made in china

sorry for the lack of format.

made in china
In terms of product design, there are two options that China (and the rest of the world for that matter) can turn towards:
industrial design- dealing mainly with functionality, and what designer Pearl Lam calls ‘hyper design’- which deals with a
combination of artistic design/design for daily life/social design. In choosing the topic of design, I had the opportunity to intern with XYZ design, as well as speak with product designers and professors at the Industrial Design unit of Shanghai University of Technology. In having the chance to visit these locations and extensively speak with the individuals within these fields, I was able to learn production methods and ideas of social idealism based on artists’ personal visions.

Chinese design is emphasized mainly by the context of contemporary China itself. By saying this, I mean that China is a place of industrial manufacturing, making certain aspects the process of designing more accessible to current design practitioners in China. In turn, just based on the premise that an object is ‘made in china,’ the act accessing certain materials and going through with the process of designing becomes more easily graspable. Designers are further prompted to explore different outlets, or ‘traditions’ as a medium to integrate art into design.
Industrial design can be defined as an applied art, where creating and developing concepts and specifications both
aesthetically and functionally improve a products marketability and production. In turn, this benefits both the user and the
manufacturer. At the College of Art and Design at the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, I was given the
opportunity to interview faculty members as well as product designers-Teddy Zheng, Grant, and Chen Tao. The discourse
mainly focused on the educational system within this field. As with most things in China, they explained how the industrial
design industry began developing in the 1980s. At that time there were only thirteen Universities offering design courses as
opposed to the 220 that contain programs presently. The vast increase of design universities is a direct product of China’s
developing economy. Prior to 1980, products were designed in foreign countries and manufactured in China. Rather than
producing individual ideas and independent design, workers took to the factories, copying the shapes that they were given and paying attention to technical and aesthetic renderings.
The causes of industrial design education are products of Qing Hua and Zhong Nan University. Both set a standard
curriculum which all other Industrial design schools in China imitate. This is the reason why each University’s curriculum is at the same level. However, some have distinct characteristics- such as offering more of an art background or offering more of a science/technology background.
The industrial design unit at the University of Shanghai offers students a four-year program composed entirely of a set of
standard classes. These classes force students to explore a practical concern in technical processes and requirements for
manufacturing products. The goal for the University is to assist students in fulfilling requirements by introducing them to
materials/forms, exploring design outlets and furthering technological design. Within the first year, students are required to
study politics, master English, and explore math, mechanical technology, as well as sketching. From there, the second year
offers more professional classes, exploring costs, graphic design, aesthetics in design, sketches on design, and form fabrication. These classes train the students to use simple materials in order to get a general idea of form making. The next two years offer more specific classes that cater to the students future goals within the design world. This is the time where “real product design” happens. Students are introduced to the process of creating simple structures such as perfume bottles and then move to more complex structures such as mobile phones and vehicles. At this time students are required to take classes in the concept of forms, model making, economics, structural construction, material selection, as well as take part in social contests.All students are required to complete the three levels of the program. So, even if a student is more interested in designing microwaves, he must go through the process of learning technicalities in washing machines, vehicles, etc. At the end of their four years, the teachers introduce the ‘good students’ to independent designers and international companies. The careers of an industrial designer can range from graphic design, to furniture design, to companies such as Shanghai GM, Whirlpool, or Electrolux.After graduation, students are often times encouraged to take a year abroad to gain a higher degree and acquire further skills in the design process. Currently, most students are being outsourced to Japan and Germany. Reason being is that Chinese Industrial Design is based off of Japanese and German influence, (they hate France, they find it too Romantic). In terms of Japanese influence, China mimics their take on details, whereas in terms of German influence, China respects the functionality and durability of products. The resulting product yields no absolute difference between the two influences- both working in conjunction to create products with optimal function, value, and appearance. Today, Industrial Design enterprises in China, as in anywhere, are dictated by the consumer market, thus this is what the design curriculum is based on. Products coming out of China are based on a client’s experience with a product- a synthesized combination of functionality and trends of consumer aesthetic. Concepts and specifications are based off of human characteristic, needs, and interests. Designers must explore and understand visual and tactile.
Where the industrial design units of the Universities deal primarily with functionality, the fine art departments at the same
Universities offer technically run studio courses, which aid designers who want to concentrate more on the aesthetics of design.
From what I gather, it seems as if those who go into ‘hyper design’ tend to have more of a fine arts background- particularly in sculpture. In another one of my interviews I met with artist/designer Hang Feng, who attended Shanghai University as a fine art major, concentrating in Graphic Design. Upon visiting Hang Feng’s studio in Moganshanlu, located in the back area of Art Sea- an upstairs gallery in building 9, I was able to interview him about his schooling in the fine arts field. As a graduate from the system before art and graphics had really become a particularly popular outlet, Hang Feng had nothing but negative things to say about the art programs in China. In his perspective, the Chinese educational system is disastrous and impractical based on the premise that everything the institution teaches stems from rote memorization and exact duplication- there is no freedom of thought. The curriculum in which he was enrolled offered mostly drawing and painting classes, which he deemed as ‘not very interesting.’ To broaden his range of experience and to enhance his artistic skills, he took up a printmaking course on the side, as well as did quite a bit of independent self-study on anything that interested him. Because his graphic design course was actually taught without the use of computers, his semester consisted of classes devoted to drawing exact technical sketches of a pen, or an arrow. Due to this major disappointment, he began to work for advertising companies and magazines to pick up extra knowledge within the graphic design and photography realm. Firsthand experience within these fields acted as the key, which “opens a gate to [him] as everything can be designed differently...
below is his artist.”
In the center of his studio hangs his most recent design endeavor- a circular oriental carpet. As you approach this object
you begin to notice something peculiar going on, the shapes and patterns within the design are composed of nothing but
commercial symbols. Dissection leads to internationally recognizable trademarks of Puma, NIKE, Louis Vutton, and Channel.
As I will mention a little later, this carpet, themed ‘Fake Market’ encompasses one of the more popular themes and trends
within the contemporary Chinese Design scene. The production of this piece called for Heng Fang to oversee the entire project from start to finish. He explained that because workers in China are careless about detail, he found no other choice but to opted to live in a carpet factory for four months in order to direct workers every step of the way. Production of this one of a kind, handmade carpet took approximately a month and a half.
Heng Fang’s studio also displays a series of plastic/paper laser cut outs of the similar Branding-Logos symbols. He has
worked on furniture design as well as other popular culturally Western products, such as a geometrical plastic Christmas tree
sporting logo cutouts.
In my travels I inadvertently had another studio visit. This time with a student/employee at XYZ Design Company named Toni. Similar to Heng Fang, he studies at Shanghai University and has a similar educational background in fine arts- concentrating in sculpture. I was sent by my internship to his studio located at the University. The task at hand was the completion of the beginning stages of a project for design team Julie Mathias and Wolfgang Kaeppner. Through XYZ, this French and German duo presented us with a photo of a vase in the shape of a robot standing about a foot and a half high in length. We were also given a miniature tin robot in addition to this photo. From these two sources, we were expected to produce an exact rendering of a combination of these sources, keeping in mind precise measurements/requirements. A pristine porcelain robotic vase would be the result—partially produced in Toni’s cluttered and congested studio at Shanghai University. The procedure goes as follows:
start with basic wire structure, build up basic figure in clay-body legs, arms head- built out of basic square and rectangular
structures, add slightly more detailed accouchements- a backpack, clamped had, earphones, etc, make sure everything is in
proportion and that there are no flaws. When the clay mold is completed, it will be cast in fiberglass at Toni’s studio, inspected by Wolfgang, Julie, and XYZ design, and then sent to another factory, where it would be produced in porcelain. When this is completed it would yet again be sent to an alternate location for details to be painted on the finished product—the example photo we rendered from sported a series of blue vines crawling up the lower portion of the robot. This is the way things go in China, once the sketch leaves the designer’s hands, their idea is outsourced to manufacturers in order for their work to achieve a perfect industrial finish.
As one can probably gather from previous mentions, the company XYZ Design/Contrast Gallery relates more to the
aesthetics of design. This company was founded in 1992, and the first to focus solely on contemporary design in China. Pearl
Lam, head of XYZ Design/Contrast Gallery, defines art as “a combination of fashion, product design, graphics, painting,
sculpture, furniture design, and architecture, and considers it anachronistic to separate these disciplines into strictly autonomous fields.” Although a purely Chinese based-with locations in Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong- XYZ Design commissions mainly western artists. Most recently, projects are based off the idea of exploring the influence of the West on the East. Because the designers supported by this company are from diverse countries and cultures, the products created can be considered as ‘intercultural’ art, which Pearl translates to as “respecting and understanding cultural heterogeneity.” She likes to imagine that each designer her company supports draws from China’s 5,000-year-old civilization in order to create a new means of communication, in turn forming a new visual language within their work. However, in my perspective, the result is Western art (design) and Western ideas. I may be wrong, but the only Asian spin that I’ve seen from designers in her company is their utilization of quick and cheap labor and production. Which I guess is a pretty precise reflection of what China is all about. In my short time exploring this field and interviewing the limited contacts whom I’ve met here, the only real first hand Chinese product design I’ve come in contact with – and by Chinese I mean that the designers themselves were Chinese-- yielded peculiarly similar products. In meeting with artist/designer Hang Feng, in addition to seeing and working on designer Pearl Lam’s most recent work I began to notice a trend. Both individuals produce items that are highly saturated with signs of commercialism, which surprise surprise, is what the contemporary art scene here seems to be presently about as well. Where Pearl designs Ming Dynasty style chairs upholstered in knock-off Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci, Prada, and every other pretentious high fashion handbag, Hang Feng creates rugs, plastic Christmas trees, plastic sheet hangings, etc inscribed with NIKE, Puma, Louis Vutton, and Channel symbols. The use of these symbols is of course descriptive of China’s new commercial and cultural openness, the rapid urbanization and transformation of cities, the relentless bombardment of consumer culture, and the influences of mass media.The result of this cross-cultural design concept also results in cross-disciplinary aspects of contemporary art and design. In this way, emerging designers with origins in fine art are reinventing traditions as well as creating new forms. This new breed of Chinese designer is linking the past with the future through present day practices. This takes into account the traditional Chinese concept of ‘art,’ which defined any form of creativity as artistic expression, and which made no hierarchical distinction between ‘fine art’ and design.’
So where is the history? In researching both industrial and aesthetic design in comparison to early Chinese design, one can
revert to the ren wen tradition. Both industrial design and aesthetic design can stem from this type of ideology. In the past,
when referring to the concept of art, the Chinese defined it with ‘ji shu’ meaning skill and craftsmanship, and ‘sue shu’ meaning scholarly knowledge (Li Xu, Wen Ren). Art and design stood on an even playing field, and there was no segregation between the two due in part to the extensive academic curriculum for Chinese scholars, also known as ‘wen ren.’ The traditional ‘wen ren’ was deemed as a true polymath- “a complex mix of multiple identities, with a great range of skills at their disposal”(Li Xu, Wen Ren). This meant that aside from primarily being a literary scholar and artist skilled in music, chess, calligraphy, and painting, etc. he should also be a philosopher, scientist, military strategist or statesman. They were expected to compose music, design houses, landscapes, objects such as teapots, brush pots, vases, and furniture with the assistance of craftsmen, in order to share his scholarly sentiments (Li Xu, Wen Ren).For a long time after the wen ren, China experienced quite a long period with no design at all. Individual expression was suppressed to the extreme, and design existed merely as practical function. The severe visual impression cast on Chinese living was: a white porcelain bowl, a porcelain enamel cup, an aluminum lunch box, a bag for military use, a blue and greyinsh Sun Yat Sen’s unifim, military coat, a bamboo thermos, a bare light bulb and cut-and-dry cement dormitory, as well a s a coarsely built classroom, an auditorim, a dining room, and a bathhouse. (Li Xu-wen Ren and Design- Loss of the Wen Ren Tradition.) Due to China’s rapid modernization and suppression of national values due to incidents such as the Reform Movement, 1911 Revolution, May Fourth Movement, and Cultural Revolution, it seems as if ancient lifestyle has nearly vanished, and national pride is on the downfall. As a result, when design once again emerged as an accessible idea, Eastern thought imitated western reference.
Modern Chinese product design is “projected through the context of information, globalization, economic integration and
increasingly homogeneous entertainment; that embracing the uniqueness of our national culture is not only important, but has a response with the broad population as well” (Li Xu, Wen Ren). The tough thing about design, particularly product design, is that it is expected to reflect current trends, and must constantly move with the times, if not ahead of it. Although contemporary China is about rapid transformation, often times traditional culture can be exploited in order to make use of a more advanced ideology. The common conception of Chinese design is that it must reflect a sense of “Chineseness” and obvious “Chineseness.” This means it must show hints of obvious traditional design—as Ming Dynasty furniture as displayed in Pearl Lam’s work, or at least contain a Chinese character or two.
Today, it seems that traditional culture is not being embraced and instead individuals look towards developing the economy by turning to Western ideology. This can be reflected in the fact that it is extremely difficult to find a product with specific
relevance to modern Chinese culture, other than the criteria which I had previously mentioned. This makes it questionable
whether or not the aesthetic system in ancient China can be applied extensively to current life. However, at this present time in history, design has become more of an international market than reflective of a specific marketable culture. Thus, is it possible to manufacture contemporary furniture, vases, washing machines, cars, etc with a particular Chinese quality and without referring to ancient aesthetic? From what I gather, in attempts to create a national language and integrate into the western world, Chinese modern design remains lingering between modernization and internationalization.

