Last year DICA was showing a selection of artists’ videos on the screens attached to the donkey, but this time around Michael Yuen and Yam Lau have created custom-built shelves for the cart which display a library of artists books.

After being moved on by the police from their original spot, DICA ended up on the corner of Fangyuan Xilu 芳园西路 and Jiangtai Lu 将台路 near the Lido Hotel, a busy intersection. There was a good turnout of locals on their way home from work and art-people, and many people took the time find out what was going on and thumb through the books:

On the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713), David Hume (1711–1776) and Edmund Burke (1729–1797):

What art is not able to offer, in that ideological reading of it known as the aesthetic, is a paradigm of more general social significance – an image of self-referentiality which in an audacious move seizes upon the very functionlessness of artistic practice and transforms it to a vision of the highest good. As a form of value grounded entirely in itself, without practical rhyme or reason, the aesthetic is at once eloquent testimony to the obscure origins and enigmatic nature of value in a society which would seem everywhere to deny it, and a utopian glimpse of an alternative to this sorry condition. For what the work of art imitates in its very pointlessness, in the constant movement by which it conjures itself up from its own inscrutable depths, is nothing less than human existence itself, which (scandalously for the rationalists and Utilitarians) requires no rationale beyond its own self-delight. For this Romantic doctrine, the art work is most rich in political implications where it is most gloriously futile.1

On Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805):

The aesthetic is a kind of creative impasse, a nirvanic suspension of all determinacy and desire overflowing with entirely unspecific contents. Since it nullifies the limits of sensation along with its compulsiveness, it becomes a kind of sublime infinity of possibilities. In the aesthetic state, ‘man is Nought, if we are thinking of any particular result rather than of the totality of his powers, and considering the absence of any specific determination’2; but this negativity is thereby everything, a pure boundless being which eludes all specificity. Taken as a whole, the aesthetic condition is supremely positive; yet it is also sheer emptiness, a deep and dazzling darkness in which all determinations are grey, an infinity of nothingness. The wretched social condition which Schiller mourns – the fragmentation of human faculties in the division of labour, the specialization and reifying of capacities, the mechanizing and dissociating of human powers – must be redeemed by a condition which is, precisely, nothing in particular. (108)

1. Eagleton, Terry (1990) The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Oxford, Blackwell Publishing, p.65. All subsequent references to this text will be given parenthetically after quotations.
2. Schiller, Friedrich (1967) On the Aesthetic Education of Man, ed. Elizabeth M. Wilkinson and L. A. Willoughby. Oxford, p.146.

Edward Sanderson: Elaine, you’ve been here three years, how did HomeShop start? Have you and Fotini been working together the whole time?

Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga: I’ve been to China a few times now, and we have collaborated on several projects, but it’s only at this moment that I’m joining in, as we are trying to think about HomeShop’s future. Elaine will be able to tell you more about what she’s been doing so far.

Elaine W. Ho: I think HomeShop really came out of my experience of living in China and my fascination with the juxtapositions between public space and private space here, which I think a lot of people notice or are intrigued by when they come here. A lot of the work that I do involves the public space and looking at alternative settings with which one is interfaced with an idea or a “work”, and because of that particular interest in negotiating a public space and a private space—not only on a spatial level but also on a social, economic level—this idea came to me: let’s play with the commercial space and see what we can do with that. So this was how it originally came about, and all the projects we’ve done here are based around this environment and the people here and are determined to a great extent by the architecture and the way that this space in particular relates to the community.

ES: What was your background prior to this?

EWH: I’m American-born, but my parents are from Hong Kong. That’s a whole different game to being a mainland Chinese person, so in many ways I’m still an outsider.

I first studied at Rice University, in Texas. At that time I was doing Art and Art History, but then I moved over into doing design work. I studied at Parsons in New York and then also transferred after that—it’s been a long ride!—to Holland, and I studied there for three years.

