‘MEGA MODERN’ Residency at 501 Contemporary Art Centre, Huang Je Ping, Chongqing

Back by popular demand, Rachel Marsden and others via email who have expressed their interest in Skype conversations I have with the artists.

Skyp conversation 2, part 1/2

[15:56:20] Helen Kaplinsky: End of the day and still not sure what’s going on. Really need to give something to a graphic designer. Do you want psychoanalysl logo next to crystal or not? etc…which logo, I have different versions…

[15:58:22] Helen Kaplinsky: Confirm is the title ‘I DID IT MY WAY WAY’ capitalised etc…?

[16:01:11] Joey Holder: Hey Helen

[16:01:25] Joey Holder: Right

[16:01:36] Joey Holder: I am just re-doing the image now

[16:01:59] Joey Holder: as the measurement thing in the top right needs to go on the bottom left

[16:02:08] Joey Holder: will send it through in the next 15 mins

[16:02:23] Joey Holder: we are using the logo with the pyramid ‘a’s

[16:02:35] Joey Holder: do you need me to send the logo again?

[16:02:56] Joey Holder: Chris can send you a high res image of the logo in the next two hours

[16:03:02] Joey Holder: i ll see if I have one now….

[16:03:10] Helen Kaplinsky: Cool.

[16:03:35] Joey Holder: apologies for lateness

[16:03:36] Helen Kaplinsky: So, is the measurement for the graphic designer or part of the image you want to print.

[16:04:04] Helen Kaplinsky: You dont need to give this on the image if it’s not part of the image

[16:04:04] Joey Holder: the measurement is part of the image

[16:04:34] Helen Kaplinsky: Hokay

[16:05:13] Helen Kaplinsky: So, if you design one side, we design the other? Then tell us if there is a font you want to use

[16:05:30] Helen Kaplinsky: Also, where you would like manadarin title if next to crystal?

[16:06:23] Joey Holder: Christopher is going to send you the font he would like to use for the title etc….

[16:06:53] Joey Holder: or he said alternatively if this needs to be done right now, you could do it and just send it to us for approval before print?

[16:08:53] Helen Kaplinsky: Ok. You need to be very quick about approving. We are behind.

[16:10:50] Helen Kaplinsky: As soon as I get material from you I will send to graphic designer. Then you can do font and other changes all in one, yes?

[16:11:31] Joey Holder: yes, i will tell Chris to get on it

[16:11:40] Joey Holder: he is at the Embassey now

[16:11:49] Joey Holder: but has his computer

[16:11:58] Joey Holder: i am sending the image now as a psd through yousendit

[16:12:57] Helen Kaplinsky: cheers doll

[16:14:10] Joey Holder: it is a psd, the logo etc is a layer which can be moved

[16:15:16] Joey Holder: sorry but i dont know what font christopher will want

[16:15:20] Joey Holder: he is the font man

[16:15:36] Joey Holder: and is very particular about fonts 8-|

[16:15:52] Helen Kaplinsky: have you shown the placement of title?

[16:16:17] Joey Holder: no

[16:16:26] Joey Holder: but happy for graphic designer to do this

[16:16:41] Joey Holder: i guess the only place would be top right

[16:16:53] Joey Holder: if our logo is top left

[16:17:03] Helen Kaplinsky: so you want it next to image, not on other side of flyer?

[16:17:41] Joey Holder: this

[16:17:42] Joey Holder: me and chris didnt relly discuss thios

[16:18:00] Joey Holder: hang on

CONTROL AND OCCUPATION OF ART SPACE IN CHONGQING

Only now is the full story emerging of the problem with exhibition spaces which I faced when I first arrived. Yanyan offered me an exhibition space in a bar next to 501 Contemporary Art Centre. When I turned my nose up and asked about the spacious columned space in 501 I was promised when invited on the residency he muttered something about local government. I was left confused and alone, without explanation. Now I’ve witnessed this local politics escalate into possible confrontation next week as the artists plan to make their problems public.

