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/

A piece I wrote for Art World Magazine has appeared in their March edition, dwelling on my experiences as a foreigner in the Chinese art world. The English version of this piece is also appearing over at Tuanjie Space, an online community which aims to “develop critical discourse and practices with artists, curators and writers.”

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!

Today Art Museum, Pingod Community, No.32 Baiziwan Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing

December 9 – 26, 2010

With an artist as well known as Zhang Xiaogang, it’s perhaps difficult to move audience perceptions on from the clichés of “Chinese art” which his work has, for better or worse, become an image for. This problem is equally true for the artist themselves in their quest to develop their work. Zhang’s solo show at the Today Art Museum in Beijing demonstrates a development of his signature stylistic forms into a space which may energise those forms.

Zhang Xiaogang’s canvases since the early-‘90s have been characterized by their figures in the stiff and formalized style of photographic portraiture, emphasizing a flatness of the characters and their surroundings which finds its existential parallel in reflections on memory and the recordings of history. The stiffness is visualised in views, furniture and bodies which are as if pressed flat, with archaic electrical cords which strain across the pictures in stiff, straight lengths and abrupt bends. On top of these settings are interruptions of marks and stains adding another dimension outside of the world view occupied by the figures, while still holding a relation to it as they drape across the forms and follow the structures like a slick of colour through which the painting soaks, saturated by them.

Perhaps in an effort to work against these expectations, as you enter down a short corridor into Today’s main exhibition hall, a mirrored surface sits on the wall in front catching the light, reflections cast down onto the floor over which you step to reach the piece. The mirrored metal is scuffed and scratched in sections, and a diary-like text is handwritten over the surface. The text extends beyond the boundaries of the mirror, beginning on the wall on the left side in silver ink, etched across the metal as dulled sections, dropping back onto the wall to the right, pulling forward and backward as you follow the characters.

This form and its playing with surface and depth is continued in Today’s massive main hall, in the main installation of the show. The hall is beautifully empty apart from a full-size sculpture of a bed in the centre of the room lit by a single bulb hanging from the ceiling far above. The bed is painted with the splashed and mottled forms which will be seen in many of Zhang’s more recent paintings. Another text is painted onto this installation, beginning on the floor, over the bed and back down the floor on the other side as if projected from above. The bed is a double size with neatly folded quilts and pillows at one end, and the addition of a small quilt and pillow placed in the centre as if for a young child, a form echoed in a painting later in the exhibition.

The remaining feature of the installation is a band of green paint up to about chest height, running around the perimeter of the room, another signature feature from Zhang’s paintings, evoking a sterile, institutional environment into which his figures insert their flattened lives.

In the last room are a large set of paintings and bas-reliefs demonstrating the installation as an extension of Zhang’s painted forms. Overall the subject matter has developed into a somewhat more general view of the artist’s world. In one series of paintings the motif of the train window is used to create the inside/outside relation of layering in pure paint which the relief and mirrors demonstrate in their own ways.

The low reliefs, built up on a painted picture plane which is itself on the mirrored metal, repeat the spaces in the paintings with an attempt to move beyond their flatness without denying it. These pieces’ mirrored surfaces are again scratched and scuffed, in some cases adding the written component already seen, but respecting the frame in these cases. These elements work together with the low relief to pull elements into and out of the picture plane, complicating the spaces represented.

While the artist’s investigations of various ways to expand on his successes are presented well in the generous spaces at TAM and are formally interesting in their own right, ultimately the show disappoints, as little goes beyond what we already know. Indeed the direct and straightforward feelings of the early works, which held some sort of power, have been lost in this move to three-dimensions. These formal and material experiments, in my eyes, have little real meaning or result in any successful development in the works.

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published 28 December, 2010 on ArtSlant.

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.

Edward Sanderson: Where did you study originally?

Chen Xinpeng: I graduated from Luxun Academy of Art1 in 1994. Then I moved to the States where I stayed for 10 years, and moved back to China about 5 years ago.

While I was in New York, I was working my ass off and I didn’t have time to do the things I liked to do, so I came back. I think here I have better opportunities.