Great leap forward

Their work is utterly shocking - but they just can't get arrested. Alfred Hickling on how China learned to love its young artists

Wednesday March 28, 2007
The Guardian


Helter skelter ... Ai Weiwei's Working Progress ... Fountain of Light. Photograph: © Ai Weiwei

Ten years ago, Xu Zhen was the archetypal garret-dwelling artist, scraping a living in a Shanghai apartment with barely room to swing a cat. To prove the point, he found a cat and swung it. The artist claims that the animal was already dead when he made the 45-minute performance video, which shows feline entrails being spattered across the walls. But the piece established Zhen as the rising star of the new generation of Chinese artists whose work now features in The Real Thing, an exhibition at Tate Liverpool that is the most comprehensive show of contemporary Chinese art ever staged in this country.

The Liverpool show opens at the same time that a group of Young British Artists make their first appearance in China. Aftershock: Contemporary British Art 1990-2006 brings items such as Tracey Emin's bed and the Chapman Brothers' Stephen Hawking statue to the Capital Museum in Beijing. But while these pieces have a retrospective feel, China arguably has the most vital, imaginative and uncontainable art scene in the world today.

Xu Zhen and his peers represent a new wave of firebrands set to make the Tate Liverpool show go off, quite literally, with a bang. Tomorrow evening, the exhibition launches with an explosive piece by the Yangjiang Group entitled If I Knew the Danger Ahead I'd Have Stayed Well Clear. The work takes the form of a massive firework battle worth £50,000.

If the YBAs are set to be supplanted by YCAs in terms of talent and notoriety, Xu Zhen is arguably the Chinese Damien Hirst. In June 2006 he organised a warehouse show of 30 young artists in Shanghai, of which the centrepiece was a video of a panda being masturbated for artificial insemination. The show was forced to close on its opening night.

It is, however, now quite difficult to provoke the authorities into closing an exhibition, as the Chinese government seeks to co-opt contemporary art to advertise the productivity and tolerance of the new China. In 2006, the Shanghai Biennale became the first major state-sponsored exhibition of contemporary art - even the fringe show, entitled Fuck Off, was left to run unimpeded. The Beijing exhibition of Young British Artists is another example of this eagerness to embrace international influences.

The U-turn in the official attitude can be gauged by the fate of Beijing's avant-garde in the wake of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989, when Beijing's radical artists relocated to an area beyond the city's third ring road, known as the East Village. With no money or conventional outlets for their work, the artists began to conduct increasingly extreme experiments on themselves. One, Zang Huan, covered himself in fish paste and honey and sat for several hours in a public toilet in 100-degree heat. The piece - a comment on the fate of the poet Ai Qing, who was forced to clean toilets during the Cultural Revolution - provoked the police to raid the East Village and evict its inhabitants. In 2001, the area was bulldozed to make way for a public park.

A new artistic community sprang up in the north-east of the city at Dashanzi, centred on a former machine tool plant known as Factory 798. This time, the government sanctioned the area as a cultural quarter, opening up a flood of international investment. Today, Dashanzi is a hub of international galleries, plush apartments and restaurants, with few practising artists left.

The official acceptance of the avant garde is a paradox for Chinese artists. Beijing-based critic and curator Pi Li identifies the emergence of "a kind of official, harmless contemporary art" which leaves artists in danger of losing their identity. "Their position had been the underground. Now they are widely shown and can sell their work very successfully. This has not brought about a good situation for Chinese art; on the contrary, it made the art lose its energy."

Works by Chinese artists have recently changed hands for as much as $1.5m - the amount paid recently by Charles Saatchi for a painting by Zhang Xiaogang - but The Real Thing's curator, Simon Groom, hopes the exhibition will re-establish Chinese art's radical edge. He has taken the bold, possibly even foolhardy, step of inviting Xu Zhen to collaborate in the selection process. "Some of his initial suggestions were a little unworkable," Groom says. "He proposed that we kidnap a drunk, lock him in the gallery and witness his reactions when he wakes up." Zhen also suggested handing out knives to exhibition visitors. One piece that did make the display is the tip of Mount Everest, lopped off by the artist during an expedition to the mountain and mounted in a glass case.

