Wife of Chinese Dissident to Sue Yahoo for Snitching

This is, I believe, the fourth time Yahoo has been implicated in the jailing of a Chinese intellectual. It's scary to think Yahoo will so readily disclose its users private information, but on the other hand - they have no real obligation not to do so, either. This case is especially interesting in light of this month's New York Magazine editorial on how no one actually owns their privacy anymore (as if we haven't all known that for years... infact, I remember reading a Calvin and Hobbs comic about that when I was a child).

Anyway, here's the article, (via Boing Boing and Digital Chonsunilbo)

The wife of a Chinese dissident jailed for publishing articles on the Internet says she plans to sue U.S.-based Internet company Yahoo for allegedly helping to put her husband in jail in China.

Speaking with VOA's Mandarin Service Wednesday after arriving in Washington, Yu Ling said Chinese police arrested her husband, Wang Xiaoning, partly because Yahoo's Hong Kong office gave Chinese authorities information about his e-mail accounts.

Yu Ling said she has come to the United States to sue the company for damages and to demand an apology.

In 2003, Wang was sentenced to 10 years in prison for publishing what China's government called "subversive" articles on the Internet.

In recent years, human rights groups have accused Yahoo of providing Chinese authorities with information that has led to the imprisonment of several dissidents.

Yahoo and other Internet companies say they have to obey Chinese laws to do business there. They also say that their operations in China benefit millions of people who otherwise would have no Internet access.

Paris-based Reporters Without Borders says China has imprisoned at least 50 individuals, including Wang Xiaoning, for their activities on the Internet.

VOA News

Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Center and this weekend

For those who have not made it to Pecha Kucha, here is the address for the Posters:

Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Center.

Room BOC, President Apartment, 868 Huashan Lu

Telephone: 6211 1845.

Also tonight:

3 Japanese dance at JingArt

3:30 Stop at Zhendai

6pm Artsea

6-10 Islands 6 opening

6 pm Gore Vidal at M on the Bund

6:30 Creek Art opening

8pm Beijing Art Now opening

Pecha Kucha tonight!

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

"Stop 30 Seconds" Contemporary Art Exhibition

"Stop 30 Seconds" Contemporary Art Exhibition

Organised by: Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Artbank

Exhibition Venue: Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art

2/F Building 28, 199 Fang Dian Rd, Pudong New Area, Shanghai

Opening Reception: 10 th March 2007, 3.30pm

Exhibition Dates: 10th -24th March 2007, 10am-6pm (closed Mondays)

Curator: Duan Dongtao Zhang Dachuan

Participating Artists: Duan Dongtao Du Junmin Du Yiyao Feng Jing
Lu Yonglei Jiang Kun Kang Shiwei Qiao Shouhui Song Zhiqiang

Zhang Dachuan Zhang Qi Zhang Xiaotong

Tel/ ~{5g;0#:~}86-21 50339801

Fax/ ~{4+Uf#:~}86-021-50339803

www.zendaiart.com

Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007)

On Tuesday, March 6, French theorist Jean Baudrillard passed away.

Shanghai Literary Festival at M

THE PROGRAMME

TICKETS

General Sessions: RMB 50, includes a drink
Headline Sessions: RMB 100, includes a drink
Literary Lunches: RMB 200
Students: Half Price
12 Session Pass: RMB 500, includes 10 general sessions and 2 headline
sessions

TO BOOK:

Call (86-21) 6350-9988, 10am - 6pm daily

TICKET COLLECTION:

All tickets must be picked up at least 2 days before the session booked.

A maximum of 4 tickets per person, per session may be purchased.

Tickets can be collected at M on the Bund, 10am - 10pm.

7/F, No. 5 The Bund

silf@m-onthebund.com This email address is being protected from spam
bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

*Programme changes do happen - please check the website for changes and
updates.

WEEKEND ONE

Saturday, March 10

10am Love and Erotica in French and Chinese Poetry

Qiu Xiaolong and Tang Loaec

RMB 50

Shanghai-born Qiu Xiao Long is a poet, writer, translator and the
creator of the Inspector Chen mystery series. He is the translator of
Treasury of Chinese Love Poems.

Tang Loaec is a writer, editor and literary critic, whose published
work ranges from literary novels to geopolitical conflict and erotica.
He is the founder of La Venus Litteraire, a website devoted to the
review of literary erotica.

12pm Theatre & Scriptwriting: An Asia-Pacific Perspective

Wang Xiaoli and Katherine Thomson

RMB 50

Beijing-based playwright Wang Xiaoli is a graduate of the Central
Academy of Drama and a former journalist. Recent projects include In
the Bag, the first contemporary Chinese play to be performed in the
U.K., and the screenplay for Return in Winter.

Australian playwright Katherine Thomson co-wrote Answered by Fire, for
which she won a major AWGIE award, Diving for Pearls and Change in the
Weather (for which she also wrote the screen adaptation), among other
plays.

2pm From Shanghai to Hong Kong: Women's Friendship and Writing

Susanna Hoe

RMB 50

Susanna Hoe was born in England and lived in Hong Kong from 1987-97, a
period she describes in Watching the Flag Come Down. She also focuses
on women's history with a special interest in women in China (Chinese
Footprints; Women at the Siege, Peking 1900).

4pm Anna May Wong: From Laundryman's Daughter to Hollywood Legend

Graham Hodges

RMB 50

Graham Hodges is a Distinguished Fulbright Professor of History at
Peking University the author of several books on New York City and
African-American history. His new book, Taxi: A History of the New York
City Cabdriver is coming out this month in the U.S.

6pm Headline Session: Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal: In Conversation with Bob Carr

RMB 100

Widely considered America's finest man of letters, Gore Vidal is a
novelist, essayist, playwright and provocateur - and a shrewd,
uncompromising observer of American political history and world
culture.

Bob Carr is the former Premier of New South Wales, an author and an
acknowledged expert on some areas of U.S. History, notably Abraham
Lincoln.

Sunday, March 11

10am - CHILDREN: The Cat in the Hat Birthday Party ~ Crystal Room

Various readers, famous and not yet famous

RMB 50

Storytelling, activities and 50 candles for the Cat in the Hat (who
turns 50 in March)

10am - Inspector Chen: The Shanghai Story ~ Glamour Bar

Qiu Xiaolong

RMB 50

Shanghai-born Qiu Xiao Long is a poet, writer, translator and the
creator of the Inspector Chen mystery series, which is set in Shanghai.

12pm Literary Lunch: The Rise of India

Pankaj Mishra

RMB 200

Pankaj Mishra is a writer and literary critic. His latest book,
Temptations of the West: How to be Modern in India, Pakistan and
Beyond, describes his travels through a changing subcontinent.

2pm Headline Session: Madhur Jaffrey

Taste Memories with Madhur Jaffrey

RMB 100

Bestselling cookbook author Madhur Jaffrey introduced home-cooked
Indian cuisine to food lovers around the world. An award-winning
actress, her recently published memoir, Climbing the Mango Trees,
describes a childhood filled with remarkable tastes.

4pm New Writing from Ireland

Double Session

Claire Kilroy: The Last of the Old Irish

Claire Kilroy will read from her literary thriller, Tenderwire, which
has been shortlisted for the 2007 Irish Novel of the Year.