When I moved back here I saw everything was so temporary. All the building here – they build the buildings, then they tear down the buildings which they just built a few year ago. In the same way, I wanted to do something really temporary, so I made the Tent – you can blow it up and deflate it real quick and as it’s inflatable you can move it around easily – that’s pretty much the idea.

Actually I had made the plan for this a long time ago: I wanted to do a very temporary, easy to move, and very short-term exhibition. And not particularly for fine art, maybe as some other kind of venue. I really like the idea of people re-using my tent to do something else. They see the tent, and they are like “Oh that’s great! I can have a wedding in there!” – or they can do whatever they want, or they can make a tent themselves, or they can come and borrow it from me.

I’m also quite interested in different kinds of audience, not audiences specific to art districts. I’m quite interested in different locations, different people. How they take to different kind of shows. For me it’s a pretty fun approach.

ES: So you’re trying to get out the art district?

CXP: Yes, I pretty much want to get out of that kind of venue.

ES: Was this an issue for you in the States?

CXP: When I was in States, I was pretty much working with the system. But when I was in Beijing, because I had not been in China for a long time, I was not involved in the normal art practices here. I had to do something the way I wanted to do it. I didn’t have strong connections with people here, so I had to do something on my own. I had become kind of disengaged with my friends in China, you know. They had been here for a long time, they had their own way of doing things and I’m not in their system. And also I really don’t like it: I want to do something my way. That’s how I come up with the Tent project.

Because of my background, the first thing I did in the tent was related to art – all I knew was artists. I worked with some friends – not only from China, they were also from Scotland, Switzerland, Mexico, Chile and the US.

When I made the tent, I didn’t know if it was going to work or not because I had never done it before. Turned out it worked fine.

ES: Where did you find the tent?

CXP: I had it made. I found a factory which made tents, actually it was quite cheap. It’s made out of large tubes. It’s like 10 meters high; I think about 400 square meters in area.

Most of the works were sculptures, and some video. I have two smaller tents inside the big one, sort of a video rooms.

I couldn’t hang painting because there’s nothing to hang things on. You know if I include big walls for paintings, it becomes hard to move. The main point is to make it easy to move, so I can tear it down in a few hours; I can move to some other location and put it up in a few hours. That’s the whole idea.

The first time was in 798, by the South gate. And the second place was in a shopping mall called Solana in Chaoyang Park in Beijing. The third time was going to be in the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), but I couldn’t get permission.

ES: I would have thought CAFA would be the easiest place?

CXP: Actually CAFA was the hardest one. Working with business people is much easier than administration. CAFA had all kinds of rules.

The Tent was up for a few days in each case – 4 or 5 days.

Cou Huo2 was the show inside the tent. Cou Huo is like when I moved back to China, everything seems kind of falling apart, you know? You can buy something real cheap, but it’s not fine quality. In Chinese, it is called Cou Huo. You can have everything but at a lower quality!

ES: Who’s involved in setting this up? It’s you who initiated the whole thing, and then Katherine Don [Red Box Studio] is also involved?

CXP: Yes, me and Kat did it together.

ES: What were the reactions of people?

CXP: Actually I was quite surprised. In 798 it was more like a regular art show. But when we moved the tent to the shopping mall people were actually touching everything, and I have to tell them “Don’t touch!” and finally I don’t care anymore – they can touch whatever they want! I can’t control all the kids! There were lots of people there. It was on for only two days in Solana. On the third day there was a huge wind and I had to take it down, otherwise it would have blown away.

ES: Are you doing your own work at the same time, do you have your own practice?

CXP: Yes. Generally my work is somehow related to making some small “innovations”. I have some ideas, and people can use them. I am going to make another temporary building—like a temple—and people can go there to worship, and then I can tear it down and take it someplace else.

ES: A blow-up temple? Like a portable shrine?

CXP: Yes, very portable!

I also made a book. It’s a different kind of thing for me. All the words in the book I found on the street, they are the handwriting on paper in dumpster or on the street, and I collected them. It’s just some stories, some nonsense. I didn’t change anything, it’s like a photocopy, I typed in everything I collected, and that’s only half of it!

Beijing Jieshi by Chen Xinpeng

ES: How long did it take to collect this much?