The Liverpool show also features a mammoth engineering project by Ai Weiwei, now China's best-known artist. Ai Weiwei recently collaborated with architects Herzog and de Meuron on the innovative "bird's nest" design of Beijing's Olympic Stadium. For Liverpool, he has created a soaring, illuminated spiral floating outside the Tate in the Albert Dock. "It's the kind of piece that could only be realised in China, where material and labour costs are low," says Groom. "But you cannot underestimate the speed of change in China. Young Chinese artists are less interested in politics than their own dreams and desires. That has never happened in China before, where art had always been a response to the state."

Groom still doesn't know if Zhen plans to attend. "In some ways, I'm rather hoping he doesn't. He's more likely to show up in disguise, or try to sabotage the show in some way. He might even try to close it down." That could be seen as the ultimate irony - once, the Chinese authorities used to shut down exhibitions. These days, the artists do it themselves.

The Real Thing: Contemporary Art From China is at Tate Liverpool from Friday to June 10. Details: 0151-702 7400

'Modern Art: an unexpected swirl' is just that - modern art.

Don't forget DuChamp's 1917 "Fountain." Seems like Du Zhenjun was simply putting a "new media" spin on R. Mutt's most famous work. And as far as interactive art is concerned, Pierre Pinoncelli had that idea in January '06. Here's an old article about it on nytimes.com: http://travel.nytimes.com/2006/01/07/arts/design/07duch.html

Apologies for making this a full post; alas, no comments allowed on the original "unexpected swirl."

Pecha Kucha in Review x2

Kung Pow Kara beat me to it but here are some extra thoughts...

Pecha Kucha night came back to Shanghai for its 5th installment last Thursday, March 8. The event took place at Kong Gallery located on the top floor of The Source on Xinle lu, a streetwear clothing store. This particular location seemed quite fitting considering the large focus on street art and culture in Shanghai as presented by gallery curator and photographer Rodney Evans and his partner Nick Barham.

Pecha Kucha, which literally translates to “Sound of Conversation,” in Japanese was conceived by Tokyo based architects Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham. The event is meant to serve as a forum for young artists to meet and show their artwork on a public platform. Conceived only in 2003, Pecha Kucha nights have spread to venues across the globe due to such an overwhelmingly positive response.

The really clever thing about Pecha Kucha, though, is the abbreviated format. Each artist has the stage for exactly 6 minutes and 40 seconds, allowing them to show 20 pieces of their work in 20-second snippets, keeping the material concise and the interest level up at all times. Pecha Kucha Shanghai (which began less than a year ago in May, 2006) seems to have a way of attracting an especially wide variety of artists and art lovers from all over the world to discuss any and all types of media. At the most recent installment at Kong gallery, 14 artists presented their work in realms ranging from photography, architecture, graffiti and music just to name a few.

Admittedly, the collective works were a bit contrived, allowing a few presenters to wax philosophical on flowery issues like the meaning of true art. Some of the misses included (but were not limited to) photo sets of various rooms in their natural lighting and some rehearsed prose on street art and all of its connotations. On the other hand, there were a handful of artists who came prepared with really innovative and thoughtful presentations. They ranged from fresh web designs, computer graphics and streetwear design made by quirky design duo Lin Lin and Sam Jacobs, to a fascinating thesis discussing a hybrid of architecture and fashion design as inspired by a mythical fairytale presented by architecture student from Canada, Andrea Lin.

Pecha Kucha nights give all of the artists a chance to talk about their vision and put themselves out there, making the experience perhaps a little fluffier than I would have liked it to be, but also inviting some pretty interesting open-ended discussions. Not to mention the vibe was overall quite friendly and surprisingly un-pretentious, although the cheap drinks certainly helped to lighten the mood. If anything, who can deny a 30 yuan entrance fee and some prime people watching?

Let 10,000 Young Artists Bloom, Saatchi

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/magazine/11wwlnQ4.t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&oref=slogin

Among the young artists whose work can be seen on Charles Saatchi's new
Chinese Web site are two who posted self-portraits: Huiyuan Sun, who
posted a series of photographs called "A Little Matter and My Face,"
above.

Stephanie Hueon Tung describes herself as a "fan of adrenaline and
adventure" on the Saatchi site, on which she has posted her "Light
Writing No. 1" and five other images.

PERUSING the student art on his Web site recently, as he does somewhat
obsessively throughout the day, the British collector Charles Saatchi
happened upon an entry from a painter named Liu Yang. This artist had
posted images of seven of his works, including a painting of a factory
set against a haunting gray background and a work on paper depicting a
woman's elongated torso.

But unlike European, American or Australian users of the site, who use
their Web pages there to tell the world everything about themselves —
their favorite artists, what movies and books inspired them, their
convictions about art or politics — Mr. Liu, a student at the Sichuan
Fine Arts Institute, simply wrote: "I can't speak a lot English. Sorry.
But love. ..." His message trailed off in a few lines of Chinese that
read in part: "I admit that my knowledge of art is limited at present.
However, I am sure I can learn quite a bit from your Web site."

Soon Mr. Saatchi began to notice that Mr. Liu was not alone. Every day
more art students from China were posting their work at Stuart (short
for Student Art), a popular nook of Mr. Saatchi's recently reinvented
Web site, saatchi-gallery.co.uk).

Known a decade ago for spotting talent and turning his discoveries into
superstars, as he did with so-called Young British Artists like Damien
Hirst and Rachel Whiteread, Mr. Saatchi is fixated these days on
Chinese artists, the hottest sector of the global market. And when he
saw these shyly tentative Web postings, something clicked.

"There are so many artists in China who want their work to be seen," he
said in a recent interview at his London home, pausing every now and
then to scan the large computer screen on his desk. "These students,
like all the others, want to know what's going on around the world."

So in January he decided to create a Chinese version of his Web site to
cater to that audience. Working in a warren of makeshift offices in the
basement of his Eaton Square home, 16 experts now oversee both the
popular Saatchi Gallery site, which is getting more than six million
hits a day, and a site in Mandarin, accessible from the home page, that
went online two weeks ago.

"Our goal is to break down language and cultural barriers," said Neeraj
Rattu, who is leading the site's technology team. Having compiled a
considerable amount of data, the team estimates that 20 to 30 art
schools operate in China; that about 10,000 students will graduate from
such schools this year; and that some 14,000 artists in China are
represented by galleries.

"That leaves roughly 10,000 unrepresented artists," said Kieran McCann,
who is in charge of the site's content and creative development.

About 300 art galleries operate in Beijing and about 300 in Shanghai: a
relatively small number, Mr. Saatchi said, considering the surge in
interest in Chinese work. China also has 100 to 200 auction houses,
many of which sell contemporary works.

Like Stuart, the Chinese site is designed to be as navigable as
possible, so that posting work will be as easy as opening an e-mail
account. So far 23 Chinese students have posted work on the site.

Each has a distinct personality. Kang Can, a serious-looking young man
photographed in sunglasses, writes, in perfect English, that he was
born in 1982 in Chongqing and graduated from the Sichuan Fine Art
Institute, and that he has already shown his work at Art Basel Miami.
Among the 15 images he has posted are a series of paintings in which a
sleeping infant is variously depicted in a chewing-gum wrapper, on top
of a gun, on the rim of a KFC plastic cup and in other poses.

"Babies as a symbol of human purity came to this world simple and
unadulterated," Mr. Kang writes.

Some of the pages are more cosmopolitan than others. Stephanie Hueon
Tung, a student at Peking University, writes that she recently
graduated from Harvard. "Now living and working in the wonderful city
of Beijing," her posting says. "Fan of adrenaline and adventure. Olé!"

Ms. Tung shows six images from her "light writing" series, in which she
scrawled in light on photographs ranging from a still life of a park
bench to an image of a closed-up shop that she embellished with a
heart-shaped graffito. Another student, Huiyuan Sun, has posted a work
called "A Little Matter and My Face," a series of 10 photographic
self-portraits in which he depicts himself in many guises.

In a few weeks the Saatchi team hopes the new site will be as
interactive as the English-language one, with a chat room in Mandarin
and a forum encouraging artists to debate current issues. The team's
eventual goal is to make its chat rooms seamlessly international, so
that students from all over the world can talk to one another in many
languages.

As it did for Stuart, the Saatchi team is reaching out to art schools
in China to let them know that their students can post pages at the
site. "It's all been word of mouth," Mr. Rattu said.

One looming concern is potential censorship by the Chinese government.
In recent months China has aggressively brokered controversial accords
with Google and Yahoo to filter the search-engine services they offer
in China and blocked access to some material offered by the Chinese
version of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

Mr. Saatchi's team knows it may encounter problems if work posted on
the site is overtly political or directly critical of the Chinese
leadership. Its pioneering effort is likely to be closely monitored by
Western dealers and auction houses in the months ahead.

Pressed on that possibility Annabel Fallon, a spokeswoman for the
Saatchi Gallery, played down the potential for conflict. "After
discussions with the Chinese Embassy here we don't believe censorship
will be too much of a problem," she said in a written statement.
"According to the dealers and artists in China we are in contact with,
government interference in the arts seems to be at a very low level in
the last 10 years."

