mmm. we got back from dinner after a big day of cleaning and the power box was beeping. I asked the neighbours, and through sign language I worked out it was an ‘electricity’ card we needed. We find out the card is with another assistant who is not answering her phone – so no card, the power went off that night, – and now the following night, we are put into a hotel in Sichuan Art Academy. Its been about 30 hours now – and they say they will work it out today I think. They wanted to move us to another apartment – but after all the cleaning, I couldn’t face another clean in another apartment. Anyway, so now we are in a hotel. The bad part of this is Pablo is sleeping with us, meaning its hard to sleep – and the great part is – they have a hot shower here – steaming hot – and the shower in the apartment is just luke warm, so showering means boiling a kettle.
So far we have been in chongqing for five days, and I am yet to think about work – we have just been concentrating on the living environment, but I am already thinking time is going too quickly. We went into the city yesterday, and I just started snapping photos – people in restaurants, in the streets, hairdressers.
The area is fantastic, and the people at Organhaus a really great. We had an opening at Organhaus the day we arrived – two German artists from Dusseldorf were leaving the next day to go back to Germany. Yanshu, the director has also gone to Dusseldorf to do a residency – they do swaps with Chinese artists and German artists – but we met him briefly before he left on the flight. The following night Nikun, the curator, took us to a hot pot restaurant. A Turkish artist has just arrived – Gunes – she is here with her mother – she lives in Istanbul. The restaurant was so loud- everyone laughing, smoking, shouting, drinking and gambling throughout dinner. Pablo made some friends with the other kids, and they started running wild throughout the restaurant, entertaining the rest of the diners. At night here the streets fill with stalls cooking all sorts of things – mostly street barbeques, hot pots and noodle dishes. – and then night markets fill the street as well. The area is filled with art students. Pablo gets heaps of attention – some he handles OK and others he just hides his head until everyone disappears. But it doesn’t take long to draw a crowd here.
There is no internet in the apartment which has been strange for me – I usually have to spend a lot of time online – and everyone at organhaus doesn’t seem to start work till around 6pm – I am not sure why – but I am going to have to get my head around starting a meeting at 6pm – its usually my shut off time – where we are just thinking about feeding Pablo, and settling in for the night. However, even over the last five days – we have shifted – we are getting up around 10 am and to bed around 1am.