CXP: A year. The other half I’m still working on. That’s in Korean, English, Spanish – it’s pretty hard! Each entry has a number; this is a reference to the original material – the source. So I can go find the original easier.

ES: You have a whole archive, numbered?

CXP: Yes.

ES: Why do you do this?

CXP: Well, I think a lot of the information people throw away actually is kind of interesting. I try to collect it, and keep a record. People don’t write so much anymore, and really I think these messages are quite valuable. Actually people enjoy reading them, some of the stories are quite interesting.

The title is Beijing Jieshi3 – jieshi is to pick things up off the street.

ES: And you’re going to produce a whole series of these?

CXP: I was going to but I don’t think I can do it, because it takes too long. It’s an intense labour. For a whole year I didn’t do anything but work on this book. I also just print it for a few people. Certain material I don’t think you can get published.

ES: So what else?

CXP: Well, I am working on certain things, which are like games. Like the temples, and fortune telling for artists… I have this kind of Chinese fortune telling system: I can tell you what kind of work you should do to get very successful. Sometimes you’re confused and you can give yourself guidance – you have my book, you can find out for yourself.

ES: A lot of this – the fortune-telling, and the temple, for example – seems to have an interest in faith and belief?

CXP: Well, I really want to do something very basic, like a small-time innovator. ART making gives me a certain kind of freedom; I can do some awkward things. By putting my energy in some other field I may not have the freedom to do it. Actually, ART gave me freedom to do things.

Actually there’s a good reason this happened in Beijing. I stayed in New York for a long time. New York is kind of very orientated and systematic. it has certain rules you have to follow. But in Beijing, you don’t have rules; you can do whatever you want.

ES: Do you mean in terms of art, or generally?

CXP: Well, generally, you have certain rules but they’re not really rules, they can be broken any day, any hour. I think it’s quite interesting. You can’t do that in the States, because people put you in a certain category, very fast. And after that you’re lost…

ES: Why Beijing…?

CXP: Well, you know, China as a whole – we are ideologically very confused now. Nobody believes in Communism, no religion. So I think anything goes. There are certain things that are not that good about this situation, but certain things are definitely good.

ES: What’s good then?

CXP: Well, you can step over the line, in certain ways. Actually, you can get away with certain things. Maybe people are concerned its stupid, but actually it’s quite interesting. I think you can let things just happen here.

ES: So, do you think Beijing is a particular hot spot for this kind of thing?

CXP: I don’t think it’s hot right now but I think it should be. I think in China the businessmen are more aggressive than artists. Artists are kind of falling behind, you know. The way businessmen are doing business, they’ve broken all the rules, they don’t really care about traditional business practices, and I think artists should do that too. But art now is not as aggressive as business.

ES: Do you think they ever were?

CXP: In the past we have certain time periods like Nanbeichao4. The people were more aggressive and they step over the line often. But that’s like a thousand plus years ago! I think artists are supposed to be more aggressive than businessmen, but in China I think business is more aggressive. I think artists should be more aggressive than the rest of society, but now in China artists are kind of slow runners.

The main reason is they want to be more commercial. They want to make more money. And they have lost their creative edge. But businessmen are different. They are willing to try everything to make money, so they can be more aggressive, they break laws, they go to jail. But for the artist, no, that’s different. Artists don’t want to be aggressive. they want to be conservative. I think that’s not a good trend.

ES: Can you think of any artists in China who are being as aggressive as business?

CXP: I think there are some but I don’t think there are enough! I think now some artists are getting involved in other sorts of practice, this is a good trend.

ES: What other sorts of practice?

CXP: Well, they should go out get involved in all kinds of things, like business development, all kinds of stuff. I think that’s quite interesting. As an artist you have more freedom to do certain things. People say, “wow, this is crazy!” but because you are an artist maybe you can still do it. I think that’s good.

It’s different for designers. Designers do that kind of thing all the time, get involved in other kinds of business practice, and they are more open than artists now. I think artist are more conservative. I think artists should do this. We should involve all kinds of stuff.

ES: And what you are doing is your way to try to be free-er and getting involved in other things, the Tent in particular?

CXP: Yeah, all kinds of things. I think there will be more and more alternative spaces and artists using them. I know a few people doing that, not a lot, one or two.