She added, "We don't foresee our site becoming a platform for
anti-government propaganda, but we do of course aim to be respectful to
the wishes of our host nation if our site starts being abused."

In remaking his Web site nine months ago to appeal to artists and
students and to be more interactive, Mr. Saatchi says, he resolved to
buy nothing posted there for the site's first year. Nonetheless he has
already bought works elsewhere by popular Chinese artists like Wang
Guangyi, Yue Minjun and Zhang Xiaogang. And when his new gallery, a
50,000-square-foot space on Kings Road in the Chelsea section of
London, opens in the fall, its first show will be devoted to
contemporary Chinese artists.

In the meantime he and his Internet team spend their days pondering
ways of attracting more artists to the site. In addition to Stuart, for
art students, and Your Gallery, a separate area where artists of all
ages can post their work and sell it directly without relying on a
dealer or other middleman, the site offers links to museums around the
world and a magazine with art world news and feature articles.

It is also sponsoring a six-month competition called Showdown, the art
Web equivalent of "Pop Idol" in Britain or "American Idol" in the
United States. Artists registered at the site can enter works on which
the Internet public will vote; the winner will get £1,000 (about
$1,930) and a chance to show his or her work at the Saatchi Gallery
when it opens. The runner-up will get £750, or about $1,450.

After posting its first call for submissions last week, the site
reported nine million hits over a 24-hour period. The team will soon
post the contest instructions in Mandarin so that Chinese artists can
compete.

But Mr. Saatchi says he won't stop with China. Over the next six months
his team hopes to draw in artists from India, Russia, Spain and South
America.

"My aim," Mr. Saatchi said, " is to do everything I can to maximize the
site's exposure."

Pecha Kucha tonight!

See most of you tonight at the 5th Pecha Kucha fanfare! Here is the presenters' list.

Tokyo builder brings mixed-use formula to Shanghai megaproject

Tokyo builder brings mixed-use formula to Shanghai megaproject

By Miki Tanikawa

TOKYO: When the Shanghai World Financial Center finally rises to its planned height of 492 meters next year, the builders will be toasting more than its size.

They also will be celebrating yet another example of blending lifestyle activities like dining and entertaining into the 1,614-foot home of major banks and securities firms.

At least, one of its planners, Mori Building, sees it that way.

Shanghai's financial center is an echo of the company's flagship projects, Roppongi Hills and Atago Green Hills, both in Tokyo. "I believe it is going to be a very advanced financial city," said Minoru Mori, president of Mori Building.

The 101-story building, estimated to cost more than $850 million, will have retail space on its lower levels, offices in the middle and a five-star hotel at the top. An observation platform is being built on the 100th floor, 472 meters above the ground, to provide a panoramic view of the city and the Huangpu River.

As for the residential component, a complex of luxury apartment buildings is planned for an adjacent lot.

The Shanghai city authority, which selects the names of large facilities, does not plan to add "Hills" to the building's name.

But for Mori, the Hills concept is at work here — the company's first full- scale attempt at marketing its urban mixed-use development concept overseas. And the address for the project's Web site is www.shanghaihills.com.

Mori Construction was founded by Mori's father, Taikichiro, in 1959. Over the years it has expanded to encompass, as the company Web site www.mori.co.jp puts it, "every aspect of the urban landscape" — including redevelopment; real estate leasing and management; and cultural, art and town management.

The company's revenue for the year that ended March 31, 2006, was ¥152.7 billion, or $1.28 billion.

Until now, the company's headline project has been Roppongi Hills. The complex, which opened in 2003, has created a lasting buzz in Tokyo. During its first year it attracted more than 45 million people — or 120,000 a day — to its mixture of offices, shops, restaurants, movie theaters, a museum and open space. And, the company says, the numbers have held steady ever since.

"I receive many requests to build the 'Hills' in their local area," Mori said, referring to requests from Japanese cities like Gifu as well as other communities throughout Asia.

The company does plan to be involved in such projects. "We could serve as advisers, put up capital or help with the marketing," Mori said. "There are many ways we could be of help." But for now, he said, he is focused on the Shanghai project and on advising a mixed-use development in South Korea.

While Mori is known throughout Asia as an advocate — and builder — of mixed-use developments, the concept also has been spreading elsewhere, like Canary Wharf in London and HafenCity in Hamburg.

Roppongi Hills and other Hills projects are not unique, said Azby Brown, director of the Future Design Institute at the Kanazawa Institute of Technology in Tokyo. "It is a similar approach to that taken when someone is trying to build a new city from scratch," he said.

Mori said today's urban lifestyle demanded the integration of a whole range of human activities. "We are living in the knowledge-based society, where thinking and creating becomes the focus of our activity," he said. "Then, working and living become inseparable."

It is an environment much like that of man's early agricultural age, he said, when people lived close to their fields, "and the workmen who created the work tools and the furniture all lived nearby."

Then came the Industrial Revolution. "When factories are built in town, it creates smoke and pollution," Mori said. "The work environment was a tough one, so people couldn't be living where they worked.

"Soon, imposing strict zoning became a prerequisite for a good city," he said, artificially forcing homes, workplaces and leisure locations into different areas.

In the 21st century, though, Mori said, a daily commute between an office in the city and a home in the suburbs absorbs too much time for information-oriented white-collar professionals — and is not environmentally positive, either.

A multipurpose complex, like the Shanghai finance center or the Hills complexes, also is a winner in terms of space utilization, Mori said.

Restaurants in traditional office areas might see few customers on weekends. But if their surroundings include more than just offices — if there is shopping or other attractions like museums and hotels to create traffic on nonworking days — then they can count on weekend business, Mori said.

Also, the existence of hotels and apartments in the same complex should assure entertainment facilities of customers well into late evening, he said.

"Since it's the most convenient location, wealthy people would choose to live there, which, in turn, drives retail business," Mori said. The synergy extends to personnel as well, he added: "Because of high utilization, you can hire excellent chefs, for example, and retain them."

Despite Mori's successes at Roppongi and Atori, the concept has its share of critics, including Brown of the Kanazawa Institute of Technology.

On its face, Roppongi Hills appears to be an interesting idea, Brown said, but it and similar Mori projects replaced living neighborhoods. They blocked pathways that people once used to get from one part of town to another, Brown said, and did away with playgrounds that belonged to the local community.

"In the case of Roppongi, it was a fairly dynamic and vital and living and well-mixed neighborhood before Mori took a wrecking ball to it," he said.

NYU urban tour: Shanghai

If you ask people living in Shanghai, ‘have you ever climb the LuPu Bridge?’ nine out of ten would definitely say no. Even stayed in Shanghai for more than three years, I never heard there is a platform on the top of this river. Thanks Defne, as well as Giel, for giving us such a fully planned urban tour, offering us a great opportunity to view and apperceive this traditional and reformed modern city.
Our first site is Pujiang town, one of the nine satellite towns that are supposed to relieve the pressure from the downtown residential areas. Associated with the LuPu Bridge and coming Metro Station, this area is recognized as a large, under developed foreground. However, the 5 bn yuan’s investment and Italian architecture’s design do not bring us a bran-new, attractive idea of combining Venice and Chinese concepts. Instead, those gray, humdrum light colors give us an uncomfortable, disharmonious feeling, making both foreign people and Chinese dislike it. The impractical river, close style traditional design, and few residents extraordinarily criticize the urban development. The most amazing thing is the first-phase apartments and villas have all been sold out. One sentence by Professor Shi still swings in my mind, ‘Chinese always know to build, they do not care whether they (the houses) will be sold, they believe there will be buyers.’ The pressure from the house in Shanghai indeed needs newly developed apartments; but the market urges not only the land, but also something more deep, like culture and art environment, which will more reveal the urbanization.
Our second site is LuPu Bridge of Shanghai. If it is not the fog, the platform will be the best location to view the 2010 world Expo site that day. Besides the factor of traffics, this bridge outflows the aesthetics of modern architecture. Born under the foot of Mount Tai, climbing this bridge brings me one widely different feeling. Stand above the river, all the buildings are all in the sight. The bustle traffic is under the foot, unlike the steady feeling brought by a mountain; it is more like standing in the air of a noise city. Maybe this is just the one time experience, quick impressive feeling. Maybe it’s the result of fast pattern in metropolitan.
Our third site is Yangshupu Lu. I love the title ‘Urban Regeneration’ in the booklet. The old warehouse lying near the river, secret quiet location, and simple traditional materials’ creatively reused, all of this gives me a sight of perfect integration of west and east. This is a place full of creativity. The designer is so smart to use the stuffs, such as using the tiles to make the floor, the steel tube to be the handrail near a modern commode, and a large mirror to board and puzzle people’s eyes. In a word, the designer successfully adds the modern convenience into the primitive and simple traditional structure.
Furthermore, Mr. Giel gave us a meaningful short lecture. In his vivid presentation, I viewed the huge contribution by the artists, who successfully exert the contemporary visual art into public places. Like the pure white tube in the subway, that simple and particular idea of design solved the headachy graffito problem. We also cognize the operation of art in the commercial area, by advertising in the online world. I realize those artists looked like living leisurely, in fact, they burdened more social obligations than ordinary people. The traditional culture needs them, the urbanization also needs them.

