Little Donkey Farm, West of Houshajian Village, Sujiatuo Zhen, Haidian District, Beijing

April 16, 2011

To the North-West of Beijing just beyond the sixth ring road, approaching the mountains and the Great Wall, you find the Little Donkey Farm (LDF), a farm and community organisation promoting Community Supported Agriculture within China. LDF work with sustainable farming methods to grow and distribute healthy produce within the Beijing area. Artist Emi Uemura has been working with this organisation for the past year and April saw the fifth of their Country Fairs, initiated and co-organised by Uemura, an occasion where farmers and customers get together to buy and sell produce and share information. As was always planned by Uemura, Country Fair has now grown beyond her original artistic vision to become a broader platform for the social issues around food production.

On this hot and dusty weekend in April, I shared a taxi with a group of friends to make the one and a half hour drive to LDF to attend the Fair. LDF occupies a large section of land mostly taken up with fields managed by the members of the collective who share the land and resources. Beside the fields livestock areas hold a large population of chickens, pigs, and the (not so little) donkey from which the organisation gets its name.

In the middle of all this is a communal area where the Country Fair was being held. Already busy by the time we arrived, this large open space was lined with stalls promoting organic and sustainable farming, as well as selling fruit and vegetables grown on the grounds and homemade food and drink. On the other side a barbeque was set up cooking fresh fish, as well as a stand with jiaozi (dumpling) steamers flanking a large “Bus-Supermarket” decorated in black and white cow print. The bus was home to Special Commune, a local organisation for youth with intellectual disabilities, where you could support them by “adopting” a tree or a horse, amongst other things.

Taking a step back then, as much as this was a lovely day out, why should it warrant a review here on ArtSlant? For me, this has become an interesting question, in that the type of artistic activity Uemura initiates often straddles a fertile gap between the arts community (and their expectations) and society (ditto).

Uemura’s involvement in Country Fair has developed from her earlier, smaller-scale works, such as Bento Delivery, Mobile Container Farm and Calendar Restaurant, which I mentioned in my first review on this site about artists working with food. A recurring theme in all these activities has been the production and distribution of food. Country Fair, originally hosted by Vitamin Creative Space at their Shop venue in Caochangdi Art Village, has since taken place twice at Columbia University’s Studio-X in the centre of the city, and once at Renmin University. Each time the event has grown and now attracts quite a crowd—roughly 2,000 people made the journey on the day I went—to the extent that it can no longer be held in central Beijing. Indeed, as Uemura has always planned, the Fair has taken on a life of its own, taking it out of the artist’s direct control to the extent that it has built a community that will support it in the future.

This process of development and Uemura’s ambivalence to her extended artistic involvement, leads to the question of what purpose the art world serves in this situation? There is the realisation that at some point, an activity is best served outside of the art world: and for a work which aims at society, why delay the effectiveness by fixing it within the art world? This is not to say that the art world is completely useless, its freedoms in this case have proved initiatory and can lead to results difficult to achieve in more circumscribed arenas.

This movement from one arena to another, and the relative merits of either, is an interesting position and one which many artists who deal with social issues are well aware of. However, this movement also leads to ethical questions about an artist’s own commitment to the two arenas. There is ultimately no real gauge for this apart from the results, and it would be idle to impose artificial restrictions on what an artist can or cannot do. Based on the evidence, Uemura’s extended work with the issues embodied in Country Fair has proven her responsibility to the groups and individuals concerned.

It’s perhaps also appropriate, even, to reflect on the purpose of this review for her work. In the same way as Uemura is ambivalent to the art world’s role, this also makes problematic my own writing about her work, situating it (as I inevitably do) within an art milieu, reading her work against an artistic framework. This is problematic—not for the artist, who picks and chooses her engagement with the art world—but for me, approaching her work from that direction.

To me this wrong footing of an approach via art, seems a very important and interesting side effect of Uemura’s work. In persisting in art writing and writing about art in what becomes a seemingly futile and almost de-humanising manner, serves to put the artistic into a balance between success and failure – to put it in the process of one or the other and to try to deny writing’s habit of setting things in stone.