I think going into design was a desire to find something a bit more active and hands-on that I wasn’t finding doing Art History. I had been working in museums and I didn’t find it super interesting or stimulating. So moving into design and then coming back towards art has been influenced in a lot of ways by design issues, the ways of relating form and function to an everyday public.

I lived in Beijing for a year and then I went away for another year for other projects. After I came back I think I was here maybe six to eight months before I moved into this place.

I wouldn’t say this space was completely planned out or anything, it was quite an impulse to say: “This is my interest, let’s play with it and see what happens”. After I’d moved in, for a year I really didn’t do anything with the space. Looking back at it now, it was a necessary time to invest myself in this area and get to know the people. There’s a lot of mistrust, for sure, when they see me – this stranger living here. And of course they hear my accent and know I’m not from around here.

The first project that we did—the first big “coming out” project—was to do with the Olympics, which took place a year after I’d moved in here.

ES: You were in here for a year just setting up home, getting embedded in the environment and learning how it worked? So having a shopfront, what does that mean for you? Why is that a useful thing for you?

EWH: It’s useful on quite a lot of levels actually. On one hand—and this maybe has to do with my background in design—how people relate to one another on the basis of a commercial transaction, and how that commercial transaction allows a certain public-ness to a space that wouldn’t be there otherwise. In fact, shopping malls are not really a public space, they’re this pseudo-public space. But once that possibility is offered—that I can sell you something, or that there’s something for you to come and look at and possibly buy—they allow an openness of a relation, between a buyer and a seller, or between the owner and non-owner. Beyond the fact of a financial transaction, this level of publicness is a very interesting possibility for me.

Also, finding this space with a glass front made a nice juxtaposition – here is this living environment, but it’s made bare and visible. It becomes this screen between the outside and inside. All of these metaphors were things that I was interested to play with.

ES: So how do you work with the commercial idea of the space?

EWH: Thus far it hasn’t been a commercial project at all, it’s more engaging this idea of commercial-ness or the offering of a commercial enterprise, but without being so, necessarily. On the other hand, maybe I’m a terrible businessperson! I haven’t been able to manage this thing so well, but for me I use it in a lot of ways more as research rather than an actual business. I’m not making money from it.

ES: You also publish a journal called “Wear”, I assumed it was some kind of pamphlet, but now I see it it’s something more major.

EWH: The way of printing and the design is done on this very thick paper, so it’s actually not as big as you imagine! It is the intention that it is first approached as this huge object, as if importance were rated by volume. But when you open it and read it, it becomes much more minor, much more ambivalent, and the heavy pages are created in the style of toddlers’ books.

With the Wear project, it’s commercial in the sense that it is sold in a variety of places, but it’s moreso simply that I try to avoid losing a lot of money because it’s a completely self-funded project.

How that goes into the future is a balance we’re trying to play with right now. I mean it’s a concept hanging over everybody, you have to balance your artistic interests with being able to survive, making money. And so how we are going to pursue that line is the next stage of the project. Which may mean on the one hand, some things becoming more commercial (so to speak), but even then I think that it still remains that these transactions, whether they are financial or not, are always about the ways of relating people to people, so that is our foremost research interest.

ES: So you may well have a commercial line, and an artistic line?

EWH: I would hope that the commercial and the artistic could be rolled into one. That’s the tricky balance between all of these things.

FL-H: Maybe the question is to stay more on the line, instead of having to take a position. Actually in the first edition of Wear, I wrote a short text about the threshold, which I think is a good metaphor to understand the whole project – this condition of being in-between. There’s a sign over the door saying “家 (Jia)” or “house”. People walk by and they always look at it puzzled and probably think it’s a store. Some of them stare at us and they come inside wanting to look at these clothes behind you, because they think they are for sale, or they start asking questions, and it’s these kind of everyday encounters and interactions that we find particularly interesting.

