The publication Vanishing Point: How to disappear in China without a trace is an artist book by Susanne Bürner, which is a manual written in Chinese on how to disappear from society.
How-to-guides have a long tradition and became a genre on their own. In 1971, Aby Hoffman published “Steal this Book” which is a manual on how to survive without money, starting by stealing this very manual. In many cases, this form of “How-to” has been used by activists as a means to comment on social issues.
Today, in light of recent events, the word of “vanishing” became more important. Rather than
being objected to someone else making you disappear, this manual proposes disappearance on your own terms which might be a weapon against enforced disappearance.
The content of the book has been developed by the artist’s research process during her residency period in China. The advice given is partially fed by the result of numerous discussions about the different roles of people in contemporary Chinese society; partially it presents an adaptation of the original text version for America to the situation in China today. The American version has been published previously since 2006.
The information in the manual is open to be not completed by only this book, but It is rather a collection of practical advice which can be extended and should be discussed further for containing more content by potential contributors on the web.
The book is designed so that it can be easily carried with you. Apart from being a manual, the publication could be seen as a travelogue of someone on the run, illustrated with the photographs of the Chinese provinces they may pass through. This person is physically part of the world but has vanished administratively. They are in a permanent state of limbo between visibility and invisibility.
About the artist
Susanne Bürner is an artist based in Berlin and London. Her work circles around the representation of virtual space and mainly comprises videos, artist’s books and photographs. She has widely exhibited: 2010 Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin, 2009 South London Gallery (solo), 2008 Goethe-Instute Hong
Kong (solo), 2008 OCAT Shenzhen, 2008 Galerie Giti Nourbakhsch Berlin (solo), 2006 Busan Biennale among others. At the moment she’s working on a project about snakes’ anticaption of earthquakes consisting of a video and an artist’s book.
消失點：如何在中國無跡可尋
這是一本可以隨身攜帶的逃生手冊，如果你想要離開中國，不想被追蹤到任何訊息，這或許可以幫助你。
“出版此書的目的在於供大家隨身攜帶，並在需要的情況下提供最佳的應對方法。無論躲避的是他人，還是政府當局，亡命天涯的原因總是眾說紛紜，良莠不齊。本書絕不鼓吹其中的任何一種事由。
想從社會消失的好理由有很多，壞理由也有很多。想從社會消失的好方法擴展功能有很多，壞方法擴展功能亦有很多。接下來我並不會太過深入的討論人們為何要消失，而是討論如何才可以成功消失。
人們因為各種各樣的理由在中國消失，有時他們不過是想出去走走，表達下意見而已。”
關於作者
Susanne Bürner, 居於柏林與倫敦的概念藝術家，作品主要以攝影、錄像和圖書出版。