The Journey West Travel Office, 43 Zhonglouwan Hutong, Dongcheng District, Beijing, 100007 China

21 May – 10 July, 2011

As an agent of Spectacle, tourism fulfils manufactured desires, and you can’t get more manufactured—or at least programmed—than guided tours. Tailor-made to your requirements? Maybe so, but within your tightly regimented schedule (value-for-money!) you’ll see only what you want to see, and the tendency to cede control and the experience to the tour company itself becomes part of a demonstration of social and economic affluence. But maybe those restrictions can be put to use to provide a frame within which to re-view our understanding of the sites that we visit, through a critical engagement with the process and assumptions of tourism.

Setting up shop for the last two months in a tiny street front space in the historic Drum and Bell Tower area (once home to Beijing’s time-keeping apparatus), American artists Stephanie Rothenberg and Dan S. Wang have been running their Journey West Travel Office. The Office has been developed as a serious business, from their initial location scouting in this strategic area which sees plenty of foot traffic from potential clients, to the process of interviewing and engaging salespeople, whose subsequent travails as arbiters of the various package tours to passers-by become documentary material adding to the content of the piece as a performative intervention in the area.

The four available tours are to purposefully non-mainstream locations, and include The Majesty of Parking Lots (led by Ryan Griffis, “a leading expert on the history, economics, and aesthetics of America’s parking lots”) and The Great American Test Range Tour (led by author and expert on black-ops secret bases, Trevor Paglen). The tours serve as examples of what has become known as Critical Tourism, the seeds of which were laid in the ‘90s with the writings of Lucy Lippard and the actions of groups such as Critical Art Ensemble and REPOHistory. It serves as an exposure and antidote to the exercises in power relationships and the normalisation of historical and social meaning which tourism can embody. Critical Tourism was partly about avoiding the monumental and iconic sites that we all “know” before we even get to them, in favour of locations and methods of tourism which dug a little deeper into the sites, the tourists’ presence in those places, and the meanings and uses of tourism itself.

Although this is the first time they have worked together, Rothenberg and Wang have a shared interest in art practices that investigate modes of production and consumption. Tourism is one such process whose intricacies bear attention and critique for its tendency to homogenize our views and experiences of the places around us, what gets written into history and the hierarchies of it. As Rothenberg puts it, it’s in the nature of tourism to be an act of “social engineering”; its accoutrements and systems working with a type of “consumer propaganda” of its promised utopian experience:

“It’s interesting to question what makes something a significant landmark, what gets on the tourist map and what doesn’t. You move beyond what is iconic and start to understand more about a ‘localism.’”

Based on their experience of China, the inspiration for the Travel Office came from the artists’ awareness of the decontextualization of many cultural factors in this place.

“…it was the whole appropriation of Western iconography or cultural signifiers that then get really disconnected, decontextualized … I wanted to open up some kind of travel agency that could bring it back to where it came from.”

The result became what they describe as a “discursive platform,” a way to engage with the passers-by and investigate these utopian visions of travel versus the reality and its actual real-world impact.

The events organized in conjunction with the Travel Office served to expand its reach into the surrounding spaces and audiences. These situations garnered attention and also changed the nature of the spaces to one that perhaps reflected the ethos of the Office itself, by positioning it as an active participant in the community.

“Finding the store, setting it up, doing the worker interviews, coming up with the worker chant – it becomes about the production of a travel agency, an exposure of the system … It was really important to have our own “Journey West motivational exercise and chant”! The performances were a great way to activate the space around the Office.”

I reviewed one such event on ArtSlant a few weeks ago, Something on the Way by Alessandro Rolandi and Megumi Shimizu. For American Independence Day Rothenberg and Wang organized a celebration in the public square in front of the Office. On that balmy evening the square was packed with locals and tourists, with the ubiquitous rickshaws scooting through the narrow alleys showing people the sights. The celebration began with a dance routine prepared by members of the HomeShop community (a nearby artist collective) designed to mimic the pre-shift motivational chants and exercises workers are required to do. The HomeShop crew took on the role of “workers” dressed in “The Journey West” uniform of cowboy hat, red bandana necktie and company shirt. The event created a party-like atmosphere with drinks, pie and a small charcoal barbecue finding its place in amongst the evening life of the hutong. The dancers staked out their performance space, but had a tough time competing with the locals’ own line-dance groups that form every night in open spaces in China. Towards the end the locals began to edge the interlopers out a little, re-asserting their own space and imposing their own “normality” against the oddity of the Travel Office’s activities: “It was interesting in terms of East meets West: here comes the artist with her ironic performance of Chinese dances, and then it totally merged with the real, local thing.”