Shanghai Tour: Space and Expression

When we think of art presentation, what comes to mind? For me, art represents aesthetics in an enclosed environment especially established to accentuate the effects of the piece.

When we think of urban design, what comes to mind? For me, seeing the intricate design and construction of modern architectural in contest and collaboration with each other.

What if we loosen the rigid social and ideological conceptions we have and accept the world beyond physical and conventional standards into a fusion of the real and the surreal to create and team spatial dimensions, would that be an advance into the future or a farfetched sci-fi fantasy?

As the last Arts & Media class and sadly my last Thursday in Shanghai, I already feel nostalgia for this NYU abroad experience with my teachers (of course I will dearly miss you Defne) and of this ascending city. As our last class, Professor Defne Ayas collaborated with Professor Shi Mingzhen and took us on a tour of Shanghai to visit modern urban architectural designs, sites, art and people.

The first leg of the trip landed us in Shanghai’s satellite city Pujiang. Pujiang is one of the 9 satellite cities of Shanghai circling downtown. These satellite cities were are being developed to ease the growing population in the central city and shift the population outwards into the suburbs. Pujiang is known to have an Italian theme to the city and is referred to as Italian town. I realized how impractical the town is after looking at the miniaturized models of the city and given a brief summary of the cost, occupancy, distance and development of the town. The town strived to achieve a modern architectural design fusing European and Chinese concepts. My evaluation of the results: ugly. I understand that cynicism is toying with my judgment but I couldn’t see any positive features or pragmatism in the architecture or the city. Even though the town claims to resemble Italian architecture, the uniform red, yellow and gray colored buildings with their rectangular houses and walls only resemble individual cells. The isolating wall of the home is what strikes me most about the design of the town. The walls remind me of the historical Chinese infatuation with isolationism. All the old Chinese cities have remnants of walls around them, signs of China’s tradition as an exclusive and isolative nation. However, in contemporary China in which global values influence China’s development and the government’s slogan is a “harmonious society,” architectural reversion that creates the solitary homes in Pujiang conflicts with an individual’s integration into society.

After circling Pujiang, we headed for Lupu Bridge and climbed the 300 stairs to see the Huangpu river stretch across Shanghai. If only the fog didn’t shroud Shanghai in a misty gray, we would have been able to capture the modern beauty of Shanghai.

In our final leg of the trip, Giel brought us to Yangshupu Road and presented to us in a renovated factory. Unlike the desolate town of cheap material and bad architecture, Giel gave a detailed and expansive presentation touching on many aspects of contemporary art and space. What struck me most is the urban acceptance and adaptation of art. The concept of virtual space and urban installations representing art and human psychology are the two topics that impressed me the most. In modern urban fabric, such installations such as news stands, billboards, phone boots, shops and malls all incorporate and integrate into an elaborate urban design that reflects the aesthetic perception and expression of society. The fusion of trees, billboards, shops and malls along Huaihai Road blend together to illustrate Shanghai as a contemporary Chinese art piece. Virtual space such as massive online games are also a form of contemporary Chinese art. Many Chinese join online games because of the attractive presentation of video game characters. Chinese are able to express themselves outside the norms and conventions of society and perform upon desire. The new culture expands the network people live in and allow them to characterize themselves according to their imagination. Whether it is a warrior or a millionaire in the game, Chinese are increasingly able to interact with others and perform acts as individuals or groups that emphasizes expression. An example would be Giel’s screenshot of many colorful videogame characters protesting an unjust act that occurred in reality. More and more, these virtual spaces are becoming grounds for expression. And isn’t that what Chinese contemporary art strives for? To express in a society keen on restricting speech?

Ai Weiwei : Fragments, Voids, Sections and Rings

Ai Weiwei : Fragments, Voids, Sections and Rings
Dec 05, 2006
Adrian Blackwell (interviewer)
Mason White (instigator)

Ai Weiwei (Beijing) is an artist, curator, and architectural designer who has been working in China and the United States since the late 1970's. An original member of "Stars," a group of artists working in Beijing in the late 1970's during the first years of reform, Ai attended film school with directors Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou. He then traveled to the United States where he made conceptual art focused on the alteration of readymade objects and situations. In the early 1990's Ai returned to China to edit a series of three books on the art a new generation of artists, based in Beijing's Eastern Art Village: "Black Paper," "White Paper," and "Gray Paper." Since that time he has produced work which focuses on China's cultural history, centralized political system, and the contradictions of modernity. His work has shown across Europe, North America, and China.

Ai uses a set of tactics for the production of his work: undermining the meaning of existing artifacts, attacking fixed hierarchies of power, privileging developed vernacular knowledge and simply letting things take their own course. Over the past few years he has moved closer to architecture, beginning with the design of his own studio, the China Art Archives and Warehouse, and the Urs Meile Gallery all in the outskirts of Beijing; the plan for a Park of architectural follies in his family's home town of Jinhua in Zhejiang Province; and a collaboration with Herzog & de Meuron Architects on the Beijing Olympic Stadium.

This interview by Adrian Blackwell took place on June 21, 2006 at Ai Weiwei's studio/home in Cao Chang Di Village on the outskirts of Beijing.

Adrian Blackwell: There are two things we are interested in with your urban work. The first concerns your thoughts about the contemporary city: what's happening right now with Chinese urbanization? The second is the approach you take in your own urban interventions. I thought we could begin by talking about some of your recent projects. You started making art in the late 1970's, architecture in the late 1990's, and then quite recently, just a few years ago, you began to making works that are about urban space, documents of your city. I know of four of them: the Beijing video map, the void photographs, the Chang'an boulevard project and the Ring Road project. They are each fascinating ways of reading Beijing. What made you start making work like that, what made you start documenting the city?

Ai Weiwei: It's not exactly documenting. It has that function, but it has no documentary purpose. It's not being used as evidence or testimony for anything, but rather to materialize our physical life, its condition in the moment. If you are in place A or on line A or line B, then that present there or that movement is simply as it is. We're living in a constantly changing world and everybody sees it and knows it, but as an artist who is also involved in issues of design and urban planning, I always try to find a way to most efficiently capture what I call fragments, or very small pieces which carry the flavor or carry the essential meaning of the city. So it's a very small effort that I have made, even if it looks quite massive in terms of the length of the videos, its just one section of a fact - the concrete world.

AB: So maybe we could talk briefly about each of those pieces. Let's start with the first piece, the video which follows every street in Beijing within the fourth ring road.

AW: "INTERVAL" - From Da Bei Yao to Da Bei Yao, 8.10. - 7.11.2003.

AB: It's about the street network and it makes me think of Zhu Jianfei's book Chinese Spatial Strategies. He talks about the public space of the city of Beijing arguing that in a western city you have squares, public space is organized around openings in the fabric, while in the Chinese city (his example is Ming and Qing dynasty Beijing) public space is in the street, so the public space is not a void, but a network of space, and the active spaces are simply nodes, or widenings in that network. One of the things that I like about this project is that it is an attempt to map this entire network using video, but it also conflates the map and its opposite, which is the experience of simply being lost in the city. What were you thinking about with this network of every street in Beijing?

AW: I think that a city is a three dimensional or multi-dimensional thing, but the work itself is not even two-dimensional, it's just one point to another, to another, to another. So of course in time this weaves a net if you are thinking of the road you have been traveling along or if you join the individual points. It covers the whole city, all the hutongs and streets, but actually it is made at one time, at a moment. Still it follows a line, a line made by a vehicle which has more than a dozen people on it, and from day 1 to day 16 it passes through different parts of the city. So it appears to be a complete view of Beijing, but if you look at any point, it's just dots, because there is no camera movement except the movement of the car. Very little changes, but the attitude or position that drives it is not passive, it's fixed through a very concrete concept. So I think it's quite ironic in that sense: after 150 hours it documents the city, but nobody would watch 150 hours and at any moment you see, you are confined to a single point, or proportionally stretched points form a very short time within this big work. It only works when it is so long, more than six days and nights. It shows how big, how impossible, how crazy this city is, or how meaningless at the same time, because our proportion, our sense of time, and also our visual contact with the city is really limited by where we are and which direction we go. The moment is about a certain period of time, so when you just look at one moment you don't really know what is before or what is next, even if you can pretty much guess.

AB: With the void photographs you are documenting a moment where there is nothing. If you think about Chinese cities as constantly being torn down and rebuilt, then this is a moment of quiet in between. It seems that this is a moment of potential, but I don't know if you are that optimistic about this possibility all the time. What made you take those photographs?

