We are speeding through China at 300 km an hour on the bullet train – it used to go a lot faster, until the big crash and 35 people dead last month. China is developing at such a speed, it has the most bullet trains in the world, with a desire to build one to London and Singapore – we are going to Shanghai in 5 hours, it used to be 4 hours before the crash.
The landscape out there is sort of desolate, interrupted by incessant building of apartment blocks, however, its all going by so fast that its hard to focus on anything. I have been taking a lot of video footage on the way. I would like to do something with it, maybe mix it with some slower transport footage, going in a different direction. Maybe horse and cart (which you still see on the streets of Beijing).
Looking out the window, you can see about a mile now, but this morning, in our ride to the train station, you were lucky to see 100 metres. It was surreal, and a touch dangerous side – on the huge highways – the cars have no seatbelts here. You just hope for the best. We set up the camera on the dash board, taking a close up shot of the traffic, the forward motion of cars passing us by and speeding into blankness. The camera had a hard time focusing with all of the smog, so it was really blurry. It looked good.
We are heading to Shanghai now to start some new work. I am hoping to find uot more about the development of ‘China’s happiest and most harmonious face’. Since the Olympics, there seems to a movement in the service industry, trying to bring a smile to it.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2011-06/15/content_12704643.htmhttp://www.thebeijinger.com/blog/2011/06/23/Girls-In-Training-or-Speak-English-Feel-Beautifulhttp://english.sina.com/china/p/2011/0615/377796.htmlhttp://www.chinadaily.com.cn/olympics/2007-10/12/content_6895958.htmhttp://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/12/21/1198175339045.htmlhttp://www.ebeijing.gov.cn/BeijingInformation/BeijingNewsUpdate/t1173357.htmjapanhttp://www.japanator.com/put-on-your-happy-face-for-japanese-smile-training-technology-10636.phtmlhttp://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-11/12/content_11538465.htmChinese business ettiquette school 0 course – http://www.aifa.org.cn/en/Training.html
Would like to find these courses.
I have been up since 5am because I had an exhibition in Brighton UK last night http://www.whitenightnuitblanche.com/brighton/even… and we did live video links with Beijing. – I am showing a recent project, Present Perfect, Continuous, its a chat engine (reworked Skype) so people can only talk in`present tense. I am also showing a work, Percolate, I developed with Nokia. So I have been on video and chat to Brighton all morning, while frantically packing the Beijing Studio. We have been here for a month, and with Pablo, it means things are sort of everywhere, and especially where you would least expect them.
It feels way too sudden to leave Beijing. We will be here for two weeks before we head to Chongqing. We went to an opening last night at the Red Gate Gallery, http://www.redgategallery.com/ for the opening of new work by Guan Wei. Brian Wallace, the director of the Red Gate Gallery, invited us to dinner with the Artist. About 40 of us – a huge dinner with heaps of artists from around the world – in a great Yunnan Restaurant.
Beijing is a great city with a huge art scene – everyone is so welcoming. You could get caught here for years, and lots do – they just keep coming back. You need atleast five months more for this city. I don’t know what I expected of beijing, but its much better than I expected – i wasn’t expecting such a huge art scene, and I wasn’t expecting so many friendly people. We will try to come back next year. I could easily make Beijing a bigger part of my life.
Tomorrow will be spent racing around Shanghai – first of all to register ourselves with the police and secondly to get our next visa here. I hope it works out OK.