Mike McCormack: The Rural Postmodern

"The best kept secret in Irish fiction," Mike McCormack is the author
of an award-winning collection of short stories (Getting it in the
Head), a New York Times book of the year, and two novels. He will read
from his latest novel, Notes from a Coma.

RMB 50

Thursday, March 15

6pm Headline Session: The Man Booker Prize Lecture: Kiran Desai

Kiran Desai, Winner of the 2006 Man Booker Prize for The Inheiritance
of Loss

RMB 100

Kiran Desai is the author of Hullaballo in the Guava Orchard, which
critics praised for its prose and the potential of its author. Eight
years later, she published The Inheiritance of Loss, an extraordinary
novel that explores, with intimacy and insight, nearly every
contemporary international issue: globalisation, multiculturalism,
economic inequality, fundamentalism and terrorist violence.

WEEKEND TWO

Saturday, March 17

10am Stranger in a Strange Land: On Writing in a Foreign Land

Guo Xiaolu

RMB 50

Guo Xiaolu is the author of two semi-autobiographical novels, Village
of Stone, contrasting the life of a girl from a small southern Chinese
fishing village with life in modern Beijing, and A Concise
Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, a love story in the form of a
dictionary.

12pm Surviving Iraq: High Tea in Mosul and the Human Face of Iraqi
Suffering

Lynne O' Donnell

RMB 50

Lynne O'Donnell is a journalist, formerly based in Beijing, and now
Hong Kong, whose first novel is about two Englishwomen who married
Iraqi men and settled in Mosul over 30 years ago.

12pm Shanghai Writers on Shanghai Writing [session in Mandarin, no
translation]

with Qiu Xiaolong, Chen Danyan and other writers of, and from, Shanghai

Shanghai-born Qiu Xiaolong is a poet, writer, translator and the
creator of the Inspector Chen mystery series, which is set in Shanghai.
His latest book is Case of Two Cities.

Chen Danyan is a writer of fiction, non-fiction and children's
literature, who is well known for her Shanghai stories. She is working
on an in-depth book about the Bund.

2pm La Verite de l'autre [session in French, no translation]

Arlette Shleifer and Joseph Vebret, moderated by Tang Loaec

RMB 50

Arlette Shleifer is a painter, novelist and the author of four books,
including one set in Taiwan.

Joseph Vebret has published essays, anthologies and a novel (Souffre
Plaisir) , which received an award from the Societe de Gens de Lettre.

Tang Loaec is a writer, editor and literary critic, whose published
work ranges from literary novels to geopolitical conflict and erotica.

4pm Headline Session: John Ralston-Saul

RMB 100

John Ralston-Saul is a world-renowned Canadian essayist, author and
philosopher. His most recent work is The Collapse of Globalism, a
critique of the international financial system.

Sunday, March 18

9.45am - Abracadabra! Books, Writing and the Magic of it All ~ Glamour
Bar

Gail Carson Levine

RMB 50

Gail Carson Levine writes fairy tales with a twist. These include Ella
Enchanted, which won a Newbery Honor award. She is also the author of
Writing Magic - Creating Stories That Fly.

10am - Passion: Themes of love, family and relationships

Celestine Vaite

RMB 50

Celestine Vaite is a Tahitian novelist and the author of short stories
and two novels, Breadfruit and Frangipani, centred around a large,
extended Tahitian family and the universal themes of love, family and
relationships.

12pm Headline Session: Jan Morris

Sunday Brunch with Jan Morris, in conversation with Simon Winchester

RMB 200

Born James Humphrey Morris in 1926, Jan Morris began her career as a
journalist, later becoming a full-time traveller and writer. Her works
include the Pax Britannica trilogy, Hong Kong and her latest, Trieste
and the Meaning of Nowhere.

2pm Fiction Writing Master Class with Romesh Gunasekera ~ Glamour Bar

Romesh Gunasekera

RMB 50

Romesh Gunasekera was born in Sri Lanka and moved to London in 1971. He
is the author of Reef, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

2pm Poetry From Two Worlds: American poet Daniel Hall and Chinese poet
Wang Xiaolong, translated by Qiu Xiaolong ~ Crystal Room

RMB 50

Daniel Hall is an American poet, the author of two collections of
poetry, and is currently Writer-in-Residence at Amherst College.

Wang Xiaolong is a Chinese poet whose work reflects contemporary China.

Shanghai-born Qiu Xiao Long is a poet, writer, translator and the
creator of the Inspector Chen mystery series. He is the translator of
Treasury of Chinese Love Poems.

4pm Beasts of No Nation ~ Crystal Room

Uzodinma Iwaela

RMB 50

Uzodinma Iwaela was born of Nigerian parents in Washington, D.C. His
outstanding first novel, Beasts of No Nation, relates the experiences
of a young African boy, conscripted into an army of guerilla fighters.
The book won the four major "first fiction" prizes in the U.S.

4pm Headline Session: Dai Sijie

Depuis la petite tailleuse chinoise [en francais]

After the Little Chinese Seamstress [session in French, no translation]

RMB 100

Novelist and filmmaker Dai Sijie was born in China in 1954. He left for
France in 1984, and has lived and worked there ever since. Dai, who
writes in French, is the author of Balzac and the Little Chinese
Seamstress, Mr Muo's Travelling Couch and Le nuit ou la lune n'est pas
levee.

6pm The Pleasures of A Wandering Life

Simon Winchester

RMB 50

Simon Winchester is an adventurer, author and award-winning foreign
correspondent (for The Guardian), whose books include River at the
Centre of the World - a journey up the Yangtze - and his latest, Crack
at the Edge of the World, about the California earthquake of 1906.

WEEKEND THREE

Friday, March 23

6pm Headline Session: Amy Tan

An Evening with Amy Tan: Musings on Joy, Luck and Fate

RMB 100

Amy Tan is the author of several novels, including The Joy Luck Club,
the internationally best-selling novel about mothers, daughters,
culture and identity. Her latest novel, Saving Fish From Drowning, was
published in 2005.

Saturday, March 24

10am The Adventures of a Wildlife Photographer

RMB 50

Jan Latta is an author and wildlife photographer whose encounter with a
mountain gorilla in Rwanda inspired her to create a series of books for
children on endangered animals.

12pm Literary Lunch with Amy Tan: The Journey to Becoming a Writer

Amy Tan, in conversation with Charles Foran

RMB 200

Amy Tan is the author of several novels, including The Joy Luck Club,
the internationally best-selling novel about mothers, daughters,
culture and identity. Her latest novel, Saving Fish From Drowning, was
published in 2005.

Canadian author

2pm Writing China: Stories, Real and Otherwise

RMB 50

Canadian author Charles Foran, a regular visitor and occasional
resident of China for the past 18 years, reflects on writing fiction
and non-fiction about the country.

4pm Namu: Wisdom From the Land of the Daughters

Namu Erche Yang

RMB 50

Namu Yang is from the matrilineal Moso ethnic group. She left her
village on the shores of Lugu Lake to attend the Shanghai Conservatory
and later became a professional singer, top model, and a prolific
author. She tells her remarkable story in Leaving Mother Lake: A
Girlhood at the Edge of the World. Her latest book is Being Born
Beautiful is not the Same as Being Beautiful.

