We have been here a week now. Time seems to be flying by. I have some work to do this morning, and then off to see some sights for the day. Its getting colder here – and they agreed to start the heating earlier for Pablo – he has been getting too cold at night, so this morning we woke to hear coal being shovelled beside outside our door. Our internet is still down which is driving me crazy.
I mentioned Pablo was a bit sick, and Viki from Platform China come back with heaps of chinese medicine. Last night he had some and he just crashed for the night – slept so deeply I found myself waking up constantly to see if he was still breathing. God knows what was in it. He seems fine this morning.
Yesterday we went to a sound performance at Platform China by Dutch artist Martijn Tellinga -“Concluding a working period in Beijing of almost one year, Dutch sound artist and composer Martijn Tellinga recently completed a series of sound performances for acoustic instruments, speech and space; ‘on the event of Doing Something’. On October 9, three pieces from the series will be performed at Platform China by both prominent and young Beijing-based artists and musicians.” It was three seperate pieces, about 20 minutes each. The musicians spread out around the gallery space. It was great. We met a few of the sound artists, and I met one that works a lot with interactivity, so we are going to meet up again.
http://www.platformchina.org/en/exhibitms_show.asp…
I sent out the lists of the work I would like to undertake in China. I have sent it to a few people, as I need all the suggestions I can get. I sent it to Laurens Tan, an australian artist/curator who is now based in beijing – who we met at an opening at Where Where Space the other night. He rang me back wondering if any of the work may be available for a show he is opening in Korea in three weeks time. I sent through ideas this morning, but the work is a long shot.
Laurens has a studio in beijing with a kitchen and Matt, my husband www.matthewwild.com has offered to cook a dinner for ten – maybe this week. I had a thought I would like to use the opportunity to turn it into an event. I have a thought of everyone sitting around eating while a few seamstresses sew our clothes together by hand. I guess its looking at how the east view emotions – in asia, people are a lot faster at reading the emotional tone of large groups, and in the west we are faster at assessing individual emotional states. But who knows! this would be a lot to edit, plan, etc. I would then like to keep the artifact, and show it with the video. I would like the seamstresses to track the emotional flow of the interactions, via thread.
On Monday we made our way to the Forbidden City, Tianeman Square. Forbidden City was strange and incredible – it is huge. – We ventured on the subway, the buses – all worked out well – even the pram in rush hour wasn’t too bad – a lot of shoving and pushing, but all pretty manageable and easy to follow. The buses don’t have much english written about stops, but we are just sort of finding our way. The subways have a lot of english – really easy to get around.We made our way to “ghost street” for dinner – dinner wasn’t great – but the chants and dances of the waiters getting ready for service was entertaining.
We came out of the wrong exits in Dongzimen – it took about 40 minutes to work out where we were again, and to find our bus home. The exits are East, West, North, South. We need a compass – I have no idea. So far, we have found public transport easier than taxis – the taxis seem to expect that you know where your going and look to you for directions constantly which gets pretty disconcerting.