ES: In Beijing?

CXP: Not in Beijing. One in Chongqing – Yang Shu5, he has this little place called Organhaus Art Space6. He’s organising some shows, in a little gallery, it’s all non-profit, but also in all different kinds of venues. It’s quite interesting.

And also I’m part of this group called Diao Dui7. We’re going to have a show on the 18th of September8 at C5 Gallery in Beijing’s Sanlitun area. This group is just me and a few friends who have been doing this for a few years. It’s pretty hard to explain, you have to see it. It’s light hearted, performance, everything. And sometimes we have a public show, sometimes we just do it for ourselves.

On the 18th we are presenting ten works, some unfinished, some are just writings, some are where we are just arguing about the rules and we never get round to doing it because different people have different opinions. We have put these rules on the wall.

There’s a similar group in Hangzhou, called Shuangfei9. We’re kind of similar, but different! They are more nutty, you know, but we’re kind of private. We do certain things which in a certain view are not really acceptable – because we’re not commercial, and our activities are not really well-produced, and also we take the group opinion as rules. We have seven people and we set up a rule, and we have to follow that rule to do things. Sometimes they’re quite dumb! But that’s the rule, we have to follow it. Once in a while it can get quite interesting!

Chen Xinpeng was interviewed by Edward Sanderson at the Cave Café, 798 Art District, Beijing, on 9 September 2010.

1. Luxun Academy of Fine Arts http://www.lumei.edu.cn/ #
2. 凑合 http://art.redboxstudio.cn/en/2009/projects/2009/cou-huo/ #
3. 街拾 #
4. 南北朝 Northern and Southern dynasties (420AD-589AD) #
5. 杨述 http://www.99ys.com/zt/txjs/artist_ys.html #
6. 器空间 http://www.organhaus.org/ #
7. 掉队 #
8. The 5th Falling Behind Show: Chen Xinpeng, Dong Jing, Liang Shuo, Shao Kang, Wang Guangle, Zhang Zhaohong, Zhou Yi: http://www.artlinkart.com/en/exhibition/overview/4d7brtpj #
9. Shuangfei Collective 双飞小组: Li Ming, Sun Maoyuan, Huang Liya, Zhang Lehua, Lin Ke, Li Fuchun, Yang Junlin, Cui Shaohan, Wang Liang. 李明、李富春、杨俊岭、孙茂源、黄利芽、张乐华、林科、崔少瀚、王亮。 #

Japan, Canada

Edward Sanderson: Can you give me your background? You were born in Japan? How did you end up in China?

Emi Uemura: I was born in Japan and grew up there, going to College in Sapporo to study English Literature for two years and then transferring to the University in Halifax, Canada,

I went to Halifax to study spoken English first of all, and while at the University I took Cultural and Linguistic Anthropology, which still influences my thinking. Around that time, I started to meet students from NSCAD (Nova Scotia College of Art and Design) and began engaging with art, social activities and changing eating habits, After graduating from the University, I went back to Japan, worked for a year, then went to Frankfurt, Germany.

Germany, China

ES: What was Germany for?

EU: At this time, a couple of my friends attended Städelschule, a school in Frankfurt, so I was simply curious to experience living in Germany with a group of friends. I was not an official student at the school, but I sneaked around and attended their lectures, film screenings and especially their cooking classes. And did some small projects while I was there.

ES: When would that have been?

EU: 2005–2007, for two and half years. And I think that was the time I was really influenced by the relations between space and food. Even though it was a small school they had a chef and a huge cafeteria where the students and teachers sat together and eat. I found that quality interesting, that in front of food people are very open and have discussions. I think from that point on I wanted to be working with food.

Then I went back to Japan again for two years and I consciously worked with food. The artist Fuyuka Shindo and I had a collaboration unit called DUET♪. We started catering and organizing food events and projects. At this time, I was working with the Sapporo Artist in Residence programme, and I learned the importance of long-term processes for producing work and engaging with people. I’ve now been in Beijing since the end of last year, because a friend of mine is living here and again, I’m looking forward to experiencing a different culture.

