograph black/white it's really small when I was in college we were supposed to go to the countryside then learn from the soldiers we were trained that to be prepared and ready to find our enemies that time is very clear number one enemies is American imperialism I remember I was a top shooter and that picture brought back my memory the tiny picture of me with carrying a semi-automatic rifle then I feel like I want to do a cutout like a pop image without any background and then the bandage I thought there I can