Tang Contemporary, 798 Art District, No.2 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing

17 December, 2011 – 25 February, 2012

Photography seems to be the perfect medium for Wang Qingsong’s monumentally theatrical set pieces. In his overblown symbolic constructions and groups of people, the artist addresses issues of both a general and personal nature. In the gallery, these are presented as lush, large-format photographs allowing the artist’s attention to detail in the settings to be held static in front of our eyes for detailed attention. In the spaces of Tang Contemporary the artist is now presenting two set pieces, as well as the photographs, to the audience, which leads to the realisation that the extra dimensions may not benefit the works.

Photography’s power of presentation through the singular viewpoint is put to great use in Wang Qingsong’s epic tableaux. Despite the complexity of his settings, each piece works towards an overall symbolism – a message that each photo presents to the viewer. The works make comments on life, or address social realities in China today (consumerism supplanting the ideologies of the past, for example). Wang’s world is one highlighting the absurdities of the situations, breaking down our assumptions about them. The quality or value of the messages being put across in Wang’s images may be debatable, but the photographs’ effectiveness as spectacle cannot be denied.

Unfortunately, bringing these constructed situations back into real life seems to dissipate the coherence of the image and the symbolism that the photograph so effectively presents – the installations dilute their power.

Tang Contemporary’s main gallery space is taken over by a large installation made up of what appears to be the aftermath of a celebration. The sad remains of half-deflated balloons, and their shiny, cartoon-headed helium counterparts, are bunched together and dispersed around the volume of the room. Most are no longer capable of floating and are attached to strings hanging from the ceiling to keep them in place. In amongst these are objects which also partake of the balloons’ enforced defiance of gravity: a metal bed, a wheelchair and bits of furniture; a bicycle hanging with a Christmas tree; an old coat and a collection of duvets in colourful patterned fabrics. Through it all a long, flying Chinese dragon snakes through the debris, looking like a cheap decoration in the same gaudy aesthetic as the balloons.

More debris is littered around the side room next to the main space, this time with no support and left to grace the floor, adding a more uncontrolled feeling in contrast to the main room where everything is held in suspension.

This suspension relates to the second installation, Poisonous Spider (2011), in the back room of the gallery. This piece is a recreation Wang’s photograph of the same name (also on show in the upstairs galleries). The photograph shows a worker suspended at the centre of a huge, barbed-wire spider’s web. The artist has attached random, everyday rubbish to the web as if the spider uses this to attract its prey. The new installation replaces the suspended man with an empty wheelchair standing in front of the wire structure. The wheelchair appears in both installations, and (particularly with Poisonous Spider) places the body (and its lack) into the installation.

The large photographic prints upstairs show Wang’s elaborately constructed environments and heavily symbolic scenes. Aside from the aforementioned Poisonous Spider (2005), Home from the same year, shows a recreation of a half-destroyed Beijing hutong (alleyway) building with the character for “demolish” (拆) prominently spray-painted on its walls. The character 拆, and its associations with the destruction of traditional residences to make way for the “new,” has become a controversial symbol of the roughshod development of Beijing over recent decades. Wang’s photo shows a lone man with his back to us, leaning against a doorway in what could be a sad or resigned pose. This building is perhaps the figure’s ex-home with all his possessions strewn amongst the rubble.

I find this tendency to heavy-handed symbolism a problem with Wang’s work. This is exemplified with the newest photograph in the show, Goddess (2011). In a photo of another of his large constructed tableaux, in amongst a forest of decrepit scaffolding, discarded artist’s materials and a group of chickens, the torso and head of the Statue of Liberty can be made out. The scene appears to be a sculptors’ studio, with the figure made from large panels of clay applied to a wooden structure. However, the figure is only half-finished (or already beginning to disintegrate), as parts of her crown are missing and there are large cracks showing between the clay panels.

What takes this picture into the region of farce is that the figure of Liberty, instead of wearing the flowing robes of the original, here adopts a “Mao” jacket. This style of jacket, as a symbol, has such a deep resonance in the Chinese psyche and also in Chinese contemporary art that it’s difficult to judge its use here. For many contemporary artists in China it has served as a ubiquitous reference to “recent Chinese history,” appearing in works by Sui Jianguo, Wang Guangyi, Zhan Wang, Zhang Xiaogang, etc. So much so that it is now a cliché of huge proportions. I feel that, to be used now, such an image must be ironic – not of its original use as an item of clothing synonymous with China’s past – but of its use in contemporary art.