In the end, no sales were made, but success in these terms was, if not irrelevant, then would have been simply a side benefit of the project. During the interviews for potential sales-people, Rothenberg was advised by an MBA from the Yemen that their location may have actually worked against them in this respect, and Beijing’s business districts might be more suitable. Rothenberg came to reflect on the role of tourism in global business presence: “…big group tours nowadays are organized through companies, where they are sending their employees overseas so that they can experience and get to know other cultures – on those trips they’re interfacing with their potential clients.”

I think this investigation and response to the audiences in the area served as a point of clarification for the project as a whole. The hutong store sat within a hub of tourist activity, but tourists who were in consumption mode rather than research mode – would they want to buy another tour when they were already on holiday? For the local residents and workers the tours were usually too expensive for them to consider. But that provocation of out-of-reach realities had the productive potential to give some kind of interruption, encouraging a consideration of how could one be in a position to take part in these tours; what is the value of these tours to me; and, who are they really addressing? The process of weighing up your position in relation to the “utopian visions” of the Travel Office can perhaps open up a greater awareness and reassessment of one’s own wishes and possibilities.

Perhaps coming into contact with the Travel Office while on your vacation, visiting one of Beijing’s major tourist pit-stops, you may become painfully aware of your position herded with your fellow tourists and intimately disconnected with the local hutong residents that give the area their “character.” This layering of the surreal elements of the whole situation, may just give the audience pause to consider their own situation as part of the global tourist class.

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published 25 July, 2011 on ArtSlant.

The Journey West Travel Office, 43 Zhonglouwan Hutong, Beijing, China

19 June, 2011

Last weekend in the hutongs around the historic Drum and Bell Tower area in Beijing, Alessandro Rolandi from Italy and Megumi Shimizu from Japan staged the performance Something on the Way. This was included as part of Stephanie Rothenberg and Dan S. Wang’s Journey West Travel Office (a “performative installation that casts a critical eye on global tourism”). Something on the Way drew upon a mixture of traditions from Epic Theatre to Japanese Butoh performance to impose something of a delay into the everyday life around these narrow hutong alleyways.

In simple terms Something on the Way was a walk that they undertook from the Travel Office to Zajia, a bar and performance space a few streets away. Even though only 300m separates the two sites, the artists massively extended their walk in both time and concentration as they slowed their pace down to a crawl, drawing out every step of the way into a hyper-controlled set of movements. Starting at 3pm, they didn’t arrive at their destination until 7.30 that evening.

Despite its historic status, the area in which they were walking still holds a sizeable population of ‘locals’ who call the hutong alleyways home, so the artists’ actions took place amongst many different constituencies of people: tourists snapping shots of the picturesque architecture and ‘authentic’ local color; locals popping in and out of their homes; street hawkers setting up their trailers next to banks of parked bicycles; and, in amongst all this, drivers trying to negotiate the straitened spaces in between.

When I try and put Rolandi and Shimizu’s action into some kind of perspective, its successes and failures highlight for me the tricky position of art and artists in society, especially when they deliberately go out of their way to create a provocation.

Any work that aims to “make strange” and confront the audience with an everyday gesture (such as walking), raises issues that usually prefer to stay in the background. By inserting themselves into a situation to change it and demand a response, although the response was generally good natured, the artists potentially exposed themselves to the full range of reactions, positive through negative. In this case, this was usually a physical accommodation to their presence, a change of route, a delay while the artists slowly got out of the way – a minor annoyance. But if the action works to produce some permanent change in life or attitude, as I believe it aims to do, this can be very uncomfortable for people to accommodate as they go about their daily business.

The nature of this intervention almost suggests something of a ‘violent’ relationship with the world around it. As I followed Rolandi and Shimizu and became part of the walk’s pace and being in the world, the artists’ disconnection seemed to present an attitude of passive-aggression. By occupying that public space, the performance demanded a reaction. Through the artists’ inability to become absorbed into the environment (given the rules they had set themselves), they created an aura of being separate from the rest of the life that went on around them.

Towards the end of the walk two events took place that brought to the fore for me the potential of this event and also its problematic. Many of their audience had taken up station waiting on the steps outside Zajia and as the performers turned the final corner and came within view, the audience spontaneously began clapping the artists on. However this gesture of support became slightly farcical, as those last few meters took about 30 minutes to complete, the clapping becoming somewhat forced as time wore on. This difference between audience-time and performer-time was an interesting, amusing effect of the piece, drawing clear attention to the strictures of its methodology.

Also on this final stretch, the performers were required to cross the road to reach Zajia. Up to that point they had been able to walk on either side of the road, more or less avoiding the passing cyclists and cars. But their progress across this road put them directly into conflict with the cars – and Beijing drivers are not known for their patience.

