The Color Orange

speaking for The Color Orange Project

Can China forbid the color orange?

Purpose: To use the Olympics in Beijing 2008 to visually put focus on China's violations of human rights, and to create a visual symbol, using the color orange, to remind people that "we do know there is something wrong with the respect for human rights in China." We will use the color orange and make it a symbol of the protest against the human rights violations in China.

Due to the strict censorship it will be practically impossible for sports people and spectators to get into the stadium with obvious symbols in form of text or pictures. But no authority will be able to ban the color orange, although it is obvious for everybody that it expresses a conspicuous accusation against the human rights violations in China.

Starting the campaign: The project will be launched at the beginning of 2008. We will send out information to vast circles in various languages.

Background: China is known as a country that practices great suppression of its own people and of human rights. The examples are countless, from the annexation of Tibet to the slaughter of their own students at the Tienanmen Square. Due to the extreme violation of the Freedom of Speech, it is impossible to talk about this suppression in China. There is no doubt that China will use the Olympics 2008 to improve its image. By carrying out a perfect and efficient Olympic game in 2008, they hope to be able to promote China as an efficient and modern country.

Some have compared the Olympics in Beijing 2008 with the Olympics in Berlin in 1936 where Hitler used the games to promote Nazi-Germany as a great country where things worked fine. Many things have changed since then, but to stop China in repeating the same ‘success’ as Berlin1936, it is necessary that everyone supports a common project that tells both China and the many millions of viewers that a modern and efficient society must contain self-determination and the respect for human rights. It is necessary to make a statement during the Olympics that this kind of respect does not exist in China. Usually there is strict control with political and ethic expressions in relation with the Olympics – and this control will most likely be even stricter in China.

Olympic Games and politics: The core of the Olympic ideal is to unite humanity and to avoid division due to political or other discrepancies. We agree about this. The Olympic Charter says: “No kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.”1. This declaration is made to ensure that the Games are carried out on a sheer athletic basis. We also agree about this point. However, the mixture of sport and politics is already a fact, when the Olympic Committee chooses to arrange the Games in a country with a reputation of extensive violations of the human rights. Under the pretext that the Games should be apolitical, the regime gets an opportunity of promoting itself for billions of TV viewers as a modern and well functioning society without contradiction.

The Olympic Charter emphasizes as fundamental Olympic principles “respect for universal fundamental ethical principles” and “promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity”2 But can anybody properly claim that the Chinese government complies with these ideals? – We view the use of the Color Orange as an ethical and apolitical statement in essential unison with the fundamental principles of the Olympic Movement. Hence it is important and completely legitimate that critics of China’s human rights policy make a common effort to send out a signal “there’s something wrong in China, and we know it”. This is the only way to secure politically balanced Olympic Games where the sports people’s great achievements are not abused as political propaganda by a repressive dictatorship.

The idea: The idea is to redefine the color orange turning it into a symbol of the violations of human rights in China, instead of being just a color. We will encourage everyone who goes to the Olympics in 2008 to wear something with the color orange, like a dress, a hat, a shirt, a neck tie, a pen etc., so as to symbolize that something is wrong with China's treatment of its own population. At the same time we will encourage people outside the Olympic stadiums in both China and the rest of the world to use the color orange during the Olympic days with the aim of indicating their resistance against China's violation of human rights. By reinterpreting and using the color orange as a symbol of these violations we checkmate China.

Not even China can forbid “the color Orange”. At the same time we give thousands of athletes, journalists, spectators and others in Beijing 2008 an opportunity to show that they are aware of the fact that the Olympics are held in a country that openly violates basic human rights. I believe that thousands of human rights organizations, sport unions, Tibet committees, environmental organizations, the Chinese Democratic Movement and others who are also interested in influencing China in a positive direction will take this reinterpretation of the color orange positively. They will incorporate the color orange into their own materials on the Olympics and China, and they will encourage their members to spread the idea and to develop creative ideas on how to use the color orange.