Seed Bombing

ES: Maybe you can talk about some of the things that you’ve done, like the Bento boxes, the Chain Letter Dinner at “also space”, and the seed bombing. I’d also like to ask about your work with Elaine Ho’s HomeShop. There’s an informal group of people around that, and you work together on certain things. Perhaps saying you work together is too much of a structure – it’s an informal, friendship thing, so the seed bombing, for instance, is a kind of joint effort.

EU: This year the HomeShop is working with the theme of “ballsy”. Elaine told me the meaning of “ballsy” in Chinese relates to courage (in English this works too) but also sprouting seeds. I mentioned to her there’s this technique of seed bombing and why don’t we put that together with this meaning of “ballsy”? It’s a kind of spontaneously happening activity where I have less consideration of it as a formal or informal project of the HomeShop.

One of the great things about the HomeShop is if you’re making an action in front of the space people come over – it attracts attention. A neighbour, passerby and regular kid visitors will come and have a conversation and exchange; this kind of social context can otherwise be difficult to have in Beijing.

For me, HomeShop is more a friend’s house than having to do with an institution (whether Elaine agrees with this fact or not) and I think that an interesting element is each person has a different approach and consideration towards HomeShop, and—literally—this place functions as home and shop in that sense.

Chain Letter Dinner1

ES: And both Elaine and you were involved in the also space2 show, at C-Space?

EU: We did the Chain Letter Dinner. I received an email, a chain letter of recipes from a friend. Usually I ignore chain letters, but I was doing the Bento Delivery project, which involved cooking everyday and I thought: “Why not?” I was excited about receiving recipes too, that’s not a bad exchange after all. One of the people out of the 10 I sent it to was Elaine and she was so excited about it! And the 8 recipes I received were all from Elaine’s friends – so we figured that somehow her friends were really active in this situation. At that time also space was happening, so we thought why don’t we realise these recipes at the space?

We just copied all the recipes and emails and put them up on the wall in the kitchen of C-Space. We also announced on the also space blog that we are cooking at a certain time. I fixed two or three recipes and Elaine also fixed two or three recipes. We made cheesecake and chocolate moose, tofu omelette, pizza, and kimchi rice. So we were the chefs or cooks.

But also space² in itself had an interesting quality about it, people could go anywhere in the gallery and hang around in the residential area, and at one point this guy came into the kitchen and we just started cooking together.

ES: Who was he?

EU: I don’t know. Some random guy. And we were making cheesecake together. And before it was finished he just disappeared. I worked with Elaine and Reinaart Vanhoe (the curator for also space²) based on friendship, and at the same time I have respect and trust toward how consciously they work with people and space in certain contexts and social situations.

Bento Delivery

ES: Well let’s go back and talk about Bento Delivery then. We’re going back in time here, the Bento boxes were actually the first time I came across your work, although I didn’t know it was you then.

EU: Bento Delivery happened over a period of three months, from the end of March to the beginning of June 2010.

It was collaboration with Vitamin Creative Space. We talked about the food situation of China and figured that we could work with food delivery systems. The shop at that time was located in Jianwai SOHO, a large commercial/office district in Beijing’s CBD where people working in the offices often order in food at lunchtime. So we decided to work with this, using lunchtime as a possibility for intervention in space and time, to go into the offices with our Bento – instead of people coming into the gallery. So this was not just about the food, but the act of bringing it to them. We also included some small ‘zines contributed by artists or other people about food – poetry, pictures or drawings. And we used Bento boxes made out of bamboo, which is reusable.

ES: Did you make them or did you find these boxes to use?

EU: We searched for bamboo box makers in Beijing; the other part of this project is concerned about micro economy and that production money should go into local people. However, bamboo is a Southern product and we could not find a local source. So we found them on the Internet. This part did not work out and we compromised with this solution. Other aspects, like the wrappers, are made of recycled fabric, with my own stitched patterns on them. I collected the fabric from some people in Beijing who had leftover material. Over the three months I delivered to around a hundred people. Five people a day three days a week, bi-weekly for 3 months.

ES: That’s a lot of work. It was popular then?

EU: Yeah!

ES: How were people finding out about this?