ES: So you’re setting up a situation that appears to be one thing, but maybe isn’t that thing but then encourages people to believe in it and somehow when that happens…

EWH: It triggers a curiosity, or at least the asking of a question, and I think that asking questions is always something super-important to the work.

ES: So the projects you’ve already done, starting with the Olympics project…

EWH: This was a series of different events. The loose structure was that we did it as a reverse countdown, a sort of impending moment that had been coming for seven years, from when they announced it until 2008. So we made a joke of it and did a reverse countdown until the day that the Olympics would end. And during that time we did different events, for as many days as we could in between. They varied from public screenings of the Olympics that were projected on the store-front; reading groups; a lot of field recordings that I was doing on my own at that time; other activities where I invited artists to come and do an activity or intervention on the street, or in the neighbourhood. We did a big barbecue party, with a Nintendo “Mario versus Sonic at the Beijing Olympics” Wii competition projected on the store front; the winner, an auntie that lives across the street, won tickets to a rowing event that were donated by a friend.

I was really happy about it because it was the first thing that we did, and with this strange juxtaposition of the city being kind of empty at that time, it was just the right moment with the whole spectacle and people being more open to the unexpected. It was a big turning point for the city, for everything from Government activity, to urban planning, to media, to public/personal interest in sports (which maybe people wouldn’t have had otherwise), all of these things coming together in that very big moment is incredibly important for China and the makings of its new society.

On another level,it was this very strange process because I did it all myself at the time, gathering friends of course, but it was really just this DIY effort – “let’s put this thing together and document it and post about it” – it was this constant self-conscious process of things happening at the same time as you’re recording them and figuring out how to arrange other things for the next day. And this process was how it led to the journal project, which serves the very simple purpose of documentation of the projects that we’re doing, but also a way to expand on the thoughts that we were having and invite other artists and writers to participate.

[The journal is a good format] simply because a lot of things that we’re doing are time-based and event-based; they are ephemeral and very limited in terms of who can participate at any one moment in time. And because I’m not any sort of official institution on the art map of Beijing, I have to rely on these methods to let anyone know what’s happening, so on that level it becomes very important. Personally, I like writing very much, so that process of documenting and relating the visual to a text-based reflection is a constant working process.

From there it seems most apt to continue in this way, to do a series of projects, mostly in the summer time – simply to allow us to be outside, when people are out and the weather is nice.

ES: So the very small size of the space demands that for any sizeable number of people you have to spill out?

EWH: Yes, exactly. And I want it to, so that’s what led to this loose organisation of a yearly series, around the summer time, loosely based on a certain theme or issue or interest.

I feel bad that sometimes this small space is not big enough to comfortably invite people in. But in the summer, when the doors are open, the neighbours come over all the time to chat and this is really great, I like this. There’s a lot more that could be done if we had a bigger space, but I think we’ve done well considering.

ES: What was the second project that you did?

EWH: The second series was about “Cultural Exchange” – a cynical take on what that that term means and how it is used as an empty justification. There is so much foreign interest—in both directions—between China and everyone else (as the division is commonly proposed here). This last issue of the journal is documentation of some projects and events that happened last summer, and then some newer contributions from people like Carol Lu, Michael Eddy and Mai Dian.

This season we’ve loosely tagged the series “Balls” or “Ballsy”. We try to keep it light, but in an ironic sort of way, so “ballsy” can be simply a formal reference or something more subversive, depending upon how you look at it. But the line-up of activities will really depend upon when we can get a new space and how we can get it organised.

ES: You call them “series”? Because it’s a series of things happening?

EWH: Yes, because I think that experimentation with format (as in, moving from film screening to workshop to installation) is something very important, but then I find it hard to find a proper word to describe such variation, like “huodong (活动)”, maybe?. A series allows you to know that there are several things happening that are related and built upon continuities.

ES: A world series? [laughs] OK, so let’s move onto something which is a bit imponderable – the next stage you’re in the process of deciding on. How do you see this developing?