In their work, the artists bring up connections with Brechtian Epic Theatre and the ‘Distancing Effect’ it relies upon. Something on the Way did have this effect, but I wonder whether it was too aggressive given the context? Did it become less effective because of that? Are subtler, less overt means better suited to the task? Of course, subtlety holds its own risks.

In the end I do question the results and benefits of this piece. It seemed too easy for it to have a negative effect, in terms of aggravating the communities it comes into contact with and risking reinforcing stereotypical divisions of “us” versus “them” – artists (or even ‘foreigners’) as somehow separate from the society in this place. I’m not convinced it’s enough for artists insert their actions into the environment and then leave it up to the audience to deal with them, without more of a give-and-take in the process.

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published 27 June, 2011 on ArtSlant.

Boers-Li Gallery, 1-706 Hou Jie, 798 Art District, Jiuxianqiao Lu, 100015 Beijing, China

19 May – 19 June, 2011

A few weeks ago I reviewed Breaking Away, Boers-Li Gallery’s abstraction group show here on ArtSlant. I then travelled a few blocks West within 798 Art District to Space Station to cover XYZ, the solo show by one the participants, Xie Molin. And this time I’m returning to Boers-Li, where another participant, Zhan Rui, has his own solo show in their smaller galleries upstairs. Suffice to say, in Beijing at least, abstraction appears to be popular right now.

Zhan Rui’s work represents the type of abstraction that uses the painted image as a means to present data in a pseudo-scientific manner, using interpretations of the raw information as a means of populating the canvas with form. These paintings show the results of a systematic analysis of aspects of the real world, using a set of painterly systems chosen by the artist to reflect them.

There are essentially two forms of painting on show here. In one case, a series of six small canvases painted with thin horizontal striations in red or green represent the up- or downticks of specific stocks over a certain period of time. The other paintings in the show work within a 9×9 grid, each cell filled in various ways to represent either the weather or the sex lives of the subjects over an 81-day period.

Without the extra clue given by each of their titles—pointing out their respective connections to “The Stock Exchange, Weather and Sex”—the pictures tell us little and remain colourful arrangements. Even with those clues however, the connections are not made clear, a key to the forms is not given, and we are left to our own imaginations with only a vague understanding of the connections between forms and the events that apparently informed them.

The way the data is re-presented ultimately seems arbitrary, and as abstract as the data itself that is extracted from the world then formed into these charts. Unlike Xie Molin’s paintings that present the remains of the direct action of his machine on the paint and surface of the canvas, Zhan Rui’s works sit at another remove. They straddle an uncomfortable gap between a scientific representation of data and an artistic interpretation of the same – not so far from reality, but far enough to be alienated from it. They are an abstraction of an abstraction.

My own efforts to make sense of the data, as presented by these paintings, simply led me to understand that this search is a fool’s errand. And if I could accurately interpret the data – what then? The pieces titled “Time for sex and love” perhaps afford some mild titillation, but ultimately without a firm index back to the real world, what can really be learned?

I felt that all the pieces demonstrated this disconnection – an alienation from our activities that leaves space open for fantasy but ultimately prevents meaning from cohering. These paintings are literal stereotypes, in their partial and arbitrary representations of selective data.

Which left me with a sense of the hopelessness behind our attempts to understand phenomena, or people. This is perhaps a point of the work – they demonstrate a hint of insight, a gesture towards completeness, to understanding, but ultimately are simply poised above the mass of data in the world, sampling what amounts to a drop in the ocean.

Do these pictures have the potential to enlighten us? It’s unclear whether this is even an aim of the artist. The artists’ choices are as arbitrary as our own choices; the information as selective as our own attention to the world. We focus on some “high value,” “highly significant” data that we think makes sense of everything, but really all we know are our own tiny samples from which we extrapolate into cliché and stereotype.

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published 30 May, 2011 on ArtSlant.

Space Station, 4 Jiuxianqiao Rd, 798 Art District, Chaoyang District, 100015 Beijing

23 April – 20 June, 2011

A few weeks ago on this site I reviewed Breaking Away, the abstraction group show at Boers-Li Gallery, and got a bit carried away addressing some of the institutional structures in place. This show, and some other shows that are forthcoming, also seemed to hint at a resurgence of abstraction in Beijing this year. My over enthusiasm for the critique meant that I only superficially addressed the artists in the show. One of the artists that I omitted to mention was Xie Molin, whose works in the Boers-Li show had kicked off some thoughts about abstraction itself. Luckily I’ve had a chance to re-acquaint myself with his luscious machine-made paintings in his concurrent solo show at Space Station.