EU: We made flyers and gave them away in the CBD area. We limited the delivery space to the CBD area where the shop was located, and also around where my house was, in Tuanjiehu. Other areas would have been too difficult for me to get to, because I wanted to do the deliveries myself whenever I could.

ES: Were you making them at your house?

EU: Yes.

ES: And most of the people were in the office blocks in Jianwai SOHO?

EU: Actually it varied. Many people ordered from Jianwai SOHO, but other orders came from Central Park area, Capital Library on the South Third ring road; Chaoyang Park area; and Dongdan, close to Wangfujing. So the CBD area expanded a little and all the time I was biking around, like other delivery people. Some people ordered from Wudaokou, but “No way!” I had to refuse.

These random orders were from the shop’s Douban3 network, where you can publicize events, and where we announced this project as well. Actually most of the orders came through Douban, interestingly from people who actually didn’t know about the shop and were just curious about my bento – they just thought the shop was a restaurant and I was the owner.

ES: So their only connection to the shop is through you at this point?

EU: Yes, I really liked this twisted reality.

ES: So why would they be connected to it on Douban? Through someone else?

EU: They get mailed if there is an event added. So once the shop put up this event on Douban, about three thousand people got the message. And if you wanted to join the event or were interested in it, you clicked a button. And when you do that I think all your friends are informed.

So our announcement was: “Homemade Bento delivery, between April 21 and May 20, inside of CBD area. We are doing delivery of home-made Japanese food. Everyday five people will be delivered to.”4 I didn’t manage the orders, staff at the shop did and it helped me not get emotionally involved in the selection. I have a tendency to not refuse the order.

ES: It filtered through the shop to you? You just got a name and an address, like Pizza Hut or something?

EU: Yes, exactly. I got the information and cooked, made the bento and delivered.

But an important part of the project was that I communicated and exchanged with customers as a delivery person, asking them questions about food, office work, and who they are. By doing so I tried to break the regular routine and associations of their lunch and lunchtime. I was trying to do this project on a very personal level. As I expected, sometimes they would refuse to let me into the office, and I had to use a different elevator, and there was no engagement at all with the customer; but at other times, I had a lot of interactions and conversations took place.

ES: So the people you deliver to were expecting to get the delivery from you as an artist?

EU: Not necessarily. But yes, some people who were familiar with the intention of the project treated me as an artist and often conversations went smoothly because we both knew what was happening. In this case, I stayed longer and ate lunch with them, talked more in-depth on food issues and any other common interests.

There were actually two different types: some people were really looking forward and waiting for me, and some people were just waiting for their food. Another aspect is that staff from the shop would sometimes do the delivery, like Michael Eddy, Zhang Jun, Yi Lin and Zhang Wei also delivered to places, so they played a role and expanded their social situation. And this was not intentional, but developed from occasionally demanding help that I needed because of not being able to manage time for the geographical spread. Michael and Zhang Wei offered as helpers at first, and they found interests in the outcomes of exchanges with the customers, so other people were also involved.

ES: When you were in the offices, you were doing research. What kind of information are you interested in? How people work and live?

EU: It was like research, but I liked thinking of the visit to the office as if the relation of gallery person and audience had been switched – so, I visited the office as if I was visiting an art space, looking at office desks and plants as installations and displays. Just interested in how business people use space for the people who spend half a day of their life there. One dotcom office was interesting in how they created an open atmosphere, no partitions between desks, a lot of plants, a bar lounge area, lunch time presentations, a loft&ellips; what few partition there were, were glass. They were working with space as a whole, instead of cubicles.

ES: OK. How they’re projecting themselves, presenting themselves. And this research ended up in a book, as drawings and a report?

EU: Right now I’m working on digital format of documentation of Bento Delivery. Every week when I finished the deliveries I made a drawing diary in analogue format which was originally presented at the shop during the project period. But for a wider audience to share and discuss the project, I’m making it into digital format to present on its own website and Douban again so that we will be starting another conversation, hopefully.

Mobile Container Garden & Calendar Restaurant5

ES: Related to that, let’s talk about the Calendar Restaurant. I feel the Bento Delivery seems very developed as a project, and the Calendar Restaurant is another well-developed project.