The wall-text suggests Goddess and Home represent disillusionment “both for the individual pursuit of basic materials (such as a stable home) or about the country’s political and religious ideals of conception.” Which may well be true, but the mixed messages of Goddess could also represent, on the one hand, a rapprochement reached between Chinese and other cultures (culture is simply a melange of different sources, with the process of assimilation half-finished, half-falling apart); or, on the other hand, this image may inadvertently suggest that China’s recent art history has in itself become a set of clichés ripe to be picked over.

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published 23 January, 2012 on ArtSlant.

For me, the classic, single-viewpoint photograph is a seduction. It threatens to convince us that it is imparting a “truth” about the world by its seemingly straightforward presentation of a view. Art’s use (and more importantly, abuse) of the medium and its formats has been instrumental in disabusing us of the static image’s privileged status as a purveyor of truth. So these days no one should be under any illusion about these fixed perspective, mono-directional images—neither for their depiction of reality nor for the value of their meanings.

Siemens Home Appliance Art Space, Taoci 2nd Street, 798 Art District, 100015 Beijing, China

23 July – 7 August, 2011

In 2010, on a side street behind the main drag of 798, the German appliance company Siemens opened a small art space as part of their mission to “finance young artists’ projects and provide community service around China.” As part of this worthy cause, this month the gallery is hosting Overstep, a show of two young Chinese artists Shen Yi Elsie and Lei Benben, curated by Pi Li (Director of Boers-Li Gallery).

Over the past few years both Shen Yi Elsie and Lei Benben have moved from photographic works to a more expansive approach to media – in Lei’s case into video and for Shen a practice that has developed through video into public interventions. For Pi Li, their work “oversteps” discredited boundaries of objectivity, fragmenting narrative into disjointed personal histories, creating a situation he characterises as “the inversion of time and space, [where] reality starts to drift into illusion and no longer firmly detains us.”

The video China Utopia (2009) by Lei Benben, is constructed in three short “chapters” each presenting scenes in which preoccupied figures are placed in sensuous environments. In the first chapter a riverbank scene bisected by a thin tree is interrupted by a man gazing out with us at the view. Stepping forward he removes his tie and drops it to the ground, but any thought that this might be a prelude to a full disrobing and leap into the water is denied as he sits to contemplate the scene. Following this, a two-part chapter begins with a view down another river into which a boat is paddled. On the boat four figures stand becoming dark shapes extending up from the boat, against the colourful, mountainous surroundings. The figures look around them, while the boat comes to rest in the middle of the river. The scene then changes to three figures in army fatigues in a cleared patch of field. They seem uncertain and walk in different directions, never coming into contact with each other. In the third and final chapter, a young urbanite wanders a bucolic wood, the ground covered with flowering plants. Sitting down against a tree he seems to doze, whereupon we are taken to a boldly coloured garden in blurred focus where on a traditional pavilion a duo of characters in Chinese opera dress languidly dance.

China Utopia, while giving over a clear feeling of contemplation, perhaps suffers from the lack of direction that may be representative of this “overstepping.” In many ways the purposelessness of the characters reminds me of Yang Fudong’s work, but (as with Yang Fudong) this can become tiresome without an obvious resolution or point to the activity. Taking a look at Lei’s other works (not on show), it is clear she has an eye for the purposeful/purposeless movements of figures within landscape – for example in the short video Tuanjiehu Park from 2009, where she surreptitiously films people performing their personal exercise routines in the titular Beijing park, a theme which recurs in Fresh Air (2010) but with far more emphasis on non-diegetic sounds creating an idealised backing to the gestures.

In the other rooms, Shen Yi Elsie presents works produced over the past few years that move beyond her earlier photographic tableaux, bringing in a social awareness, which greatly energises the pieces for me. The video work The Neon God (2008) takes her still shots of teenage migrant labourers performing menial work, and adds light trails which animate the figures as if revealing their hidden powers through photography. The video takes the photographs a step beyond static shots, animating the scenes through fades and tracking shots, however I am not sure that this additional manipulation adds much more than spectacle to the photos. It may be the case that the narrativity of the photographs themselves works well enough in its own right.

That said, this video reveals the artist’s urge to push her photography ever further, something that takes a leap in the public interactions of the Breath series. Her initial foray was in 2010 when she inserted little strips of pink paper, with the Chinese characters for “Breathe” on them, into closed walnuts shells. These were then mixed with unadulterated nuts on a market stall that the artist manned. These acted like messages in a bottle, sending the artist’s little reminders of life out into the world for the public to accidentally come across, beyond the control of the artist.

