Chapter 14: The Feast of Art

A few days later, the annual art festival was opened.

The festival has become the largest cultural and art festival in China, including many works of art at home and abroad, and showcasing contemporary art through various exhibitions and academic lectures. After several years of development, it has the scale of an art fair. The opening day was crowded with journalists and attracted a number of artists and visitors from all over the world.

In this year's festival, performance art is strictly restricted.

Organizers and local neighborhood committees have posted notices to strengthen security and prohibit any performance art in exhibition halls and venues.

The four members of the special task force dressed up as tourists and also came to enjoy this gluttonous feast of contemporary art.

Su Mei was a little disappointed and said: I really want to see performance art, but now they won't come out.

Deputy Secretary Huang pushed Professor Liang in a wheelchair and said: Those performance artists are very bold, and they will not miss this opportunity to show themselves.

Professor Liang said: Everyone should be vigilant, the murderer may have appeared, let all the surveillance personnel be in place, and each person is responsible for an area.

Deputy Secretary Huang arranged for a number of plainclothes police officers to secretly observe the halls and exhibition halls, focusing on whether there were any venues displaying amber or other resin crafts, and the sculpture hall and several art studios were the key targets of surveillance.

There was a commotion in front of the exhibition hall, and the first performance artist appeared.

The man was a long-haired man with an iron hoop on his head, a leopard-print apron around his waist, and a net pocket tied to a bamboo pole in his hand. He was carried out of the exhibition hall by several security guards and brutally thrown on the concrete floor in front of the door.

This performance artist plays the role of the Monkey King.

Sun Wukong shouted: Two little demons, I lost my somersault cloud, I want to catch the cloud, please make it convenient.

Sun Wukong stood up, held the net pocket, waved it a few times, and wanted to break into the hall again.

Two security guards dragged Sun Wukong and punched and kicked, one of the security guards broke the bamboo pole with his knee, and the other scolded him: Dog's neurosis, you still catch clouds, you catch a fart for me.

Su Mei said: Performance art is quite fun, Sun Wukong is quite funny.

Drawing the dragon said: There are four of us, and there are also four people who learn scriptures from Journey to the West, I think I am Wukong, Xiaomei, you are Bajie.

Professor Liang smiled and said, "Let's go hunt for goblins."

Su Mei said: Uncle Liang, you are so bad, you also say that I am Zhu Bajie, I am a sand monk, Xiaobao, are you good at Bajie?

Bao Chop said: Uh...... Well, just kidding, anyway.

The exhibition hall is large, divided into seven pavilions, and the entrance is guarded by staff, so it is unlikely that performance artists will mix in. In the college student design exhibition area, two hostesses wearing red cheongsams were distributing gifts, and one of the hostesses said to Su Mei: Hello, this is a free gift from the organizer.

Su Mei smiled and took a gift box and said thank you.

The painting dragon reached out and asked for a gift box, and the hostess smiled and said: "I'm sorry, we only give it to women and children."

The gifts were distributed in a short time, and the two hostesses left.

Su Mei opened the gift box, and there was actually a fluffy chick inside, standing in the box, like a small yellow pompom.

Su Mei said: It's so cute, chicken, are you hungry, why don't you scream?

Everyone saw that the corners of the chick's tender yellow mouth were tied with a cotton thread, and Su Mei untied the cotton thread, and the chick chirped.

Professor Liang said: I was fooled!

Bao Chu said: Is this also performance art?

Deputy Secretary Huang said: The two hostesses must be performance artists, and the idea they want to express should be - the chick is life, given to women and children, and each recipient will make a choice, facing a question, whether to be responsible for this little life or abandon it.

The dragon said: Xiaomei, what do you do?

Su Mei said: Brother Hualong, how cute this chick is, can you help me hold it?

Drawing the dragon said: I'm not fooled, don't give me this trouble.

Su Mei said: Hmph, it's a big deal I'll take it back, raise chickens in the office of the special case team, and make noise to you every morning.

Next to the exhibition area of college students' works is the art museum, which has the largest flow of people, and some abandoned chickens are running in the gallery, and some of the chickens have been trampled to death......

After visiting the art museum, the special case team looked at a lot of sculptures, but found nothing. The surveillance system in the exhibition hall was taken over by the police, and electronic probes were everywhere, and no suspicious persons were seen in connection with the Amber Child Corpse case.

The first day of the Devouring Festival is over, the pavilion is closed, and the special task force is a little disappointed and can only look forward to tomorrow.

When it gets dark, a group of performance artists gather in the open space outside the pavilion, which is bustling with a few oddly shaped lights. The maker of the lamp described his work to reporters, the oil of these lamps comes from the beauty salon, which is made of fat extracted from the weight loss of beautiful women, and the human oil lamp is named "Aladdin's magic lamp" by the maker, and you can make three wishes.

In the woods next to the clearing, there are several performance artists who hang themselves like they sell pork by sticking steel hooks into their skins and sticking them through their backs.