Sunday, March 25

10am Die Tradition der Singvogelhaltung in Beijing – eine literarische
Reise ins alte Peking [auf Deutsch]

The Birds of Beijing - A Journey Into Old Peking [in German, no
translation]

Rainer Kloubert in conversation with Professor Hans Heindrischke

RMB 50

Rainer Kloubert on the history of birds in Beijing, and the insights it
gives into the life, times and culture of old Peking.

Hans Heindrischke is the Head of the School of Modern Languages at the
University of New South Wales, and the reader for all Rainer Kloubert's
drafts.

12pm Getting It Published

Jo Lusby, Tim Murray, Benython Oldfield

RMB 50

Jo Lusby, General Manager of Penguin (China), Tim Murray, Managing
Director of Ringier Publishing, and Benython Oldfield, literary agent,
on the nuts and bolts of getting that book published.

2pm The Post-Amy Tan Generation

Globalisation, technology and the changing Chinese diaspora - and its
impact on young Chinese writers

Tze Ming Mok

RMB 50

Described as a new critical voice from the New Zealand Chinese
community, Tze Ming Mok will speak on globalisation, technology, the
changing Chinese diaspora and its impact on young Chinese writers.

The Bund from a Chinese and Western Perspective

It's Shanghai's most famous street - but does everyone look at it the
same way? Two writers with books on the Bund - one Shanghainese, one
British - share their views.

4pm The Bund: A Chinese Perspective

Chen Danyan

RMB 50

Chen Danyan is a writer of fiction, non-fiction and children's books
and is well known for her Shanghai stories. She has just completed an
in-depth book about the Bund.

6pm The Bund ~ A Chinese and Western Perspective

Peter Hibbard

RMB 50

Peter Hibbard studied city planning and urban sociology before shifting
his focus to the study of the historical development of tourism in
China. His book The Bund will be launched at this session.

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.

The Blood of Yingzhou District

The Blood of Yingzhou District, a film tha follows the lives of childen
in Anhui who have lost their parents to AIDS, won the Oscar for best
documentary short earlier.
YouTube has the trailer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJx18Ynuzck

Beijing Rock Scene in Fader Magazine

Beijing Rock/ The Chinese Beat

"Bitches of Rock n Roll includes the surprisingly poppy songs "Eat Me," "Hey Bitch," and "My Eyes Pissed Again," but that evening, Shang chose to end their set with a cover of the Contour's "Do You Love Me?"

The current issue of The Fader has an article on Beijing underground rock. However, there is no direct link to the article, so you have to download the 50+ MB .pdf version. The article is an introduction to the underground scene in Beijing.

Francesco Bonami on Chinese Art

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/magazine/25Style.China.t.htmlr=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

For every Koolhaas the West produces, [China] can produce 10 very good young Chinese architects able to deliver the same project, at the same level of quality, for about a third of the price. This doesn't mean, of course, that China is immune from nouveau riche posturing.

Published: February 25, 2007

Recently I received an e-mail message from a curator friend inquiring about a painter and sculptor named Liu Wei. I had included his work in a show I organized in Turin called "AllLookSame?" that featured pieces by young Korean, Chinese and Japanese artists. "Do you believe that Liu Wei is just a good artist or a very good artist that will be famous in the future like Zhang Xiaogang?" my friend asked. (Zhang Xiaogang is a Chinese art star whose paintings fetch six figures.)

I am a curator, but I am not a clairvoyant. The word on Chinese art right now is "Buy!" but I'm not convinced that we really understand what's going on there. Ten years ago, a few Chinese artists, like Chen Zen or Huang Yong Ping, appeared on the West's radar screen, satisfying a certain outdated "Orientalist" craving among some collectors. People like Uli Sigg, the former Swiss ambassador to China, who counts some 1,500 pieces of Chinese and Asian art in his collection, and another Swiss citizen, Lorenz Helbling, who opened his gallery, ShanghART, in China more than a decade ago, are reaping the profits of their foresight. But now Western collectors and dealers are descending on China like a swarm of annoying and aimless flies. Actually, today's burgeoning Chinese art world depends very marginally, if at all, on the gallery establishment in New York and London. Huge crowds may jam the Miami Basel and Frieze
art fairs, but those numbers are nothing compared with the potential size of the art market within China itself.

All of these things make it hard for me to answer my friend's question about Liu Wei. But the real difficulty has less to do with the dangers of market speculation than with the fact that I haven't quite figured out how a Chinese artist thinks, creates and produces a work of art.

A studio visit to an artist in Beijing is often like 10 studio visits in Brooklyn. In China, you don't find a painter, and a sculptor, and a video artist, but rather one artist who is working on painting, sculpture, photography, video and (why not?) performance all at the same time. When I visited Liu Wei in Beijing to select works for my show in Turin, he offered me not only beautiful cityscape paintings but also architectural models of famous buildings, like St. Peter's
Cathedral and the Empire State Building, made from the same rubber used to make fake dog bones. (I chose a painting.) In Europe, an artist that looks for inspiration in both a pet shop and the early work of Gerhard Richter would most likely be dismissed as lacking a consistent point of view. But in China the same criteria do not apply.

European artists often develop different bodies of work. Many Chinese artists seem to develop different bodies for each work. A great chaos under the sky was supposedly an excellent sign for Chairman Mao Zedong, and the same may be true for today's Chinese artists. Complexity and change is part of Chinese philosophy. To favor one medium over the others would be to impose a silly constraint. If all is possible in contemporary art, why limit yourself?

Beijing's Central Academy of Fine Arts currently receives applications from some 17,000 aspiring artists annually. Maybe a third of these will be accepted. But even if only 10 percent of those succeed in some way, there will be plenty of Chinese art to collect. What and by which ones has yet to be determined. But there is less and less doubt that the future, in some form or shape, will belong to the Chinese — not only as producers of art but also as consumers of it. Their capacity to devour and digest global ideas in order to create their own new aesthetic is
simply astonishing. It's happening already with architecture. After overcoming their initial inferiority complex, the Chinese are realizing that they don't need to buy into the Western star system. For every Koolhaas the West produces, they can produce 10 very good young Chinese
architects able to deliver the same project, at the same level of quality, for about a third of the price. This doesn't mean, of course, that China is immune from nouveau riche posturing. Louis Vuitton and Prada bags are as avidly consumed there as they are everywhere else on the planet. But a new, more sophisticated generation of creative people and style makers seems to be taking control.

Today, even government censorship has become a sort of performance art. During my visit to Shanghai last year, the government closed down a weeklong exhibition of ambitious installations in a newly renovated factory — some of the art was said to contain pornographic content — and a mild protest followed. But it all seemed to be part of a continuing game of cat and mouse, if not even a weird new form of art marketing.

They say that if you show a video of a tiger running in the jungle, a person from the West will focus on the tiger while a person from China will take in the whole image. There's no question that while Americans and Europeans are looking at individual artists or individual works of
art, the Chinese are seeing a cultural transformation of enormous proportions. Some Chinese artists will no doubt get eaten by the tiger. But perhaps it's the dealers and the collectors in the West who are missing the big picture.