Xie Molin’s works present an interesting dichotomy. On the one hand their luscious, perfectly ridged surfaces of paint appeal on a visceral level. The perfect gradations of colours—the paint seemingly still wet and glistening—have been dragged across the canvas and scored through by a multiplicity of evenly spaced points. The overall effect combines the visual disruptions of Op Art with an almost erotically tactile impression in low relief.

On the other hand, this serried perfection emphasises the absence of the human hand in their creation. These are not like, for example, Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings, whose massed hand-drawn lines submerge their manual nature through repetition; from the start Xie Molin’s lines are overwhelmingly rigid in their perfection. This stems from the painting-machine that the artist has spent the last few years designing and building – a machine which sits in the background of all these works, both through its physical results and in its theoretical impact, yet is never revealed to the audience. And I feel it’s this machine that sets off a train of disruption through the whole show.

The accompanying texts by the Gallery and the Exhibition Director Sun Dongdong, constantly battle with the fact that the paintings can only present one side of the meaning of the show, and their process of production through the machine also being an essential element to an understanding of the work.

The machine is recognised in the Gallery’s text as an “art project” in itself, in its process of construction confronting the “conflicts between idealism and reality that reflect the various sides of social reality and human nature,” and which becomes inextricably attached to the meaning of the works. Sun Dongdong himself recognises that the presence of the machine will become “a fundamental problem he needs to face up to in the future experiments.”

But for me, the hands-off nature of the machine and its imprint on the works also seems to mirror the problematics of abstraction as a style. To read the raised visibility of abstraction in Beijing as an ideological reaction is tempting; I can’t get away from the feeling that abstraction in general and Xie Molin’s works in particular represent a reaction to the conditions artists finds themselves in. What this reflects (in my opinion) is that the contemporary situation discourages clear statements. Although the results of transgression can be very real, the boundaries between permissible or otherwise are invisible and heavily context-dependent, so an atmosphere of uncertainty prevails, leading to a policy of self-policing – and abstraction sits as one solution to this problem.

Although Sun Dongdong studiously avoids any reference to this subject in his text, the gallery statement suggests:

“…it doesn’t mean that the artist gives the least concern to reality, moral, soul and philosophical problems, it’s just that these problems are cautiously laid aside and chosen by the artist. In the artist’s eyes, art has a more independent and abstract function…” [sic]

I feel there is an unseen churning going on beneath the frozen rippled perfection of these painted surfaces; there seems to be so much informing this show that is being held at bay. Aside from the works ostensible remove from wider issues, a tense struggle of emotions and ideologies is perhaps being played out through the statements and presentations on the margins of the works themselves. Maybe I am being melodramatic, but in a way this show represents the daily accommodations we all have to come to terms with in society. As an example of the artist’s, the Director’s and the Gallery’s positions within this system, XYZ proves to be revealing.

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published 30 May, 2011 on ArtSlant.

forget art, Beijing, China

16 May, 2011 – 16 May, 2012

forget art is a loose artist collective, based in Beijing, and initiated in 2009 by Chinese artist Ma Yongfeng. They focus on intervention-based work, often with a touch of the absurd, promoting small-scale, subtle disturbances in the fabric of society, which they describe as their “social micro-practice.”

As they work by and large outside of recognised gallery spaces, the creation and value of social space has become an important material for forget art. This keys into the long history of nomadism, with particular attention to the local experience in China and its mass population of migrant workers, as well as the international development of the itinerant white-collar worker. So in forget art’s “situations” ambivalence towards the fixed location comes through, feeding into their approach to production and presentation, and their feeling that sometimes it is necessary to “forget” in order to proceed. As Ma quips “That’s also why we don’t need any space – because we “forget art,” why do we need any space to do this?!”

forget art made its first appearance at the Dragon Fountain Bathhouse in September of last year, with a group show inserting a collection of minimal works into a temporarily détourned bathhouse in Beijing’s Caochangdi Art Village.

The works appeared as small situations expanding on the idea of an artwork, but always with a standpoint somewhere between the object and the situation. The light touches of the pieces infused the rooms without overly asserting their presence or nature, with male and female areas open to all for a few hours only. At the time Ma explained to me that “An ‘object’ is just this thing [indicating a cup], but if we draw a circle around it, it’s an expanded object, developed, and it becomes a situation. But we don’t want it to become bigger and bigger, we’re just in the middle, in-between.”

This sensibility has laid the groundwork for forget art’s Guerrilla Living Syndrome (created by Ma Yongfeng, Yang Xinguang and Wu Xiaojun) that began last month. Guerrilla Living Syndrome will be a series of projects continuing to attend to these subtle displacements of spatial and social constructions but applying to wider forms of subject matter. As the name suggests, all the sub-projects will build up to a renegotiation of our social relations based on lived space.