Shen has taken this method further with her works in other settings. Working in a dry cleaning establishment she inserted little folded paper objects—which she describes as “a common form of a folded letter or delivering a message in old times”—into the cleaned clothes. On the paper is written “please breath” ready for the client to discover. Other works in this series involve the artist creating a set of small ink stamps, whose impression she applies inside of newspapers to match the existing fonts, but highlighted in red ink. She then takes on the role of delivering these adjusted papers, the additions again reminding people to breathe. A fourth piece sees the artist handwriting signs offering to teach people to breathe if they phone the number provided. These signs are pasted on walls amongst other homemade adverts, inviting strangers to contact her for this unusual service.

Each piece is presented as a vertical series of photos accompanied by examples of the artefact involved – a very important and effective way of presenting the intervention without resorting to cliché. However, one point of concern for me in these pieces, is the relationship that the artist sets up with the labourers and the roles she takes on – which risks becoming patronising. The relationship between these two sections of society is an issue it is clear she is concerned with, but the focus of the pieces seems to be more on the artist performing the role interacting with the customers, which somehow precludes the body of the labourer themselves.

That criticism aside, I loved the way these actions step beyond themselves and reach out to an audience that to a large extent cannot be predetermined to bias the effect. Both Breath and The Neon God become a way for the artist to re-imagine the relationship of communication between the worker and their clients.

Pi Li, in his text for the show, describes “Overstep” as, for example, a move from “closed” to “open” narration: “from uniform to paradoxical.” This small show demonstrates the positive and negative consequences of such a move, and is a welcome demonstration of how a critical curatorial structure can productively work with it’s chosen set of works to leave room for questions and create something that takes them beyond themselves for the audience.

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published 1 August, 2011 on ArtSlant.

One thing I noticed is that everyone wanted to express their private selves. Unlike older photographic trends that were focussed on society or big topics, younger artists are focussed on their inner world.

This is certainly a strong trend in art-making here in China, something which I’ve been aware of ever since I arrived here, but it’s interesting to hear this from someone who has such a perspective on the recent history of Chinese photography.

Rong Rong (2009). Interviewed by Edwards, Dan. the nurturing of chinese photography. RealTime, issue #92 (Aug-Sept). [Online]. Available from http://www.realtimearts.net/article/issue92/9557 [Accessed 6 June 2010]. Reproduced with permission.

These brief notes on some “alternatives” in Beijing (and beyond) were inspired by a visit to one of the groups mentioned, TCA, which led me to question just what it meant to be “alternative,” what is “alternative” a reaction against and how do these organisations go about positioning themselves?

UPDATE: I’ve been alerted to a couple of other “alternatives” – Homeshop, and the golden tent. But I don’t know enough about them yet – working on that. Keep them coming!

Right from the outset using the word “alternative” leaves one open to all sorts of questions. “Alternative” is such a relative term that, to be understood and be useful, demands a pretty close analysis of the context within which it is used.

A characteristic of the art scene in China is the hyper-commercialised gallery-based system. The growth of the Chinese art market over the last twenty years, based around the hot-house development and promotion of the a generation of Chinese artists, has led to an unrealistic model for today’s Chinese artists – the changing economic environment over the past three years has revealed the unsustainable nature of this system. The most visible generator of this growth has undoubtedly been at the gallery level which has acted as the front line in the development of a particular group of artists. Obviously this is their job, and they have their place in the system and shouldn’t be criticised for being good at what they do, but this ability has almost been too successful, when coupled with an almost uncritical acceptance of the goods on the part of the buyers that led to a “bubble” in the market. The effect of the bubble and its collapse have not only affected the market, but also the reputations of those involved, and the reputation of particular formats of art which became indicative of the bubble.

So what does “alternative” mean in this context? These alternatives position themselves as trying to do things differently, but how that manifests itself in reality depends on whom you are talking to. For some “alternative” is positioned as against a discredited form of gallery system. A focus on the pursuit of sales is seen as symptomatic of something which has encouraged bad habits in the past. Another “alternative” is in being independent from funding partners which might be seen to direct the focus of the organisation unnecessarily. For each group their bug-bear is seen to have an adverse affect on production or programming in terms of inertia or control over the content: to position oneself as “alternative” makes an implicit or explicit assumption that in some way the “originals” restrict or subvert production.