Until yesterday the Huang Jueping Contemporary Art Museum, an impressive looking municipal building which sits opposite my studio block appeared abandoned and shunned. A vast air hanger style space, according to Yanyan and others it is under government control and suffers from a bad reputation for sparse and conventional programming. The day before yesterday I witnessed a flurry of activity; workers moving in and students with sketchbooks in hand. Yesterday it became clear what activity was taking place, a technical art training summer school.* 108 Gallery which belongs to the Sichuan Fine Art Institute suffers from a similar problem of government control and when I looked at it as a possible venue for my exhibition people warned me that it’s perceived as boring and no one would turn up if it had that venue’s name attached to it.

The local government, in a push of cultural regeneration following the opening of high speed rail links from Shanghai and Beijing have committed to ploughing 3 million RMB into restructuring the Huang Jueping Contemporary Art Museum. Yanyan and other artists who rent studios in my building are cynical about plans which follow from this policy. Money is always given to one person for each project, and these are not people who know anything much about contemporary art the local artists say. Yanyan used to rent the space for exhibitions every now and then but he has stopped bothering in recent years as his relationship with local government officials has deteriorated: they ask for more money and try to control programming. The same thing has happened 501, a block of studios through which he built the name ‘501 Contemporary Art Centre’ when he and other artists moved in, in 2006. Two years ago the owners of the 501 building from whom Yanyan rented, in cahoots with local government officials hiked up rents and attempted to control programming. Despite protests and long meetings no resolution has been found, more commercial artist such as designers have begun to occupy 501 and Yanyan et all have moved onto new pastures such as 102 where I’m staying. The recent activity of the temporary training school set up in the former Museum opposite 102 has really got up the noses of 102 artists. Yesterday they held a meeting. They have an enormous purpose built Museum space sitting on their doorstep which is wilfully mismanaged. I’m sorry for them but it’s quite exciting to be here at a time when everything is coming to a head. They seem to be plotting something dramatic and public.

*These training schools have proliferated in Chongqing in the last 10 years. As Sichuan Fine Art Institute has a very tough entrance exam the training schools enable students to build their portfolio of skills. Applications to the Institute are in excess of 60,000 every year, competing for only 1,500 places. For at the least 18,000 RMB (£1,713) and at the top end 30,000 RMB (£2855) you can undertake the crash course and get in with an increased (but far from guaranteed chance) of entry. These costs are only teaching, they do not include dormitories etc. Putting figures into context, you can live on 21000 RMB a year in Chongqing. This is a real money spinner. As well as these training schools being big business for the investors behind them they are also an importance source of employment for graduates from the Sichuan Fine Art Institute who become teachers at these training schools, and many teachers at the Institute earn supplementary wages acting as assessors.

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PROUD TO BE A LONDON GIRL IN CHONGQING

I’ve been doing some thinking about the discussions around cultural exchange with China and the position of activism.

Many UK organisations such as The British Museum and the V&A have been criticised for lending their collections for shows due to open in 2012 including “British Design 1948-2012” at Shanghai Art Museum. Our project suffered a loss of a major partner in the UK as a result of increasing criticism of cultural exchange following the detention of Ai Weiwei. The Art Newspaper reported “Anish Kapoor has cancelled plans to present his sculptures at the National Museum of China in Beijing, in protest against the continuing detention of Ai Weiwei” I tend to agree with the British Council’s commitment to continuing relations on the grounds that boycotting shuts down discourse. “British Council chief executive Martin Davidson believes in “freedom of cultural expression”, but is keen for the programme to go ahead. He commented: “It is through cultural exchange that we best demonstrate the benefits of free artistic expression and build supportive links between people in the UK and China.”

Perhaps Kapoor and others who see a cultural boycott of China as a viable and effective means of protest to the PRC are over estimating their influence. As if China will care. What better way to maintain such a regime than to keep the cultural door closed whilst enjoying the benefits of economic freedom. The delusion of this western perspective also rests on the long fought for principal of freedom of speech. However, over the past year Wikileaks have spewed forth excessive mounds of information not previously accessible, and the escalating events surrounding Newscorp in the UK have perhaps gone some way to exposing the self-censoring which occurs in the West as a result of interests which are bound to suppress information which might be interesting to the public.