A starting point for this new project is the effect of the Hukou system on life in China. A Hukou is a residence permit, which gives you rights in the area it applies to. While not preventing you from moving around, as it did in the past, a Hukou make things like healthcare more convenient in its area, treatment for serious health issues can only be received in your Hukou.

Although certainly not as draconian as it used to be, the Hukou system represents a strong tie to a “home” area. The psychological and practical issues of accommodation outside of your area become an issue, so the first Guerrilla Living Syndrome project Youth Apartment Exchange Project (YAEP) picks up on the issues of nomadism seen in the previous projects while providing practical accommodation possibilities for the participants. As Ma says: “People move many times in their lives, and there are also a lot of temporary spaces in the city – Starbucks, hotels, restaurants. We want all spaces to become temporary.”

On a practical level YAEP takes the form of a social website that allows participants to find others who want to exchange residences, and then to share the experience and stories behind the exchange back on the site. The site is not just for apartment swapping though, anything can be shared through this open barter system forget art have constructed.

One effect of this new system is to bring people together, promoting social interaction through exchange. Ma worries about the contemporary tendency of people to live their lives online, weakening real world social bonds. As Japan has its otaku, China has its zhainan (宅男) and shengnu (剩女), recognised as potential problems for the development of society. YAEP addresses this by providing an arena for real-world socialisation through the exchange format, in what Ma characterises as “from Facebook to face-to-face.”

When I put it to Ma that in practice exchanging apartments would perhaps not be easy for many people, he was pragmatic about the issues involved, and also pointed out the part traditional Confucian family values will play on participation. These emphasise your family as your top priority while those outside of it are seen as less important or trustworthy. This background will make exchange with strangers difficult for many people, so to begin with the project will bring existing friends together to exchange with each other.

These social barriers are the things that this project seeks to address with its interventions, which forget art see as a route to adjusting society as a whole: “Chinese civil society is not like Western civil society. [Chinese society] can be very cold and selfish… We want to make our projects the starting point to let people accept their value as a citizen, to care about strangers, to care about society, about social responsibility. This is not an art project: it’s a social thing.”

Reflecting the nomadic ways of life, YAEP represents alternative living practices, and although Ma recognises this is “a very utopian way of thinking about society in the future,” nevertheless he feels that taking a lesson from art practice can provide new possibilities in the wider field:

“In the art world we talk about alternative strategies, but we can expand this to everyday life. In the traditional Beijing hutongs we have shared toilets in every alley; it’s more sociable (but maybe less convenient). But modern life says that having a toilet in your house is the only acceptable value, but that way of thinking is very much like what Marcuse addresses in ‘One-Dimensional Man.’ We want this society to have many different values of living, not just one.”

Appropriately, this is a long-term project for forget art which they see lasting 10 years (or more), and the results very much depend on circumstances; Ma is happy to leave that aspect of the project open: “China has a very sophisticated society, so the results of this are really unknown.”

Starting from the minimal roots of the Dragon Fountain Bathhouse project, Guerrilla Living Syndrome shows that the approach of forget art will always be subtle but with grand aspirations: “We want to make a very small change – to find that critical point, where we can try and get some more interesting things to appear.”

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published 30 May, 2011 on ArtSlant.
• forget art: http://www.forgetart.org/
• Youth Apartment Exchange Project: http://www.yaep.net/

New Malden

Over at the HomeShop blog, I’ve been invited to write about the subject of gentrification. The first part of three has just been published, and there I’m thinking about the nature of gentrification and its causes and effects on local communities. I’m focusing on two examples: HomeShop’s own situation, and my home town of New Malden (in the South-West of London) which has seen the development of Europe’s largest South Korean community.

UPDATE: All three part have now been published on the HomeShop blog:

• Gentrification Disco, vol. 1.1: New Malden
• Gentrification Disco, vol. 1.2: Beijing
• Gentrification Disco, vol. 1.3: Everyday Life

Special thanks to Michael Eddy for the invitation to take part in the discussion!

A concern with the “everyday” happens to coincide for two of Beijing’s experimental spaces: both Vitamin Creative Space (whose Pavilion I addressed previously on ArtSlant) and HomeShop see it as grist to their mills. This past December, HomeShop moved into their new premises in a former Danwei dormitory in central Beijing. This move took place amidst an ongoing self-analysis of the relationship of their activities with the everyday and the sustainability of their practice.

HomeShop thrives off its central, backstreet location. A look at Beijing’s unique structure reveals residential areas still existent very much in the centre of the city. Zoning of dedicated areas for residential, industrial or shopping is not so pronounced and there are still large areas of residential housing permeating the whole of Beijing’s structure, right to the centre. In the older areas within the 2nd Ring Road this takes the form of blocks of low-rise apartment blocks or the old-fashioned (although not necessarily very old) hutong alleyways.