AW: I think that's a special landscape in today's China, you are the largest construction site in the world and each year Beijing has one hundred million square metres of construction which exactly equals the area of the whole city in 1949. Every year you have this total amount of construction, but you only finish a third of it, thirty million square metres. You know these are just numbers, but they really tell you something about the urban condition, especially when you see that China builds 20 times the area built in Beijing. The whole country is building crazily. So you have a kind of landscape that destroys the old, because the old is really garbage I think. It's really shelter in its worst condition, like Harlem. We used to say that Harlem was 100 times better than most ordinary people's houses. Then after you destroy you make it flat - we call this san tong yi ping (three [infrastructural]connections and one leveling).


Pei Zhao: By now its jiu tong yi ping (nine connections and one leveling)

AW: Then all this land will be rebuilt by powerful people, developers. Most of them, are connected to the government. They make big profits from land, which is not constitutional. After 1949 land was taken from the landlords. They killed the landlords, and the land was given to the people, under the control of the state. Now all the land is being auctioned to people in favor or associated with the state, who are profiting from their privileged background. So you have a landscape that is just waiting for this future. Even if it's totally empty, it will soon be built. Soon it will change the whole landscape of Beijing and of China.

It's a very sad condition, you see a nation or a city rip up the past, not to benefit the people, or the situation, but for profit, it's really the idea of all those new rich. It's like a country girl has to be a prostitute, because there is no other way to get out of the village. China's development is so much based in this idea: to let somebody ruthlessly become rich, but they can't become rich unless the party and government also profits, otherwise it's impossible. So who has become rich? Who has become more powerful? Who benefits and who is losing their rights, or their property. This property belongs to everybody, it belongs to somebody who never sees this property, because you know we are a communist country and this of course for the past 10 to 20 years has been a hidden secret (I mean nobody talks about it). It's stealing. I am not criticizing, these are only the facts. I record the condition after things are torn down and before they are built up, you know it's a very short moment, but in that moment nobody wants to look. There's a question mark there, a big, big void. The old is so sad, but the new is also sad. It is a very sad condition, so I think it's interesting to record it. It's a unique situation, a void with many questions, yet people don't want to look, or raise these questions.

AB: If the void project looks at empty moments inside the city, the Chang'an boulevard project moves in a straight line from outside through the city. It's a section. You were interested in the movement from rural space through urban space and back to the rural. How do you see that piece describing the contemporary city?

AW: I think that surprisingly enough when I started to make it, I did not know what it would be. It's not based on very sophisticated thinking, more on an attitude than on careful planning. It started when one of our friends said they had a son who wanted to come to Beijing, but had nothing to do. After he arrived I asked him if he could do this for a while. Then after days of planning what he should do, I found that Chang'an from the 6th ring road to the 6th ring is 45 km. So I made a very simple decision: just take one video shot for one minute every 50m. No technical requirements: push down, count 1 minute, turn it off, move another 50m, push down... Whatever happens in front of the lens is fine. It took months, the whole winter, because in the winter there is no better or worse view. I think in Beijing the winter really reflects northern landscape very well. You know there is a kind of sadness there. So after months he had taken 1000's of shots: from a very rural, primitive village, to the business district, to the political center, to an old town and later on ended up in the Capital Iron Company, which has just been destroyed and moved to another city township. This video was the last possible time to take these shots of the Capital Iron Company, a symbol of socialist industry. They made all the iron for the nation.

AB: When you look at maps of the growth of Beijing from 1949 to the present it is amazing to watch Chang'an Boulevard, it draws the city out, away from the old city. So much of the growth of the city is along that line that it is much longer than the rest of the city. The Last work that I know about that deals with the city is your Ring Road project.

AW: I made two pieces, one about the second ring and the other about the third ring. The video of the second ring is structured through the 33 bridges, taking one minute shots on each side of the bridge. So standing there you see the car traffic moving from overhead. Then I did the third ring, 50 some bridges and the same thing, the only difference is that second ring is taken on cloudy days (in Beijing most days are like that), while the third ring is taken on sunny days. If you look at it immediately you know that one's second ring and one is third ring. One is just grey color, and sometimes snowing. It's very boring and not an exciting thing to do, but nevertheless it records the condition at the time, its very much like a witness passing through: what he would see, his eye, anybody's eye. There is no artistic or aesthetic value, not much judgment there. Its very, very simple situation; it's very much like a monitor actually.

AB: We have talked a little bit about these works you have done about the city. But the other thing I am interested in is the way you live in the city. You live in a village; you don't really live in the city.

AW: Well this city, Beijing, surprisingly enough is not a real city. I cannot call it a city, it's still very flat, not dense enough, not strong enough, it doesn't have enough variation and mixed conditions, it's still very even.

Today I live in Beijing. I was also born in Beijing, but soon after we moved to Xinjiang and I grew up there. My father owned a courtyard in Beijing, but for years other people lived in it, because our family was considered an enemy of the people, an enemy of the state, and an enemy of the party. Three enemies. Being just one of them was enough to be exiled. Then after 20 years away we returned and lived in different parts of the city. We borrowed places, because our home was inhabited by other people. We lived in different places: West, North, East or South, so I have a very clear image of what the city looked like. At the time the city was occupied by bureaucratic compounds: universities (of course at that time were not open), government, military and so-called scientific research institutes. All these different departments were all under the same conditions, communist, without private property, everyone belonging to the work unit. So there was only one condition: you were either one of the people or an "enemy of the people." So simple. I guess there weren't so many "enemies of the people," but from time to time that vein was very consciously mined. They were trying to find out who is an enemy of the people for years while I was growing up. It was one political movement after another after another. It was crazy every day. Today you talk about it and it sounds more like a joke: "what a joke, why are you still talking about things like this?" But this was true: many people lost their lives. I think that that ghost is still haunting China today. Not the communist ideology, the ideology may be good, but the way that this power is maintained within society and how brutal the state can be towards a human's basic condition, not to talk about human rights, but essential needs.

So that is basically what this city was and still half of the city is still based in this and the other half is the so-called new rich, after Deng Xiaoping's getting rich first policy. Of course who is going to get rich? It's not the ordinary person. But this is not a complaint, it's simply the truth. You know in China, you still talk about people who have the right to live in the city or not to live in the city. It's called hukou, dividing people into locals, non-locals.

PZ: You need a license, or special registration to live in the city. Throughout the entire world only North Korea and China have a policy like this one.

AW: Locals don't have many rights, besides the privilege of enrolling in school, but in the newspaper they often talk about the crimes caused by non-locals. There is a crazy amount of discrimination against people who are not local. A small example of this is that the city has laws against illegal structures like this one (Ai Weiwei's home and studio). Think about it this way: the city is built solely by migrants from the outside, but none of them are locals except the boss and where are they going to live? Nobody provides any space for them. Of course they gather at the outskirts of the city...

PZ: And in the village in the city...

AW: Just to build a place that they can stay, whether it's legal or not.

AB: But this village, Cao Chang Di, is it a village that pre-dates the city, or is it a village like you are talking about now, a village that is built illegally? Most people that live here appear to be migrants, but did they build this village, or did they inhabit an existing one?

AW: In the 1960's this was a so-called "China Albania Friendship Farmer's village." These were very privileged farmers, who were supposed to provide an example for the country, growing vegetables for the city.

So when university or high school students graduated, and Chairman Mao sent them to be re-educated on a farm, they would send some people here. At that time people working here found much better conditions that you would find in more distant areas. At least on the weekend they could ride their bicycle home. These were example farmers, so it was a good farm.

Recently I heard that it is no longer a village and the former farmers are buying out their hukou to become citizens, instead of farmers. The real reason this is happening is so that the land can be returned to the government, because if you are a farmer no one can take your land. Of course there is real benefit for these new citizens, they have some new citizen's rights, but at the same time the land is returned to the state, so that it can sell the land to anybody it wants to. There are a lot of tricks and games, but it is really so simple: the state is the only beneficiary. But in a state, like China, which is not a democratic society, far from it, nobody argues about this, the press won't talk about it, intellectuals never discuss it. Probably I am the only crazy guy who always talks about it. But they think: "This shit guy, why is he always talking about this?"

So what kind of city is this? I can't see a city without citizens. It's like you don't see a religion without followers. Nobody can decide how the city is going to be; everything is done through governmental decisions, today we need a road here, tomorrow... It's by very simple decisions from the top. If Sanlitun (a Beijing bar street) becomes nice they say: "Oh, lets change it, we'll plan big buildings so that someone can profit from it, not all you street vendors." It's crazy, whenever they see people benefit, they will grab the profit. It's so simple, they change here or there not as they say, to make the city better. The city is already better when they do nothing, take 798 (a contemporary arts district, in a former model industrial work unit) as an example, but once they see this they always take action.

So that's my understanding of this city. I really have no relationship with it, except when journalists come to visit me. Otherwise I just go to one restaurant, which I designed (called Where to Go?). A lot of friends go as well, so we have a place to meet and eat dinner, and then I come back here.