So Uemura’s work also serves to upset its relationship with art. This isn’t a sole aim of the work—that would indicate a lack of commitment to the social effects of the work as I mentioned above—but it is certainly an effect of the work for me and as such is one of the reasons I find it interesting.

Uemura’s role in the development of Country Fair becomes an interesting case study in how an artist comes to terms with the art world – which has a habit of converting all its subjects into commodity status and defusing their potential. If this can be interrupted somehow, perhaps we can gain a fresh perspective on an artwork within society, something that Country Fair itself seems to do.

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published 16 May, 2011 on ArtSlant.

Social Food: Emi Uemura

Through a number of discussions with Emi Uemura, alongside the more obvious subject matter, I’ve come to understand her work as dealing with a boundary between art and life that is forever friable and purposely undefined. I see her taking this position to prevent barriers either to the works’ appreciation or to the applicability of the work. Her subject matter highlights the raw materials of life—our food—and the processes of its production and delivery, but also the significance of our every-day decisions about it. Indeed “the every-day” may be seen as a consistent theme running through her work, an awareness of the unconscious, unremarked actions influenced by our environments and which are part of the bedrock of society. Although her works deal with “big” issues, the environment, organic food, etc. they deliberately try to stay small in scale and demonstrate a lightness of touch, keeping the effects on a personal level.

Between 2005–2007 Emi lived with friends attending the Städelschule, in Frankfurt, Germany, and herself informally took part in the school’s program, remembering this time as when she was first “influenced by the relations between space and food.” The school had a chef and a communal cafeteria where the students and teachers sat together to eat: “I found that quality interesting, in front of food people are very open and have discussions.”

When Emi returned to Japan she began to consciously work with food as part of DUET♪ (a collaboration with artist Fuyuka Shindo), involving catering and organizing food events and projects. At the time, she was also working with the Sapporo Artist in Residence programme, where she says she “learned the importance of long-term processes for producing work and engaging with people.”

On moving to Beijing in 2009, she began working with local individuals and organizations, including the HomeShop (a store-front project space created by Elaine W. Ho), and Vitamin Creative Space’s the shop. With HomeShop Emi described her work as “spontaneously happening activities where I had less consideration of them as a formal or informal project of the HomeShop.” These included the Seed Bombing project where she and her friends would surreptitiously drop seed “bombs”—seeds carried in a ball of earth—as a way to re-green the city.

With Vitamin Creative Space, Emi developed a series of projects taking food and distribution as their starting points. Bento Delivery came out of discussions with Vitamin, working with their location in Jianwai SOHO, a large commercial/office district in Beijing’s CBD, where many workers would order food in at lunchtimes. Emi recognised this time as “a possibility for intervention in space and time, to go into the offices with our Bento – instead of people coming into the gallery.” This was not just about the food, but the act of bringing it to people. Included inside the Bento boxes were also small ‘zines contributed by artists or other people about food, with some poetry, pictures or drawings.

After the shop moved to Beijing’s Caochangdi art village in 2010, Emi developed Mobile Container Garden & Calendar Restaurant as a way to deal with the somewhat sterile spaces around the gallery.

“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.”

From that developed the Calendar Restaurant, inspired by a long-term wish of the artist to open a café where once an order had been placed, she would travel to a coffee-growing country and begin growing the plants for the beans, so after 5 years or so the customer would receive their cup of coffee. The Restaurant relied exclusively on produce grown in the Mobile Container Garden, so was entirely dependent on the growing seasons and the vagaries of growth patterns, the weather and local conditions.

For Emi both these projects are related in how they 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 Container Garden.” Most importantly for Emi these activities presented the idea that growing vegetables takes an amount of time that people normally don’t appreciate when they make purchases from a grocery store: “it becomes just an exchange of money and products. Here, I simply show that it takes time.” The Calendar Restaurant represented for her the opposite of a regular restaurant in which you are served immediately.

And, as with Bento Delivery, these works forced the audience/customer to think hard about what they were getting. The customer gets more involved in the process of production and delivery, realising the consequences of their choices and decisions on a very real level as affecting how and when the goods they choose actually appear.

