Contemporary ART - A selection of interviews

Here's the interview video that Helena, Grace and I put together - I've uploaded it to Google Video (the quality isn't great but it's good enough). If you have trouble accessing it or anything let me know and I'll see what I can do.



[EDIT] I've uploaded it to YouTube for those that can't access Google Video (it's in two parts because of the limitation that videos can't be over 10 minutes)

You can see part one here and part two here.

Interview between Xintiandi architect Ben Wood and Ma Qingyun talk

Architects Ben Wood and Ma Qingyun talk about the hyper development of Shanghai, in the first in a series of reports by Louisa Lim on the Chinese city.

Twenty years ago, the Pudong area was farmland. Now, its futuristic skyline lights up the horizon across the river from Shanghai's original settlement.

Shanghai's Building Boom

In China, Shanghai's role is as a paragon of modernity, and also as a harbinger of the future. China is now undergoing one of the most massive urbanizations in human history, and nowhere is that more evident than in Shanghai. The city's population is now almost 18 million, and is forecast to rise to 25 million by 2020. Louisa Lim has an overview of the city's past -- and how it's preparing for its future.

Morning Edition, December 11, 2006 · It's become an urban myth that at one time, one-quarter of the world's construction cranes were in Shanghai. Indeed, it now has more skyscrapers than New York City.

Shanghai's historical upheavals and rebirths can be traced through architecture, with its colonial legacy and capitalist boom. Ahead of the World Expo in 2010, the city is being transformed again, with mind-bogglingly ambitious plans.

The latest symbol of Shanghai's urban hipness is Xintiandi, a bustling shopping and entertainment district. But these luxury boutiques, which appear to be housed in traditional lanehouses, are not what they seem.

In fact, Xintiandi is a re-imagining of Shanghai's old streetscape as consumer experience, dreamed up by American architect Ben Wood.

"In order for a place to be fashionable, it has to transcend the nostalgia of historic preservation," Wood says. "I was quite resourceful. Some preservationists say I was ruthless. … I made openings where openings didn't exist if I thought it would improve the cinematic experience of walking the neighborhood."

Traditional music wafts along the street, heightening the film-set feel of the place. This is Shanghai's most hyped urban development of recent years. But the decision to leave some old buildings standing is the exception rather than the rule.

The more-accepted new face of Shanghai is an ever-growing labyrinth of skyscrapers. From an observation deck in Pudong, a district across the river from Shanghai's original settlement, skyscrapers stretch out into the distance as far as the eye can see.

Twenty years ago, this area was just farmland. Now, this viral growth of skyscrapers, this city on steroids, symbolizes China's urban future.

Architect Ma Qingyun, who has just been appointed dean of the school of architecture at the University of Southern California, says Pudong's frenzied development "has certain dimensions of symbolic quality, to represent ambition and achievement in its new form of urbanization."

But for Wood, the American architect, Pudong's new cityscape is all about show.

"It's designed to create plots of land for monuments to corporate power, the global economy," says Wood.

He says you can't cross the street in Pudong because the red lights aren't long enough. "Sometimes it takes as long as three changes of the stoplight to get to the other side of the street. So it's really not a humane place."

Yet Pudong, too, is part of Shanghai's strategy to build for its surging humanity. Almost 18 million people live in greater Shanghai. But that figure is expected to rise by one-third before 2020.

As a result, the city is spreading unbelievably fast. In just five years, nine new satellite towns have been built literally from scratch -- each housing about the same number of people as the city of Atlanta.

Senior city planner Tang Zhiping says the need is pressing.

"We feel that the development and construction of these small towns is pretty urgent. But these experts are even more impatient than us; they want us to build lively, bustling towns in just two or three years. That's impossible."

So Shanghai is re-inventing itself anew, this time as the center of an urban megalopolis.

But as its lanehouses are leveled to make way for a forest of skyscrapers, is it in danger of losing its Chineseness?

No, says architect Ma Qingyun, because Shanghai's soul is in its openness to change, its tolerance and its absolute pragmatism.

"That's true Chineseness," Ma says. "Everything is in constant mutation, nothing is set as a fixity. We don't follow any spatial models. We don't care about the look of the building, so much so everybody still lives in Shanghai in ugly buildings. We care about how convenient life is."

Shanghai literally means "on the sea": It's the city that looks outward to the rest of the world, to the future. But what will Shanghai of the future look like in 20 years' time? With change so rapid and overarching, even architects working here designing that future can't answer that question. Ma worries about endless urban sprawl swallowing up the countryside.

"I have hope," he says, "but what I'm so afraid of is my vision" of the future.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6600367

Questions for Tan Dun

Questions for Tan Dun
By DEBORAH SOLOMON
Published: December 3, 2006

Q: As an experimental composer who has used crumpled paper, rocks and swishing water sounds in your music, how did you wind up at the staid Metropolitan Opera, where your new opera, “The First Emperor,” makes its debut this month? Do you see yourself as an avant-garde composer?

