UPDATE, 3:43 pm: Please see this update.
In Stockholm on Monday, on the night of the Nobel banquet, a man dashed butt-naked through the cold and snow, his ebullient battle cry resonating across the dark Swedish night. Wherefore?
According to SVT News (via Notes on the Mosquito, a website about the poetry of Xi Chuan), the streaker was protesting Mo Yan winning the Nobel Prize in Literature. (We don’t know Swedish, but we see very clearly after putting the article through Google Translate that Mo Yan is involved.) He was also very drunk, which most people have to be to denude in subfreezing temperatures.
Via SVT via Google Translate:
The photographer captured one of the men springandes naked on the Stockholm Concert Hall, where the ceremony takes place. The man was quickly disposed of by the police.
- The men were drunk and has been hospitalized for sobering up. They showed up with rowdy and drunk, says Sven-Erik Olsson, press spokesman at police länskommunikationscentral.
Do we know why they showed up like that?
- No, it has not revealed anything. They tried to ask them before putting them in sobering. We’ll see if they can say something sensible when sober.
We’re not holding our breath on that last part.
UPDATE, 2:55 pm: Thanks to the top commenter, who points out that a second SVT article claims the streaker, Meng Huang, was “completely sober when he was arrested.” Also, Liao Yiwu was there: he’s the man in the black overcoat who ushers Meng over the first cordon. You can clearly hear Liao (or someone) telling Meng in Chinese, “Run.
UPDATE, 1:47 pm: Youku censors figured it out; the video has been deleted. We’ll try uploading to some other places. 4:20 pm: It’s on 56.com, embedded above. Let’s see how long it lasts.
In a second article, journalists at the scene refute the fact that the man was drunk. Its also mentioned the man and two friends also at the scene were writers/artists in exile, who’d come specifically to protest against the award.
The second article, also in Swedish:
http://www.svt.se/kultur/de-uppforde-sig-lungt-och-redligt
Sorry hold all horses and phones etc – does that article/video say THE Liao Yiwu was there, and that Meng Huang was the one streaking?
way to cite Notes on a Mosquito, well done
That’s right, according to SVT (Swedish state television). Here’s the first paragraphs of the second article, in a rough translation:
“- There were absolutely no signs of intoxication, says SVT Culture News photographer Mikael Eriksson.
The background story to the nude action, which attracted a lot of attention last night, involved Liao Yiwu, Meng Huang and an additional regime critic who had planned a protest action against Mo Yan being awarded the Nobel prize.
The plan was to bring a chair for Mo Yan to give to the jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo. It would symbolise the empty chair meant for Xiaobo when he could not attent the Nobel peace price ceremony in 2010, due to him being in jail.
But since the chair never arrived, the artist trio decided to perform a different action. In central Stockholm, Huang got undressed and jumped the fence, dashig towards the concert hall, cheered on by Liao Yiwu (the man in the blac coat in the video)”
It’s a bit unclear what they mean in regards to the chair Mo Yan was to give to Liu Xiaobo.
THANK YOU
You’re welcome. Happy to contribute to an excellent blog. Let me know if you need bits of scandinavian translated in the future.
Liao has been involved in the Swedish debate on the prize earlier this year, calling it “the Nobel prize’s bigest dishonour in a hundred years”
Liao’s comment in Sweden’s major daily Dagens Nyheter:
http://www.dn.se/dnbok/dnbok-hem/liao-yiwu-att-skriva–utan-att-vittna-ar-skamligt
Very good show, STOIC.