FL-H: The main idea is to have a bigger space that will allow for more things to happen, and more people to join in in various ways or at various stages. The idea is to bring together the things that we’ve been doing the past few years with other creative projects that we want to do, in a way that’s sustainable and still allows us to engage with the neighbourhood around us. To stay on that line that we were talking about earlier, between commercial and non-commercial, or the line between public and private, to walk this very thin but blurry line through these categories and see what can come out of it.

EWH: I think it’s the difference between looking at an artist as a product maker – “one who signs their name on their thing and sells it”, versus us being artists as workers or researchers. We hope to provide or offer something to a community, with that community being very much in transition. At the same time, all of these interactions are creative jumping off points, or means of reflecting on larger issues about society and the city. This is the uniqueness of the juxtaposition of “laobaixing (老百姓)” – the people that live in this neighbourhood, with other creative people that are similar to us or that have similar ways of thinking or exploring ideas.

ES: These are two different audiences? This area, does it have a particular strength, we’re right by Fangjia Hutong (方家胡同), so do you have a creative community around here, do you think?

EWH: Yes, for sure. The funny thing about this street is its juxtaposition between Fangjia and Nanluoguxiang. You have this strange passerby population of schoolchildren from next door, the normal local Chinese people that live around here, the hipster kids that are passing through, and then because of the restaurant being on this street, the foreigners looking for Dali [Courtyard Restaurant].

I think what we’re doing is not necessarily that unique. How one positions oneself relative to the art world could make it seem unique, but I think that pursuing an artistic practice in this way is something that’s very common, actually. Whether I call it “high” art or whether it’s a community thing is where it can end up seeming more or less special, but this is not so crucial. On the one hand I present myself as an artist and I think that in many ways what I am doing has a discourse with a lot of parallel streams in art, but how much I am investing myself in the art world and art scene within China is probably a lot less deliberated. That can be seen as an advantage or a disadvantage depending on how you look at it. In the time that I’ve lived here I’ve exponentially gone less and less to see the shows and to participate in all of these things, and I do feel very much that as a sort of “outsider” artist it’s very hard to break into that Chinese art scene. So I think I just kind of said, well, okay, I’ll just continue doing my thing and not worry about it. It’s not really my place to judge whether I’m in it or not. Of course I do have a certain interest to maintain dialogues with certain people within the art world for reasons of common interest. But I don’t think the formats [I’m working with] are ever the kind of thing that will make them easily consumable by that kind of community.

ES: You’re also one of the organisers of the “Also Space²” show?

EWH: Yes, I was very interested in participating in “Also Space²” because I wanted to work with the curator, Reinaart Vanhoe. who has a lot of similar interests and ways of working—a sort of organised but slightly anarchic method—that I was interested to play with as well. I think it’s something very strong about Reinaart—that he’s open to letting things happen, to see where people take their own initiative.

There was also the first “Also Space” show last year. With this first show I wasn’t so involved because I wasn’t here beforehand – I came back [to Beijing] maybe one or two days before the show opened. It was [physically] very close, at this hotel near Andingmen. So after I got back I was able to be there all the time, to learn from how he was playing with this environment and how he put people together. For my own artistic play I decided to sleep there as well, to be attentive to a displaced temporal context in a city which is technically my current “home”. Discussion from the first “Also Space” led us to want to try it again. So I got more involved with organising the second one, but like I said it wasn’t something that we were struggling very hard with for months and months! It was quite open.

This is something that is very important for me as a way of finding a balance between an artists’ project, coming out of certain initiatives and interests of mine, but also as a way of building a community, which is related to both of our work. How much a community can be involved and how much it can come together without being over-organised – in one sense this can become a political question. This is for me the basis of a lot of the theories and thinking I’m doing. So that question of having a bigger space or of having more people involved, or what kind of people get involved, the question of people having the initiative to make and discuss rather than simply consume – these are things that we would like to focus upon.