I see myself as a spiritual mathematician. What I do is kind of one plus one. I figure out that one plus one equals one.

That sounds very Buddhist. What does it mean?

It has many layers. I have conducted orchestras around the world, but my favorite instruments are still the ones you find in nature — water, stone, ceramics. I add my past one and my current one together on one stage.

You grew up in a remote village in the Hunan Province of China, without a television or a radio or any knowledge of Western music.

Before I ever saw a Western orchestra, I wanted to be a shaman. Only they understand the talk between the wind and the birds and the stones.

During the Cultural Revolution, you and your parents, who were both intellectuals, were forced to work in rice paddies on a government commune in order to be “re-educated” according to Mao’s plan.

I stayed two years cleaning the bathrooms and feeding pigs, and planting rice in the countryside. I have to tell you — those two years, I enjoyed them. I started to collect all those farmers’ folk songs during that two years.

And those were the songs that saved you when you applied to the Central onservatory in Beijing, which was reopened after Mao’s death.

It closed during the Cultural Revolution, and all the professors went to feed pigs. So when they called for students, thousands of composers showed up. They tested me. They said, “Can you play some Mozart?” I said: “What are you talking about. Who is Mozart?” Then they said, “What are you doing here?” I said: “I want to be a musician. I can do 500 folk songs.”

Later, you won a scholarship to Columbia University and played a violin on street corners to earn a living.

It was West Fourth Street. That time it was very good. In an hour I can make maybe $30. Amazing. I still see those people who used to share the spot with me. “Hey, Tan, where are you playing?” I say, “I play at Lincoln Center, but inside.”

Where do you live now?

I have a house in Chelsea. It has six floors, and the top floor is my writing studio. I always write in the morning. I work six hours at a time. I use a huge Ping-Pong table as my writing desk because I need the space to orchestrate my scores.

Your score for “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” which you wrote in all of 10 days, won both a Grammy and an Oscar and presumably brought you great worldly riches.

It doesn’t make much difference if you have a lot of money or not. Of course, there’s a difference for the poor, but for people making $1 million a year or people making $100,000 a year, there’s not much difference. For artists, you are so busy you have no time to spend money anyway.

Western conductors and composers are typically described as temperamental and egomaniacal, but you seem pretty amiable.

I am very easygoing. I am not a person to be nervous at all. When you relax, you can make miracles. A lot of poetry and beautiful lines are said taking showers, and I hear a lot of beautiful melodies out of the bathroom.

Why do you think people sing in the shower?

A shower is very spiritual. I take at least two or three showers a day. I was always in the river when I was a kid in Hunan. I listened to women singing work songs and washing the laundry in the river.

Can that experience ever be recaptured?

Now I couldn’t do it in the Hudson River, so I do it in the shower.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/magazine/03wwln_q4.html?_r=1&oref=login

Interview with Steven Wang

Steven Wang

Position: An assistant director
Films: Fearless, Mission Impossible III.
Background: graduated at Film Academy in Shanghai University, working 5 years in Chinese film making industry, now study in New York Film Academy.

(Below are the interviews, I simply summarized, A is Alex, S is Steven Wang)

A: How do you think of the film market in China?

S: The whole market was divided by three groups. The first is American, Japan, and Korea. They occupy the largest part. American was the first one entering China. Under the influence of Hollywood, films from Japan and Korea developed very fast, especially Korea. In recent years, Korean films are more and more commercialize. Some famous films from Korea have been introduced into China; it is very obvious that Korea has ranked into the train like Japan and America. The second group was Hong Kong, since the import quota license has been canceled, Hong Kong films have greatly impact Chinese Mainland, and in the same time, films from Taiwan, who used to be as important as Hong Kong, have quitted this stage. The third group was a few excellent directors in Mainland; they once operated several ‘successful’ commercial films.

A: What are the objective conditions of work in China?

S: It can be summarized by a Chinese traditional idiom “Yu Long Hun Za” (good and evil people mixed up). Most film making groups are from Hong Kong; because the limitation and shrink of Mainland market, those groups crushed into Mainland. They use the advantage of geography and cheap labors to produce and publish films. About the propagandizing part, they are occupied by the advertisement making groups from Taiwan. They have adequate experience by plagiarizing, absorbing, and imitating advertisement creativities from foreign countries, especially Japan. Now, they have formed their own expert groups to pack and propagandize. While in the mainland, under the film-making mode from Hong Kong and Taiwan in several years, some small brands and producing groups have been built up.

A: How do you think the future of film industry in China?

S: There are infinite potential in China now. Since the national power strengthened, the brand of culture has been more and more emphasized. Due to the particularity of film making environment, it needs special management and reasonable salary distribution system. And after joining into WTO, the communication of culture has been broaden, the art quality and commercial factors of Chinese films have been forced to run up. Moreover, not only the capital from foreign countries, but also the producing money from inland has greatly increased. It activates the producing environment. In addition, some talent persons choose to return to China, to join into producing domestic films. They helped to advance the producing level, and the new management they brought into is forcing the old system to step out of the market.