Looking specifically at the consequences for Beijing, critic and curator Pauline Yao presents the situation thus:

At present, contemporary art has been largely defined by its commercial nature and increasing confinement to purpose-built art districts in the remote outskirts of the city. This raises many questions regarding art’s physical remove from the urban fabric of the city, not to mention the severing of an artwork’s ties to the very social and political conditions it is alleged to represent.

So, how do these “alternatives” present themselves in their specific realities? The following is a summary of the various published materials for a set of organisations that present themselves as “alternative” in some way, or could be seen as such. At the end of this piece, I’ve added a set of appendices which copy out the relevant passages from which this information comes from. This list is by no means complete, and simply reflects my own knowledge and experience. Additions and corrections are more than welcome.

Arrow Factory (Beijing)

• Personnel: Pauline Yao (curator, writer), Rania Ho (artist), Wang Wei (artist)
• http://www.arrowfactory.org.cn/
• Non-commercial (small-scale sales take place as part of a show)
• Non-product
• Consistent location
• Small physical size
• No fixed calendar
• Longer-term shows (more than one month) (including flexibility about closing dates)
• Support
  • Self-funded, donations, some small sales
  • Dedicated page on website listing supporters (includes logos and links where available)
• Comments:
  • Freedom from pressures of time and sales
  • Allows for longer projects
  • No public entry to the space, but uses the street in front as gathering space (enforces integration with the local area)

Vitamin Creative Space (Guangzhou)

• Personnel: Zhang Wei, Hu Fang, etc.
• http://www.vitamincreativespace.com/
• Commercial
• Consistent location
• No consistent programme
• Brand building for artists
  • Cao Fei/RMB City
  • Xu Tan/Keywords
• Support
  • No information about external support on website
• Comments:
  • Opposes “institutional funding” with commercial approach
  • Acting as “an ‘independent’ art space and as a ‘commercial’ gallery”

The Shop (Vitamin Creative Space) (Beijing)

• Personnel: (as with Vitamin Creative Space)
• http://vitamincreativespace.blogbus.com/
• Commercial
• Products:
  • Unique works, but also multiples, publications
• Consistent location
  • Commercial premises in shopping and business district (albeit a relatively quiet corner of one)
• No consistent programme
• Extras:
  • Talks, events
  • Insertions into galleries/art fairs (Frieze (London), CIGE (Beijing))
• Support
  • No information about outside support on website
• Comments:
  • Takes on aspects of a shop, less of a gallery
  • Events more flexible and experimental
  • Image of being less precious (more affordable?)

Chart Contemporary (various sites)

• Personnel: KC & Megan Connolly, etc.
• http://www.chartcontemporary.com/
• Commercial
• Consultancy
• Open House: Commissions
• Education activities, organised tours
• No consistent programme
• Support
  • List of clients on website, emotional investment in the project encouraged by naming them “ChARTers”
• Comments:
  • Business-like image
  • Website includes a press room, press kit, etc.
  • Professional: “Reliable and reputable, we provide our clients with the highest level of customer service and expertise.”

This City Art (TCA) (Beijing)

• Personnel: Martin Barnes (artist), Oak Taylor-Smith (artist)
• http://www.thiscityart.org/
• Artist-run organisation
• Commercial (focused on wall-mounted prints/design/photography)
• Public space, underpass, potentially anywhere
• Ultra-short term (one night only)
• No consistent programme
• Support
  • No information about outside support on website
• Comments:
  • Reproducing aspects of the gallery, outside of a gallery
  • Organised self-promotion/marketing techniques
  • Testing existing structures in new locations

INH-SZ 传承：深圳 (Shenzhen)

• Personnel: Claire Louise Staunton (director, curator), etc.
• http://inheritanceprojects.org/inh-sz/
• Curatorial project
• Non-profit, non-commercial organisation
• Short-term location
• No consistent programme
• Support
  • Provides a list of supporters on website
• Extras:
• “Exhibition, performance, music and film programme, commission new artworks, foster collaborations between local and international artists and build a publicly accessible contextual library…”

Artist Projects

Artist projects sit in a different relationship with art making than do the organisations above. The following example straddles the division between the organisation and the artwork. It plays with the same concerns as the organisations above, but intends to push the meanings and boundaries of the concepts much further, given its position of relative autonomy from the systems they are addressing. A gallery is restricted in its activities in that it must maintain its reputation as a valuable part of its currency in the art world. Artists are in a position to critique without suffering many of the consequences to their reputation that a gallery lives or dies by. Money considerations are still present though, but the artist sits in a different relation to the generation of funds than the gallery and, if they are inclined to critique the gallery by playing out its role, are given more leeway to fail in that respect. The artist has a different set of priorities which change the rules that they wish to abide by.