AB: This is a courtyard house, and it seems to me that the kind of city you are talking about when you say you live here and in your restaurant, has very few elements, its not so much about the city space in between. I am interested in that because a lot of people, for instance New Urbanists in North America, might say you make a good city by making lively streets, by concentrating energy on the public space of the city. I don't know if it is the way you would like to make a city, but the way you live is different from that, its much more about autonomy, creating a separate space through the compound, but still finding forms of community. The restaurant for instance is a kind of public space, which can't be here in Cao Chang Di; it's better that it's in the city, because people can get to it more easily. I am wondering if you are interested in making a city that starts from the way you live in it, which I think is quite different from the way many others think a city should work.

AW: Of course most European cities are based in convenience and efficiency. But it's not necessary to me that these functional requirements are supported, what is more important is the use. You need a real variety of intention and purpose: people who are doing things that you would never think about. So you know that's important. I think a city can be very brutal and lacking in qualities of life, because these are not desired, but without many different purposes, the city loses its initial reason for becoming a city.

Many places, like this city, have vast areas without use. It is so strange, these spaces are not for individuals; they're for a special group that has no meaning. This group gives the city no meaning; it's a negative force, working against other people.

AB: Maybe we could finish, with a question about the different processes you use in making art. I'll list some of the different techniques, or tactics, that you use. I am interested in how you might see them applying to your design thinking and its relationship to processes of urbanization.

The first is the notion of detournment, this Situationist idea of diverting the meaning of existing artifacts, taking found things and altering them slightly to change their purpose. You've used this technique in architecture, in the projects you did at Beijing's Soho housing development, the silo and the upside down house, and in the project we're sitting in - your own studio. Even though it's not a found object, it looks like one. You use ordinary typologies and vernacular forms and slightly modify them.

The second involves letting things go, you just drop a Han Dynasty vase on the ground. You let it go to see what happens. I think this works like the video pieces as well, you set up a process to see what ensues.

But then there is another tactic you use: an overt "fuck you!", working very strongly against authority, centrality...

AW: ...order and the state, establishment...


Documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany.


AB: And I guess the final one which is in some ways the opposite of the last one, is that you use the power of developed knowledge, a general intellect, vernacular techniques, you have a deep respect for the way people do and make things.

So I am wondering how you see these tactics in relation to the city, can you see your practice of making urban space in relation to these same techniques?


AW: I think we are in a very special moment, As Chinese people, but also internationally, we have gone from the cold war, an unjust society, towards so-called globalization, or a stronger capitalist society, or an information age. Everything happened with a purpose leaving us with unknown conditions. I don't think humans can ever really control this, and it has become even less controllable. Circumstances are now much more complicated than we can predict. For example until quite recently there was no China or India and now suddenly they are the factories of the world. But people are still trying to figure out what this means in relation to ideology, social and political structure, and all kinds of other problems, like education and the environment. I don't think there is a single reaction, at least for myself that can answer these questions, or put me at peace. So I constantly think about the condition of being lost. Once you're lost, you try to figure out where to go. Imagine you're in the middle of a train station and you try to understand the much larger, much more complicated, space around you, or the travel you are embarking on.

So I think it's crazy, the whole thing is crazy. I am not very clear about what I am doing. If I have a character, I don't have much purpose in my life, but more of a natural flow. The only fact is that I am still alive. I'm here. This is solid now, but even this might change. I can't figure out what is going on. Really that's true. Honestly, I don't have a clear answer for this. The clearest answers look ridiculous to me.

Adrian Blackwell teaches architecture and urban design at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design.

Pei Zhao practices architecture and urban design with Parsons Brinckerhoff in Beijing.

Together they curated the exhibition Detours: Tactical Approaches to Urbanization in China at the University of Toronto's Eric Arthur Gallery. The exhibition features projects by nine contemporary architects and two artists, including Ai Weiwei's "INTERVAL" - From Da Bei Yao to Da Bei Yao, 8.10. - 7.11.2003.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Zeng Li's Archeology of Modern China