Anish Kapoor and others believe that showcasing British work in China is immoral, but these same people seem to have no problem showing Chinese artists here. Tibet protestors condemned ‘The First Emperor: The Terracotta Army’ exhibition at British Musum but so called “critically engaged” practitioners such as Huang Yong Ping and Ai Weiwei and welcomed. The curatorial approach to Chinese contemporary art in the West can be associated with a wider phenomenon of “the collapsing distinction between marketing and activism” outlined by Micah White and others. Ai Weiwei’s sunflower seeds at Tate Modern provided not only mass entertainment but a satisfying moral soup.

When I return home after seeing the sunflower seeds to check emails my inbox is jammed with online petitions from 38degrees declaring.

“Dear Helen,

Together, we are deciding what 38 Degrees does next. Thousands of us have shared our ideas and commented on each others’ suggestions. We’ve analysed all the suggestions and now it’s time to vote to decide what we focus on.”

So, activists who don’t even know what they’re fighting for! This is amazing!

Whilst in China I’ve been receiving messages about Murdoch from Ricken Patel of Avaaz.org (reportedly backed by George Soros) who claims their marketing/ online activism is responsible for bringing down the Murdoch media empire.

“Together, we took on the world’s most powerful media baron, opposing the biggest deal of his career, and won!

After seven months of campaigning, 1 million online actions, 250,000 messages to official consultations, 2 polls, 8 stunts, legal threats and thousands of phone calls to our leaders”

According to White “digital activists have adopted the logic of the market place”. The operation of a mobius strip of activist news between blogs feeding one another, generating ‘clicks’ of support seems to be a passive and easily manageable format of insurgency. It reminds me of the idea of dependence of press upon press which is well demonstrated in Michelangelo Pistoletto’s work ‘Twenty-two less two’ at the 53^rd Venice Biennial where press of the performance of smashing mirrors created the work.

The point I’m making is somewhere between the wider marketing of activism and the marketing of Chinese contemporary art. It occurs to me that in both cases politics should not be this easy.

References:

http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Anish-Kapoor-rejects-China-show-in-support-of-Ai-Weiwei/23991

http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Are-strong-words-enough-to-support-dissidents?/23804

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/7303158.stm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/12/clicktivism-ruining-leftist-activism

Today I gave a talk at T Art Space (bookshop, café, workshop, and gallery space) run by Wang Yingjie and Hanlan. The first audience members to arrive are three young Chongqing girls who hope to study at University of the Arts, London. They are derisive of the education system in China. They say they like the UK very much, but none of them have been there previously and when I ask for references they say they like British movies, but cannot translate the names of which ones. I tell them that Yanyan’s students are very complimentary about his teaching, and suggest perhaps that he takes individual responsibility. This gets me thinking that perhaps this is one good consequence of a sick system, individuals within the institution have to take responsibility. In the UK it occurs to me that no-one takes any responsibility, you can always shirk blame onto the institution.

This is the second talk I’ve given since arriving and it went much better than the first attempt due to shortening my presentation to allow more discussion as well as a better translator. In the poster I had welcomed the audience to bring material such as catalogues, images and writing to contribute to a discussion concerning the art scene in Chongqing. Nobody produced any material although luckily we were in a bookshop, and I had also bought half a suitcase of ephemera (press releases, pamphlets, flyers) from London, collected every press release in sight during my time in Beijing and artists and curators in both Beijing and Chongqing have been incredibly generous in gifting me catalogues of their work. I distributed the ephemera for people to browse through while we settled down ready for my presentation.

I began by discussing my initial interest in art education via working with autodidacts Islington Mill Art Academy in 2009, then how psychoanalYSL have performed a sincere and entertaining reflection of the trends which surround them whilst studying at Goldsmiths. I showed some images of this year’s graduate shows at Royal College of Art, Royal Academy and Slade all in London, my findings so far from research undertaken in China, and some thoughts on how Chinese contemporary art is curated in the west. I show images of the clay Ai Weiwei head made by psychoanalYSL and glance round for looks of disapproval, but I still haven’t got the hang of reading people.