ES: Obviously when you have a bigger space, that puts more overhead on you, which then feeds through into the decisions you’ll make about what you do to sustain that. Which may end up being more organised events – this kind of butterfly effect, a change in one parameter affects in different ways other aspects of the project. So it will be really interesting to see where you go, what happens because of that, because it will be a different thing at that point, it won’t be the HomeShop as it is here, it will be a completely different thing.

EWH: Well, I hope not completely different, because I think there are still a lot of threads there. But of course it won’t be exactly the same.

Elaine W. Ho and Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga were interviewed by Edward Sanderson (CPU:PRO) at the “HomeShop” Beijing, on the 11 April 2010. Interview edited by Edward Sanderson.

You may not know that there’s a tradition of bell-ringing in Britain that might well be the only case of Britain’s own music, because you won’t find it in any other part of the world. It probably has more to do with maths than music. The people who design these clocks or bells have a set of rules to work with, for instance, if there are eight bells, how to work out all the combination of them? There are a lot of rules, such as no neighbouring bells shall ring consequently, etc. Some people treat this tradition seriously. We have a weekly magazine, and all you’ll find in it are maths problems about different sounds produced by all kinds of clocks and bells. I once write to the editor of The Ringing World weekly saying, ‘I like your music very much, can you tell me where can I buy your CDs?’ And he replied furiously, ‘We are not making music. We are mathematicians.’

Why did I bore you with such a long and blabbering story? Because you can see that these people never think about or care about music – they avoid the topic – but what they produce is the best music that you can hear in Britain. This is quite inspiring for an exploratory musician or those who want to make totally different systematic music; it’s encouraging for me as well. When I make this kind of music, for instance a systematic piece, the first thing I would think about is the technical aspect, and then the content. The system I designed could generate music automatically, and when that happens, I’m not a musician, but an audience. The creating of this kind of music is a bit like evolution, it has become a very interesting discipline in itself – cellular automata or ‘self-evolving cellular science’, there’s a connection between the two.

Eno, Brian (2007). Sonic images in a material world. A talk with Brian Eno. Interviewed by Chinnery, Colin. In: Yan Jun & Gray, Louise (eds.) Sound and the City: British Council China SATC Anthology. Shanghai, China, 世纪出版集团/British Council. pp.71–72.

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.

Him: “You’re at the front of the queue!”

Me: “? er, yeah”

Him: “That’s unprecedented!”

Me: “?”

Him: “You must be an F1 driver!”

Me: “??? er, no. Are you an F1 driver?”

Him: “no!” –said as if I was a bit odd to even suggest such a thing

Him: “Actually, I was hoping you were a girl.”

With which he slapped me on the shoulder and walked away.

Bizarre!

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/2010/03/27/agamben-undergone-not-experienced/ http://blog.escdotdot.com/2010/03/27/agamben-undergone-not-experienced/#comments Sat, 27 Mar 2010 04:11:32 +0000 escdotdot http://blog.escdotdot.com/?p=1029