HomeShop began life in 2008 when artist Elaine W. Ho rented a storefront space near the Drum and Bell Towers. Over its two years of existence, this tiny space—a bedroom, bathroom and a semi-public living/working space opening directly onto the street—hosted a series of events organized by a floating community of artists under the HomeShop platform. Working within a series of broad themes, they reflected on the features and limitations of the physical spaces HomeShop inhabited.

Discussions about how it should develop have been ever-present – the new space being one result of these inquiries. Elaine has said that “HomeShop has existed as a very small-scale project since 2008, and there have been many talks and lots of child-like excitement built up over the last years about how to carry things forward in a sustainable way. This year, the combination of getting good people together, the contract ending at the former HomeShop space and finding a suitable new space challenges us to simply (or not so simply) take the plunge.”

The new space “broadens our scope in number and potential” says Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga, one of the primary collaborators. Physically, the new space is about ten times the area of the first HomeShop and comprises a series of rooms built around three-sides of a small internal courtyard, including a storefront activity space, individual studios and co-working space. A shared kitchen and dining area serve to encourage the communal aspect of the space.

The storefront space is the physical feature that remains constant between the old and new spaces. For the launch of the space in late December, this served as a communal area where a fast-turnaround, crowd-sourced newspaper was produced to celebrate (for which artist Michael Eddy created screen-printing facilities).

But subtle and significant differences are evident which will push the group into new forms of working and interaction with their community. With a larger space comes a tendency towards to institutionalization, which may go against the urge to flexibility and freedom, which the original space embodied.

A consistent feature of HomeShop, and I feel its particular strong point, is its urge to general collaboration and specifically to engagement with its immediate neighbourhood. As their front-page blurb says: “HomeShop questions existing models of economic and artistic production as an exploration of the micro-political possibilities of the everyday, and of working together.”

This negotiation and productive relationship demands a light touch, dissipating if a heavy-handed approach were adopted, or rigid expectations of what might happen in a given situation were assumed. The beauty of the original space is that its front room was its world – there simply was no room (or desire) to shut oneself off and thus the activities were forced to spill out into the street and become communal. The artists would live and work there in full view of the passers-by; encouraging interaction and unforeseen input into their own work and conversely into the neighbours lives.

Any move creates new possibilities and potential, and HomeShop’s new space brings an inevitable change to the dynamic of its activities, as Elaine recognises: “Admittedly there are a lot of pressures and changing dynamics to deal with for the new HomeShop, but all are measures in constant process, and we are trying to learn as we go.” HomeShop’s openness means this process will hopefully be self-evident and it will be instructive to see how the original HomeShop ethos is adapted to the new conditions.

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published 22 February, 2011 on ArtSlant.

Faith in the quality of our food has become a major issue in China following the recent well-publicized food safety alerts. Many people are turning to organic foods as a reliable source of safe and healthy food, which are also good for the environment. Artist Emi Uemura is working with Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms on the fringes of Beijing to promote awareness of organic principles and access to high quality foods in our city. Recently she launched an online map so you can find the nearest farm for all your organic needs.

The production of food involves processes we often take for granted, so over the last year Uemura has been working with a group of CSA farmers to raise awareness. One of those is Shi Yan, initiator of Little Donkey Farm, and a well-known advocate of organic farming in China. “Organic agriculture means everyone should have the right to healthy food,” says Shi Yan.

At the beginning of 2010, the Chinese Government Health Care Administration published the first ‘Non-Point Source Pollution Report.’ This affects the water system from diffuse sources (hence ‘non-point’), and the report came to the startling conclusion that agriculture and the raising of animals contributed roughly 50% of this pollution in China. “We should use less chemicals and with organic farming we can use even no fertilizers and pesticides in the production of our food, which will directly reduce non-point source pollution,” Shi Yan claims.

Shi works to promote CSA and organic farming throughout China and puts this into practice at the Little Donkey Farm in Haidian District. She explains, “CSA originated in the States, but was originally inspired by traditional Chinese, Korean and Japanese farming techniques.”

Shi emphasizes that: “CSA is a commitment by consumers and producers. The producers grow healthy food for the consumers and the consumers pay in advance for this, supporting the farmers by giving them a reliable income. I also hope that we do not just have a relationship based on buying and selling – we are building a community where each helps the other.”

You become a “member” of Little Donkey Farm by paying a subscription, either as a “Working Share,” granting you the use of a plot of land to grow your own produce; or a “Distribution Share,” to collect or have delivered a box of fresh produce once or twice a week. “In big cities like Beijing about 60-70% of the vegetables you buy travel huge distances from other provinces – this is very bad for the environment,” says Shi Yan, “So we are encouraging people to eat local.”

