I LOVE MAO ZEDONG / I HATE THE DALAI LAMA investigates the meaning and possibilities of formulating critique on a political level within the context of the People's Republic of China. Two hundred fifty t–shirts were freely distributed in the 798 Art District, Beijing, carrying the anagrams 'OOZE AMONG LIVED' ('I love Mao Zedong') and 'HAIL DAHLIA EAT MEAT' ('I hate the Dalai Lama'). Both t–shirts also mention a website with the respective sentences as url, on which the date of October 17, 2008 is announced as the day that the 'actual meaning' of the anagrams will be 'disclosed'.

I LOVE MAO ZEDONG / I HATE THE DALAI LAMA was realized during the month before the official opening of the Olympic Games 2008 Beijing, in the midst of a period ending on October 17 when the strict enforcement of the internal ban on the communication or discussion of certain 'sensitive' topics within the Chinese public sphere will be lifted in part, together with the expiration of all foreign media visa. The main focus point of the project is not to criticize Tenzin Gyatso (the Dalai Lama) or Mao Zedong, but to use these figures as markers of the absolute no–go zone of criticality, as exactly the 'sensitive' issues not to be discussed.

I LOVE MAO ZEDONG / I HATE THE DALAI LAMA analyses the 'doublespeak' nature of (radical) political criticism in contemporary Chinese society and in its art communities in particular. It proposes a sociography, an analysis of the social context and possibilities, of formulating a consistent (artistic) critique within the current Chinese sociopolitical climate: how to allow people to question existing orders and/or (temporarily) install different ones? And how to develop these models as a shared (open source) format? Such form of critique shouldn't be immediately recognizable as such — it would put individuals in direct (and very real) danger — and shouldn't resort to resistance techniques (of unambiguous activism) appropriated from Western art such as they are commonly and exhaustively employed within the China contemporary art scene, which due to their lack of proper context have become completely pacified. This is mainly due to the organization of Chinese art institutions within government-approved 'Art Districts' like the 798 District in Beijing, which in 'entertainment park-fashion' mimic Western 'sites of resistance' which artist neighborhoods generally once qualified for. However, this consumer-oriented approach, both targeted at cultural tourists and nouveau riche Chinese alike, coupled with the booming real estate prices of such neighborhoods, exhaustively impairs the research on effective strategies of critique.

I LOVE MAO ZEDONG / I HATE THE DALAI LAMA seeks to express in the most primitive way the current Chinese disposition against these two figures. Since any openly negative comment on Mao Zedong (the untouchable father-of-the-nation icon), or positive comment on Tenzin Gyatso (the number one state terrorist) is strictly off-limit, the only real possibility of voicing internal critique is a statement of the completely obvious: a statement which repeats as its most basic gesture the (semi)official disposition of the Chinese government. The anagrams on the t–shirts form the most primitive and obvious way of encoding a message: "It is not very difficult to find the truth", as one of our Chinese contact confided in us. Together with the general suspicion that surrounds visiting Western artists in the year of the Beijing Olympics, these otherwise blunt and unequivocal utterances introduce the possibility of a different, more nuanced and perhaps even opposed meaning.

Since this tactic executed by two western artists chooses not to participate in the logic of doublespeak (criticizing the government is allowed as long as you don't do it unequivocally) but only mimics its tactics of masking (anagrams) and seeks to affirm the Chinese government's disposition in the most rude way, it installs doubt within the only available language of critical thought in contemporary China. Only through a fully positive affirmation of the official claims on language by the Chinese authorities, new critical models and dispositions can be revealed.