As demonstrations of processes of production, Mobile Garden and Calendar Restaurant are connected to Emi’s current farming practice, around which Country Fair took shape. Country Fair includes many farmers practicing CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), which works with networking and delivery systems. Emi recognises that “there are big gaps between farmers on a technical level, and many consumers do not know how to receive natural food products.” Country Fair is a place where people can come together to share opinions about local organic produce and discover ways to support local farmers. This is where Emi’s arts background has its benefits, where she is working in an environment that is less defined by disciplinary borders than most:

“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 could talk with farmers about creative approaches.”

Ultimately all Emi’s projects draw from her own personal investment in materials like plants and what they can teach her, and extend to produce a platform where she can explore the relations of individuals, different social groups, and networks, with the intention of mixing them together. There is a very real sense of working across boundaries, to reach as broad an audience as possible: “I’m trying to be active in between art and other social situations. Farming and growing vegetables is about relating to people in the community, this quality is really important for me.”

• Sanderson, Edward (2011), 《社会食物：植村绘美》, Art & Investment Magazine (Issue 53, May), p.29.

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.

Vitamin Creative Space, 2503-B- Building 2, Northern District, Pingod Community, No.32 Baiziwan Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100022, China

November 20, 2010 — ongoing

The end of November marked the inception of Vitamin Creative Space’s “The Pavilion” – their third space in China, and second in Beijing – and allowed for a revisiting of their presentation methods in their various spaces. So, what is this “Pavilion” and what purpose does it serve? And how does it relate to their previous space, “the shop”? Coming to grips with Vitamin’s selection of spaces reveals a taste for poetic license in their consistently ambiguous commercial spaces.

“the shop” opened in November 2008 and initially occupied a difficult to find commercial slot in the outer, less popular, limits of Jianwai SOHO (part of Beijing’s CBD). Earlier this year it moved to a gated community of galleries in the maze-like art district of Caochangdi in Beijing. In this district not known for it’s user-friendliness, “the shop” itself took up position in what was itself a somewhat hidden space.

And now, situated at the end of an anonymous corridor on the top floor of an office block, “The Pavilion” occupies an aerie displaying a similar aloofness. Visitors do not have an easy time – at least up until a few days ago there was no signage at any stage of the route up, just an open door. I think that one can now assume that making such an issue of access is a deliberate ploy by Vitamin.

The Pavilion’s launch was preceded by an announcement laying some groundwork: “From the experience of the process of the shop … we feel the potential and necessity to explore a new approach to public space, leading to the emergence of ‘The Pavilion’.” Physically this new approach reveals itself as a duplex, arranged to create various single and double-height spaces. The open-plan arrangement on both levels is dotted with artworks and installations. Two informal, semi-dedicated areas are labeled as “Facade Library” (currently a collection of books by and about Olafur Eliasson) and “Sound Archive” (displaying CDs and a laptop to listen to recordings). These two areas make use of the underside of a steep staircase doubling as seating for talks, and which leads to the upper gallery space and then a small office area over the entrance.

Whilst referencing the titular traditional structures and borrowing some broad meanings from them, The Pavilion takes the example initiated by the shop several steps into overt poetry. As Vitamin’s Director Zhang Wei is quoted as saying: “…unlike the shop that deals with the daily life issue, the pavilion deals more with the issue of daily life awareness…” an awareness which lets in a poetic reading of these spaces’ characteristics. This movement can be linked to the magical-realist texts of Hu Fang (Artistic Director of Vitamin), whose series of novels and stories seem to have formed a consistent influence on Vitamin’s activities and spaces. In the case of the shop this movement continually attempts to pull the space back from a gallery-style aloofness, removing itself into an everyday-ness, re-energizing the gallery’s primary function as the space of commercial transactions. This retrograde movement is a somewhat quixotic position against its commercial landscape: in the process of emphasizing the quotidian, the activities reveal their poetic natures.