Donkey Institute of Contemporary Art (DICA) (various sites)

• Personnel: Michael Yuen (artist), Yam Lau (artist)
• http://www.donkeyinstitute.net/
• Curator/artist project
• Non-commercial
• Non-product
  • Video, but potential for other things
  • Screening curated collections of video
• No consistent programme
• Moveable structure
• Screen sized (+ donkey and cart)
• Event based
• Support
  • Provides a list of supporters on website
• Comments:
  • The structure is a performance in itself
  • Various levels of curation (on-screen, on donkey)

Presentation and sponsors

Marketing and branding are important indicators of an organisations’ intentions – their presentation as more or less monolithic institutions and the level of professionalism they project to the world is a factor of their attention to these tools. Funding and support, the life-blood of any organisation, are also issues that they address in various ways and situate themselves in different positions in relation to.

Chart Contemporary promote their organisation in a consistent fashion, creating a strong brand as well as clearly positioning their sponsors as part of the project. Arrow Factory have less of an over-arching branding system in place, indeed their branding is somewhat subtle. They also include a page of supporters on their website, ranging from individuals to organisations. Vitamin, deliberately position themselves as reliant on sales rather than “institutionalized” funding: “In order to operate independently from institutionalized funding, [Vitamin] is active both as an ‘independent’ art space and as a ‘commercial’ gallery.” Arrow Factory, on the other hand, distance themselves from commercial considerations: “…we do not sell anything. We subsist on small contributions from friends, colleagues and ourselves.”

“Alternative”?

So the use of the term “alternative” is not necessarily anti- the commercialisation of the artworld. From the above examples it has a lot to do with providing more possibilities for art. The major objection to galleries seems to be that they are inflexible, unable to deal with certain types of work, and tend to force artwork into certain channels and forms.

The examples I’ve mentioned play a vital role in developing the art systems. The production of these “alternatives” addresses perceived problems or deficiencies in the system. Their existence is an important aspect in the critique of art and the critique of its dissemination. Experiments and new forms of presentation are important to provide depth and perspective to the art world and to take it away from an over-reliance on a single way of dealing with art and a single type of location in which to experience it. A healthy art ecosystem supports multiples avenues of experience. These multiple avenues provide the checks and balances that prevent one section of the system from presenting a distorted vision of art and its value.

Appendices

Appendix 1: Arrow Factory

Arrow Factory is an independently run alternative art space in Beijing that is located in a small hutong alley in the city center. Arrow Factory reclaims an existing storefront and transforms it into a space for site-specific installations and projects that are designed to be viewed from the street 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Arrow Factory’s modestly sized space (15 sqm) occupies a former vegetable stand, signaling an economy of means that informs our practice and promotes artistic collaboration, exploration and experimentation across different cultural contexts and viewing publics. We are committed to presenting works by local and international artists that are provisional in nature, highly contingent upon the immediate environment and that form meaningful responses to the diverse economic, political and social conditions of our given locality and everyday lived experiences.

Arrow Factory, founded in 2008, was initiated as a response to the current conditions facing contemporary art production in Beijing. At present, contemporary art has been largely defined by its commercial nature and increasing confinement to purpose-built art districts in the remote outskirts of the city. This raises many questions regarding art’s physical remove from the urban fabric of the city, not to mention the severing of an artwork’s ties to the very social and political conditions it is alleged to represent. For Arrow Factory meaning making is an activity that occurs through interacting with the pre-existing givens of a site, and adopting a strategy whereby the social frame does not so much ‘surround’ as much as it becomes part of the work.

Arrow Factory shares the same name as the hutong alley in which we reside. We hold a temporary commercial business license, but we do not sell anything. We subsist on small contributions from friends, colleagues and ourselves. We do not hold openings and we operate modestly, spontaneously and flexibly. Our mission is simply to provide an alternative; a different context in which artists can experiment with pushing the relationships that radiate outwards from the levels of the individual, the neighborhood, the urban, the region, to finally, the global.