  As Agamben indicates in the 1989 preface to the English translation of Infancy and History, the key question that unites his disparate explorations is that of what it means for language to exist, what it means that “I speak.” In taking up this question throughout his work, and most explicitly in texts such as Infancy and History, Language and Death, and most recently, The Open, Agamben reinvigorates consideration of philosophical anthropology through a critical questioning of the metaphysical presuppositions that inform it, and in particular, the claim that the defining essence of man is that of having language. In taking up this question, Agamben proposes the necessity of an “experimentum linguae” in which what is experienced is language itself, and the limits of language become apparent not in the relation of language to a referent outside of it, but in the experience of language as pure self-reference. … Infancy and History … attempts to grasp and articulate the implications of such an experience of language as such. Consisting of a series on interconnected essays on concepts such as history, temporality, play, and gesture, Infancy and History provides an importance entrance to Agamben’s later work on politics and ethics, particularly in the eponymous essay of the edition on the concept of infancy understood as an experiment of language as such. In this, Agamben argues that the contemporary age is marked by the destruction or loss of experience, in which the banality of everyday life cannot be experienced per se but only undergone, a condition which is in part brought about by the rise of modern science and the split between the subject of experience and of knowledge that it entails. Against this destruction of experience, which is also extended in modern philosophies of the subject such as Kant and Husserl, Agamben argues that the recuperation of experience entails a radical rethinking of experience as a question of language rather than of consciousness, since it is only in language that the subject has its site and origin. Infancy, then, conceptualizes an experience of being without language, not in a temporal or developmental sense of preceding the acquisition of language in childhood, but rather, as a condition of experience that precedes and continues to reside in any appropriation of language. (Mills; emphasis mine)

  • Mills, Catherine (2005) Agamben, Giorgio [The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]. [Online]. Available from: http://www.iep.utm.edu/agamben/ [Accessed 27 March 2010].
  ]]> http://blog.escdotdot.com/2010/03/27/agamben-undergone-not-experienced/feed/ 0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://blog.escdotdot.com/2010/03/14/hands-on-v-hands-off/ http://blog.escdotdot.com/2010/03/14/hands-on-v-hands-off/#comments Sun, 14 Mar 2010 16:15:05 +0000 escdotdot http://blog.escdotdot.com/?p=1008 The distinction Rex Lawson made in the previous post between Pianolas and Recording Pianos is an interesting one, in terms of how they fit (or don’t fit) into the project which been hinting at recently.

  This project is provisionally organised along a division between what I am characterising as hand-crafted or hands-on and hands-off material. I’ve been explaining it as follows:

  Hands-on: those people producing material using primarily hands-on methods. I’m thinking here of things like live-coding, circuit-bending, etc.

  Hands-off: those producing material with self-running systems with only minimal human intervention beyond the initial setting up of the system.

  I see this as the work being split into two types, one for “knob twiddlers,” and the other for the more minimally-inclined worker. In both cases a particular focus could be generative software like Supercollider, which allows for both types of activity.

  Hands-on/hands-off is obviously something of an artificial distinction – people don’t really restrict themselves to one or the other, but this event is designed to investigate the various options around these different types of work, and to see what kind of productive exchanges you can get when you focus on and contrast these particular aspects of production.

  I’m also trying to avoid any forcing of the material into categories like music, noise, sound, visual art, architecture, etc. The principles being dealt with here cross over many disciplines and forms, so I want to leave this as open as possible and let the artists create the distinction with their work.

  Returning to the Player Pianos, and Rex’s distinction that the rolls for Pianolas are edited versions of the original musical scores, while rolls for Recording Pianos are created by a machine translating the key presses of a particular pianist into slots on the paper. So, in former case, you have this abstraction which is the musical score, being translated into a new medium of the roll, but essentially they are unchanged in their content. From thence the Pianolist (the player of the Pianola) interprets the playing of the roll using the various means available on the Pianola (speed, tone, strength, etc.). In the latter case, you have the reality of the player’s movements being the players’ realisation of the abstraction of the score, translated into slots on the roll, the idea being that these rolls are then played as-is, without intervention on the part of a Pianolist. In this case at the time of performance you have what aims to be a reproduction, whereas in the former you have an entirely original performance.

  In terms of my project, I want to pay attention to this interesting slippage through the roll of the human hand in the process, and more importantly at what stage in the process the hand enters and leaves. For the hands-on work the hand is ever-present to a greater extent, by definition; for the hands-off work, the hand has done it’s work beforehand (as it were) in the preparation, which then almost has a life of its own once it is performed (or performs itself, you could say I suppose).

  ]]> http://blog.escdotdot.com/2010/03/14/hands-on-v-hands-off/feed/ 0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/