Zeng Li's Archeology of Modern China
by Christopher Phillips
http://www.shanghaigalleryofart.com/en/artists_detail.asp?id=48
During the past five years, regular visitors to contemporary art group exhibitions in China have often encountered groups of large color photographs showing the facades of apparently unremarkable Beijing apartment buildings. Compared to the exuberant paintings, installations, and video works around them, these sober, factual photographs typically stand apart because of their unassuming presentation and everyday subject matter. Although credited to "Zeng Li," few visitors would think to associate them with the celebrated Beijing stage designer of the same name, whose innovative decors for the People's Art Theater and collaborations with Zhang Yimou have won world-wide recognition. I was surprised to learn, not long ago, that the stage designer and the photographer are indeed the same person. And I was astonished to discover, when I paid my first visit to Zeng Li in Beijing, that the photographs I had seen in exhibitions were only the tip of the iceberg. In fact, during the past 10 years, Zeng Li has made thousands of photographs that portray the destruction of Beijing’s hutong dwellings, the changes in residential architecture of the past five decades, the wholesale reconstruction of China’s urban centers, and the traces of China’s industrial heritage. These photographs provide a meticulous record of the changes that have taken place in the everyday urban fabric of Beijing and other cities, as the hutong lanes, the standardized apartment buildings, and the sprawling factories of the recent past have given way to soaring residential towers and glittering shopping malls. When Zeng Li speaks of desire to create a lasting visual record of an urban environment that is rapidly disappearing, it is possible to glimpse an unexpected but authentic passion. Born in 1961, Zeng Li grew up in Liuzhou, in Guangxi province in China's far south. He remembers it as a place notable for the nearby mountains and also for the newly built factories situated in the region. His family lived on the outskirts of the city, in residential quarters belonging to a chemical factory. Zeng Li stayed in Liuzhou until he finished high school and left to attend the Central Drama Institute in Beijing, where he studied stage design. Since graduating in 1987, he has been associated with the Beijing People's Art Theater, earning acclaim as one of China’s leadng stage and costume designers. He attracted wide international attention in 1997 with his stage design for Zhang Yimou's production of "Turnadot" in Florence and then Beijing, and he collaborated again with the celebrated film director on a ballet version of "Raise the Red Lantern" in 2001. Because China’s creative community is unusually close-knit, Zeng Li has also been involved in projects with the leading artists and architects of his generation. He participated, for example, in the "Bunker" group exhibition that the artist Cai Guo Qiang organized in 2004 in a complex of former Taiwanese military bunkers on Kinmen (Quemoy) island. Zeng Li’s contribution, "Fight Theater," was a performance by 20 members of the Peking Opera. On a stage in front of a map of China and Taiwan, they carried out an ironic remix of battle scenes from historic Peking Opera productions. The visual richness of Zeng Li's stage design does not prepare you for the austerity and the quiet reserve of his photographs, which reveal a very different side of his artistic temperament. It was around 1997, he recalls, that he realized that photography could be used to register the dramatic changes that were sweeping through Beijing’s historic neighborhoods as a result of the capital’s ongoing modernization campaign. At that time, he kept a painting studio some distance northwest of central Beijing, in the part of Changping district where the Ming Tombs lie in a tranquil, orchard-filled valley cradled by the Tianshou mountains. His visits to that site, where 13 of the 16 Ming emperors were buried between 1409 and 1644, sparked his historical curiosity. At that time, he recalls, only one of the tombs had been restored, and the remainder lay mostly in ruins. When the Beijing municipal government announced a plan to restore all of the tombs and to develop the area as an international tourist attraction, Zeng Li felt that he should photograph the area before it was "destroyed" by renovation. He purchased a professional camera and made some of his first photographs there; the area has remained one of his long-term photographic subjects. Traveling regularly by bus and bicycle back and forth to his studio, Zeng Li says, he could not help but observe the accelerating pace with which many of Beijing's traditional residential neighborhoods were disappearing. Gradually he began to imagine the creation of a systematic photographic record of the old sections of Beijing that were slated for destruction. This urge became even more pressing in 2001, when Beijing was chosen to host the 2008 Olympics. Zeng Li realized that many of the historic yet badly dilapidated areas of the old city would almost certainly be demolished by the municipal government, in an effort to spruce up the city’s image for the benefit of foreign visitors and the world media. The debate over urban renewal in the central districts of the capital was hardly new. Ever since the founding the People’s Republic in 1949, Beijing has witnessed a continuing struggle between the forces of urban renovation and those of preservation. In 1949, the four central districts of Beijing’s old city were filled mainly by one-story residential buildings--mostly courtyard-style houses arrayed along the narrow lanes of densely packed neighborhoods called hutongs. As the population of Beijing grew, some hutongs were torn down and replaced with new, low-rise, six-story housing. Nevertheless, until the late 1980s the main official response to the challenge of Beijing’s swelling population was to build new, standardized residential complexes on the city’s peripheries. In the long run, however, this strategy did little to protect the hutongs. Because housing maintenance was given such a low priority by the municipal government, Beijing's courtyard dwellings gradually deteriorated to a dangerous degree. By the end of the 1980s, Beijing's hutongs had won a reputation as crumbling, unhealthy quarters, and city officials increasingly described them as a blight on the reputation of the nation’s capital. In 1990, the Beijing municipal government embarked on a program of sweeping changes in the central city, adopting an ambitious master plan that aimed at the renovation of 8.2 million square meters of courtyard housing occupied by 400,000 households. The actual situation of the hutongs could, of course, be interpreted quite differently depending on one's vantage point. To city officials, they appeared as embarrassing relics of an earlier, almost feudal age, that were wholly unsuited for the capital of a powerful modern China. Such observers could see only dilapidated buildings afflicted with crumbling walls, rotting columns, leaky roofs, poor drainage, primitive toilet facilities, inadequate heat and ventilation, and lack of sunlight. Combined with the desperate overcrowding of the courtyard dwellings, where three generations of a family might share a single room, these conditions led many of Beijing’s planners to conclude that the hutongs were a national disgrace, and worthy only of destruction. For the residents of the hutongs, however, these obvious disadvantages were to a large degree offset by the lively and intimate lifestyle that these areas afforded. Thanks to their narrow lanes, originally designed to offer protection from Beijing’s notorious dust storms, hutongs were hospitable to pedestrian traffic but not easily accessible to automobiles. The very crowdedness of the courtyard dwellings encouraged a vital, constantly flowing street life. While living conditions were difficult, these neighborhoods were hardly slums; the hutong social structure was remarkably stable, most residents were employed, and public services were readily available. Most crucially, families that had lived for generations in the same hutong inevitably developed a network of close, nuanced relationships with neighboring families. The real appeal of hutong life was this extraordinarily intimate human texture, a quality impossible to re-create in the standardized apartment buildings that were Beijing's only residential alternative. The announced goal of the Beijing “housing renewal” of the 1990s was to improve the quality of life of hutong dwellers. As it was implemented by the new private real-estate developers who came to dominate Beijing’s urban-renewal process, however, renovation often amounted to the permanent relocation of hutong dwellers, who bitterly realized that they could not afford the market-rate rents that would be introduced following rehabilitation projects. As Zeng Li's interest in making a visual record of the hutongs became known, he would often receive phone calls from hutong residents or from members of preservation groups alerting him that bulldozers had been summoned to knock down a certain area. He would hurry there with his large-format camera; some of his pictures show the demolition already in progress. Most of the hutong dwellers that he encountered while photographing encouraged his project, because they realized that buildings like theirs were rapidly disappearing all over Beijing. Yet other people, Zeng Li recalls, would stop and brusquely ask him, “Why are you making these pictures? There is nothing beautiful here.” By 2000, there were increasing of photographers recording the destruction of Beijing’s hutongs. Zeng Li stands apart as one of the few photographers to expand the scope of his project beyond the hutongs, to encompass the story of the wider changes that had taken place in the housing of the capital’s inhabitants since the 1960s. He began systematically to photograph the different types of residential buildings that characterized succeeding decades. These included examples of the spartan six-story walk-up buildings of the 1960s and ‘70s, a period when the nation had scant resources to devote to housing; the 12-story midrise buildings of the 1980s, which began to appear after the state decided to allow market forces to play a role in developing the housing sector; and the soaring, ornately decorated luxury towers that began to dominate Beijing's skyline during the economic boom of the 1990s. It is characteristic of Zeng Li’s approach that he did not set out to highlight the most architecturally important or innovative buildings, but to create a visual archive of the residential structures that were the most typical of their kind. His photographs usually employ a straight-on viewpoint and avoid unusual camera angles or dramatic compositions. They did not initially elicit great enthusiasm from Beijing’s artists, who were busy exploring more theatrical and conceptual approaches to photography. Instead Zeng Li found his most appreciative audience among Chinese architects, who quickly realized that his photographs cast a revealing light on a part of China’s everyday built environment that had largely escaped serious attention. Zeng Li’s visual revelation of the unheralded yet ubiquitous buildings in which millions spent lived their lives amounted to an alternative history of the recent course of architecture in China. Another facet of Zeng Li’s fascination with Beijing’s architectural environment can be found in his series of photographs of industrial chimneys and smokestacks. He regards these as compelling symbols of China’s determination, in the 1950s and ‘60s, to achieve industrial self-sufficiency as rapidly as possible. This goal prompted the construction of factories large and small throughout the country--even in Beijing, the nation’s capital. While a few of the smokestacks in Zeng Li's photographs belong to factories that are still in operation, most now serve only to mark sites where working factories once stood. As such they are monumental reminders of China’s historic shift from an agricultural to an industrial society. Just as the small factories that once dotted Beijing are now disappearing because of environmental concerns, so the giant iron and steel factories that arose during the same era are now being closed or relocated. Among Zeng Li’s most memorable photographs are those made on the grounds of the Shougang Iron and Steel Company, which once occupied the leading ranks of China’s state enterprises. Founded in 1919 in what were then the western suburbs of Beijing, the company grew rapidly after 1949 to become one of China’s largest and most famous steel-producing establishments, employing more than 100,000 workers. Recently, as a result of Beijing’s growing alarm about the enormous pollution created by Shougang’s operations, it has been decided that the company’s steel-making facilities, which lie only 18 kilometers from Tiananmen Square, will be completely relocated to Hebei province by 2010. There have even been recent official discussions of turning the vast, 2-million-square-meter Shougang complex into an art district similar to the 798 Factory in Beijing's Dashanzi section. For Zeng Li, the conviction that such industrial enterprises form a vital part of modern China’s history eventually led him to travel to Guizhou province, in the country’s southwest, to photograph the sprawling Shuicheng Iron and Steel Works. Prior to 1949, there was virtually no industry in this mountainous region, which despite its natural resources was one of China’s poorest provinces. With the advent of the People’s Republic and the strategic decision to locate new industrial facilities deep in the country’s interior, the central government provided financing for the establishment of coal mines, chemical plants, and metallurgical plants, as well as a railway meant to connect Guizhou to its neighboring provinces. By 1960, the first regional iron and steel facility opened in Guizhou’s capital, Guiyang. The metal works that was subsequently was built in Shuicheng was one of the country’s largest steel facilities to be constructed entirely with Chinese resources, without the foreign assistance that had been common before the Sino-Soviet rift of the early 1960. The Shuicheng factory remains active today despite pollution concerns. Zeng Li relates that he was able to obtain permission to photograph there with the help of the editors at the Workers Publishing House in Beijing. He told them of his keen desire to photograph China’s historic factories, and they wrote letters on his behalf to the local authorities. Zeng Li wryly relates that even though the editors realized that he would work in his usual non-dramatic photographic style, they may have secretly hoped that he would accidentally make some beautiful pictures that could be of use to their publishing house. Overall, Zeng Li’s photographs of depopulated industrial zones, abandoned factory buildings, and shut-down blast furnaces suggest his fascination with the aftermath of the China’s epic rise to the status of industrial superpower in the course of a short half century. He shares this fascination with the filmmaker Wang Bing, whose monumental nine-hour documentary West of the Tracks (2003) explores the present-day ruins of the vast industrial complex in Shenyang, in the northeastern province of Liaoning. It is important to realize that both the photographer and the filmmaker are portraying local examples of a process that is occurring not only in China but world-wide: the decline of the labor-intensive resource-depleting industrial system that originated in the 19th century in Europe and the U.S. and then spread to the rest of the world. Today this system is under pressure everywhere, as we enter a new age of high-tech, computer-guided production and global markets. Examples of this historic process can be found in the decaying factories of the “rustbelt” in the U.S. northeast; in Russia, where the once-powerful Soviet steel industry has almost entirely withered away; and in the Ruhr Valley of Germany, once the steel-producing capital of Europe. Seen in this light, Zeng Li’s photographic project seems remarkably close in spirit to that of the German husband-and-wife team Bernd and Hilla Becher. Since the late 1950s, the Bechers have created a remarkable visual record of the vanishing traces of Europe’s former industrial culture. In their precise, objective, and purposely “non-artistic” photographs, we see an amazing array of blast furnaces, cooling towers, lime kilns, mine heads, grain elevators, and workers’ houses--all part of a vast industrial world which existed from the 1830s to the 1960s. The photographs of the Bechers, like those of the earlier German “New Objectivity” portraitist August Sander, are well known to Zeng Li. His photographs, like theirs, serve to remind us as how quickly entire social worlds, inhabited by countless millions of people, can dissolve when a new economic and technological era suddenly makes its appearance. Looking back at his photographs of the past decade, Zeng Li acknowledges that his conception of his own project has steadily expanded. Starting with the historic structures of the Ming Tombs, he enlarged his view to include the everyday architecture of China’s cities and then its historic factories. Now, he says, he intends to take his camera to the countryside, to assemble a visual record of the momentous changes that are occurring as a powerful wave of 21st-century modernization takes hold in China’s traditional agricultural regions. These photographs, it is safe to predict, will take their place in the unrivaled historical panorama of China’s transformation that Zeng Li is quietly, patiently creating.