Supporters

• 现金赞助 Cash Donations
  • 匿名友人 Anonymous Donor
  • ArtHub
  • Peikwen Cheng & Shanti Christensen
  • 北京北青文化传播有限公司 Beiqing Culture and Communication Co., Ltd.
  • Joan Lebold Cohen
  • 贺潇 Fiona He
  • 徐峥 贾伟 夫妇 Mr and Mrs Xu Zheng and Jia Wei
• 物品捐赠 In-kind Donations
  • 李松松 Li Songsong
  • Paper Restaurant
  • Roy Kesey
  • Magnus Lindblom
  • Frank Yu
  • Michele Matteini

  Appendix 2a: Vitamin Creative Space

  Vitamin Creative Space is exploring an alternative working mode, specifically geared to the contemporary Chinese context. In order to operate independently from institutionalized funding, it is active both as an ‘independent’ art space and as a ‘commercial’ gallery. Vitamin Creative Space is actively challenging the preconception by merging these two, which traditionally are opposed strategies for supporting and presenting contemporary art, raising the searching of new Chinese contributions both from artistic practice level and institutional level within the new global context.

  Appendix 2b: The Shop (Vitamin Creative Space)

  the shop is a public space produced by Vitamin Creative Space that takes a more organic view of art practices, surrounded as they are by daily processes. As a space of daily experimentation and time accumulation, the shop will eventually not only contextualize but also produce reality.

  Appendix 3: chART Contemporary

  chART Contemporary is a Beijing based curatorial lab dedicated to Bringing together art & people. Our overarching goal is to establish cultural bridges between the East and the West through programs and activities that promote contemporary art and culture. We actively maintain an extensive network of artists, architects, designers, collectors, galleries, museums and academics. We are cultural producers fulfilling a global need by creating an open platform for artistic expression through research, education and curatorial integrity.

  Redefining The Black & White Box Model

  Open House embodies chART Contemporary’s mission of bringing together art and people through curatorial initiatives that educate, stimulate and support the production of new work by emerging artists. Open House is inspired by marketing tools used by local real estate developers to sell property based on showrooms that are designed to reflect the living standards desired in China today. Open House evolved from the American marketing concept where doors are opened to the public for an afternoon and potential buyers, renters and lookers are invited to visit a property. While the concept has different characteristics in each country, Open House has a commonality where anything is possible and the world is yours for the taking.

  The Open House series presents a site-specific project for one afternoon in a space that is for rent, sale, abandoned or slated for demolition. The Open House series gives people an opportunity to interact with contemporary art beyond the black and white walls in a gallery or museum. There is no equivalent of the American concept Open House in Chinese, but the term yangbanjian, which means showroom, conveys a similar feeling where real estate is on display for public consumption.

  Supporters

  • Aspen Art Museum
  • Cincinnati Art Museum
  • Citigroup
  • Cleveland Museum of Art
  • Columbia University
  • Condé Nast – Traveler Magazine Gertrude Contemporary Art Space
  • Gertrude Contemporary Art Space
  • Hong Kong Art Museum
  • MIT
  • NYU
  • Saint Ann’s School
  • Seattle Art Museum
  • Sotheby’s
  • The Clark Art Institute
  • The Metropolitan Museum Of Art
  • The New Museum
  • The New York Times
  • World Monuments Fund

  Appendix 4: This City Art

  公共PUBLIC’s intention is to integrate everyday urban environments directly with their work through a desire to be resourceful and independent in the current climate, yet still achieve and evolve as visual artists.

  Alternative art capturing the spirit of cities, created and exhibited for unique events in unusual spaces.

  TCA make art influenced from direct experiences of cities. Two foreign artist living and working in Beijing, seeing the city in unique alternative ways that come from being a visitor.

  To make genuine events which promote their Art, and media friendly stories to bring awareness to their creative process.

  To participate in art based events and projects which engage subjects, locations and people in New Ways.

  Appendix 5: INH-SZ 传承：深圳 (Inheritance-Shenzhen)

  Proposed as a temporary and potentially mobile project space, the mission of INH-SZ 传承：深圳 is to demand urgent questions about the art history and visual culture of the new and migrant city. Accessing such issues as history making, voluntary displacement and exile, economic migrancy, identity and gender politics through artistic and curatorial practices – Inheritance Projects hopes that this is only one element of a permanent engagement with the impermanent city.

  INH-SZ 传承：深圳 has an open door policy with an unobtrusive but active public programmes, inviting the local population to see in a local context, the artistic practices of artists who live and work in the city. There will be workshops with Shenzhen schools and universities, research and development of local artists and unstructured happenings involving the nearby residents and merchants. It is fundamental to INH-HZ 传承：深圳 that the habitants of Bai Shi Zhou and wider Shenzhen have the opportunity to experience art without feeling patronized or excluded in order to recognize the artistic heritage of the young city.