REMOTE/CONTROL

REMOTE/CONTROL
Interactive and Multimedia Art @ MoCA Shanghai
Exhibition Date: March 3rd –April 20th, 2007


REMOTE/CONTROL, the Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai’s 10th exhibition, is an investigation of the presence of technology in contemporary art today, and the fraught encounter between these art objects and today’s ‘multi-medial’ spectator. The use of multi-media technologies is now an international art phenomenon, at once dazzling, seductive, subversive and above all accessible. These art works have not only profoundly changed the nature of aesthetic practice and display, but have also engendered a new means of perceiving and experiencing art. Interactive and video installations put into crises the distance between the work of art and ourselves, both interactive as well as interpersonal, creating an ambivalence of intimacy and alienation that is in itself a paradox of technological development in the global community.

Featuring the work of both international and local artists, REMOTE/CONTROL is an examination of various perceptual systems, processes, narrative structures, and aesthetic strategies that focus on the question of agency. As the spectator is kinesthetically and sensorially engaged with multimedia objects, the space of the museum is altered, as is the role of the artist. The artist, artwork and spectator are caught in a complex ambit of fantasy and control, inviting us to re-examine the place of art in a technological world, and our place in relation to it.


Curators: Wenny Teo, Ella Liao

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Agenda

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/magazine/25Style.China.t.html

Mao Now (Ross Terrill - The Wilson Quarterly)

Mao Now (Ross Terrill - The Wilson Quarterly)
January 22, 2007
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?

fuseaction=wq.essay&essay_id=202988

In the early 1990s, a story circulated among Chinese taxi drivers
about an eight- car traffic accident in Guangzhou that resulted in
injuries to seven of the drivers involved; the eighth, unscathed, had a
Mao portrait attached to his windshield as a talisman. The story fueled
Mao fever (Mao re) in China, with shopkeepers offering busts of Mao
that glowed in the dark and alarm clocks with Red Guards waving Mao's
little red book at each tick of the clock. Mao temples appeared in some
villages, with a serene portrait of the Chairman on the altar.
Transmuted uses of Mao continue today. Nightclub singers in Beijing
croon songs that cite Mao's words. Youths dine in "Cultural Revolution-
style" cafés off rough- hewn tables with Mao quotations on the wall,
eating basic peasant fare as they answer their cell phones and chat
about love or the stock market.

This nonpolitical treatment of Mao Zedong (1893–1976) is an escape that
fits a Chinese tradition. When floods hit the Yangzi valley and farmers
clutch Mao memorabilia to ward off the rushing waters, it is
reminiscent of Chinese Buddhists over the centuries clutching images or
statues of Guan Yin, the goddess of mercy, to keep them safe and make
them prosperous. Following the eclectic nature of Chinese popular
beliefs, Mao is added to the panoply of faith.

But where is Mao the totalitarian? Each of the major nations that
experienced an authoritarian regime in the 20th century emerged in its
own way from the trauma. Japan, Germany, Italy, even Russia departed
politically from systems that brought massive war and repression.
China, still ruled by a communist party, has been ambiguous about Mao.
Although Mao's portrait and tomb dominate Tiananmen Square in the heart
of Beijing, Mao himself— unlike Stalin in Russia or Hitler in ­Germany—
has floated benignly into a nether zone as if somehow he was not a
political figure at all, let alone the architect of China's communist
state.

The cab drivers, farmers, pop singers, and shopkeepers are really only
following the lead of the Chinese Communist Party, which does not quite
know how to handle Mao's legacy. New history textbooks approved for
initial use in Shanghai have largely brushed Mao out of China's
20th-century story. China has abandoned Mao's policies but not faced
the structural and philosophical issues involved in Maoism— and
probably won't until the Party's monopoly on political power comes to
an end. Yet unless China gets the Mao story correct, it may not have a
happy political future.

The moral compass of the Mao era has gone, unregretted. But money
making, national glory, and a veil over the past in the name of "good
feelings" are not enough to replace it. Can a society that lived by the
ideas of Confucianism for two millennia, and later by Mao's political
athleticism, be content with amnesia about the Mao era and the absence
of a believed public philosophy?

In a recent biography, Mao: The Unknown Story (2006), Jung Chang and
Jon Halliday pile up evidence that Mao was a monster to eclipse Stalin
and probably Hitler and Lenin as well. "Absolute selfishness and
irresponsibility lay at the heart of Mao's outlook" from his teens to
his dotage, say the authors. In a second influential volume, The
Private Life of Chairman Mao (1995), Mao's physician Li Zhisui portrays
the Chairman as exceedingly selfish, jealous, and promiscuous. Soon
after his book came out, Dr. Li came to speak at Harvard, and I showed
him around the campus. "Three words did not exist for Mao," the gentle
doctor remarked as we strolled. "Regret, love, mercy." These two books—
both written from outside China— explain the Mao era in China as
essentially the consequence of having an evil man at the helm.

Certainly Mao's rule was destructive. Tens of millions of Chinese died
in the forced collectivization of the Great Leap Forward of 1958–59,
victims of Mao's willful utopianism and cruelty. Millions more died,
and tens of millions had their lives ruined, during the Cultural
Revolution of the 1960s. Practicing brinkmanship toward India, Taiwan,
and the Soviet Union, Mao declared that a loss of hundreds of millions
of Chinese in a nuclear war would be a setback China could readily
digest.

Yet "bad man" does not adequately sum up Mao and his legacy. To believe
so would be to embrace the moral absolutism of communism itself, with
its quick verdicts ("enemy of the people," "hero of the proletariat"),
and to repeat the manipulations of official Chinese imperial history,
in which even a flood or earthquake "proved" the evil character of the
emperor. Were the "good men" around bad man Mao blind to his failings
for so many decades? Were the hundreds of millions of Chinese who bowed
before Mao's portrait and wept at the sight of him out of their minds?

Mao made history; at the same time, history made Mao. In addition to
looking at Mao's failings as a human being, we must look at the
structures and pressures that turned whim into tyranny. At the ideas
Mao wielded. At the evaporation— in Mao's case, as in that of several
other dictators— of youthful idealism and exactitude. Above all, at the
seduction of a "freedom" bestowed from above by a party- state that
believed it knew what was best for the citizenry.

In a Jesus was dismembered for speaking out… . He who speaks out does
not necessarily transgress, and even if he does transgress, this is but
a small matter to a wise man." Immediately we face a puzzle: Young Mao
was an ardent individualist. In his years at the teachers' training
college he attended in Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province, Mao's
credo became the self- realization of the individual. "Wherever there
is repression of the individual," he wrote in the margin of a
translation of Friedrich Paulsen's System of Ethics (1889), "wherever
there are acts contrary to the nature of the individual, there can be
no greater crime." His first published newspaper work, written in 1919,
was a plea for the liberation of women, a passionate nine- part
commentary on the suicide of a young woman in Changsha moments before
her arranged marriage.

Mao at 24 saw the Russian Revolution of 1917 as an outbreak of freedom
for the individual that lit the way for China. A young female friend
objected, "It's all very well to say establish communism, but lots of
heads are going to fall." Mao, who had recently read Marx and Engel's
Communist Manifesto, retorted, "Heads will fall, heads will be chopped
off, of course. But just think how good communism is! The state won't
bother us anymore, you women will be free, marriage problems won't
plague you anymore." Although these words hint at Mao's later
callousness about human life, it is striking that he viewed Lenin's
revolution in terms of the "marriage problems" of individual women.