EU: They are related in how they both deal with current food and social issues. Mobile Container Garden uses container gardens on wheels to move around. Calendar Restaurant is a restaurant that only opens when the products grow in Mobile Garden. They are at the shop in its current location in Caochangdi.

In this Caochangdi space, the shop is located in an art context where the building complex is spatially isolated from the local village. When I saw the space, I found it difficult to do a project there, because of the lack of liveliness. However, when I saw the courtyard area, the idea of a garden and growing vegetables came about to decorate the space. And the idea developed wheels so that the garden could move around to make a new path (or at least a new standpoint), to take a route for the regular visitors and also as a friendly welcome for the passersby (if any) and local Caochangdi people.

So originally it was a Mobile Garden, and Calendar Restaurant developed from that. I had had an idea for a long time that I wanted to make a café where people can order coffee and once an order has been placed, from that day I go to Colombia or wherever and start growing coffee, and maybe in 5 years I can make this one cup of coffee!

ES: So the Mobile Container Garden is in the polystyrene tubs that you can see outside the shop now?

EU: Yes. Styrofoam is cheap and we can get tubs made from it at the vegetable market. We collected twenty-five used Styrofoam containers and decorated them with colourful tape (which was a technique learned from the local budget couriers’ use of materials, and which I used for my delivery box in the Bento project). When I was making boxes, people came around and started working with me – the kids and some old men from around here, as well as staff from the shop – they all came down and started covering boxes with tape patterns. Everyone designed spontaneously and it just happened as an activity without major significance, It happened as if playing at a playground, something attracting people and just disappearing again.

Soil and fertilizer came from the “Little Donkey Farm” where I am currently participating for farming. They showed interest in this project and donated the organic soil and fertilizer. They also gave me some seeds. Other seeds I found in the flower market; and from Zhang Wei (the director of the shop) – her Grandpa is farming in the Northern part of China and she brought back some seeds from him, so we planted all these seeds. It started on July 13th and the idea is the vegetables will grow until October.

Calendar Restaurant only has five dishes: vegetable garden pizza, cucumber salad, snow pea mint soup, 20days radish, and mung bean sprouts. From the third week of July I’ve been cooking sprouts every Friday. You can make sprouts in 3~4 days (I did not grow beans for it). In October the other 3 menus should be ready. 20 days Radish will be ready this week, but only four are growing!

ES: Out of how many?

EU: I planted twenty or more. But local kids in Caochangdi pick them sometimes. And perhaps the weather is a problem, I also planted some summer vegetables too late – anyway, my enemies are small local kids!

ES: But there are some things that are growing?

EU: Coriander, carrots, lettuce, snow peas, beans, cucumbers are fruiting, tomatoes, eggplants are blooming, lots of leafy greens, basil and mint. Some have already been retired, strawberry, green pepper and red pepper, chives.

ES: So you have a menu, but the menu is based on when each ingredient will be ready, it’s divided by months.

EU: Presenting the idea that growing vegetables takes an amount of time that people normally don’t appreciate when they purchase them from the grocery store – it becomes just an exchange of money and products. Here, I simply show that it takes time.

ES: There’s a real sense of cause and effect in this. You get a real relationship to the growing process. It’s not just that you go into a restaurant and there’s a list of things that you can get all the time.

EU: The Calendar Restaurant is the opposite of a regular restaurant where you are served immediately; in this restaurant the customer has to wait [laughs]. Unfriendly restaurant.

ES: It’s forcing you to think about what you’re getting. Like the bento boxes, but the customer gets more involved in the process of production and delivery. The bento boxes are about delivery, and this is more about production, forcing the customer to appreciate what they’re getting and when they’re getting it.

EU: Mobile Garden and Calendar Restaurant are presenting the process of production and are very connected to my current practice of farming. Oh, and I’m organizing a Country Fair on September 18. This project arises from Mobile Garden as a platform, with three to five farmers coming in to sell their produce and consumer’s unions coming to discuss issues around urban agriculture and food. My friend who shares the plot at the Little Donkey Farm is making dumplings for Calendar Restaurant. She was like: “Hey Emi, I’ve got so many chives now, so I’m going to make dumplings for Calendar Restaurant!” – it’s a very friendly takeover of my restaurant, I am excited! Most participating farmers are practicing CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), working with networking and delivery systems. However, still there are big gaps between farmers in technical levels and also many of the consumers do not know how to receive natural food products. This Fair is for people to share opinions about local organic produce and discover the way to support local farmers.