Art perspective: It is the Danish sculptor Jens Galschiot and his art workshop (Art in Defence of Humanism, AIDOH www.aidoh.dk) that is behind the ‘color Orange’ project. Galschiot thinks of art as nonverbal communication and he often uses his art to make international art happenings to place focus on defenders of humanism. He usually uses his sculptures as artistic manifestations, but as a result of the extremely limited Freedom of Speech at the Olympics in 2008, he has chosen the color orange. He funds his art events himself mainly through the sale of bronze sculptures to art collectors and he is therefore completely independent from political, economic and religious interests.

Jens Galschiot says: “This is not really a campaign in the traditional sense. The project has to work as a catalyst for some kind of wave or feeling that repeats itself over and over again and that flushes all over the world. It is more related to poetry and art than to actual political activism. It is a global history that tells itself. You can say that we are launching a fight against a totalitarian regime about their monopoly of the interpretation of reality.

"The project will, through its own dynamics, function as what Joseph Beuys has called a “Gesamtkunstwerk” in which the distinction between the artist, the art itself and the viewer has become blurred. Everybody becomes part of the art even if they want it or not, either through what they do or through what they avoid doing. Many people will start to wear the color orange to support the campaign; while others who might already be wearing orange will start wearing other colors. Their expression will be noted whatever they decide to do. An unpredictable factor in this is of course how the Chinese authorities will react. They might easily bring themselves into a situation in which they involuntarily will look comical."

Websites: The internet domain thecolororange.net will be the catalyst for this event. On this site the press and other interested will be able to get information and inspiration on how to use orange creatively in connection with the Olympics 2008.

The website includes:

• A list of the people supporting the project and who want to use the color orange in connection with the Olympics. You can add yourself directly on the website and there will be links to other websites that are using the color orange.
• A mailing list sign-up to get the latest information on the progress of the event.
• A catalog of links to websites that debate and shed light on human rights violations in China.

The website will also be used to disseminate news to the press on the progress of the event and there will soon be photos and articles for download.

The Internet: We will send out the appeals through Jens Galschiot’s network (AIDOH) with a request for people to pass it on through their own networks. This should make it possible for the project to reach a lot of people. The AIDOH network includes some 35,000 people (one of them is me) with close connection to the media, activism, NGOs and art activities all over the world. In addition to this, we expect that many of the affiliated organizations and others will send out the request through their own networks.

We will create different profiles, newsgroups, debate forums on the internet, for example on www.facebook.com. In Second Life we will request people to wear orange scarves and so on during the week that the Olympics take place.

What could ordinary people do to help redefine the color orange: It is important to give ordinary citizens who are not going to the Olympics some options to support the project and make their own statements about China. This could for example be: On the internet they can put the orange logo that supports the project on their websites, internet-profiles or by passing on press releases and information about the Orange Project and about human rights in China. They could add themselves on the lists that support the continuous focus on China during the Olympics.

Ambassadors: To make this project as wide as possible, we request outstanding personalities to sign up as ambassador. That could be human rights organisations, Chinese dissidents, outstanding sportspeople, trade union leaders, cultural celebrities etc. I propose that we, as an internet community and political action group, publically support The Color Orange Project.

The symbolism in ‘the color Orange’ project: The color is inspired by the Tibetan and Burmese monks who use orange as part of their clothing. The color also evokes associations to the prison uniforms from Guantánamo.

Orange is a mixture of red and yellow. In China red is the symbol of fire and yellow is the symbol of earth; these two elements neutralize each other like some sort of Yin Yang. Orange can therefore also be interpreted as a kind of harmony; we demand that China acquires harmony and balance in their human rights 'balance sheet'.

My mental imagery is this: that the color I think of as China is red, just like their flag. I would like to see more kindness, humility, fairness symbolized by the color yellow, I would like to see more yellow influence in the Chinese government, I want to see more orange.

Won't you join me?