There was a tractor parked by the woods, a person was lying under the car and constantly tapping with an iron wrench, the sound attracted reporters, several performance artists stood in front of the tractor deeply, one of them thought for a long time and asked: Dude, what theme do you want to express in this work?

The man under the car replied, "I'm broken down here, I'm repairing it."

The police kept a close eye on each of the performance artists, and Bao Slash followed the bald man in the down jacket that summer, when the heartening news came that the cleaners had found a number of amber photographs in the closed pavilion.

There's a human head in the amber!

It was Liu Ming's head, his eyes were open, and his eyes were confused.

The photograph was taken with a mobile phone, and although the pixels are not high, it can be clearly seen - in the photo, the amber head is very exquisitely made, crystal clear, and the human head in the amber is delicate and lifelike.

The photos were posted on the toilet partition door and could be seen by everyone who pooped. A phone number was also left on the photo, indicating that the makers wanted to sell their work.

It's impossible for so many visitors to see every piece of the festival, but they all go to the bathroom.

The toilet was not monitored, and the position in front of the toilet was ignored by the organizers, but it was effectively used. The person who posted the photo may sigh that the best works can only be posted in the bathroom of the art gallery.

Obviously, the person who posted the photo was the murderer, and the amber head was made for sale. This daring guy even left his contact number, and the special case team immediately notified the telecommunications department to launch an investigation into this number. On the day of the festival, there were dozens of people who dialed this number, and there were even overseas phone calls, and it seems that many people were very interested in this artwork after seeing the photos in the toilet and wanted to buy or ask for a price.

Su Mei geolocated this number, hoping to find the murderer as soon as possible, but Bao Slash accidentally found a shortcut.

I wore feathers that summer

The bald man in the velvet jacket paid for a woman who had lost her footing and publicly performed sex in the woods, and the police arrested her on the spot. Bao Chu looked through the bald man's mobile phone, and there was a phone number on the photo of the amber man's head in the address book, and the owner of the number was called: Mark.

The special case team immediately conducted a surprise interrogation of the bald man, and Professor Liang asked: Mark on your mobile phone, is it your friend?

The bald man said: It's a peer, Mark is also a performance artist.

Professor Leung asks: Do you know where he lives?

The bald man said, "It's not far from here, I've been there."

Deputy Secretary Huang said: In this way, you take us to find him, and your crime is not serious, and we can consider releasing you.

The bald man said: Mark has done something bad, you want me to make meritorious deeds, I can take you to him, but I have one condition, I don't want any release, you can detain me, what I want is ...... Detain me for a few days, release me, and you tell the outside world that I escaped from prison...... So that I can be famous too!

The four members of the special case team looked at each other, not knowing how to answer.

The bald man took off his glasses and said: I'm ready, fighting in the field is just the first step of my performance art, you see, this glasses frame is a camouflaged blue gang saw, I originally planned to escape from prison, since you have asked me, I don't have to really escape from prison.

The police, led by the bald man, quickly found Mark's residence.

It was a resin handicraft factory, also in Tongzhou District, not very far from Songzhuang, because the factory had closed down, and the police did not pay attention to it during the investigation. The factory was involved in a lawsuit, was sealed by the court, there was no one in the factory, and the director of the factory also ran away. There are wild grass growing in the courtyard, the workshop is sealed, there are still some raw materials in the warehouse, the workers have long been disbanded and returned home, and the dormitory is idle there.

Mark used to work in a resin craft factory, after the factory closed, he did not return home, during the day he performed performance art on the streets, still lived in the dormitory at night, and sometimes quietly brought friends here to spend the night, the bald man once followed Mark over the brick walls of the factory, and stayed here for a night.

When Mark was arrested by the police and several armed policemen, Mark was in his dormitory dealing with a Hong Kong businessman. Hong Kong businessmen came to buy the amber head made by Mark, and the two sides bargained, because people kept calling Mark to say that they wanted to buy it, and finally the Hong Kong businessman negotiated the deal at a price of 110,000 yuan.

The amber head was placed on the bed in the dormitory, and the amber hands, amber feet, and amber hearts made by Liu Ming were found under the bed.

During the interrogation, Mark was very calm, admitting that he had made amber for the corpse, but denied that he had killed someone.

Professor Liang asked: Could it be that Liu Ming committed suicide?

Mark replied: You're right, he committed suicide, he volunteered to donate his body to me, and I have a donation agreement that he wrote.

The dragon said: Let your mother fart, what is the name of that child, it is also suicide?

Mark said: You said that child, you found out, that child is called Xiao Wa'er, the child's mother used to work in this factory, and later, the factory closed down, and the child's mother was serving food in a ramen restaurant, and Xiao Wa'er was an illegitimate child, not a suicide.

Bao Qi asked: How did the little baby die?

Mark said: "The child said that he died of gas, and asked me to help find a place to bury it, which I did wrong, I made amber, I just wanted to see if I could make people into amber."

Su Mei said: You don't mess around, it's useless to lie, what the hell is the child, where is the ramen restaurant?

Mark said: "The kid eloped with a guy at the ramen restaurant, if you don't believe me, I'll take you to ask."