To Add One Meter to an Unknown Mountain

In 1995 Zhang Huan began to stage larger scale performance works that involved other participants. To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain was a collaboration of Zhang Huan and nine East Village artists who lay on top of one another in order to raise the summit of the mountain by one meter. The performance began with each of the artists being weighed and then building a pyramid of bodies with the heaviest laying down first.

To Raise the Water Level in a Fishpond was a work in a similar vein conceived and directed by Zhang Huan. Approximately forty migrant laborers, all males ranging in age from 4 to 60, naked to the waist, walked into a Beijing fish pond together in order to raise the water line through their shared body mass. While raising the water level this group of peasants also raise awareness of, and give voice to their unnoticed community of itinerant workers.