New members can join by applying through their website, but Shi Yan prefers people to first come to the farm, to see the facilities and crops, and to have a chat with the farmers about how it works: “We obey the principles of organic farming, we don’t use any synthetic fertilizer or pesticides, and we practice crop rotation and feed the animals mainly using our own grass and vegetable leaves.” This one-to-one contact is very important: “The regulations for organic certification in China currently only apply to larger farms, so although we cannot get officially certified we encourage consumers to visit the farm and certify us themselves! They will see what we are doing, which makes for a more participatory guarantee system.”

Every other month Shi Yan and Uemura organize a ‘Country Fair’ (in cooperate initiator with Vitamin Creative Space) that sees several hundred people visit to hear talks by the farmers and buy produce directly from them. Food cooked on site uses ingredients provided by the farmers’ and the waste is composted, creating a virtuous cycle of recycling. Uemura says: “This is for people to share opinions about local organic produce and discover ways to support local farmers.”

The Google map which Country Fair has just produced with Pangbianr also supports the farmers, as you can now locate your nearest producer of healthy food. Uemura says: “The map makes it much easier for farmers and consumers to get a mental image of what is involved in getting the food produced and distributed. We’ve added contact information, website links, and data about the farms and their products, and you can use this map to start ordering your food or just find out about your local farms.”

The next Country Fair will take place on 16 January, 2011, at Renmin University Gymnasium.

Country Fair information: http://www.organicpress.org

Beijing Organic Farm Map: http://pangbianr.com/farm-map/

Little Donkey Farm: http://www.littledonkeyfarm.com/

or Shi Yan’s blog: http://blog.sina.com.cn/usashiyan

Author: Edward Sanderson

Platform China, 319-1 East End Art Zone A, Caochangdi Village, 100015 Beijing, China

November 11, 2010 – November 30, 2010

Developing quite a reputation as a space which encourages experimentation in their shows, Platform China currently have two shows which in their own ways leave some breathing space in the works and the formats of presentation – a rare and noteworthy situation within the oftentimes banal Beijing gallery environment.

In Platform’s Caochangdi space right now their upstairs gallery is devoted to a solo show by Chinese artist Jin Shan, presenting his mercurial series of mini-videos “One Man’s Island” as a scattered installation of monitors and projections, marking out a complex space with these recordings of the artists minor activities. But the focus of this review is actually downstairs, in a smaller room to one side of the entrance, where a rather heartening group show has been installed, which literally and theoretically opens up a space for a physical negotiation with the works on display and for discussion around them.

Curated by Beatrice Leanza, who jointly runs the Beijing-based cultural consultancy BAO Atelier, “The Third Party” is a series of shows, taking principles of exhibition and curatorial practice as their basis. They attempt to promote a certain kind of critical activity which Leanza feels is lacking in the presentation of contemporary art in China. On this basis are constructed three shows, beginning with “How to Be Alone (or where else am I safe from the question: why here?)”. The second part will open on December 9, 2010, titled “The Stranger,” and the third part: “The Third Party” in January 2011.

Part 1, which ended this week, presented works which were chosen to serve as an investigation of the artists’ self-actualization and self-historicization. Part 2 will look at artists working amongst themselves in small groups, and Part 3 will present work which includes the audience as a collaborative part of its work. Leanza explains that “the first show features a very solipsistic, individual type of artistic practice. The second instead opens up spaces for people to participate… and the third will be more obviously related to practices of collaboration, so literally: what is it about art making when simply more people contribute to the piece.” Figuratively she represents this as a movement from “a centripetal to a centrifugal force.”

With 20 artists in the first part, and works covering many styles and forms, the show is packed with material. A number of new installations have been produced for the show, including a new series of Wang Wei’s signature tile pieces; a subtle trompe l’œil wall painting by Zhang Enli; and a sound installation by Elaine W. Ho. These nestle amongst the other artists’ paintings, videos, sound works, and constructions all of which articulate the space with their materials – in one case forcing you to ascend a ladder to catch a glimpse of Liang Shuo’s installation on top of a room inserted into the gallery housing Yan Jun’s sound and site-specific installations.

The forms of presentation are, of course, an integral part of the show, and a prominent feature of the installation are the many brown, hexagonal boxes scattered throughout the space. Collectively these are known as “The Beehive,” and are a storage/display system designed by Li Naihan, Leanza’s collaborator in BAO Atelier. This modular form serves many purposes: in their basic form as a platform and support for the art works; when used in large architectural arrangements it helps to organize the space; and, in their projected use as part of the final show, they become a container for the artists’ works or for the instructions for the works’ creation.

These honeycomb accretions are a consistent thread passing through the whole installation, providing an important, formal reminder of the curator’s theoretical backbone pulling all the works together.