The anarchism of Peter Kropotkin, the author of Mutual Aid (1902), had
a strong hold on Mao until he was nearly 30. A great virtue of the
Russian anarchist, Mao felt, was that "he begins by understanding the
common people." Anarchism in Mao's perception was linked with
Prometheanism; Friedrich Nietzsche was also among his early
enthusiasms. The Promethean individual would prepare for his heroic
role by taking cold baths, running up mountains, and studying books in
the noisiest possible places. This prefigures the fascism to come in
Mao's Cultural Revolution, just as fascism in Europe owed a debt to
Nietzsche. At the time, however, Mao's individualism was nurtured by
the influence of a Chinese professor at Changsha who had imbibed the
idealist liberalism of T. H. Green, the late-19th-century British
philosopher.

Mao was a rebel before becoming a communist. The psychological root of
his rebelliousness was hostility to his father, and, by extension, to
other authority figures. The political root was dismay at China's
weakness and disarray in the face of foreign encroachment, shared by
most informed Chinese of the period. Mao's chief use for the steeled
individual was as a fighter for justice and China's salvation. "The
principal aim of physical education," he wrote in 1917 in New Youth
magazine, "is military heroism." The authoritarian strain in Mao's
individualism was already present.

Eventually, Mao's respect for individual freedom collapsed. There were
four causes. One was the powerful current of nationalism in
early-20th-century China; the cry to rescue the nation eclipsed the cry
for the self- realization of the individual. A second was the large
role of war in China from the 1920s to the '40s. Pervasive violence
made political debate a luxury and favored repression. A third was
Mao's embrace of Marxist ideas of class, central economic planning, and
communist party organization. Fourth was the hangover in Mao's mind and
Chinese society generally of a paternalistic imperial mentality.

In the end, Mao Zedong, facilitated by Stalin, put the population of
the world's largest nation under a regimen that combined Leninism, the
paternalism of early Chinese ­sage- rulers, and, by the 1960s, a
hysteria and military romanticism that amounted to fascism Chinese-
style.

The imperative of national salvation was the first factor working
against Mao's attraction to freedom. Mao was mildly attracted to a
movement comparable in spirit to Europe's Enlightenment that sprang
into existence in China in 1919. Named May Fourth (after the date of an
initial student demonstration), it aimed at modernizing China by
embracing quasi- Western ideas of individualism, democracy, and
science. Liberated individuals would rescue China. But May Fourth soon
split in two, a left wing jumping to Marxist collectivism and a right
wing sticking with individualism. Leftists, including the 27- year- old
Mao, founded the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1921.

Bolshevism helped Mao be progressive and anti- Western at the same
time. Opposition to the West was necessary to many young Chinese
leftists, despite the appeal of Western ideas, because of British and
other foreign bullying of China since the Opium War of 1839–42. From
Lenin, Mao learned that social justice and national salvation could
come as one package. Leninism— and to a lesser degree Marxism— joined
anarchism, nationalism, and individualism in the rag bag of Mao's
political ideas. It was Lenin who showed Mao his road to power. Anti-
imperialism was going to be for Mao, as it was for Lenin, the framework
for revolution. But this anti- imperialist— soon anti-­Japanese— nation
alism that Mao injected into the Chinese Revolution negated individual
freedom.

In the 1930s, Mao argued to the semi criminal secret society Gelaohui
(Elder Brother Club) that its principles and the CCP's were "quite
close— especially as regards our enemies and the road to salvation." Of
course, the threat of enemies was the central point. In his appeal to
non- Han "minority" peoples during the Long March of 1935–36, when Mao
emerged as the CCP's top leader as the Communists retreated before
Chiang Kai- shek's Nationalist forces, Mao challenged Mon golians to
"preserve the glory of the era of Genghis Khan" by cooperating with the
Communists. Pressing the Muslims to support him, he told them that this
would ensure the "national revival of the Turks." Of course, Chinese
nationalism had turned Mao into a trickster. After the wars with Japan
and Chiang Kai- shek were over, there would be no common cause with the
Gelaohui, no freedom for the Mongolians or the Muslims of Xinjiang.

The violence that continually rippled through China was another force
militating against individual freedom. After the death in 1925 of Sun
Yat- sen, a leader in the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty in 1911 and a
founder of the Nationalist movement, the gun was prominent in Chinese
public life. Sun's wavering leadership gave way to warlordism, a
violent rupture of the tenuous coalition of Nationalists and Communists
in 1927, and growing incursions by Japan beginning in 1931. Guns were
to freedom as a cat is to mice. From the time Mao used force to
confiscate the holdings of Hunan landowners in 1925, when he was just
one of many CCP leaders, his political life cannot be understood aside
from violence, both the wars he waged and those waged against him. As
he sought to organize farmers in a remote mountain region, he remarked,
"The struggle in the border area is exclusively military. The Party and
the masses have to be placed on a war footing." Mao spoke of
"criticizing the Nationalists by means of a machine gun."

A third enemy of freedom was the class, organizational, and economic
theory Mao drew from Marx and Lenin. Here Mao's story is similar to
that of Stalin, Castro, and others. Class theory has intrinsic
distortions; people often do not act as members of an economic class.
Class labeling became especially inimical to freedom when Mao was
forced to rely on farmers rather than workers as the key class in
Copyright The Wilson Quarterly

China's revolution. Anyone who pointed out this departure from Marx's
theory of proletarian revolution was stamped out as a renegade.

Eventually, class became little more than a convenient way to demarcate
friends and enemies of the moment. Hence, longtime colleague and
expected successor Liu Shaoqi was "discovered" by Mao in the 1960s to
be a "bourgeois" who had "sneaked into the Party." Never mind that Mao
and Liu had worked together as leftist organizers on and off since
1922.

Guggenheim mulls museum project in Beijing

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?

type=worldNews&storyID=2007-02-09T055820Z_01_PEK217870_RTRUKOC_0_US-
CHINA-GUGGENHEIM.xml

BEIJING, Feb 9 (Reuters Life!) - The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
is considering developing a museum project in Beijing, its director
said on Friday during a visit to China.

The foundation is looking at several possibilities, including a
five-year museum collaboration that could be located at a converted
factory adjacent to Beijing's 798 art district, said Thomas Krens,
director of the New York based foundation.

Other possibilities could include cooperation with Chinese government
bodies along the lines of an existing partnership with the State
Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.

On Saturday, the Guggenheim premiers in Beijing an exhibition of 130
works of American art, from the Colonial era through contemporary art.
The exhibition will travel to Shanghai in May and June.

The foundation said in July that it would build a museum in the Arab
Gulf city of Abu Dhabi, to be designed by Frank Gehry. It already has
museums in New York, Bilbao, Spain, Venice, Berlin, and Las Vegas.

The Parisian modern art museum, the Pompidou Centre, plans to open an
annex in Shanghai by 2010, its president said in a January interview
with French newspaper Le Monde.