I think the shop can be a platform to distribute their ideas and also to create networks. I have found there are not many places to discuss the issues around food with customers, there is no direct communication happening in Beijing as far as I know. It would be interesting if artists would talk with farmers about creative approaches.

Daily Activities

ES: I wanted to go a bit broader now. Is Beijing a good place for the things you do? Or are you just doing things and seeing what happens?

EU: I never think too much about the significance of Beijing. The difficulty is not speaking Mandarin or knowing Chinese and Beijing culture, this is the huge wall to get over when doing anything, and always having to be helped and depending on others. But I’m catching up on daily basis. For my project, it does not matter so much about the location, however, I have to say that the Bento Delivery and Mobile Garden came up as a reflection of social issues that I perceived in Beijing. I did not come to Beijing for Chinese cultural interests or those specific to art practice, but I would like to see what I can do here and see what happens.

ES: But the kind of work that you do reacts to particular situations you’re in and the things that you’re interested in – I guess it’s not about Beijing per se, but about what you want to do and what you can do in a particular situation, what opportunities come up. You’re working with those opportunities rather than going somewhere because it has a particular benefit. For instance, how did you meet Elaine Ho and how did the projects with HomeShop come about?

EU: That kind of question always confuses me. I guess how you see what I do with Elaine makes it a project, but for me so far, I do things (like seed bombing) as activities with friends on a daily basis. And that is understandable that we have different ways of contextualizing situations. However, I found that when many of the people I meet in Beijing do something together it becomes “working” together, which is a little too much for me; perhaps Beijing is a city where people come and go all the time, many people just want to do some “project” during the short period of their stay. Anyway, I met Elaine through a friend of mine, and we just hang out lot. But nowadays, we talk about “work” or “projects” (finally I can use the word!) that we will perhaps realize in future, so we’ll see.

ES: At the beginning of our interview you were talking about how you became interested in making artworks – relating them to food and cooking. Well, given your ambivalence to formalising your activities too much, I wanted to ask how you see that as being “artwork”? What’s your relationship with artwork?

EU: To a certain extent, it is an artwork/project (Bento Delivery, Mobile Garden, Calendar Restaurant) that produces a platform where I can explore the relations of individuals, different social groups and networks with the intention of mixing them together. Often, this is intentionally happening in art contexts where I find less limitation of expression for an individual’s practice. I am not talking about commercial art, more about alternative, non-commercial situations here. Also, in some way, from another perspective, my activities do not have to be considered as artwork if people don’t think so – it is their decision. I guess I have mixed feelings in myself about categorizing my work as art But it is true that I’m trying to be active in between art and other social situations. For example, farming and growing vegetables is about relating to people in the community, this quality is really important for me. These people are very, very straightforward and believe in certain things and I find that I can be in-between and bring these two sides (art and farming in this case) together. I believe that art and a creative aspect will change people’s perspective a little bit into a better way of understanding reality.

ES: OK, so after the Country Fair? What’s in the future?

EU: I will work towards urban agriculture and relations to art and society, also with food and space. I’m currently working at the Little Donkey Farm outside of Beijing where November will be harvest time. Also, I’m going to participate at Grizedale Arts in England where the art space also runs a farming operation. Then, I would like to realize Calendar Restaurant in a real situation, not an art space, so I have to listen to potatoes for my direction!

Emi Uemura was interviewed by Edward Sanderson at the The Bookworm, Nansanlitun Lu, Beijing, on 31 August 2010. Interview edited by Edward Sanderson and Emi Uemura.

1. http://www.ourwork.is/alsospace/2010/04/chain-letter-dinner/ #
2. http://www.ourwork.is/alsospace/2010/05/chainletter-recipes/ #
3. http://www.douban.com [Chinese social networking website] #
4. http://www.douban.com/event/11798662/ #
5. http://ourvitamin.taobao.com/view_page-9804492.htm #

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.