  Supporters

  • Connections through Culture (British Council)
  • British Council
  • 2009 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture
  • Vision Forum

  Appendix 6: The Donkey Institute of Contemporary Art (DICA)

  The Donkey Institute of Contemporary Art (DICA) is an initiative dedicated to supporting experimental contemporary art on the back of a donkey. Established in the Beijing summer of 2009, DICA demonstrates a donkey’s spirit of steadfast oblivion. The DICA and the donkey counter all forms of calculated intelligence, promotion and profit-making within the market place of contemporary art. They do so with the slowest possible speed, the most idle tactics and wandering work ethics.

  Obstinate, dumb and proceeding on blind faith, DICA meanders throughout cities to meet its potential audience, whoever that might be. Yet, DICA makes no claim or appeal for recognition in these encounters. The institute lives by the charm and rhythm that is unique to the donkey’s soul. In this sense, DICA is the most inhuman and radical fulfillment of the avant-garde. It posits an almost complete sort of “standing-still” that refuses to concede to anything. For its inaugural meandering exhibition, DICA will present video works on portable monitors attached on the back of the Donkey.

  Supporters

  • CPU:PRO
  • Yuanfen New Media Art Space
  • REJON
  • Kate Lu
  • Bao Xiao
  • Laoban Soundsystem
  • Our donkey
  ]]> http://blog.escdotdot.com/2010/04/28/notes-on-alternatives-in-china/feed/ 1 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://blog.escdotdot.com/2009/11/04/a-map-of-my-local-area/ http://blog.escdotdot.com/2009/11/04/a-map-of-my-local-area/#comments Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:10:46 +0000 escdotdot http://blog.escdotdot.com/?p=798 Continue reading →]]>

  This is the local area map that greets you should you exit the light-rail Batong line at its terminus, Tuqiao. This is the kind of impenetrable visual information that would have completely thrown me when I first came to China, something I would have generously ascribed to “cultural difference.” Now I know that it’s just a really bad map.

  ]]> http://blog.escdotdot.com/2009/11/04/a-map-of-my-local-area/feed/ 0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://blog.escdotdot.com/2009/08/28/60th-anniversary-flypast/ http://blog.escdotdot.com/2009/08/28/60th-anniversary-flypast/#comments Fri, 28 Aug 2009 09:01:54 +0000 escdotdot http://blog.escdotdot.com/2009/08/28/60th-anniversary-flypast/

  Every weekday for the past month or so we have been treated to this flypast of helicopters, along with jets and larger planes, all in formation and incredibly noisy.

  IMAGE: Practice flypast for 60th Celebrations, originally uploaded by escdotdot

  ]]> http://blog.escdotdot.com/2009/08/28/60th-anniversary-flypast/feed/ 0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://blog.escdotdot.com/2009/08/05/slow-looking/ http://blog.escdotdot.com/2009/08/05/slow-looking/#comments Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:58:48 +0000 escdotdot http://blog.escdotdot.com/?p=677 Continue reading →]]> Some extracts from Michael Kimmelman’s article in last weekend’s NYT lamenting the demise of the slow observation of art, with some brief comments:

  …What exactly are we looking for when we roam as tourists around museums?…

  A few game tourists glanced vainly in guidebooks or hopefully at wall labels, as if learning that one or another of these sculptures came from Papua New Guinea or Hawaii or the Archipelago of Santa Cruz, or that a work was three centuries old or maybe four might help them see what was, plain as day, just before them.…

  “…plain as day…”? Sorry, surely this is the problem, it’s never plain as day. Visitors need some context to understand the works, or maybe that’s what they should expect from a museum. That’s the “job” of the museum: to provide a place to see works in some kind of context. Kimmelman seems to be suggesting that the visitor should just take what’s “just before them” at face value, which I suppose they could, but it seems that is not providing enough to hold the tourists interest, hence creating the premiss for Kimmelman’s article.

  Visiting museums has always been about self-improvement.…

  <sighs> I think it would be more accurate to say museums have always been about someone’s idea of improving other people. The Louvre (the subject of this article) being a case in point. When it was opened up to the masses after the French revolution, the displays were adjusted from being the private collection of the king, to being specifically designed to demonstrate and inculcate an idea of France’s place in the world in “the people.”

