Song Dong, Breathing, Part 2 (1996). On a frigid New Year’s Eve, Song Dong carried out a performance in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, for a century the site of historic public gatherings and demonstrations. For 40 minutes he lay face-down, breathing onto the pavement until a thin layer of ice formed beneath his mouth—a symbolic attempt to “breathe new life” into a locale associated with the bloody events of June 1989. Presented as a large-scale lightbox-mounted color transparency, this work is accompanied by an audiotape of the artist softly breathing.