meeting points and disconnects: the cultural nuances of emotional expression.

It rained last night, meaning we woke up and saw blue sky for the first time this morning. It felt great, as the smog was getting so thick, the light so dull, it was starting to feel suffocating.

We made our way into the suburbs of Beijing – to find a directional mic for my new camera. Took a day to track down, then we hired a driver to find the ‘shop’ which turned out to be a car park. After some confusion, I realised the man was asking us to come up to his apartment. Five floors later, he lets us into his tiny apartment, where he had a lot of sound equipment. I got my mic, but who knows if it will work. 700 RBM later. I had no idea what it was worth, and now I don’t really want to know. But know i needed it. I hope it works.

We headed into the Sunlitan Area, to the Markets to buy some clothes – its getting colder here, and I don’t have warm clothes – the markets are over five floors – but everything requires bargaining – exhausting process – basically most things tend to come down to one fifth to one tenth of the original price. We walked away with little in the end, as the bargaining was taking its toll. We found our way back to the 418 bus stop. Took some time to work out what side of the street we needed to be on. Somehow, with no chinese, we manage to find our way home. I think we will buy all our clothes in Cao Changdi, where we are based. There doesn’t seem to be bargaining here – just realistic pricing.

I have come to love this little village. So far, it has been my highlight of Beijing. The Caochangdi area is just off Beijing’s 5th Ring Road. Many of Beijing contemporary art galleries have relocated here from 798 and the city centre, as these districes are being “tidied up” and therefore the rents go up, so the artists move on, move out. Cao Chang Di has a great gritty feel – its a dusty (sometime very muddy) little village, sort of chaotic compared 798. Many of galleries in Cao Changdi were designed by Ai Weiwei – who apparently is also based here.

We went out to Laurens warehouse yesterday – talked about the dinner we would like to make. he has a great space about a twenty minute taxi ride from here – another sort of art zone. We then went out to dinner with Gordon from the Where Where space. Talked a little bit about the work I want to undertake. It will be hard to get things done here – but now I have most of my equipment together, so I think next week things will begin to take shape.

I met with Platform China to discuss the work. – Viki should be free next week to help out with a bit of researching. So far, Viki has been great. Her english is fantastic, and I think she understands what I want to achieve. She is busy getting ready for an opening on Saturday.

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.

Gosh – another long night – Pablo has a cold that turns into a awful weeze and cough from around midnight to 4am. He didn’t have a temperature, but those nights are long – It sounded like he was having trouble breathing. On his side he slept OK. I think I had about three hours sleep – maybe. He needs to have another quiet day. We are using the heating at night, except we are on the same power switch as the other apartment, so it fuses out a lot and switches itself off- and I think this has been the beginning of Pablo’s cold. I need to know the address (in chinese) of the nearest hospital, just in case. The weezing scares me.

The internet has gone down. Really frustrating – I hope they get it back up as soon as possible. I took the opportunity of not working to give the bathroom a good scrub – I have been putting it off, because its not in a good state – but now, atleast it feels a bit better. The cleaning standards here are pretty low. Per and Tuuna, who have the apartment next door spent four days scrubbing their apartment. It looks good now – except I don’t think I am prepared to spend four days cleaning. I am now over at the gallery space – there internet is still working. I think it may have something to do with the power surges. Viki, from platform china, has been great dealing with the issues

Last night we went to another opening at Where Where Art Space, which is in the same compound as Platform China.The Where Where Art Space is operated by Gordon Laurin and Jing Yuan Huang. Gordon Laurin is a curator, artist, and arts administrator who has directed public art museums for twenty years in Canada before relocating to Beijing in 2009. Jing Yuan Huang was born and raised in Mainland China. She received a BFA from Concordia University in 2005 and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008.

A Canadian Artist, Jean Klimack was showing her work. http://jeanklimack.com/statement.html

She writes “I make artworks that have contradictions in them, artworks that lie somewhere between the sublime and ambivalence. Through these processes, I focus on materials that are dissimilar in nature or exhibited in curious ways. By working in this manner, tensions are created between the materials I choose or through the manipulation of their original contexts. For instance, tensions between attraction and repulsion insight disorder or chaos, at which point I impose my sense of order. In other words, I try to take the mundane and simply reorganize its significance.”

It was nice to talk to her about it – her process is interesting. Met some great people, a strange mix of expat artists that have lived here for a lot of years. Sculptors seem to be based here because its a great place to produce work. Studio costs are minimal, assistants are plentiful, other artists seem to get a well paid teaching job, enjoy the cheaper living costs and studio costs, leaving time to create work.

Where Where Art Space also runs a residency. I had a look at the studio – it looks great.

http://www.wherewhereproject.com/residency2.html

Yesterday visited Three Shadows – just next door to platform China. Incredible space, with a great exhibition on at the moment, Coal + Ice – “a documentary photography exhibition featuring the work of 30 photographers from China, the United States, Malaysia, Russia, Hungary, Poland, Norway, Germany and the United Kingdom, whose work, brought together here, visually narrates the hidden chain of actions triggered by mankind’s use of coal”.

Interestingly, it also runs an artist in residency program for photographers, video artists and curators. It also has a great library of over 2,000 books, catalogues and journals related to photography and video art. It is a great disocovery, and glad its next door.

It was started by two leading photographers – RongRong, from China and inri, from Japan in 2007. Looks fantastic.

http://www.threeshadows.cn/en/Artist-in-ResidenceP…

Yesterday visited Three Shadows – just next door to platform China. Incredible space, with a great exhibition on at the moment, Coal + Ice – “a documentary photography exhibition featuring the work of 30 photographers from China, the United States, Malaysia, Russia, Hungary, Poland, Norway, Germany and the United Kingdom, whose work, brought together here, visually narrates the hidden chain of actions triggered by mankind’s use of coal”.

Interestingly, it also runs an artist in residency program for phtoographers, video artists and curators. It also has a great library of over 2,000 books, catalogues and journals related to photography and video art. It is a great disocovery, and glad its next door.

It was started by two leading photographers – RongRong, from China and inri, from Japan in 2007. Looks fantastic.

http://www.threeshadows.cn/en/Artist-in-ResidenceP…