ART IN AMERICA opened last night

ART IN AMERICA: THREE HUNDRED YEARS OF INNOVATION: FIRST SURVEY
EXHIBITION OF AMERICAN ART PRESENTED IN THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

Co-organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the Terra
Foundation for American Art

Tour: Beijing: National Art Museum of China
February 10–April 5, 2007
Shanghai: Shanghai Museum, jointly with Museum of Contemporary Art
Shanghai
May 1–June 30, 2007

(New York, NY – December 5, 2006) The Solomon R. Guggenheim
Foundation, New York, in partnership with the Terra Foundation for
American Art, Chicago, has organized the first survey of American art
to be presented in the People's Republic of China. Art in America:
Three Hundred Years of Innovation will feature approximately 130
important works of American art spanning the Colonial period to the
present age, focusing on painting drawn from major U.S. and European
collections, including the Terra Foundation and Guggenheim Foundation.
The exhibition will premiere in Beijing at the National Art Museum of
China, from February 10 through April 5, 2007, and will travel to
Shanghai where it will be co-presented by the Shanghai Museum and the
Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai, from May 1 to June 30, 2007.

"The Guggenheim's commitment to China has been central to its identity
and strategy as a global cultural institution," said Thomas Krens,
Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. "We are pleased to work
with our museum partners in Beijing and Shanghai to realize Art in
America, the first historical survey of American art ever presented in
China. The exhibition offers an extraordinary view of our nation's
cultural and historical developments and bold creative principles. This
project promises to increase understanding of American history and
culture among the Chinese public, and hopefully can be an inspirational
threshold for greater dialogue between the peoples and cultures of
America and China."

"An international lens informs all that we do at the Terra
Foundation," said Elizabeth Glassman, president and CEO, Terra
Foundation for American Art. "In the largest sense, our goal for Art in
America is to expand and enrich knowledge of American art among Chinese
audiences. By revealing the complexities of our nation's history and
artistic heritage, we seek to distinguish our own culture while
simultaneously forging new and enduring connections with the Chinese.
We are pleased to partner with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in
this historic exhibition and extend our thanks to all the lenders for
sharing their treasurers with the world."

Alcoa Foundation is pleased to support another important Guggenheim
cultural exchange, Art in America: 300 Years of Innovation, and we look
forward to sharing these rich representations of the American
experience with the Chinese people, particularly the opportunity to
bring this history to a variety of regional audiences through the
educational program," said Alain Belda, Chairman and CEO of Alcoa. "We
congratulate the Guggenheim for assembling this impressive set of
works."

"It was in 1998 that the Guggenheim first approached the Henry Luce
Foundation with the exciting idea for the exhibition and catalogue Art
in America," said the foundation's president, Michael Gilligan. "Given
our longstanding commitment to promoting better understanding between
America and China and to bringing the work of American artists to more
widespread attention, this is a natural fit. We are honored to assist
in this important undertaking to bring 300 years of American art to
China, and we look forward to sharing this artistic heritage with the
Chinese people, who have long shared theirs with us."

Exhibition Overview
Divided into six historical periods, Art in America: Three Hundred
Years of Innovation demonstrates how the art of each era both reflected
and contributed to a complex visual narrative of the nation during
times of discovery, growth, and experimentation. The exhibition
explores issues of identity, creation, innovation, and
scale—characteristics integral to the American consciousness and
derived in part from the variety and vastness of the cultural,
political, ethnic, economic, and natural landscapes of the United
States. The six sections, each marking significant phases of the
country's development, are: Colonization and Rebellion (1700–1830);
Expansion and Fragmentation (1830–1880); Cosmopolitanism and
Nationalism (1880–1915); Modernism and Regionalism (1915–1945);
Prosperity and Disillusionment (1945–1980); and Multiculturalism and
Globalization (1980–present).

The exhibition features approximately 120 artists from the early 18th
century to the present and includes: John Singleton Copley; Benjamin
West; Charles Willson Peale; Gilbert Stuart; George Catlin; Frederic
Edwin Church; Edward Hicks; Winslow Homer; Martin Johnson Heade; John
Singer Sargent; Albert Bierstadt; Mary Cassatt; Childe Hassam;
Frederick Remington; Marsden Hartley; Robert Henri; George Bellows;
Charles Demuth; Georgia O'Keeffe; Stuart Davis; Thomas Hart Benton;
Grant Wood; Norman Rockwell; Jackson Pollock; Willem de Kooning; Mark
Rothko; Robert Motherwell; Robert Rauschenberg; Jasper Johns; Andy
Warhol; Roy Lichtenstein; Donald Judd, Dan Flavin; Brice Marden; Chuck
Close; Lawrence Weiner; Richard Prince; Keith Haring; Jean-Michel
Basquiat; Jeff Koons; Felix Gonzalez-Torres; Kara Walker; and Matthew
Barney, among many others.

Highlights of the exhibition include: Benjamin West's Penn's Treaty
with the Indians (1771–72, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts); Charles
Willson Peale's George Washington (ca. 1780–82, Walton Family
Foundation); Henry Inman's Yoholo-Micco (1832–33, High Museum of Art,
Atlanta); Thomas Cole's Landscape with Figures: A Scene from "The Last
of the Mohicans" (1826, Terra Foundation for American Art); George
Caleb Bingham's Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers Through the Cumberland
Gap (1851–52, Mildred Lane Kemper Museum of Art, Washington University,
St. Louis, Missouri); Asher B. Durand's A Symbol (1856, Hunter Museum
of American Art, Chattanooga, Tennessee); Edward P. Moran's The
Unveiling of the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World (1886, Museum
of the City of New York); Winslow Homer's Watching the Breakers: A High
Sea (1896, The Arkell Museum at Canajoharie, New York); Walt Kuhn's
Clown with Drum (1942, Terra Foundation for American Art); Marsden
Hartley's Painting No. 50 (1914–15, Terra Foundation for American Art);
Edward Hopper's Corn Hill (Truro, Cape Cod) (1930, Marion Koogler McNay
Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas); Jackson Pollock's The Moon-Woman
(1942, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy); Andy Warhol's Race
Riot (1963, Daros Collection, Zurich, Switzerland); Willem de Kooning's
Composition (1955, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum); Ed Ruscha's Back of
Hollywood (1977, Musée d'art contemporain, Lyon, France); Dan Flavin's
green crossing green (to Piet Mondrian who lacked green) (1966, Solomon
R. Guggenheim Museum, Panza Collection); Jean-Michel Basquiat's Man
from Naples (1982, Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa); Matthew Barney's
Cremaster Cycle (1994–2002, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum); Kara
Walker's Insurrection! (Our Tools Were Rudimentary, Yet We Pressed On)
(2000, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum); and John Currin's Thanksgiving
(2003, Tate Gallery), to name a few.

The curatorial team of the exhibition has been led by Thomas Krens,
Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. The following curators of
American art contributed to the exhibition: Susan Davidson, Senior
Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Elizabeth Kennedy, Curator of
the Collection, Terra Foundation for American Art; Nancy Mowll
Matthews, Eugenie Prendergast Senior Curator of 19th-and 20th-Century
Art, Williams College Museum of Art.

The exhibition benefited from the expertise of the following scholars
of American art and modernism: Michael Leja, Professor of Art History,
University of Pennsylvania; Robert Rosenblum, The Stephen and Nan Swid
Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; and John Wilmerding, The
Christopher B. Sarofim Professor of American Art, Princeton University.