This is a show delicately and successfully balancing theory and an experimental edge, with a presentation providing a sparkling tie that binds it all together. Leanza is a thinker whose texts provide much meat for consideration, however she is sensible to create a system which allows the show to work on a more instantly appreciable level. The Beehive provide a foil to thwart any chance that the theory could over-power, and privileges the prosaic and playful aspects of the artworks themselves, while holding the connections between them unforced but always available for view.

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published 6 December, 2010 on ArtSlant.

Beijingers are famed for their obsession with food, but with all this food so readily available in the capital it’s easy to forget the complex production and distribution chains involved. So it’s interesting that artist Rikrit Tiravanija was in Beijing at the beginning of the year with a solo show at Tang Contemporary. The preparation of food for the public has become a trademark of Tiravanija’s work and serves to play with social and institutional divisions, and had a pivotal role in the development of Relational Aesthetics in the late ‘90s. In this iteration Tiravanija set up a stall providing the Chinese breakfast of doufu nao (豆腐脑) to the public.

What might be called responses to this historical precedent have recently been seen in Beijing, an example being the communal food-making and meals organised by Elaine W. Ho as part of the HomeShop project. The most recent food-based activity organised by HomeShop took place in September as part of NO+CH Open Studio Camp for which custom designed “bags-cum-picnic-mats” and a mobile tower of Baozi were produced. The focus is not so much on the food in these cases, as the fact that they “outline other forms of social space.”

In cooperation with Japanese artist Emi Uemura, Elaine has also presented the more conceptual food-based activity Chain-letter Dinner, which took place as part of the “also Space²” curated by Reinaart Vanhoe in May at C-Space Gallery. Chain-Letter Dinner used crowd-sourced recipes to create impromptu meals in the Gallery’s kitchen by and for whoever happened to be present.

Mobile Container Garden at the shop

For Emi, her observation that “…in front of food people are very open and have discussions,” has served as a fertile ground for her work. Bento Delivery (in collaboration with Vitamin Creative Space), delivered home-made Bento boxes to office workers in the CBD to draw attention to the food delivery systems that normally go unremarked when we pop out of the office at lunchtime to grab a bite to eat.

When Vitamin’s the shop relocated to a rather stark Ai Weiwei-designed building in Beijing’s Caochangdi, Emi created the Mobile Container Garden which performs the process of growing vegetables in wheeled styrofoam boxes, allowing this splintered garden to temporarily occupy parts of the site. From this work (literally) grew the Calendar Restaurant, “a restaurant that only opens when the products grow in Mobile Garden.”

Announcement for Emi Uemura’s Country Fair

And on the 27 November at Studio-X, Emi is organising the second of her Country Fairs bringing together artists, farmers and community activists to sell produce and discuss the issues around their work. For Emi “this Fair is for people to share opinions about local organic produce and discover ways to support local farmers.”

Bake Shop at Arrow Factory.

Organised by Arrow Factory, “Bake Shop” has been taking place every weekend for the last month at their hutong storefront space. The tiny space is usually only viewable from the street, but for this event it was thrown open to the public with “artisan home baking enthusiasts purvey[ing] their handmade cakes, pies, cookies, cupcakes, breads and coffee.”

Bake Shop: Arrow Factory founder and artist Wang Wei makes fresh coffee provided by artist Michael Yuen.

One of the founders of the Arrow Factory, Rania Ho suggests “…this is an experiment, in part to see what happens when a space which is completely non-commercial appears to become a shop. Our space has always been a reaction and commentary on the environment, the people who live in the area and who inform what we see and buy there.”

In their various ways, all these projects serve to create what Emi Uemura calls a “platform … to explore the relations of individuals, different social groups and networks with the intention of mixing them together.” And as Elaine W. Ho says, in many cases they “…are not artworks at all, but simply being aesthetically interested to understand/instigate naturally engaged exchanges, or ways of coming together and being together.”

Country Fair (Emi Uemura): 27 Nov, Saturday at Studio-X
Market starts: 10:00–16:00
Round-table talk and map-making : 13:00–15:00
Address: A103, 46 Fangjia Hutong, Andingmen Inner Street, Dongcheng District, Beijing, 100007 China
Contact: +86 10 6402 8682
Website: http://www.arch.columbia.edu/studiox/events

HomeShop
Address: Xiaojingchang Hutong 6, off Guloudong Dajie, Beijing, 100009 China
Website: http://www.homeshopbeijing.org/

Arrow Factory (Rania Ho, Pauline Yao, Wang Wei)
Address: 38 Jianchang Hutong, off Guozijian Jie, Beijing, 100007 China
Website: http://www.arrowfactory.org.cn/

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published 22 November, 2010 on ArtSlant.
• Photographs courtesy of the artists