Nina and I both started work today. After piecing together a satalite view of the local area the day before, from google maps, Nina set out to find the places suggested to her by Sarah Sanders. Sarah visited Chongqing about 18 months ago – so whether these places still exist was yet to be discovered. Nina explored the local streets and the area surrounding the power station. I am amazed how easily she managed to find her way round, considering when we first arrived in Chongqing, every time we stepped out onto the main street outside our apartment, it looked completely different. We often struggled to find our way back to the supermarket, that we’d just visited hours before.
Nina found the bookshop, described by Sarah, where a group of very friendly students took her in and fed her tea and snacks. Sarah had given Nina the name of a girl who worked at the bookshop to say hello to. After making several phone calls the students couldn’t find out who this girl was, she must have moved on. The bookshop is also an artist’s studio and a gallery. Nina has promised to take me there soon.
Today was my first studio residency. I chose to do it in what is our studio, but what still, very much feels like Yan Yan’s studio. I started work at 9.30am, it was very slow progress. It is 18 months since I last did this project (in The Netherlands), it is difficult to reach the level of concentration that this work requires, especially when I’m still in and out of jet lag. Just as the work was starting to happen, there was a knock at the studio door and several people came in to whisk Nina and I off for a Korean BBQ in the centre of Chongqing. We returned at about 10. It is really important for me to keep these studio residencies to a single day, usually I stick roughly to office hours, today the limit had to be midnight. As with all the 1 day studio residencies, I have documented the day with a single photograph.
Jessica Longmore
15th November
Chongqing