The Pavilion carries on this movement, but perhaps forms a perfect binary with “the shop”: creating an imaginary reality in which to browse the artworks, whilst the shop presents a commercial reality in which imagination has become unhinged. On the one hand The Pavilion is set up to transcend the gallery space, fictionalizing it’s activities while embedding the gallery’s functions in that very process. On the other it transcends even this poetic reading by playing the fiction off against a commercial process that forms the very structures available for it. The space leaves plenty of room for the kind of aberrant activities we have seen at the shop, and it will be interesting to see how The Pavilion negotiates its relationship with it, and how its role as a Pavilion – but also a workable space – will evolve.

Author: Edward Sanderson

• First published 13 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

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 #

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arrow Factory (Beijing)

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

Vitamin Creative Space (Guangzhou)

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

The Shop (Vitamin Creative Space) (Beijing)

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

Chart Contemporary (various sites)

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

This City Art (TCA) (Beijing)

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

INH-SZ 传承：深圳 (Shenzhen)

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

Artist Projects

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

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

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

Presentation and sponsors

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

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

“Alternative”?

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

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

Appendices

Appendix 1: Arrow Factory

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

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

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

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

Supporters

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

  Appendix 2a: Vitamin Creative Space

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

  Appendix 2b: The Shop (Vitamin Creative Space)

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

  Appendix 3: chART Contemporary

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

  Redefining The Black & White Box Model

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

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

  Supporters

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

  Appendix 4: This City Art

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Supporters

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

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

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

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

  Supporters

  • CPU:PRO
  • Yuanfen New Media Art Space
  • REJON
  • Kate Lu
  • Bao Xiao
  • Laoban Soundsystem
  • Our donkey
  ]]> http://blog.escdotdot.com/2010/04/28/notes-on-alternatives-in-china/feed/ 1 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://blog.escdotdot.com/2008/11/20/alternative-bj-project-work/ http://blog.escdotdot.com/2008/11/20/alternative-bj-project-work/#comments Thu, 20 Nov 2008 04:30:48 +0000 escdotdot http://blog.escdotdot.com/?p=429 Continue reading →]]> I think in general it’s an interesting question: what is alternative? It’s obviously completely relative to the established situation. I think the way things are at the moment in Beijing, that means working around the profound commercialisation of the majority of presentations that are currently taking place.

  So, if I was asked to point someone in the direction of ‘alternative’ spaces in Beijing, where would I send them?

  My first thought would be the Arrow Factory, a project space located in an old hutong shop front. And why do I think of this as alternative? Because it’s one of the few spaces which leaves behind the established art zones (798, Dashanzi, the Liquor Factory), and is also determinedly non-commercial.

  I think project work in general and specifically the kind of things Arrow Factory are presenting, are some of the most interesting thing happening in the visual arts in Beijing at the moment. By ‘project’ I mean to go beyond producing just a set of products which fit nicely into the ultra-commercialised environment we have here at the moment. The gallery I look after also concentrates on projects, with an internal definition of working with the artists to make the most of their ideas, supporting them however we can, allowing them to develop their ideas in new presentations that may be within or outside the space itself. Other spaces like Long March, Arario and Joy Art (wow, they don’t have a website) also have this kind of vision, I think.

  Another interesting space, although technically from Guangzhou, is Vitamin Creative Space. They are currently showing their ‘SHOP’ project here in Beijing after its debut at London’s Frieze Art Fair. Now this piece seems to throw the commercialism back in your face – it is a shop after all, positively revelling in the commercial status of the works on display, but by doing so you feel that there is an implicit critique going on of that structure from which the ‘SHOP’ gains it’s everyday meaning and rôle.

  But I don’t think I’m being naïve or overly idealistic, even given the situation we are in at the moment. We all have to make money somehow, not least the artists, so I’m not talking about rejecting saleability altogether (unless that is your particular schtick). I’m just trying to make a case for seeing other meanings for artworks than an immediate call to their capital value, which in my experience has tended to lead to lack of innovation and staleness in recent Chinese contemporary art, as it has done elsewhere in the world at different moments.

  With project work you have a kind of commitment to the artwork which seems to be one way to define ‘alternative’ at this moment in Beijing, as it’s not that common yet, or perhaps it’s just that good results are rare to find.

  As an afternote, it will be interesting to see how things develop with the global financial downturn, and what this means for ‘alternatives’.

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