  Cameras replaced sketching by the last century; convenience trumped engagement, the viewfinder afforded emotional distance and many people no longer felt the same urgency to look.…

  …the canon of art that provided guideposts to tell people where to go and what to look at was gradually dismantled. A core of shared values yielded to an equality among visual materials. This was good and necessary, up to a point. Millions of images came to compete for our attention. Liberated by a proliferation, Western culture was also set adrift in an ocean of passing stimulation, with no anchors to secure it.

  This wistful nostalgia for an overarching ideology to guide our thinking, is a bit sickly. The “liberation” he speaks of will inevitably lead to new ideologies, perhaps ones better suited to the material and the proliferation, in the same way that it will lead to new ways of seeing and presenting art – new museums even. The tourists’ inattention in the Louvre is symptomatic of this change in viewing patterns and its sensible for the museum to try and identify how to address these new patterns.

  Slow looking, like slow cooking, may yet become the new radical chic.

  That, I think, is wishful thinking. Just because this is how it was in the past, and what museums have been created to cater for, does not mean it will be so in the future, or that museums will be suited to our viewing habits in the future. Our viewing habits adapt, and institutions will be created to serve those habits. Museums which work by “slow-viewing” will still have a place, and will go in and out of vogue as times and tastes change, the definition of “slow-viewing” will also change to meet these new requirements.

  Kimmelman, Michael (2009), At Louvre, Many Stop to Snap but Few Stay to Focus, NYTimes.com, 3 August 2009.

  ]]> http://blog.escdotdot.com/2009/08/05/slow-looking/feed/ 0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://blog.escdotdot.com/2008/12/12/laoban-soundsystem-xmas-mixing-event-at-cpu798/ http://blog.escdotdot.com/2008/12/12/laoban-soundsystem-xmas-mixing-event-at-cpu798/#comments Fri, 12 Dec 2008 03:59:09 +0000 escdotdot http://blog.escdotdot.com/?p=469 Continue reading →]]> My friends at the Laoban Soundsystem will be installed in the Gallery tonight presenting their new venture, the Laoban Soundsystem. This is an open invite to all artists, musicians etc. to come along and show off what they are working on. Should be an exciting, energetic evening! Come along and see works in progress.

  Laoban Soundsystem 1.0 Holiday Mixing Event at CPU:798

  Friday, December 12, 8 PM – 12 Midnight, Free and Open to the Public

  We invite all to come out to the launch of version 1.0 of the Laoban Soundsystem for a special Holiday Mixing Event at CPU:798. This is a new type of media event where all are welcome to join, bring media, laptops, video players, cameras, and other recording devices. The goal is to mix media, explore what artists, DJs, musicians, designers, and architects are working on RIGHT NOW — successes, failures, and rough edges are welcome at Laoban events! The ultimate plan is for consumers to be producers by both mixing media, and by tagging any recordings they have with “laoban” when posting onto twitter.com, flickr.com, or other places.

  ]]> http://blog.escdotdot.com/2008/12/12/laoban-soundsystem-xmas-mixing-event-at-cpu798/feed/ 0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://blog.escdotdot.com/2008/11/22/notes-on-the-artist-zheng-yunhan/ http://blog.escdotdot.com/2008/11/22/notes-on-the-artist-zheng-yunhan/#comments Sat, 22 Nov 2008 04:16:11 +0000 escdotdot http://blog.escdotdot.com/?p=434 Continue reading →]]> Zheng’s work deals with the relationship between the Chinese people and their landscapes, it’s idealised nature as a site for forming, as man-perfected/adjusted material, a symbolic residue or site of potential for human activity.

  His works stem from an investigation of his home town of Jixi, a mining town in NE China. Jixi Research Project, ongoing since 2004, is a documentary-like archive of visual and spoken records of the lives of the people living in this town dominated by mining and the consequences of this industry on their lives and landscape. This piece is presented as a 4-channel projection with interactivity, emphasising the audiences participation in the story telling process.

  For Sunflower Project, Zheng commissioned his family and friends to plant a large field of sunflowers in the hills surrounding the town of Jixi. The resulting artwork is an ultra-high resolution composite photograph of this field. On the one side in the distance is Jixi and on the other a memorial marking a mass grave of locals killed by the Japanese Army during the occupation of China during the Second World War. The sunflowers act as physical link between the living and the dead, a route of remembrance, reflecting during their short lives the remains of life and death all around them.

  ]]> http://blog.escdotdot.com/2008/11/22/notes-on-the-artist-zheng-yunhan/feed/ 0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/