Only one day till the artists arrive. I’m trying to finish a short essay for the publication in oppressive heat. It’s impossible to concentrate. I have to play a careful game in the way in which I word things. When my text gets translated into Mandarin I know it will be changed, but not how much or in what way. Translation is such a delicate art. With the knowledge that the Mandarin text will not be my words, I try to keep my English text my own. It’s not just problem ‘key words’ which the translation will remove. I feel under pressure to create a diplomatic and bland statement about cultural exchange and partnership with Ceiling Gallery. This is not me.
The fog machines for psychoanalYSL’s installation have arrived. Yanyan had to spend four hours sorting out the delivery. There are so many practical things I would be arranging as a curator in UK which are just not possible here because of language. In some way this is great as it allows me to concentrate on the writing. For Yanyan this project is a lot more work than other residencies he has managed.
The packaging for the fog machine liquid is brilliant ***DJ~POWER***
We test them out but the space we’re in is 350sqm and the installation space only about 75sqm so it’s difficult to tell if they will suffice. They have fun remote controls with fake walnut detail. I fill Yanyan’s office with fog just as the head of culture for Chongqing province arrives for a meeting! She’s here to discuss the issues 102 artists have with the Huang Jueping Contemporary Art Gallery next to their studio block (see blog entry #14). The problem of the government controlling gallery spaces in Chongqing is coming to a head and Yanyan as one of the elders of the scene has been busy this week with meetings every second day in which he is asked to give advice to the younger artists in the 102 studios. Yanyan is the link to the council officials and landlords, the one who originally signed the agreement with the landlords at 501 studios and now manages negotiations at 102. He feels cornered when it comes to options as he knows he’s always on the outside of these negotiations. The council and landlords are in one another’s pockets.
I’ve also been working on the invitation and poster. I wanted psychoanalYSL to do the design as I knew the graphic design here would not be up to scratch from the other posters I’ve seen in the area. They could only do so much as the Mandarin needs to be inserted. Once the local graphic designer had done their work the original image by the artists had been taken down to a 50% transparency, blue and turquoise ugly squashed type stamped upon it. Those involved want their names centre stage, so the poster looks like an advertisement for a feature film rather than an exhibition “PRODUCER : ALEX ZHOU, EXHIBITION DIRECTOR : TIAN MENG, ACADEMIC SUPPORT … ETC Also the gallery insist upon using as many logos as possible to make the show look important. Yanyan has a folder of 10s of logos of different media companies; he randomly pulled about 8 to put on the poster shrugging his shoulders saying how silly this practice is. Plus the arbitrary media partners we’ve got those who have actually given support; Arts Council, Sveska Kultur Fonden, 501 Contemporary Art Centre, Chinese Arts Centre and Ceiling Space…so another 5! I can’t convince them to stop at the genuine 5 investors but I do have another go at the graphics, reinstating psychoanalYSL’s artwork to its intended hue, stripping down the amount of text and putting it in the most minimal font I can find.
It’s taken a whole week of backwards and forwards with the poster and it’s not even printed yet! We’ve also got a publication of 16 or so pages to put together. This is going to be interesting.
PsychoanalYSL prior boarding their plane to China have just installed work in
RIVE GAUCHE: South of the River
NULL/VOID’s inaugural exhibition for their project space. See: http://www.artlicks.com/events/2181/rive-gauche-south-of-the-river