Publication
A fully illustrated color catalogue published in both English and
Chinese will accompany the exhibition. Michael Leja, Professor of Art
History at the University of Pennsylvania, contributes a main essay
outlining the major movements in American art from the Colonial period
to the present. Additionally, each section contains an overview essay
written by a leading scholar of the period. Margaretta M. Lovell
contributes a text on early American portraiture; David M. Lubin writes
on 19th-century art and material culture; Nancy Mowll Matthews examines
Americans abroad and at home; Justin Wolff investigates the impact of
industrialization on American art; Robert Rosenblum explores America's
rise as a world art power in the postwar period; and Susan Cross
comments on the issues of American art in a global context. Shorter
essays on relevant thematic topics are also included: Patricia Johnson
and Jessica Lanier discuss Chinese influences on early American visual
culture; Anthony Lee contributes an essay on Chinese-American artists
and the Chinese Diaspora in the United States; and Elizabeth Kennedy
addresses the myth of the American cowboy.

Education Program
The educational program for Art in America: Three Hundred Years of
Innovation will involve a dynamic cross-cultural exchange between the
Guggenheim education staff and their curatorial and education
colleagues at the museums in China. The exchange will focus on learning
about the educational philosophies and approaches employed by each
institution and result in the co-development of exhibition-related
public programs relevant to the regional audiences of the host venues.
Two working sessions, one in New York and the other in China, will
ensure that interpretive materials and educational activities prepared
for this exhibition best serve Chinese audiences and reflect a true
exchange between Asian and Western cultures. A full-color brochure will
accompany the exhibition and be available to museum visitors free of
charge.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
Founded in 1937, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is dedicated to
promoting the understanding and appreciation of art, architecture, and
other manifestations of visual culture, primarily of the modern and
contemporary periods, and to the collection, conservation, and study of
the art of our time. The Foundation realizes this mission through
exceptional exhibitions, education programs, research initiatives, and
publications, and strives to engage and educate an increasingly diverse
international audience through its unique network of museums and
cultural partnerships. Currently the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
owns and operates three museums: the Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue,
New York City; the Peggy Guggenheim Collection on the Grand Canal in
Venice, Italy; and the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas. The
Foundation also provides programming and management for two other
museums in Europe that bear its name, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and
the Deutsche Guggenheim, in Berlin. Through a unique alliance
agreement, the Guggenheim Foundation shares its collections and
collaborates on programming with the State Hermitage Museum in St.
Petersburg and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

Dating to 1996, when the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation collection
was shown at the Shanghai Museum as one of the first exhibitions of
modern Western art in China, the Guggenheim's commitment to China has
been central to its identity and strategy as a global cultural
institution. In 1998, the Guggenheim presented China: 5000 Years, an
unprecedented masterpiece survey of Chinese art, archeology, and
culture from ancient to modern periods, drawn from China's major
museums and organized in cooperation with the P.R.C. Ministry of
Culture. Recently, the museum established a curatorial position for
Asian art, the first within a modern and contemporary art museum in the
west. In 2008, the Guggenheim Museum will present the first museum
retrospective of the work of contemporary Chinese artist Cai Guo Qiang.

Terra Foundation for American Art
The Terra Foundation for American Art is committed to fostering
innovative projects that emphasize multinational perspectives and
participation. Throughout its 27-year history, the Terra Foundation has
supported exhibitions, scholarship, and educational programs designed
to engage individuals around the globe in an enriched and enriching
dialogue on American art. The Terra Foundation's collection of American
art spans the colonial era through 1945, and includes more than seven
hundred works. Currently, the Terra Foundation operates the Musée d'Art
Américain Giverny; actively lends works in its collection to national
and international exhibitions that advance American art scholarship;
awards grants to exhibitions and programs that explore American art in
Europe, Canada, Latin America, and now, Asia; and supports scholars
through residential fellowships at the Smithsonian American Art Museum,
as well as through travel grants offered through the Courtauld
Institute of Art in London, the John-F.-Kennedy-Institut für
Nordamerikastudien in Berlin, and l'Institut national d'histoire de
l'art in Paris.

SOLO-EXHIBITION with works by LI SHAN

SOLO-EXHIBITION with works by LI SHAN
ShanghART H-Space
February 2 – March 5 2007

"The evolution of human kind has already found its end"
Li Shan on "Reading"

The sur-real universe depicted in Li Shan's paintings is a world
inhabited by magical creatures, half humans – half animals, figures
with butterfly wings and other mutant beings. This imaginary world is
informed by poetic and erotic sensibility along with an undercurrent of
unease and estrangement. Here, the painted world is based on a
principle of ambiguity and questions of what human existance is and
where it is going. In terms of artistic style, the artist has adopted
decorative methods similar to those of folk art, thus creating
intimate, eccentric and oddly organic objects

Most recently in a photographic series entitled "Reading"
(2005-ongoing), he has created imagery of various insects and plants.
Closer viewing reveals that these creatures are composed of human body
parts like fingers, ears and genitalia. Through his uncannily realistic
representation of interspecies insects, Li Shan underscores his
pre-occupation with bio-politics and its consequences. The synthesized
insects are constructions of digital imagery morphed into yet another
crossbreed. He raises the question of whether it is still possible to
identify the boundaries between any particular organism and the world
it inhabits.

Li Shan was one of the leading figures of Shanghai's avant-garde
movement in the 1980s. His work has been exhibited internationally in
solo and group exhibitions such as Painting the Chinese Dream: Chinese
Art 30 Years after the Revolution, that traveled through America,
ending at the Brooklyn Museum, China's New Art, Post 1989 Art Centre
(Hong Kong) and the 45th Venice Biennale. Li Shan was born in Lanxi
County in Heilongjiang province and graduated from the Shanghai Academy
of Drama in 1968.
2007-01-28 18:35

Yang Fudong: No Snow on the Broken Bridge

Yang Fudong: No Snow on the Broken Bridge
ShanghART Gallery H-Space
March 2007

Yang Fudong's film and video work is about the human condition. He
mostly portrays his own generation of individuals in their late 20's
and early 30's, young people who seem confused and appear to hover
between the past and present. Yang Fudong's work epitomizes how the
recent and rapid modernization of China has overthrown traditional
values and culture. He skillfully balances this dichotomy to create
works endowed with classic beauty and timelessness. His works
investigate the structure and formation of identity through myth,
personal memory and lived experience. Each of his films is a dramatic
existential experience and a challenge to take on. His work is
open-ended and inconclusive, therefore open to individual
interpretation. Yang Fudong seeks through multiple vignettes to offer
the poetics of place and existence: Whatever occurs, Yang Fudong's film
work and photography indicate that something remains untouched and
unmoved, and perhaps all the more valuable for that reason.