I field some general questions but the real meat arrives when a British man working at Chongqing University asks me about regional difference. I reflect this question back at the audience, citing that I’ve found massive loyalty in Sichuan province but am not best qualified to answer. I was glad to see Tian Meng, curator at the gallery we will exhibit at sitting at the far side of the table from me take his cue to speak. He is a serious man, committed to the art scene in Chongqing and I sense he’s keen I feed back positive things about it when I return to the UK. Since his gallery in Chongqing, Ceiling Space opened just under a year ago in September 2010 he has worked mostly with artists from Sichuan Fine Art Institute, such as Li Young, the artist currently showing with him. He hopes to take risks and probe the 3,000 year history of the region by asking what the value of this history is for young artists.

A researcher of Arts Organisations in Chongqing has many questions for me, but I’m more interested in listening to what he has to say than answering them. He says Chongqing has only recently begun to develop organisations in the last 10 years and there is no clear policy concerning art education, so these discussions are important. Yanyan is questioned by this man concerning the government’s role in the cultural life of Chongqing. Yanyan says it’s difficult to create a mood for his organisation at the moment, but this is more the problem of people than the Government. Also, the media need to cooperate, and organisations need to collaborate with one another. Fairly obvious stuff but needless to say important.

We’re held up by a storm and have dinner in tunnel.

References:

www.islingtonmillartacademy.blogspot.com/

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Skype discussion part 3/3:

Helen: That’s also why africa and afganistan is so messed up as the west want to impose their democracy, but it’s tribal

Benjamin: true, but it must also relate to the lack of a big wealthy middle class

Benjamin: scandinavia, which is mainly middle class has had monarchys since the viking era but, England too

Helen: Yes, we had a series of reforms in our country so the constitution is not seperate like america, how does it work in scandinavia?

Benjamin: im not really sure, class divisions ended after the war when schools, health care etc became free

Benjamin: also urbanisation helped as population was so low that cities werent really divided into wealthy and poor areas

Benjamin: they were of course but not as properly as in big countrys

Helen: I reckon small countries are anomalies, the international pressures on the UK and China are different, as well as the domestic heirachy.

Helen: successful artists in China live like footballers in the UK

Helen: You sell one painting for £2,000 and that’s a yearly income.

Benjamin: really? is the yearly income that low?

Benjamin: yes, your right about the sizescandinavia and swizerland + belgium and those guys always seem to get pretty good deals in politics

Helen: I’ve been living nicely on £8 a day for food and everything else. A nice flat is about £80 a month

Helen: switzerland is rolling in it. centre of european politics too

….

Benjamin: i was thinking

Benjamin: if they like blig over there

Benjamin: bling

Helen: Can I put this on the blog?

Benjamin: posters sprinkled with diamond dust

Benjamin: space?

Helen: V. Hirst

Benjamin: yes on my behalf

Benjamin: yup

Benjamin: also vic muniz

Benjamin: and tons of other bigshots

Helen:: wicki

Benjamin: wicky baby

Benjamin: theres tons of them

Benjamin: just google diamon dust print

Helen: what did you fins?

Helen: you seen the cobain one?

Benjamin: by muniz?

Benjamin: space with diamond dust…..

Helen: no, some lamo http://davidblakeart.com/archives/227

Benjamin: industrial diamons are dirt cheap

Helen: get on it.

Benjamin: diamond dust is apperently glass

Helen: on muniz?

Benjamin: cant be

Helen: arggghhhhh soooo tacky!!! http://www.artnet.com/artwork/426130535/black-mari…

Benjamin: could you ask just for fun if diamond dust would be able to get ahold of there

Benjamin: i can imagine those kinds of prints would do quite well if they like shiny expensive things

Helen: It’s all about status.

Helen: and the market

Helen: So before anyone buys your work they will look at the market for it. This will be a problem to sell properly until your work has established itself, but tacky prints for people’s homes less so.

Helen: I think decorative is a good route

Helen: for the prints

Benjamin: i agree

Benjamin: hip decorative

Helen: yep

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