"Howering between classical Chinese brush-and-ink painting and shanghai
cinema of the 20s, fudong's enveloping eight-screen landscape No Snow
on the Broken Bridge populated by angst-ridden youth, springs eternal."
ARTFORUM International, Best of 2006 Film 

Yang Fudong was born in 1971 in Beijing. He trained as a painter in
China Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou. Starting in the late 1990's
Yang Fudong embarked on a career in the mediums of film and video. He
is among the most successful and influential young Chinese artists
today. Yang Fudong participated in the 50th Venice Biennale (2003),
First Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2005), 1st International
Sharjah Biennale (2005), 1st Prague Biennale (2003) and 5th Shanghai
Biennale (2004), The 5th AsiaPacific Triennial of Contmeporary Art
(2006). He has had solo-shows at most acclaimed institutions such as
Kunsthalle Wien (2005), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, 2005), Castello di
Rivoli (Torino, 2005), The Moore Space (Miami, 2003), and ARC/Musee
d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2003).
 

 

Art zones create high rent not talent, says designer

Art zones create high rent not talent, says designer
By Yan Zhen 2007-1-25 Shanghai Daily

ASPIRING artists have been squeezed out of the city's newly created art
spaces because of soaring rents, a top designer has warned.

In an interview with Shanghai Daily on Tuesday, Wu Zhiqiang, chief
designer of the Shanghai Creative Industry Center and the 2010 World
Expo, took aim at the old factories and warehouses converted into
upscale art studios, saying Shanghai "misinterpreted" their
development.

"Many of the so-called creative zones have turned out to be
over-luxurious," said Wu, who is also dean of Tongji University's
school of architecture and urban planning. "It seems we have focused
too much on imitating other's form, but we didn't really get the
essence."

Transforming deserted factory buildings and warehouses into modern art
workshops and creative industry buildings proved a popular way to
preserve old architecture in the West during the 20th century.

"Spacious sites with low rent and low labor costs make it possible for
unknowns to produce great innovative ideas. But the model was
misinterpreted in Shanghai," Wu said.

Since 2005, the city has developed 75 creative zones in disused
buildings, including Bridge 8 on Jianguo Road M. and M50 on Moganshan
Road along Suzhou Creek.

Rents in the zones have soared in recent years.

In 2000, daily rent in M50 was only 0.4 yuan (five US cents) to 0.5
yuan a square meter on average. It now stands at about four yuan.

Rents in some of the more well-known zones have even reached eight
yuan to 16 yuan per square meter, on a par with some downtown central
business district office buildings.

"The rent is unbelievably high. Almost no single young artist can
afford it," said Sun Xiaojian, who gave up his studio in a converted
factory to move to an office building in Pudong New Area.

Jochen Schuster, a visiting architecture professor at Dusseldorf
University of Applied Sciences, said it was good for the city to find
connections between old buildings and modern art, but zones should be
made more suitable for young designers, rather than already successful
names.

Jonathan Napack, dead at 39

Jonathan Napack, a correspondent for The Art Newspaper for over ten
years, died unexpectedly in a Hong Kong hospital on 20 January. A few
days earlier Napack had told his friend, the curator Hou Hanru, that
doctors had found "fluid in his lungs". The exact cause of death is
still unknown. He was 39.

Napack started his career writing for a number of publications in New
York including the New York Observer and Spy, before moving to Hong
Kong in 1997 where he became increasingly involved in the Chinese
contemporary art world, championing artists through his journalism, his
contributions to exhibitions, catalogues and scholarly publications,
and most recently as ArtBasel's official representative in Asia.

News of Napack's sudden death, first reported on ArtForum's website,
shocked his many friends in the art world. Hans Ulrich Obrist, director
of exhibitions at the Serpentine Gallery in London, who collaborated
with Napack on a number of projects including the travelling show
"Cities on the Move", described him as "irreplaceable". The London
dealer Maureen Paley said she is "stunned and deeply saddened."

In an email circulated to friends Hou Hanru wrote: "In our memory, he
will always be brilliant, funny and pungent…you'd be pleasantly
surprised by his insightful understanding of things, people, especially
about China, Hong Kong, and the rest of Asia! It's not only about
talent, it's about love and commitment! He's gone; the art community
has lost one of its most wonderful actors, and we have lost a dearest
friend. We'll miss him endlessly."

Cristina Ruiz, editor of The Art Newspaper, said: "Jonathan knew
everything that was going on behind the scenes in the contemporary art
world in Asia. I will particularly miss his frequent updates from every
corner of the world delivered in his inimitable style— a combination of
reportage, connoisseurship, and (unprintable) gossip."

Sam Keller, director of ArtBasel, paid tribute to his friend: "I am
shocked and saddened by the dreadful news of Jonathan's unexpected
death. He was one of my oldest and best friends in the art world. We
often travelled together and had shared wonderful and unforgettable
experiences. Jonathan was a very special person, a truly unique
character and absolutely irreplaceable. Those of us who had the
privilege to know him will miss him deeply. He had a fantastic sense of
humour and told surreal anecdotes; he had a detailed knowledge of the
culture and cuisine of the countries he travelled in. Jonathan's
curiousity was never satisfied and he was always looking for the truth
behind the hype. He was an adventurer, an explorer, an analyst, a
critic and an aficionado. His pioneering spirit took him far beyond the
beaten tracks of the art world. With Jonathan's death we lose a
brilliant expert, writer, and thinker. He connected the art world from
the East to the West. It is tragic that he leaves us just as the
bridges he built are starting to get used. I am grateful to have met
this man who never stopped being a boy at heart."

Napack was preparing to celebrate his 40th birthday in Bangkok in
February.

His incisive journalism and irreverent sense of humour will be sorely
missed by everyone at The Art Newspaper.

50 Jahrs/Years documenta, archive in motion 1955-2005

50 Jahre / Years documenta 1955 – 2005
archive in motion
Exhibition dates: January 21 - February 5, 2007
Venue: Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art (Bd.28, 199 Fangdian
Rd,Pudong, Shanghai 2F)

Http://www.zendaiart.com

The world's most important contemporary art exhibition: documenta in
Kassel. It shows current trends in contemporary art every five years,
offering space for new exhibition concepts at the same time. And it has
been doing this for fifty years. Scarcely anyone imagined that it would
be such a success when the first documenta opened in 1955. Arnold Bode,
who conceived and initiated the documenta world art exhibition, worked
with art historian Werner Haftmann to present the development of art
from the early 20th century onwards, banned under the National
Socialists, in the ruins of the Museum Fridericianum, which had been
destroyed in the Second World War. At that time, Classical Modernism
was deliberately emphasized as a pan-European phenomenon. documenta
still connects a wide variety of art worlds - with a different
artistic director each time – and has made history itself by doing
this. Our major anniversary exhibition unfolds this history for us: the
documenta phenomenon can be experienced and lived through in a variety
of ways.

The story of documenta from its first appearance as an exhibition
accompanying the National Horticultural Show (1955) to documenta 11
(2002) is full of contradictions and breaks reflecting different
artistic and curatorial passions, philosophies and theories just as
much as political and social movements. 50 years of documenta are 50
years of the history of art and of contemporary history that cannot be
grasped in linear sequence.

To do justice to the unique nature of each documenta, the wide range of
documentary material is presented in eleven separate small galleries.
This presentation method makes the archive material directly accessible
and immediately intelligible. The compilation is accompanied by work by
contemporary artists who respond to the archives by addressing one
documenta each. Their work proposes a broader view of things and
shows – alongside the documentary material – how archives can be
handled creatively.